It's the inevitable and long-awaited DAVID LYNCH POLL

Ok, so speaking of Lynch DVDs - on the Short Films of Lynch DVD (and I think some other Lynch DVDs too) there's a "Calibrate Your Television" section where you're supposed to adjust the brightness of your set to the point where you can just see the "hidden image" on the screen.

So is my TV broken or is Lynch just fucking with me, because I can't see a thing no matter how bright I set it?

best part of the eraserhead doc is his talking about finding a dead cat at an abandoned industrial site while scouting locations for eraserhead and submerging it in a pool of oil for safe keeping, then returning like nine months later and filming henry dredging it up (still there!) and poking it with a hanger. ha ha. such a card.

reconciling an overwhelming preoccupation with sexual desire and the responsibilities of fatherhood

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Tuesday, June 14, 2011 10:08 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

it's about working a shit job in a dead-end town, living in a crummy apartment and having a bad relationship with a girl you don't really understand. you meet her parents and feel hideously uncomfortable. they're weird and serve you bad food. you desire other women but are also terrified of your desire. you dream pointlessly as a way of evading your situation and responsibilities. eventually you have a kid without wanting one, and you hate that, too.

duh, lol, that was SUPPOSED to be a response to this:

what, if anything, would you say "Eraserhead" is about?

― anarcho-misogynist puppies (DJP), Tuesday, June 14, 2011 10:03 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

ranked order incl. major shorts/TV

Blue Velvet
The Grandmother
Eraserhead
Twin Peaks finale
Mulholland Dr.
Twin Peaks pilot
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Premonition Following An Evil Deed
Lost Highway
The Elephant Man
The Cowboy and the Frenchman
Dune
The Straight Story
Industrial Symphony No. 1
Wild at Heart

only thing i actively dislike is W@H.

oh hai put inland empire in there after TP:FWWM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIxS7Bdz10

Your order just about works for me except that I'm not super crazy about Blue Velvet. I mean, it's a good film, but it falls short as an expression of the Lynch that I love. Your top nine (inc. Inland) is otherwise pretty spot-on. The Grandmother is excellent.

This is how I would rank them:

Lost Highway
Straight Story
Elephant Man
Lynch's Twin Peaks episodes
Mulholland Dr.
Blue Velvet
On the Air
Fire Walk with Me
Wild at Heart
Eraserhead
Inland Empire

Haven't seen Dune or any of the shorts. After a very good first 30 minutes, Inland Empire is a 2,5 hour snoozefest, and Eraserhead is a "film student film" with all the positive and negative things that implies. Everything else worth a watch, at the least.

Don't want to rank. I'll just continue telling everyone how gay I am for Inland Empire.

Don't want to rank. I'll just continue telling everyone ERASERHEAD

would the twin peaks series have won this if it had been included?

Rewatched half of Dune last night, god that movie is awesome.

dune is terrible. but i will pretty much drop everything to watch it any time it happens to be on tv.

saw The Straight Story projected in 35mm today for the first time since '99 i believe. Built around a killer performance obviously, but one of the most moving American films of its era. That scene with Alvin and the other WW2 vet in the bar...

also forgot the US distributor

WALT DISNEY PICTURES PRESENTS
A DAVID LYNCH FILM

"a Miller's Light"

Straight Story is incredible. the ending is just perfect, just perfect. just the look on Harry Dean Stanton's face tells you everything.

i have a VHS copy that i showed to an old friend in from out of town last year at Christmas. we were both on the verge of tears by the ending but he still said thank you so much for showing this to me.

one of my favorite movie scores too (I tend not to notice unless they're obtrusive)

actually it's "What does a Miller Lite taste like?"

"... that's fucking crazy, man"

Rewatched Mulholland for first time in a decade or so and it's aged really well for me... wondering if I should rewatch Inland Empire again.

i screwed a couple guys for drinks; no big deal. this one guy was kinda cute. fucker had a dick like a rhinoceros. he'd fuck the shit out of you, i tell you what. he'd buy me a couple of drinks after. we'd talk. he'd tell me about the town he grew up in, all the little girls he fucked. there was a chemical factory in this town, and he'd tell me it was putting so much shit in the air you couldn't think straight. it got to a lot of the people. there was a lot of crazy shit going on there-- people having weird dreams. seeing things that wasn't there. this one time, this one little girl--she was staring off at something one time. starts screaming. the people hanging round come to her and ask what's wrong. and, uh, she says she sees the end of the world. all fire and smoke and blood running. you know. like they say. the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, April 8, 2015 9:28 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

Alex in SF, yes, you should

I guess it's time to rescreen The Elephant Man.

Lost Highway really does feel like a dry run for Mulholland Drive... and it's remarkable to see how loathed Fire Walk With Me was even 10 years ago. A theater screened it here a couple weeks ago and I thought it was incredible, just devastating.

Sheryl Lee's performance in FWWM is all-time

oh, she's phenomenal! obviously there was just too much baggage and hurt feelings from the stars in the press after the series, but i'm surprised it's taken until relatively recently for FWWM to be rated at all. it got less votes than fucking DUNE here in 2007!

Yes, it would be much higher, maybe third.

i think i voted for The Elephant Man because i love it, it's so tender and unique. it's heartbreaking. I don't think it's my favourite and it wasn't then either, I just feared that it wouldn't get many votes.

everything about Lost Highway is soooooo 1997

So here is my top five.

Inland Empire is his most relentlessly daring feature, much more mature than Blue Velvet.

Yeah, I would swap out IE for BV for sure.

It's ridiculous that I still haven't seen Straight Story. Inexcusable.

FWWM only getting 1 vote in this is shameful

Finally saw Straight Story for the first time a few weeks ago, great movie

This poll would be so different now.

Personally I'd vote for the elephant man or TP:The Return depending on how it works out.

And if anyone does redo it then the three seasons of TP should be included.

As should all of the major shorts, tbh, I'd find someone choosing the Lumiere bros. film over anything else to be a respectable choice.

BV is expertly paced. My problem with IE is he seems to have lost -- temporarily, on the evidence of the new Twin Peaks -- the ability to know when a scene runs too long.

According to whom?

Uh, me.

Oh, well then case dismissed.

the return is already my favourite david lynch thing ever, from sheer pleasure alone. i've never had this much fun watching anything at all. even the slow parts are beautiful portraits in their own right. it's a grab bag of genres and concepts interwoven in a way that completely works, that makes this a unique, trailblazing and utterly inventive work of art. it's not like anything. it's not even like twin peaks.

wouldn't be surprised if the return would win in a redo, assuming it ends as well as it's been going

haha, i already posted this on alfred's facebook comment thread, but might as well post it here too:

Twin Peaks: The Return (even if the last 4 episodes are Dr Jacoby / Amp spray painting his shovel I’m comfortable with this ranking)
Mulholland Drive
Blue Velvet
Eraserhead
Inland Empire
Twin Peaks
The Elephant Man
Lost Highway
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Straight Story
Wild At Heart (I recognize it is somewhat disliked but I love it)
Dune

(i wrote the parenthetical to wild at heart early on in my ranking when i thought it would be near the top and needed some sort of halfassed justification, but it still holds. also i fully recognize that any list that is this long and includes the words "love" on the second to bottom ranked item is easily dismissable as fanboyism, but you know what, fuck you! FUCK YOU)

Twin Peaks: The Return (even if the last 4 episodes are Dr Jacoby / Amp spray painting his shovel I’m comfortable with this ranking)

otm

doesn't matter what happens now, it's already won

My problem with IE is he seems to have lost -- temporarily, on the evidence of the new Twin Peaks -- the ability to know when a scene runs too long.

there are many scenes in The Return that some would say run too long, so hold on to your butts

but yeah... besides the return, it's still mulholland drive

there are many scenes in The Return that some would say run too long, so hold on to your butts

― Karl Malone, Thursday, 17 August 2017 14:56 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people who complain about that are not reading the series 18 hour movie correctly imo. people don't go to an art gallery and criticise an artwork for not doing enough.

still, hold on to your butts

yeah, you need to be prepared to just go where it takes you.

also i want to be specific about a principal character's presence but can't spoil, so will say this: twin peaks revolutionised tv; the return isn't a trip down memory lane, it's not fan service, it's revolutionising tv again. lynch has incredible things for cinema, but imo he's never turned the whole of cinema upside down.

Alfred, curious why you've not watched the new TP beyond the first episode. Did it disappoint or is it just a time thing? Or are you waiting for the box set?