1152 Lost Highway

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Mathew2468
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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#51 Post by Mathew2468 » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:08 pm

The 'real' scenes are still seen more or less through a disturbed psyche I believe. Same as Mulholland Drive.

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warren oates
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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#52 Post by warren oates » Mon Jan 27, 2014 8:03 pm

Sausage: I guess I'd take issue with the idea that Lynch regularly employs more readily interpretable symbols than Kafka. I'd like to hear you say more about this with some specific examples from throughout his filmography.

I'm thinking of moments like the end of Blue Velvet, where the chirping robin of goodness has, upon closer inspection, a crunchy bug of darkness in its maw. All of this couldn't be more on the nose or more deadpan. And yet it's all intentional and jokey in a way that toys with Blue Velvet's thematic concerns but hardly has the last (or even first) word to say about them. It's a self-consciously transparent symbol that says almost nothing about the complex obsessions Lynch draws out in the hours that came before. Jeffery even tells us this explicitly in his dialogue. It's Jeffrey's earnest and yet utterly reductive reading of everything that's happened to him. And it feels like Lynch means to have it at least two ways at once, if not more. To argue that these symbols are easily interpretable is to miss the point that they tell you next to nothing and wink at you while they're doing it.

There's also a dynamic you alluded to in Twin Peaks the series and Fire Walk With Me, about Leland and Laura Palmer and Bob.
SpoilerShow
I agree with you that the work Lynch does on the abuse going on in the Palmer household is some of his best and most moving filmmaking. And that it shows Lynch's intuitive grasp of complex psychological trauma. But what to make of Bob exactly? Bob's at one and the same time a metaphor for the invading monster both Leland and Laura need someone else to be in order to keep denying that her father rapes her every night. But in Lynch's world, Bob's also completely real, a kind of free-floating demonic force that possess characters (perhaps ones who are susceptible out of weakness) but can also, disembodied, burst through the boundaries of the more mundane world and haunt characters like Laura and Cooper. You have to reckon with all of that, just for starters. And that's really just scratching the surface. Bob doesn't strike me as readily interpretable at all. And I know you don't care much for an author's intentions, so I won't even recount the anecdote we both know about how the character of Bob first came to be.
To me, it seems like Lynch's interest in Kafka's work and his intentions in his own films are much more concerned with aspects like tone, atmosphere, the overall feeling of the thing. If he's citing Kafka's influence, why does it have to be about theme or something more literary? I can see Lynch admiring Kafka's fiction for its qualities of obscure menace, almost religious mystery, and knack for particularizing the story worlds with a few perfectly chosen details within an otherwise refined and inimitable abstraction.

When you hear Lynch talking about other filmmakers he admires, that's generally what he'll mention too -- their command of atmosphere, their mastery of tone, the very specific feeling of certain images and moments -- with Herzog, Fellini and Kubrick, of course, but with Billy Wilder too. Lynch doesn't go on about Wilder's deft ear for dialogue, his impeccable dramatic construction or any of his on-going thematic concerns. Sunset Boulevard, for David Lynch, is all about the creepy gothic atmosphere.

As far as the Bierce story goes, it's interesting to me to compare something like Lost Highway with a much more straightforward horror take on it like Jacob's Ladder.
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I don't dislike the film. And I'd say that its nightmare world, an accurate expressionistic embodiment of a soldier's PTSD among other things, is hardly the cliche that so many narratives with this dream structure settle on. And yet? Once you know the big twist, most of the mystery of what you've seen previously vanishes immediately. It's all pretty easily explained (or even explained away). The mystery and all of its attendant atmospherics was all a feint.
I can't say that I've ever felt that way about a Lynch film. For him the mystery isn't ever just a means to an end, but always -- and I'd even say, primarily -- an end in itself.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#53 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Jan 27, 2014 8:30 pm

warrenoates wrote:Sausage: I guess I'd take issue with the idea that Lynch regularly employs more readily interpretable symbols than Kafka. I'd like to hear you say more about this with some specific examples from throughout his filmography.
Let's take Blue Velvet: the opening descent from cheery kitsch to the bugs underneath; the shot traveling into the severed ear as the mystery begins and the shot coming out of it when the mystery resolves. That kind of thing. The angel at the end of Fire Walk With Me. The giant sperm in Eraserhead. The references to The Wizard of Oz in Wild at Heart. This stuff isn't any more inscrutable than the symbolism you find anywhere else. That said, there's a lot of symbolism in Fire Walk With Me that I don't understand.
warrenoates wrote:And I know you don't care much for an author's intentions, so I won't even recount the anecdote we both know about how the character of Bob first came to be.
Really? I'm pretty sure I use authorial intent all the time on here (I tend to use it when it suits me and ignore it when it doesn't). I already know the story, tho'. Also, I don't know why you're asking me about Bob. I'm quite happy believing he's an actual demon. You can read Fire Walk With Me as a realistic story with a lot of symbolic and allegorical trappings that aren't meant to be taken literally, but I choose to read the majority of it literally.

Anyway, what's the point of bringing in all of these other Lynch films as evidence when I just got through explaining that I think Lost Highway differs from other Lynch movies in a couple of key areas?
warrenoates wrote:For him the mystery isn't ever just a means to an end, but always -- and I'd even say, primarily -- an end in itself.
Sure. And yet Lost Highway is still readily comprehensible in a way that Eraserhead, Fire Walk With Me, and Inland Empire aren't. Which is precisely why you won't see me offering any overarching explanations of what's going on in those ones: they baffle me and I'm fine with that. I don't know and I don't see any way to know. However the universes in those movies are operating, they're operating on a logic I am not privy to. I'm sure it's there, it's just that I'll never know it. Lost Highway I can feel the logic of, more or less. Mulholland Drive as well, tho' to a lesser extent because a lot of that one is mysterious as well.

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warren oates
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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#54 Post by warren oates » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:38 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:Anyway, what's the point of bringing in all of these other Lynch films as evidence when I just got through explaining that I think Lost Highway differs from other Lynch movies in a couple of key areas?
We'll have to disagree on how different Lost Highway is from Lynch's other films. I've been referencing other Lynch films since my first post in this thread, and the latest comparisons were more about your invitation to generalizing about Kafka vs. Lynch -- how Lynch seems so different to you because you say he uses symbols with more obvious meanings. If what you meant was that Lynch tends to use more readily interpretable symbols chiefly in Lost Highway, then I'm sorry I've misunderstood.

I have a hard time thinking of Lynch as someone who uses conventional symbols, let alone readily interpretable ones, because, like you say, a healthy majority of his filmography is deliberately inscrutable. Blue Velvet seems to me the one film of his where you could try and make that case. Yet the more you consider any given example, the less transparent it is or the less its transparency seems to actually mean, given everything else that's going on. It's a film that some critics claimed was resistant to criticism while others complained that it made the need for their critical interpretations obsolete -- because it was all right there on the surface, without subtext.

I think it's interesting that we can disagree on (or give up on) interpreting some of the other work in Lynch's filmography that we both, nevertheless, find most affecting. Because that's part of what I've been saying all along -- that this film is more like his other work than unlike it or at least that the most interesting aspects of it for me, the reasons I keep going back, have more in common with his body of work as a whole. Which is also why I've been referencing other work of his and his personal statements about his influences and intentions.
Mr Sausage wrote:Lost Highway is still readily comprehensible in a way that Eraserhead, Fire Walk With Me, and Inland Empire aren't. Which is precisely why you won't see me offering any overarching explanations of what's going on in those ones: they baffle me and I'm fine with that. I don't know and I don't see any way to know. However the universes in those movies are operating, they're operating on a logic I am not privy to. I'm sure it's there, it's just that I'll never know it. Lost Highway I can feel the logic of, more or less. Mulholland Drive as well, tho' to a lesser extent because a lot of that one is mysterious as well.
For me it's a question of emphasis. You certainly won't find me arguing that The Straight Story or The Elephant Man aren't about what they appear to be about on the surface. And you're right to maintain that some kind of consensus about what happens to Fred is almost a prerequisite for saying anything else about the film. So I suppose I don't disagree with your reading of Lost Highway so much as I'm not sure it's the ultimate way to engage with the work.

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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#55 Post by Robin Davies » Tue Jan 28, 2014 3:04 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:Lost Highway is unusual in Lynch's filmography in that it more structurally and narratively unified and more outwardly coherent and self-resolving than the films that surround it (especially Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire,
I think Mulholland Drive is easier to "make sense of" than Lost Highway. The "Hey pretty girl, time to wake up" bit is a big clue to the dream theory but in Lost Highway I think many viewers can't decide what's going on. (Hallucination? Dream? An actual transformation of the real world?) In Mulholland Drive the ostensibly "real" section at the end seems reasonably stable, self-consistent (well, apart from the miniature people) and mostly seen from Diane’s point of view, whereas in Lost Highway we only get a partial return to "reality" at the end. We're still seeing weird stuff like The Mystery Man, and the police find "Pete Dayton's prints all over" Andy's place even though Alice has disappeared from the photo.

To me, it would make more sense in Lynch's oeuvre if his "shifting identity trilogy" had emerged in the order MD, LH and then IE. We would then have experienced a development of increasing difficulty from one to the other, culminating in the intuitive kaleidoscope of INLAND EMPIRE which seems to be impossible to disentangle into "real" and "imaginary" threads.

Perhaps this also explains why Mulholland Drive got a much better critical reaction than Lost Highway. Roger Ebert said "David Lynch has been working toward Mulholland Drive all of his career, and now that he's arrived there I forgive him Wild at Heart and even Lost Highway". The editors of Wrapped In Plastic also rated Mulholland Drive very highly but found Lost Highway too confusing.

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colinr0380
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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#56 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Feb 02, 2014 3:42 pm

That is interesting because I see Lost Highway as sort of following on from Fire Walk With Me, which is also about someone's world being shattered by their self realisation of what has been done to them/what they have done/the reality of their circumstances. Fire Walk With Me ends in a kind of fatalistic self-acceptance of the upcoming brutal murder as a kind of inevitable act before being given a kind of benediction at the end for Laura Palmer's suffering. The teen character there turns into the 20s characters of Lost Highway, themselves a more hyper-male, youthful and virile projection of Bill Pullman's older character, and his traumatic self realisation does not lead to the peace of acceptance but an angry howl of adolescent rage at having his fantasy ripped away from him at the finale, because compared to the abused Laura Palmer, he is both the victim and the perpetrator (I also see Lost Highway as kind of the anti-Wild At Heart, in that the fantasy world here cannot last, and is not being allowed to last, by either the character, despite dropping hints to himself to continue the cycle of jealousy afresh, or the director himself).

Mulholland Drive kind of proceeds from that, but it is also moving into the idea of acting and taking on roles to in some ways sublimate your real problems and deal with them from a safe distance. A distance that collapses into bitter, upsetting reality at the finale. The 'need to know' I think is a very strong structuring component to all of Lynch's films, even if finding out (tearing down the carefully constructed stage sets of your delusions) ends up being self-destructive, impossible to live with or properly understand and irreconcilable in all sorts of ways.

Then Inland Empire is the real break from dealing with having to be the victim for real to be able to become the actor. Nikki goes through a lot of torment throughout the film, and takes on various roles and extremes of torment, but she is always exploring a role that is not her. She is a victim at the whims of the material she is given to inhabit, if you like, and ends up amongst all of the roles she takes on expressing fragments of the life and fears of the Polish woman (the "Lost Girl") in the bedroom and the finale of her reaching that room, hugging and disappearing from the picture is perhaps one of the most beautiful expressions in film of the actor's role as a kind of intermediary who can give their audience, even at the furthest remove, courage and perhaps a different perspective on their life to apply and carry on with their own real lives.

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Re: Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)

#57 Post by swo17 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 11:43 am


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colinr0380
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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#58 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:17 pm

Exciting to see this film finally get an upgrade, although it is a shame that they seemingly could not licence the segment from the BBC's Moving Pictures series on Lost Highway from 1996, although Pretty As A Picture is presumably going to cover all of that in more detail. On that note, I do like this current trend (along with Divine Trash on Pink Flamingos) of including notable feature documentaries as supplements.

You know, the real coup may have been trying to get some words of appreciation from Chris Morris about Lost Highway, since a a key piece of music in this film was used as an ironic counterpoint to his disturbing sitcom series Jam (NSFW)

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ryannichols7
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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#59 Post by ryannichols7 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:34 pm

all I'm gonna say is that I would've loved for Trent Reznor to make an appearance here, unless he's in that longer doc. either way, this movie was a pretty major stepping stone for him to be the Oscar winning composer he is today!

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#60 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:49 pm

Personally I'm disappointed Criterion didn't issue the 67-page DFW essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head." Cheapskates!

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#61 Post by MichaelB » Mon Jul 18, 2022 3:03 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:17 pm
Exciting to see this film finally get an upgrade, although it is a shame that they seemingly could not licence the segment from the BBC's Moving Pictures series on Lost Highway from 1996, although Pretty As A Picture is presumably going to cover all of that in more detail. )
Given what the BBC typically charges, they may well have decided that there was very little point.

And since it's on YouTube, there's even less point.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#62 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 4:45 pm

ryannichols7 wrote:
Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:34 pm
all I'm gonna say is that I would've loved for Trent Reznor to make an appearance here, unless he's in that longer doc. either way, this movie was a pretty major stepping stone for him to be the Oscar winning composer he is today!
He talked recently to Fangoria about working with Lynch again on Twin Peaks, and a little about what he did on LH as well.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#63 Post by The Narrator Returns » Mon Jul 18, 2022 4:59 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jul 18, 2022 12:49 pm
Personally I'm disappointed Criterion didn't issue the 67-page DFW essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head." Cheapskates!
I knew in my heart it was unlikely this would be included, but it really was the first thing I checked for when I looked at the stats. I wonder if Criterion even tried to bring it to Lynch for approval, I doubt it considering how mercilessly Wallace shit-talks Balthazar Getty in it.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#64 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jul 18, 2022 5:16 pm

Yeah it'd never happen- they'd need to include it as a full book a la Red River/Picnic at Hanging Rock/The Furies since it's already so lengthy in a relatively large book, and since it's not a book the film is based on, I doubt anyone would opt to get that creative

As I've expected, there's still no Dumbland, and I doubt we'll get it on Inland Empire's release either. Criterion would be begging for a PC nightmare with that one

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#65 Post by swo17 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 5:33 pm

So many other shorts they could be adding to these releases though

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#66 Post by Forrest Taft » Mon Jul 18, 2022 6:19 pm

I was hoping for some deleted scenes - David Lynch plays a role in one of them himself, as a mourge attendant I think. I’m very happy they included the Toby Keeler-doc. I saw it when it aired on television in the late 90s, but never picked up the dvd. Keeler and Lynch were childhood friends, his father was a painter and a big influence on Lynch. Keeler also appears in Eraserhead.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#67 Post by ryannichols7 » Mon Jul 18, 2022 6:35 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jul 18, 2022 5:16 pm
As I've expected, there's still no Dumbland, and I doubt we'll get it on Inland Empire's release either. Criterion would be begging for a PC nightmare with that one
Lynch totally seems cancel-proof with his legion of fans though, so I wouldn't be surprised!

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#68 Post by OldBobbyPeru » Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:15 pm

I saw the restoration yesterday at the American Cinematheque's Los Feliz 3. It's the best this film has ever looked or sounded. The re-mixed soundtrack is great, and the color is far better than any version I've seen.

It's a mind-blowing film. I don't think any of the explanations totally pan out, but they don't need to. I don't want to understand it any more than I want to know how the magician does his illusions. As long as the experience of watching it is as entertaining and enveloping as this film is, it doesn't need to be made sense of, any more than life itself makes any sense. It's a Mobius strip made into a film. That's not an easy feat. Can't wait to add this one to my collection!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#69 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:53 pm

I don't think any concrete explanations pan out either, but it's a fun one to discuss, since there's such a wide range of responses to what's being represented and even what 'kind' of film it is! There was some good discussion in the last iteration of our horror thread starting here and then again here. This used to be my least favorite Lynch and has gradually made its way to become my favorite (placing second on my horror ballot too)

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#70 Post by OldBobbyPeru » Mon Aug 08, 2022 3:59 pm

It is fun to discuss. It's so wild and crazy and bizarre, but hey, it's Lynch. He does that so well. No one captures dream logic like he does, even if that's not what he's intending, and no, I'm not saying it was all a dream. Maybe just parts of it. Or maybe not. Who cares? :) He makes his own worlds, and if you can surrender to them, and just enjoy the ride, explanations become secondary. Not everything has to have an easily digested narrative (for me, at least). I spent my life as a musician--that's the most abstract art there is, so I can go with the flow if need be.
Last edited by OldBobbyPeru on Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#71 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:34 pm

Speaking of music performing, I love that brief moment at the beginning where jazz is being treated like a rock or punk performance! It seems similar to the just released from jail club scene in Wild At Heart or the bar performances in Twin Peaks, but cut down to its briefest strokes here. Maybe that's Fred's (somewhat unsuccessful) attempt at sublimating his anxieties, and maybe transforms later on into Marilyn Manson's rocker being the 'ultimate evil' figure his wife was previously involved with who needs to be killed in her place.

(Also, is Richard Pryor in Lost Highway in the equivalent role of Robert Forster in Mulholland Drive of 'single cameo scene that overly weights a tiny role into suggesting something of enormous significance just by dint of the weight of the casting?'. Almost as if these are early examples of some of the casting decisions that would occur in Twin Peaks: The Return)

I also wonder whether it is important or worth discussing that aspect of Fred Madison in Lost Highway being an 'artistic creator'. Similar to Diane and her stymied-tranformed into-successful acting career in Mulholland Drive. That also feels like the big throughline into Inland Empire which to me, after the rhyming pair of curdled ambition of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, instead feels all about how actors themselves become conduits which their audiences use to work through their own troubles from a safe distance rather than via dangerously direct interaction (or, in other words, Inland Empire finally clicked for me once I stopped focusing on Laura Dern's Nikki and instead on the Polish woman (or "Lost Girl") watching Nikki go through trials, and somewhat bemusedly (unwittingly? unwillingly? until she grows into the role?) taking on different aspects of characters, on her behalf)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Tue Aug 09, 2022 3:08 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#72 Post by OldBobbyPeru » Mon Aug 08, 2022 6:58 pm

I think that Lynch just genuinely likes music, and it winds up being featured in a lot of his work. All the Twin Peaks stuff with the world's weirdest road house where bikers listen to dreamy Julee Cruise songs, the fifties music song Justin Theroux's character is shooting in Mulholland Drive. The goofy lady in the radiator singing 'in heaven everything is fine.' Lots of show biz tropes all through his work. He loves creating, and obviously has an affinity for actors and musicians, so I think you have a good point.

I need to watch Inland Empire again, but I'm waiting on the restored/improved version cuz that low res home video look is hard to take for three hours. I like the film, though. Another strange journey from a great artist. This video essay shows how Lynch's design aesthetic was already in place when he made his first feature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89p7br-fg3k&t=64s

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#73 Post by MichaelB » Tue Aug 09, 2022 3:03 am

OldBobbyPeru wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:15 pm
I saw the restoration yesterday at the American Cinematheque's Los Feliz 3. It's the best this film has ever looked or sounded.
I'll be very interested to judge this one for myself, as I've never forgotten it in 35mm. At the time, I seriously doubted whether it was possible to transfer parts of the first third effectively to video, although of course this was before 4K and especially HDR came along.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#74 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:46 am

colinr0380 wrote:
Mon Aug 08, 2022 4:34 pm
... (Also, is Richard Pryor in Lost Highway in the equivalent role of Robert Forster in Mulholland Drive of 'single cameo scene that overly weights a tiny role into suggesting something of enormous significance just by dint of the weight of the casting?'. Almost as if these are early examples of some of the casting decisions that would occur in Twin Peaks: The Return)...
The casting of Pryor could be similar to how some of the casting was done in Twin Peaks: The Return, but I always got the impression that both Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe would have played recurrent characters if Mulholland Drive the TV pilot was picked up as a series. In refashioning the pilot as a stand-alone movie, Lynch eliminated that other scene they appeared in (the one deleted scene included on the Criterion release), reducing the roles to one brief enigmatic appearance.

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Re: 1152 Lost Highway

#75 Post by The Elegant Dandy Fop » Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:48 am

MichaelB wrote:
Tue Aug 09, 2022 3:03 am
OldBobbyPeru wrote:
Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:15 pm
I saw the restoration yesterday at the American Cinematheque's Los Feliz 3. It's the best this film has ever looked or sounded.
I'll be very interested to judge this one for myself, as I've never forgotten it in 35mm. At the time, I seriously doubted whether it was possible to transfer parts of the first third effectively to video, although of course this was before 4K and especially HDR came along.
Following up on what OldBobbyPeru said, I went to see the new 4K restoration at another Los Angeles theater about a month ago. I’m not against 4K remasters, but my personal taste is seeing a 35mm print in the theater versus a digital restoration, even if the print has damage. I prefer the restoration for at home viewings. That said, I was shocked by how incredible the Lost Highway remaster looked and just how good it is as emulating film, especially the black levels. I’ve seen numerous Janus restorations, but this honestly might be one of their high points. Plus the remixed audio sounds incredible. I just hope the UHD looks and sounds as good.

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