David Lynch - Classic or Dud

with its Aussie soap stars, Mulholland Drive is like a lost episode, at least outdoingFire walk with Me me in episodic tension or edge (but to be fair, what can be expeced from a prequel)

Mulholland Drive is a great film for Lynch, yanking him out of his US weirdo cult niche and projecting world class ideas onto the world stage. I fail to see how it could stand a chance at BAFTA with Princess Ann on the board however (Oscars and Globes out-of-th-qn i assume).

His outsiderness, and his adoption finally by Cannes, like a Roman Polanski.

Most certainly did -- his third film after Eraserhead and The Elephant Man.

Did anyone ever see that interview he did for scene by scene - i loved the bit where he's talking about "the eye of the duck" to describe the key scene in his films.

Also i highly recommend the book "Lynch on Lynch" - so much fun!

Umm. This movie is two years old. Why are we speculating on its award chances?

*waiting for backlash*

crosspost

Yeah, quite right. I read the book a year before the movie came out so my timing was perfect there...

although, N. has had my copy of the cinema one for nearly a year, now.

cremaster's opulent mythboredom reminded me a lot of dune

absolutely. it's funny how the production design seems to be the central concern of the film for much of its length, but unlike other well-appointed films, the design is actually so rich it actually sustains interest.

this movie redeems dino dilaurentis's reputation from all the europudding he's made. (well, this movie and "blue velvet.")

the last half hour is a mess, yes, but it's compelling for being so incomprehensible. the ending, if you haven't read the book, is just quizzical--all the more so for being so terrifically bombastic and theatrical.

FWWM, like Dune, does have a lot of extra footage still sitting there. As a fan of fractured, difficult art I'm not too bothered about seeing it restored. Pretty much all the series cast shot scenes.

Err, Lynch incidentally is brain-crushingly classic.

There's a much better book out there if you can find it at all -- The Making of Dune by Ed Naha. He was hired to essentially hang around on site during the entire length of filming and write a book about it all and did a fantastic job, I thought. While essentially uncritical about the final product itself, it actually doesn't talk about that so much as just the filming itself. Also laden with tons of photos.

Here's ten, in order of "classicness":

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Eraserhead
3. Blue Velvet
4. Wild at Heart
5. Elephant Man
6. Twin Peaks
7. The Straight Story
8. Dune
9. Fire Walk with Me
10. Lost Highway

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Blue Velvet
3. Eraserhead
4. Elephant Man
5. Lost Highway
6. Fire Walk with Me
7. Twin Peaks
8. Dune
9.The Straight Story

sorry, jaymc, my aside has troubled you, AND i used the wrong tense in one sentence!
and it revived a discussion, how about that ?
but huh ?, you haven't commented on Princess Anne and the BAFTAs, which was what i was getting at. Or anything else beyond the semantics of said paragraph. What do YOU THINK ?

I'm not sure I'll ever get round reading the book so could somebody please summarize what it adds to the movie?

xp!

Ha, I thought of polling Best Directors Who Act. Pollack would be near the top.

In other Lynch news, Wild At Heart did serious numbers in Bologna last night. I'm amazed that such a big audience turned out for it.

https://bsky.app/profile/davidlynchsworlds.bsky.social/post/3mov4aa3o222m

xps Albert Brooks, YES - in all seriousness, I'd put his greatest films on par with Lynch, Herzog and Cronenberg's. Can't say the same about Pollack or Apatow's best work, and Brooks is funnier too.

uh Tootsie is absolutely on par with Lynch, Herzog, and Cronenberg's best.

Pollack's one scene was a highlight of Death Becomes Her.

Lynch, Herzog, Cronenberg, Spielberg

Spielberg would be Mike, but who would be Vyvyan, Rick and Neil?

tootsie isnt much good for any of the parts where tootsie exists tbh

what are albert brooks good movies

tootsie isnt much good for any of the parts where tootsie exists tbh

― Wichita Referee's Assistant (darraghmac)

Shame on you, you macho shithead!

uh Tootsie is absolutely on par with Lynch, Herzog, and Cronenberg's best.

Sorry, cannot agree. Mixed feelings about that film.

Oh, I know all its flaws but love it anyway, whereas Herzog is a director who makes fiction films I never wanna watch again.

Herzog's documentaries are generally better than his fiction films, but honestly I don't think most of his films live up to the myths he builds around them. However, a few that do are incredible - among his fiction work, Aguirre towers over every other scripted film he did.

One of my favorite Herzog films isn't even one he directed: Les Blank's Burden of Dreams.

otm on both counts

No shock, but looks like Lynch's daughter confirmed a Criterion box. I'd imagine next year at the earliest, people have to start saving again after the Kubrick box leaves them insolvent.

I wonder if it means they’ve rounded up Wild At Heart and Straight Story? Dune?

I’ve got all of this stuff on Blu Ray, it will take something special to lure me in. There will probably be a collection of boring shorts from Lynch.com included that will make me buy the entire thing. $300 for a static ten minute shot of a beehive.

I would actually love the shorts - even "Dumbland" - but that wouldn't be enough to get me to buy this. Nearly everything is already available as an excellent standalone Blu-ray or (in most cases) UHD, and that includes the few titles that I've never wanted to buy. But if I was starting off, if the price wasn't too outrageous, I'd probably get this in a heartbeat.

Yeah, it's a good question. The Kubrick set shows that Criterion has enough pull to license from the big leagues, like WB, and they've definitely even worked with Disney a few times. As far as his features go, I think Criterion has everything but Straight Story (Disney) and Wild At Heart (Amazon/MGM?) and Dune (Universal?), with most available in 4k (though not Eraserhead and not Inland Empire, lol). But it would be pointless to release a box without everything, let alone everything in 4K, so maybe it will be a different sort of collection, enticing but not comprehensive.

I could see them leaving Dune out.

Elephant Man 4K came out last week.

Very surprised there haven’t been AI versions of unrealized projects.

WAH and SS are on the Channel as we speak - obv we dont know the deal but the owners of those flix dont have a problem farming them out. Also no studio is jumping on physical media in 2026 idk if they care about another imprint doing the labor of making a 300 dollar luxury item for cinema sickos

Yeah Lynch as IP is definitely worth most to fans and collectors. You can stream Straight Story all you want, you're not going to make much money from it.

Didn’t INLAND EMPIRE have a 4K release from Criterion? I remember scoffing at the idea. Sticking with my Absurda DVD as god intended.
Also I’ve had THE ELEPHANT MAN on 4K for about 4 years I think.

Inland is just blu, iirc. That and Eraserhead and Wild have not had 4K transfers, I believe everything else has.

Elephant Man 4K came out last week.

― whimsical skeedaddler (Moodles), Sunday, July 12, 2026 12:14 PM (six hours ago)

https://www.criterion.com/films/29677-the-elephant-man

Ah yeah, mine's the Studio Canal / Vintage Classics issue from 2020. No complaints. I'd gladly pick up an ERASERHEAD 4K (maybe?) but I think I'll be able to resist a box.

Didn’t they clean up Inland Empire a little? I started watching some video about how the Criterion edition ruined the movie and I checked out pretty fast.

They upscaled it to 4K as I recall. Lynch endorsed it and praised the strange image quality I think.

I will rewatch Inland Empire through any cycles of digital deterioration, it'll just get more amazing.

Aaaaannd ... just reported/leaked that Disney has allegedly lost the rights to "Straight Story."

i saw the 4k upscale of inland empire when it did its tour of theaters. looked fine!

A person could watch Inland Empire on a black and white crt tv and it would hold up just fine.

They announced that "28 Days Later" is getting a 4K release, and the reaction online was more or less: why? Same for the (Lynch produced/financed) "Nadja," which is getting a 4K release despite being partially filmed with a Fisher-Price PixelVision camera. I'm actually curious about that one, the movie has kind of been forgotten, afaict. There are rumors they cut the awesome songs from the soundtrack, though (Portishead, MBV) in favor of Simon Fisher Turner's score. The rock songs worked perfectly, iirc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3RjPOCPFo

Most of Nadja was gorgeously shot on film, so it doesn't make sense to rule it out just because a handful of scenes use PixelVision. I actually saw the new restoration this year, but I've never seen the movie before, so I can't tell you how much music was cut out. (They clearly had songs though - the scene with the jukebox stands out but I forgot what song they played.)

Fisk was the man in the planet in Eraserhead. Lynch’s… unorthodox makeup techniques were miserable for him.

Lynch and Fisk knew each other since they were kids and they lived together for a while, they were both painters.