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TRANSMARINE
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
2002 Posts

Posted - 11/03/2006 :  17:02:37  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
As I've been obsessed with David Lynch since 1980, I am extremely excited to be lucky enough to go see an AFI screening of INLAND EMPIRE tonight and the after party. Thank God for connections! Hahaha! Lynch will be attending the screening and the party, and I'm sure I will say something moronic to him. Just some inside info for you Lynch fans, this screening and the New York AFI screening will be the 3+ hour version...once it is into a limited release, it will be paired down to 2 hours. Very strange. Yet, there it is. I will write back later after I've seen it.

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His name is Dalton. He's got a degree in philosophy.
-bRIAN

Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~

Belize
5305 Posts

Posted - 11/03/2006 :  17:15:24  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Very cool!!! I can't wait to see what you think of the film and your encounter with mr. lynch.... if I weren't seeing FB tonight I would be jealous

Edited by - Daisy Girl on 11/03/2006 17:15:39
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/03/2006 :  17:18:04  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
wish i was going



at least that's what your mom said
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HeywoodJablome
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
1485 Posts

Posted - 11/03/2006 :  18:32:10  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by TRANSMARINE

Thank God for connections! Hahaha!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
His name is Dalton. He's got a degree in philosophy.
-bRIAN



Dick.

Take me with you and I'll buy you some HOB "jazzy bread" and a Coors Light at the Disney Frank show.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
"No one cares about your shitty band."
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/03/2006 :  20:20:54  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
jazzy bread. that sounds good



at least that's what your mom said
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 11/04/2006 :  13:40:45  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
I'm bloody jealous, TRANS.

Recent review:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30544?moriarty_visits_david_lynchs_inland_empire_and_lives_to_tell_about_it

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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2006 :  17:53:54  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
so when are you going to tell us about the film tranny?



at least that's what your mom said
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HeywoodJablome
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
1485 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2006 :  18:44:40  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
No jazzy bread for you...



































































dick.


_____________________________________________________________________________________________
"No one cares about your shitty band."
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/06/2006 :  20:11:54  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
yeah, thanks a lot tranny































































































































































































































































not
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/09/2006 :  17:57:03  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
wish i had heard about this earlier today

http://www.defamer.com/hollywood/david-lynch/update-david-lynch-and-his-favorite-cow-team-up-to-drum-up-interest-in-inland-empire-213760.php



at least that's what your mom said
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HeywoodJablome
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
1485 Posts

Posted - 11/10/2006 :  11:20:39  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
It's always refreshing to see someone that successful still acting like a genuine weirdo, or I guess when your rich it's called "eccentric."

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
"No one cares about your shitty band."
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 11/10/2006 :  13:00:16  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Now that's how to promote a movie!

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TRANSMARINE
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
2002 Posts

Posted - 11/11/2006 :  19:13:18  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Sorry all. Have been out of town for the past week.

How was the movie?

gggGGGGGreat! Very, very cool and strange...of course. To describe it would be too hard. Stories within stories, actors and characters slipping in and out of confused realities...scary, like dreams when they're not scary, but the subtext elements you cant quite put a finger on make it scary. Laura Dern has submitted an all-out sublime and searing performance...and yet it made no linear sense.

Lynch spoke a bit before hand...but the film was 3.5 hours in length, the after-party thing was over (it was going on simultaneously)...didn't get out of the theater until well after 1am.

But it was a great time. I'm glad to have seen this version, and am excited, although a bit wary, of what the limited release 2-hour version will be like.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
His name is Dalton. He's got a degree in philosophy.
-bRIAN
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~

Belize
5305 Posts

Posted - 11/12/2006 :  11:37:17  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Transmarine, thanks so much for the review! The movie sounds so cool. What David Lynch movie does it most remind you of?

The extended version hasn't made it to my town yet, so it looks like I will watch the edited version. Hopefully the full version will be relesed on DVD....
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/12/2006 :  12:17:41  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
i read that he's self-distributing the film and will not be cutting it .



at least that's what your mom said
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~

Belize
5305 Posts

Posted - 11/12/2006 :  12:19:50  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
cool! doing it yourself is the best way to maintain creative control.
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 11/12/2006 :  14:35:41  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Blue Velvet was on TV the other night. "Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!!"

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TRANSMARINE
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
2002 Posts

Posted - 11/12/2006 :  14:42:23  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Daisy Girl

Transmarine, thanks so much for the review! The movie sounds so cool. What David Lynch movie does it most remind you of?

The extended version hasn't made it to my town yet, so it looks like I will watch the edited version. Hopefully the full version will be relesed on DVD....



Which Lynch movie does it most remind me of? Well, they are all reminiscent of each other, as they are Lynchian. I would have to say that there are pieces of all his stuff scattered here and there in IE. Familiar faces, of course. Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriski (who was sitting by me!! That was odd!)...cramped and claustrophobic hallucenogenic visuals...funny he shot the entire thing on Hi-Def video, and he didn't make an attempt to hide it. It looks awful, which must be his point, and yet his technique remains his usual in composition and framing. There are slivers of many works here...but not in rehash or zerox...just in themes and textures and visuals. The thing that haunted me most about it, and this was in hindsight as I was driving home, this film is almost totally devoid of violence or sex. Not that that detracted or distracted. Just was different in that way.

And Floop, I hope youre right about DL distributing it himself...this movie needs to retain everything I saw.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
His name is Dalton. He's got a degree in philosophy.
-bRIAN
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~

Belize
5305 Posts

Posted - 11/13/2006 :  09:07:57  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Transmarine, thanks so much for your description. It sounds so cool! I can't wait to check it out.
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 11/15/2006 :  17:55:16  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
more DL fun

http://defamer.com/hollywood/david-lynch/david-lynch-and-the-cow-return-215123.php



at least that's what your mom said
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Newo
~ Abstract Brain ~

Spain
2674 Posts

Posted - 11/16/2006 :  04:15:07  Show Profile  Click to see Newo's MSN Messenger address  Reply with Quote
Friend of mine downloaded this http://video.google.es/videosearch?q=david+lynch+berkeley for me and I´m going to watch it at the weekend, a conference Lynch gave at Berkeley last November about consciousness and transcendental meditation, which he sez he´s been doing for 30 years.

--


Gravy boat! Stay in the now!
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TRANSMARINE
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
2002 Posts

Posted - 11/16/2006 :  11:30:36  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Has anyone seen INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY NO.1? I have it on VHS which I purchased in 1990, and I wish it would make it's way to DVD. Very cool stuff!

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His name is Dalton. He's got a degree in philosophy.
-bRIAN
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Skatealex1
* Dog in the Sand *

1670 Posts

Posted - 12/14/2006 :  22:18:46  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
This movie was brilliant! Best Lynch movie? Very possible. What its about? Not so sure but defently hollywood themes in there and a girl in trouble of course. Great music too!

The Truth Is Out There
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Sir Rockabye
* Dog in the Sand *

USA
1158 Posts

Posted - 01/01/2007 :  15:26:41  Show Profile  Visit Sir Rockabye's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I saw it last weekend. Generally one to enjoy Lynch, I was severly disappointed. I walked out after about three hours and twenty minutes. Never walked out before.


You run all kinds of red lights except the ones on the street.
When you run out of exits you can always count sheep.
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Daisy Girl
~ Abstract Brain ~

Belize
5305 Posts

Posted - 01/01/2007 :  16:46:32  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Doesn't look like it's coming to my town anytime soon :(
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 01/06/2007 :  14:50:51  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
David Lynch is doing a Q+A at a screening of the film at the Paramount theater in Austin, TX, on Jan 24:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31141




Here's a couple of things I posted in another thread a while ago, but should have posted here:

Early review of Lynch's forthcoming Inland Empire:

http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=reviews&id=7808

Lynch distributes IE himself!:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003223920

Oct. 11, 2006

Lynch self-distributing 'Inland Empire'

By Gregg Goldstein

NEW YORK -- Director David Lynch has worked out a deal with French producer Studio Canal to self-distribute his three-hour digital video feature "Inland Empire" in the U.S. and Canada. Producer Mary Sweeney said the plan will "explore a new model of distribution," which is expected to include theatrical, home video and online venues.

Lynch will work with well-known theatrical and home video partners to launch his epic fever dream of a film, retaining all rights to the low-budget project in each service deal. The partnerships will be announced within a week.

A release is slated before the end of the year, along with an awards-season campaign on behalf of star and co-producer Laura Dern. Discussions to release the feature online also are in the works.

"Basically, we learned a lot from our experiences with 'The Straight Story' and 'Mulholland Drive,' " Sweeney said. "There was a lot spent on P&A. Those experiences, the new technologies of digital distribution available today, along with David's completely avant-garde attitude toward life make this the right film at the right time for this approach."

The producer added that recent reports of the film being pulled from the Sitges International Film Festival were "total malarkey" because it was never promised to them in the first place. "They've been hounding us, bless their hearts, to get the film as part of a David Lynch retrospective, but we just delivered the essential elements of the film to Studio Canal in time for the Venice Film Festival, so it was never possible."

Sweeney noted that digital and transferred 35mm masters of the film are available, so several options are open for distributing the film via both digital and conventional methods.

A flurry of rumors in the independent film community had just about every indie company in the business interested in taking on the film. In fact, some in the industry speculated that the filmmakers themselves helped spread the rumors of wide distributor interest. At least one indie acquisitions executive said he was told by Studio Canal that a $1 million offer for the film was made last week.

"Nobody intentionally tried to spread any rumors," said Sweeney, who could neither confirm nor deny the offer but said she would be "very surprised" if that was the case. (Studio Canal reps were not available at press time.) "We've had several distributors talking to us for quite a while," she added.

"Empire," which had its premiere at the Venice fest as Lynch picked up a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement, has sharply divided critics both abroad and at its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. The feature, three years in the making, begins with two interwoven stories of an actress, played by Dern, who is making an onscreen comeback in a Southern melodrama she is filming called "High in Blue Tomorrows." But the film soon branches off to follow another abused and abusive character, also played by Dern. "I figure I have at least three roles, maybe a few more," she said.

Each plot line in "Empire" deals with issues of betrayal in relationships, but the film veers off those tracks as it showcases musical dance sequences and dramatic episodes with actors speaking Polish. Sitcom-style family scenes featuring people with rabbit heads also are woven into the film, based on Lynch's nine-part 2002 series of shorts, "Rabbits." Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring and Scott Coffey, who starred in Lynch's most recent film, 2001's "Mulholland Drive," filmed the original shorts and later re-enacted their scenes on the same set for "Empire."

Here's another Inland Empire review:

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30345




Oh yeah, and a special edition of Mulholland Drive is coming out on R2 DVD. Apparently, it may containn a ten minuter preview of IE:

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=63773

Edited by - Carl on 01/12/2007 18:07:32
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cassandra is
> Teenager of the Year <

France
4233 Posts

Posted - 01/08/2007 :  03:04:24  Show Profile  Visit cassandra is's Homepage  Reply with Quote
just one month left to see it here!




pas de bras pas de chocolat
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 01/15/2007 :  06:37:50  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Teaser:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y4hFEDYmMcM

Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPYOtPSnZc

Italian trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtzSSG8X9e0

Official site:

http://www.inlandempirecinema.com/




http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article1419224.ece

From The Sunday Times

February 25, 2007

We’ve been Lynched

Cinematic genius, or obfuscating auteur? David Lynch is certainly a compulsive creator. On the eve of a new film and an art show, he chats to Rosie Millard, while Ryan Gilbey considers his weird science


David Lynch is sitting on a Perspex chair on the top floor of the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Giant floor-to-ceiling windows allow a peerless view of white Parisian rooftops, the Jardin du Lux- embourg and the towers of Montparnasse and Eiffel. A single cloud in a bright blue sky floats above the drapeau tricoloreflying on the gilded dome of Les Inval- ides. It is picture-postcard France, but then, in many ways, so is Lynch. In his customary style of formal white button- down shirt, black jacket and cigarette, Lynch, who is 61, could easily pass as a classic Frenchman. He certainly thrives here: French companies back his films, and the French public admires them. His latest, the three-hour Inland Empire, is on all over Paris, and people are queuing to see it. But then, the French have always loved an auteur.

“Oh, for sure,” says Lynch, “France is so good to me. So welcoming. They believe in the auteur. They fight for it.” On this basis, it’s understandable why the paintings, draw- ings and photographs he has been steadily creating for the past 40 years are to be put on show for the first time here in Paris, and not in his home town of Los Angeles. The story is that Hervé Chandăs, curator of the Fondation Cartier, went over to see Lynch and pulled out work Lynch had not seen for decades. He gave Chandăs free access to thousands of images, which, it appears, he created purely for the thrill of creating. “I did not do the work to be exhibited. You don’t. You just do it. Showing the work is not something I think about. You just find extreme enjoyment in doing it,” says Lynch, who studied fine art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. “It’s the same, even in film. I would rather not show my films, in a weird way.” He smiles. “But it was good to get stuff out of storage, to see old work, think about ideas that were started but not finished. Sometimes the past feeds the future, and it’s good.”

There is certainly a lot of food for thought at the show. It covers two floors: upstairs, huge frames support blue, orange and yellow curtains, a familiar Lynch leitmotif, on which hang giant pictures, some painted in heavy impasto. These depict frequently nightmarish action in a confident, primi- tive style: bodies fly out of storybook houses, skulls stride on long legs. One painting, of an agonised man, is captioned “This man was shot 0.9502 seconds ago”. His spirit, as well as his blood and guts, is flying out of his body.

Downstairs, Lynch fans will be busy ticking off more of the master’s signature motifs. A lyrical collection of colour nude photographs of women focuses on small elements of perfection — the curve of an eyebrow, the swell of a breast. There is nothing that makes a formal link to the coiffed teenage girls in his cult TV series Twin Peaks, or the strange beauty of his former fiancée, Isabella Rossellini, in Wild at Heart, but it is the same singular, artistic impetus behind both. “There are some things in the exhibition that specifically relate to Dune or The Elephant Man,” acknowledges Lynch, “some drawings that were ideas maybe for things in the films, but most of the work is not tied to the films.”

Drawings of dead insects, ephemera such as doodlings above phone numbers, or seemingly iconic phrases (“I Did Not Know the Gun Was Loaded”, or the show’s titular inspiration, “The Air Is on Fire”), lead to a wall of black- and-white photographs of industrial scenes: sewage pipes, shuttered door- ways, forbidding bridges, chance pieces of sugges- tive graffiti. Men- ace surrounds these as surely as it does the shadowy corridors down which Laura Dern runs screaming from one world to another in Inland Empire. “I think I am not alone in a fascination with a pull to the unknown,” says Lynch. “Transitions from one kind of reality to another. Doorways and curtains. Ingresses to different places.” People will not be able to resist putting some form of story to all this, I suggest. “Oh, many times a painting will start a narrative,” says Lynch. “People do it naturally. It’s the same in the cinema. The mind kicks in, the heart kicks in, intuition kicks in, and you are rolling. You come with interpretations. And conclusions.”

Interpretations and conclusions will be difficult to avoid with the Distorted Nudes series of pictures, where Lynch has digitally reworked 40 vintage erotic photographs to provide the sort of peepshow the Chapman brothers might be proud of. Amputees, heads within stomachs, people biting one another and multiple breast-growth are just some of the considerably creepy delights in this adults-only area of the exhibition. “Oh, I did that work a while ago,” says Lynch pleasantly. “That was my first experiment with Photoshop. It’s the greatest thing since Post Toasties.” Was he inspired by the likes of Dali, or maybe Francis Bacon? “No, no, I was just doing my own thing. Just taking photos and scanning them in and taking them apart,” he says. “The whole process is just a flow of ideas. That’s what it is all about.”

The idea — this has always been a fixation for Lynch, who was originally so fanatically driven to spend life as a painter that he secured himself a studio while still at high school. “I didn’t care about anything else — just painting.” It was apparently pure prag- matism that led him away from the canvas and towards the clapperboard. “I started getting green lights in the film world and falling in love with that medium. But it didn’t mean I fell out of love with painting. It’s just that this new thing came along. I’ve been painting all along. When I’ve had a chance to paint, I paint. I always say it’s about ideas. There are always ideas coming. Sometimes it’s painting and sometimes it’s film and sometimes it’s music.”

The show goes for all three: a Lynch soundtrack accompanies the paintings on the first floor, while in the basement, surrounded by the photographs and draw- ings, a small cinema will screen three of his short films. This is a man who has a finger in almost every artistic pie going. Does he still relish their differences? “There are big differences. Painting is its own thing, a special thing. It’s about so many different things, wordless things,” he enthuses. “There’s rules to it. The rules are not meant to be obeyed, but there are rules, and colours, and disturbances. All kinds of things going on. In film, there are a lot of those same rules, but way more. Way more, way more. There’s time. Like in music, you have time. Cinema brings all these art forms together, so it’s a bigger thing — in a way.”

Is Inland Empire, the new film, so long because he wanted it to become some kind of meditative painting? He laughs a lot at this sugges- tion. “No. A film wants to be a certain way. It doesn’t feel correct if it is shorter or longer. There is a way that it talks to you, and you follow that way. Though it is unfortunate it is so long, because the distributors get one less screening a day, which is a problem.”

He acknowledges, however, that the chance to shoot the movie himself (with a digital camera) gave him a greater sense of creativity, rather as if he were painting on canvas. “It gives you the opportunity to do things you couldn’t do if you had a focus puller and an operator and huge pieces of equipment. With a small digital camera, you have a feeling to move, or to drift. You are way more in there. Acting and reacting are real natural, and easy. As soon as the actors real- ise you have 40 minutes of uninterrupted time to sink in, andwe are sinking in there together, it’s beautiful.”

From pieces of cinema to doodles on Postit notes, via musical compositions, to photography, drawingand painting, this show willreveal, more than any onebig, dark, artistic secret,that Lynch is a compulsivecreator. He cannot helptransferring ideas that whirr around his head onto whatever medium he calls upon, be it paper, canvas, celluloid or computer pro- grammes. He acknowledges this, but generously so. “None of us stops creating. The thing that stops us is money. And equipment. You get an idea for a certain thing and you go work on it. That’s all it takes. You betcha.”

The Air Is on Fire is at the Fondation Cartier, Paris, from March 3 to May 27; Inland Empire is released on March 9

His dark material

In the second half of the 1980s, the film Blue Velvet and the television series Twin Peaks altered popular culture, narrative technique, American iconography — and the minds of audiences all over the world. So indelible was the impression they left that their influence now seems to function retrospectively: it’s hard to look at work that preceded them, such as the films of Frank Capra, without viewing it through the vision of warped small-town America presented by their creator, David Lynch, a quizzical surrealist described by one producer as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars”. Only now are we seeing clearly the effect Lynch has had on our visual culture. Without Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, there would now be gaping holes in modern cinema — no American Beauty, Donnie Darko, Happiness or Barton Fink, to name but a handful. The television schedules would be threadbare, too. You could kiss goodbye to Lost, The X Files, Desperate Housewives and Six Feet Under, for starters.

The dazzling opening montage of Blue Velvet shows red roses reaching toward blue skies in front of white picket fences, a man waving cheerfully from a passing fire engine and a line of contented schoolchildren trundling across a sun-dappled road. Then the camera burrows beneath the surface of one of the impeccably manicured lawns in this perfect neighbourhood, where it comes nose-to-nose with an orgy of gnashing, chomping, glistening creepy-crawlies. This discovery doesn’t disrupt the calm façade: life carries on as normal, no matter how repugnant society’s underbelly is shown to be — and with Dennis Hopper, in his career comeback, as a psychopath who abuses Isabella Rossellini while goody two-shoes Kyle MacLachlan (better known now for roles in Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City) watches from inside her closet, that’s pretty damn repugnant.

Similarly, the folksy town of Twin Peaks, where the corpse of the homecoming queen Laura Palmer is discovered, proceeds in its folksy rituals even as the FBI investigation heats up. Each spellbinding instalment uncovered new evidence in the hunt for the killer, though Agatha Christie would hardly have approved — Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan again) experienced many of his breakthroughs in coded dreams, while the proliferation of doughnuts and “damn fine coffee” mattered as much to fans as who killed Laura Palmer.

This tightrope walk between good and evil, banal and bizarre, may be the closest thing to araison d’ętreyou’ll find in Lynch’s films. In both Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, he completes his expedition into the unsavoury unknown without disturbing the surface of normality or leaving behind any footprints. “I’ve always liked both sides,” he has said, “and believe that to appreciate one, you have to know the other — the more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see, too.”

His films since the commercial and creative peak of Blue Velvet, with the exception of the gentle road movie The Straight Story (1999), have only got weirder. There was the Palme d’Or-winning Wild at Heart (1990), which can be credited with inventing Nicolas Cage’s persona; the punishing 1992 Twin Peaks prequel, Fire Walk

With Me, which was booed at Cannes; Lost Highway (1997), in which a man awaiting trial for murder simply metamorphoses into someone else in his cell; and the heady Mulholland Dr (2001), about an amnesiac and a would-be actress whose identities blur in a haunted Hollywood.

However, the new Inland Empire is arguably his most inscrutable film yet. It feels as though the bare bones of the plot — about a movie star (Laura Dern) who merges with her latest role, and with her Polish predecessor, who was murdered while playing it — are being offered to us as a mere formality. What Lynch is really interested in is stranding us in a hostile dreamscape where we can never be sure who the characters are, let alone what they’re doing. Why does it keep cutting to an eerie suburban living room in which three people with rabbit heads have their every utterance greeted with canned laughter? Where did that chorus line of prostitutes come from? Can someone pass me an aspirin?

Lynch’s films have usually provided cosmetic comforts for anyone left foxed by the Möbius-strip narratives or outraged by the displays of depravity. Blue Velvet, for instance, filtered its images of perversity and degradation through an operatic sensibility — it may have been sick, but it looked gorgeous, and thanks to the lushness of the score by Angelo Badalamenti, the ears could be soothed even when the eyes were screwed shut in terror.

With Inland Empire, Lynch has withdrawn even those compensatory pleasures. The movie, shot on fuzzy digital video, is deliberately ugly; if you expunged all the tracking shots along dank passageways and corridors, which play like excerpts from a dimly lit computer game, it would shave half an hour off the running time. And Badalamenti has been relieved of his duties, too. In fact, the sole consolation we can derive from the visual and verbal non sequiturs, and the disjointed editing, is that only one director could have made this film — a few minutes in, and you know you’ve been Lynched.

Yet while Inland Empire may not be a pretty picture, I think that’s partly the point. Without our usual cinematic comforts to buffer any bewilderment, we are forced more than ever to confront the stark horrors of Lynch’s imagination, and to work to assemble the pieces of the film’s jigsaw puzzle in our own mind. Dissenters may carp that Lynch “doesn’t give answers”, but it is precisely his insistence on our intellectual and emotional participation that makes his films so fiercely prized.

Anyone imagining that Lynch would mellow with age will be startled to find that the morbid mystery tour of Inland Empire represents his most experimental w o r k since 1977’s Eraserhead. That haunting cult hit, much admired by Stanley Kubrick, was completed over five years using cash from the various part-time jobs Lynch racked up after graduating from art school. In it, the elements that would become known as “Lynchian” were already in evidence. It show-cased his knack for rooting around in the collective subconscious and dredging up unspeakable images, like a police frogman dragging a lake for morbid trophies. I remember seeing the film for the first time and feeling chilled to the bone that someone had managed to replicate on screen the exact textures and rhythms of my nightmares. How best to describe that ground-breaking movie? A man with an outrageous pompadour, who lives in an industrial hellhole, is left to care for his mewing, limbless, duck-like baby and ends up slaughtering the infant and finding true love with a puff-cheeked woman living in his central heating. A simple tale, then, of boy meets girl-behind-the-radiator.

In the past, journalists have made the mistake of asking him to explain what’s going on, perhaps not realising that he reacts to such inquiries like a lactose-intolerant man being chased by a giant wheel of edam. An interviewer once asked what Lost Highway was about. “It’s about 120 minutes,” Lynch deadpanned. And given the myriad interpretations available, the interviewer continued, what would be a bad way to emerge from the cinema? “On a gurney,” came the reply.

There’s a serious point behind Lynch’s tendency to duck questions, however. His films, like any examples of undiluted surrealism, obey only the logic of dreams. To impose rational explanations on them would be as futile as attempting to dig a hole with a length of spaghetti. Better by far to surrender wholesale to a film such as Inland Empire and let it lead you where you thought you didn’t want to go. Dream on.






More interviews:

Empire:

http://www.empireonline.com/interviews_and_events/interview.asp?IID=641

Total Film:

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/david_lynch_on_inland_empire

The Times:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article1482735.ece

The Guardian:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2011369,00.html

The Independant:

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2347960.ece

The Independant interview with Laura Dern:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article2332766.ece

David Lynch coffee:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/blogs/?p=2664

Empire magazine's explaination of Inland Empire (whcih, since I haven't seen it yet, I haven't read myself,being-of course-spoiler heavy):

http://www.empireonline.com/features/inlandempire/default.asp?NID=20498

Edited by - Carl on 03/27/2007 16:41:07
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cassandra is
> Teenager of the Year <

France
4233 Posts

Posted - 03/28/2007 :  01:10:03  Show Profile  Visit cassandra is's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I just saw Inland Empire last week. I was a bit anxious about it.
But it was huge, awesome, brilliant like always with Lynch.

The filming is great, Laura Dern is excellent, the music is wonderful. Watching it was like if honey was flowing in my brain. That's the kind of movie that feeds you, and that makes you feel a better person.

I still think of it very often (almost everyday since then). It kinda haunts me (in a good and pleasant way).

I wish I was able to see it once more, but unfortunately they're not playing it anymore in my town.




pas de bras pas de chocolat
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 03/28/2007 :  02:40:46  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
By the way, Cass (and other French folks) here's some details about Lynch's Parisian exhibition, The Air Is On Fire, in May:

http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/009496.html
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cassandra is
> Teenager of the Year <

France
4233 Posts

Posted - 03/28/2007 :  02:54:55  Show Profile  Visit cassandra is's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Thanks Carl, the exhibition looks great (he had a lot of reviews and articles in France about that exhibition) and it's been a long time I wish to visit la Fondation Cartier. I'll try to go if I can.

I remember that Lynch was invited to the first edition of the Printemps de Septembre in my town in 2001 (which is a famous annual photography and contemporary art festival). Some of his photographs were showed in one of the biggest church of the town with other artists. That was great, and his photographs were very impressive.




pas de bras pas de chocolat
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floop
= Wannabe Volunteer =

Mexico
15297 Posts

Posted - 04/04/2007 :  20:42:38  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
gotta love Davey

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2007/04/david_lynch_ana.html



jamming good with Weird and Gilly

Edited by - floop on 04/04/2007 20:45:18
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cassandra is
> Teenager of the Year <

France
4233 Posts

Posted - 04/04/2007 :  23:48:00  Show Profile  Visit cassandra is's Homepage  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by floop

gotta love Davey

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2007/04/david_lynch_ana.html
jamming good with Weird and Gilly



he's the Man! what else to say?




pas de bras pas de chocolat
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Jason
* Dog in the Sand *

1446 Posts

Posted - 04/10/2007 :  07:35:30  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Saw it yesterday.

Inland Empire reminds me of why I'd be a bad film critic. I DID like it, but I also found it bewildering and I don't know what to say about it. At the end I felt I knew no more about the characters and the situation than I did at the beginning. But it did hold me in rapt attention, which I figure is pretty good for a three hour movie that I couldn't understand.

One thing I did think about while watching it is that maybe a movie like this -- full of characters who show up and disappear with no explanation, a main character whose identity is never quite established, and the constant feeling that we, the audience, are always being walked into the middle of situations, without being shown, or even told about, the beginning (and often the end, too) -- is the most realistic kind of movie of all. Because isn't life like that? Full of things that go unexplained and full of characters who show off some kind of quirk for a brief moment and then disappear from our lives forever.

Edited by - Jason on 04/10/2007 07:36:42
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Carl
- A 'Fifth' Catholic -

Ireland
11546 Posts

Posted - 09/10/2007 :  07:48:09  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Watched it last night. Weird, even by Lynch standards. I really liked it. Funny, really scary and intriguing. It's like watching the weirdest dream you ever had! A total "Fuck you!" to Hollywood! Laura Dern deserves an Oscar nom, she's brilliant in it. Her role is multi-faceted, but she brings it off convincingly.

"I hate how the reptile dreams it's a mammal. Scaley monster: be what you are!!" - Erebus.
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The King Of Karaoke
> Teenager of the Year <

USA
3759 Posts

Posted - 09/10/2007 :  08:21:26  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
David Lynch: Questions About 9/11
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xhYYN7QhcKs
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rj6akvriqJQ

------------------
MIT Engineer Says WTC Demolished http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8XToX7aSdg
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8129564295534231536&q=911+mysteries&total=696&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
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