Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Mulholland DVD preorder at Amazon

Amazon.com has the Mulholland Drive DVD available for pre-order. You can order the disc here. Release date is April 9.

davidlynch.com store to open soon

Lynch was in the chatroom today at his site and said the store would be opening close to February 1. That means it should be soon. Hopefully the Eraserhead DVDs will be available then as well.

Twin Peaks Fest 2002

This years Twin Peaks Festival will be August 16th - 18th. You can find details here. Looks like a pretty complete guest line up this year, so it should be a good one. You can also vote for which Lynch film will be shown at the festival on the website.

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Fire Walk With Me DVD review

DVDfile.com has a review of the new Fire Walk With Me DVD. You can read the review here.

Mulholland Weekend Box Office

Mulholland Drive took in $88,160 this weekend, down 51% from last weekend. It's in 58 theaters making the per theater average $1,520. The total domestic take is now $6,527,127, meaning it's now grossed slightly more than The Straight Story.

Mulholland German website

The German website for Mulholland Drive is up. You can find it at http://www.concorde-film.de.

Monday, January 28, 2002

Mulholland Drive DVD at dvdfile.com

DVDfile.com has a blurb on the Mulholland Drive DVD today:
With possible Oscar nominations on the way, David Lynch's acclaimed dark drama Mulholland Drive will arrive on DVD on 4/9. While lacking in supplements, the disc features a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, English Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround tracks, production notes, filmographies, and the trailer. Retail is $24.95.

Bafta nominations for Mulholland

Mulholland Drive has been nominatied for two British Academy Film Awards, for achievement in music (Badalamenti) and for editing (Sweeney).

Sunday, January 27, 2002

Mulholland Drive DVD release date

Rumor has it the original release date of March 12 has been pushed back to April 9 because of the theatrical re-release. Looks like the disc will contain just the film with a DD 5.1 mix and the theatrical trailer.

Twin Peaks DVD easter eggs

There are several DVD easter eggs on the Twin Peaks set. First, on the menu for each episode, select "episode features," then press the up arrow button until you see the flame icon appear. Select it. Depending on which episode it is, you will get a brief outtake clip from one of the commentary track sessions: Episode 1: Director Duwayne Dunham
Episode 2: Series Director of Photography Frank Byers
Episode 3: Director Tina Rathborne
Episode 4: Director Tim Hunter
Episode 5: Director Lesli Linka Glatter
Episode 6: Director Caleb Deschanel
Episode 7: Series Production Designer Richard Hoover
Tibet: DVD credits
The other easter egg is a short film edited by Michael Anderson. Start playing the Mark Frost interview, then press the back button. It will start the film playing.
You can order the first season DVD set here.

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Lost Highway lecture and screening tonight

The surrealism of David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway is the topic of an illustrated lecture by Sue Taylor, assistant professor of art history, Saturday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. in 53 Cramer Hall, at Portland State University. A screening of the R-rated film will follow the lecture. The event, sponsored by the PSU Art Film Society, is free and open to the public.
The film, a cult classic, has everything in common with surrealism, says Taylor. Lost Highway explores sexual subjectivity and the confluence of waking reality and the dream. The story doubles back on itself, ending where the film began.
Taylor is a longtime corresponding editor for Art in America and former art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her first book, Hans Bellmer; The Anatomy of Anxiety, which examines the work of the German-born surrealist from a feminist and psychoanalytic perspective, was released by MIT Press last fall.

Official Fire Walk With Me DVD press release

Speaking of Twin Peaks DVDs...

This article is from the Chicago Tribune on the 24th:
"The studios generally won't release sales figures for TV-based DVDs. But Stephen Beeks, president of Artisan Home Entertainment, says he thinks other studios are experiencing DVD successes similar to the one he had with the first season of 'Twin Peaks', the moody David Lynch drama about solving a murder in a quirky town. In the three years that it has been distributing videos of 'Twin Peaks' episodes, Artisan has sold between 30,000 and 40,000. In contrast, Beeks said, in the few weeks since the series' first-season boxed set has been out on DVD, Artisan has sold about 150,000."
Those are pretty good numbers. I think there's no doubt now that we'll see the first set of the second season later this year.

Naomi Watts Oscar mention in USA Today

Friday's USA Today had an article on Oscar hopefuls, which mentioned Watts:
* Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive. Watts is a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Hollywood wannabe at the start of David Lynch's outrageous puzzle but a completely different version of the same character by the end. ''When she does the acting audition and she knocks everybody dead, she also knocks the audience out,'' Us magazine critic Thelma Adams says. ''If they had heard of her, she would definitely be in the top five.'' Where to see it: In theaters.

Justin Theroux interview at popmatters.com

Theroux discusses Mulholland Drive and media in general in this lengthy article. You can read it here.

''Mulholland Dr.'' director will steer Cannes jury
By Alison James
PARIS (Variety) - Filmmakers intending to bring movies with straight-ahead narratives and discernible messages to Cannes should take heed: David Lynch, master of the opaque and co-winner of best director honors last year for ``Mulholland Dr.,'' will head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites) (May 15-26).
``David is in a magnificent period in his career,'' festival president Gilles Jacob told Daily Variety, ``and as one of the best two or three directors in the world, it was normal that he have his turn as jury president one day.''
In a statement, Lynch said he was ``excited, nervous and fully conscious of the responsibility'' he's taking on. He also called Cannes ``the greatest film festival in the world.''
Lynch won the Palme d'Or in 1990 for ``Wild at Heart'' and has appeared on the Croisette for ``Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me'' and ``The Straight Story.''
Last year's jury president was Norwegian actress-director Liv Ullmann, a replacement for Jodie Foster who gave Cannes organizers a headache when she exited to take the lead role in director David Fincher's ``The Panic Room.'' This year, the organization isn't taking any chances. Jacob told Variety: ``David (Lynch) is not shooting anything before Cannes -- we made sure of that.''
Previous jury presidents hailing from the U.S. include Martin Scorsese, whose ``Gangs of New York'' has been tipped to open this year's event, Francis Ford Coppola and Clint Eastwood. Reuters/Variety REUTERS

More Mulholland Press

Lynch, 'Mulholland Drive' Make a Hollywood Comeback
By Bob Tourtellotte
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood loves a comeback, and one of the biggest Tinseltown turnarounds of 2001 may be director David Lynch's love story ``Mulholland Drive,'' which is now in re-release after a gloomy debut in October. While many movie executives reshuffled film schedules and fretted over box office prospects after Sept. 11, Lynch and Universal Studios' art-house wing, Universal Focus, chose to go ahead with the debut of ``Mulholland Drive.''
The result: its acclaim from 2001's Cannes Film Festival (news - web sites) (Lynch shared best director honors), generally good reviews and major promotional push, all fell on deaf ears.
The movie was in and out of theaters quickly and has grossed just under $6 million at domestic box offices. For Lynch films, which have a core group of fans, the figure wasn't too bad. Expectations, however, had been that ``Mulholland Drive'' could reach audiences beyond Lynch's loyal followers.
The movie's dark debut brightened, however, in December, when it was named 2001's best film by the New York Film Critics Circle (news - web sites), and Lynch earned best director honors from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (news - web sites). In addition, the movie and Lynch are nominees for best movie drama and director for the Golden Globe awards (news - web sites) on Jan. 20, which are often considered an indicator of Oscar picks.
``I'm used to my movies not performing well at the box office, and I'm used to things not going so well with critics,'' Lynch told Reuters. ``But this has been unbelievably strange.''
Strange? That's nothing compared to the movie itself.
Lynch, whose films range from wacky ``Eraserhead'' in 1977 to weird ``Blue Velvet'' (1986) to sublimely serene ``The Straight Story'' (1999), will only describe ``Mulholland Drive'' as ``a love story in the city of dreams.'' That would be Hollywood, and that's about all he'll tell fans who haven't seen the movie.
LYNCH'S OWN LANGUAGE
``I don't usually expand on things. It was tough for me, that one sentence,'' he said. He prefers to let ``Mulholland Drive'' do its own talking because, he said, he likes movies in which he has no clue where the story is headed.
``Mulholland Drive'' doesn't so much tell audiences about love and hopeful ambition, as it lays out the details in a twisting drama whose characters include a lone truth-telling cowboy, duplicitous movie stars, producers and directors, and one fresh-faced Hollywood wannabe, Betty Elms (Naomi Watts).
There is money, murder and mystery -- staples of Hollywood movies -- and there is a strange case of amnesia for a top film actress whom audiences know only as Rita (Laura Harring).
There is romance, of course, between Betty and Rita, but don't think ``Mulholland Drive'' is about a lesbian love affair. It's about love of any kind -- straight or gay. It's about the effects love has on people and where love can lead them.
Betty arrives in Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a star at just about the time Rita is injured in a car accident on storied Mulholland Drive, above the Hollywood Hills where stars live behind gates in multimillion dollar homes.
Following the crash, Rita has only a bag full of cash and one clue as to whom she might be. She pulls herself out of the wrecked limousine she's in, makes her way down the hills and into an apartment where Betty is temporarily living.
Thus begins a search for Rita's identity, which ultimately gives audiences a look at the effect Hollywood's star-making machinery has on young hopefuls with stars in their eyes, like Betty -- and even a little like Lynch himself must have been when he was attending classes at Los Angeles' American Film Institute.
``TWIN PEAKS'' SUCCESSOR
To say more is to give away much of ``Mulholland Drive.'' The film does not have a plot that neatly fits together and is explained easily. It covers a series of events that seem loosely related until, near the end, audiences finally get it. Well, maybe they do.
Loyal fans and followers of the 1990s television series he created, ``Twin Peaks,'' will likely understand the unusual way his stories unfold. But Lynch doesn't see himself or his stories as weird or wacky.
``There's a component to all our lives that we can say is strange, and everyday we see things that, if there is a norm, would be outside the norm,'' he said.
``'Twin Peaks' and 'Mulholland Drive' -- they have a norm, but then there are strange events within their worlds ... Things do add up, if you pay attention to the clues,'' he added.
``Mulholland Drive'' was originally developed as a TV series for the ABC TV network to follow up on the enormously popular ''Twin Peaks,'' but it never got off the ground.
In explaining ABC's decision-making, Lynch likened it to designing a piece of furniture that starts out to be a table, but winds up as something different.
``Somewhere along the line, the financier of that table saw it and almost puked they hated it so much,'' said Lynch. ``But I say ABC did me two favors: allowing it to start out in one direction and then killing it. That gave me the opportunity to make it into a movie, and (new) ideas came out.''
One Lynch idea was to cast relative unknowns in the lead roles, which was risky because star names sell tickets and give movie marketers something to advertise, which is important if you're trying to expand the market for Lynch films.
``To me, a film isn't about money. A film is about an expression of ideas,'' said Lynch, adding that ``everyone who is known, was at one time unknown, and there is a wealth of talent out there. Huge talent in L.A., talent in every city.''
For whatever reason, ``Mulholland Drive'' lacked box office impact, initially. Whether it was Sept. 11, the way Lynch tells stories, the lack of big name stars, or the fact that his films never were boffo box office doesn't matter, now.
``Mulholland Drive'' is back, and David Lynch is the current comeback kid in Hollywood. And that's the kind of story that's been Hollywood gold for a long time.

Friday, January 25, 2002

My return and site updates

Sorry about the lack of updates since before the holidays. I've been out sick for a while and haven't been able to update the site. I'm going to work over the next few days to get caught up on the Lynch news and hopefully things will be back to normal soon. If you sent me email these past few weeks, be patient, I'll get to it eventually. I just need time to weed my way though all the offers of breast enlargement and making money fast to answer the real mail. There are many more exciting things coming soon for LynchNet, so watch this space for updates.
And by the way, have you bought your membership to davidlynch.com yet? If not, shame on you! Unless you can't afford to feed yourself, you need to go there NOW and sign up. There was a new episode of Dumbland posted just today, so new content is being added. It's worth the $10!

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