This thread discusses the Content article: Inland Empire

Hahahaha, that's gold.
From the look of Dune, Lynch sucks at making straightforward movies as well. I guess being obscure gets him and the horse he rode in on the benefit of doubt.

Not really. Check out his brilliant Elephant Man, the film about John Merrick. There's also a lot of praise for The Straight Story, I haven't seen it as yet.

And Lynch has made some terrific movies: I personally love Eraserhead, although it is very mood-dependent. Blue Velvet has some great moments, though I don't find Dennis Hopper's character as scary as some people make it out to be. I really like Wild at Heart, although the reviews are generally quite schizophrenic about it.

And Dune is a difficult thing to assess...apparently Lynch's original cut was more than 5 hours and he was forced to drop more than half of it for the theatrical release. Everything after that has been studio-hack versions with no involvement from Lynch. And frankly, Herbert's novel in itself has a number of boring and badly written moments. The best reason to read Dune would be to get the necessary background for the sequel Dune Messiah, which comes across as awesome.

I'd say the main problem with Lynch is he's playing to a gallery - it may be a relatively small gallery, but it makes a huge amount of noise. With every film he pushes the credibility and tolerance of his fans just to see how far he can go, and now, assured that he has an audience irrespective of WHAT he puts out, my guess is he's just become sloppy and lazy. He makes these totally random careless films and then says cute stuff like "Even I don't understand my films!" Like the films are being made not by him but by some great subconscious of Genius Itself that comes to the fore every time he's on the set.
Something like Eraserhead was very self indulgent and definitely not a film with all the ends wrapped up neatly, but worked for me because it had a palpable atmosphere of gloom and seemed like a nightmarish exaggeration of a few relatively commonplace anxieties. Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man, the only other films I've seen by him, were both relatively coherent -- though if you ask me BV is about as far as this 'everything's askew out here' approach can been taken without degenerating into the total chaos of Inland Empire.

ravenus wrote:
And Dune is a difficult thing to assess...apparently Lynch's original cut was more than 5 hours and he was forced to drop more than half of it for the theatrical release. Everything after that has been studio-hack versions with no involvement from Lynch. And frankly, Herbert's novel in itself has a number of boring and badly written moments. The best reason to read Dune would be to get the necessary background for the sequel Dune Messiah, which comes across as awesome.

While the characters in the novel Dune may have been a bit cardboardy, it made for a pretty good heroic sci-fi read. Granted, Dune Messiah is way more complex and has a better grasp of pathos (Princess Irulan, what a bitch!). Still, everything I saw from the movie was an EXACT re-enactment of the scenes from the book, down to the interior monologues, and it was done in this wooden, ham-handed manner that robbed the scene of any excitement at all. Having 3 extra hours of footage may have helped fix the jerky pacing of the studio release, but if you ask me, the movie has way more problems than that.

Ya the movie has a lot more problems than that...and it's main problem is that it's an adaptation that should have never taken place. Herbert's first Dune book is a wordy stretched out affair that to me finds its greatest appeal in its concepts of ecological balance and the mechanics of the spice, not in its ham-fisted Bene Gesserit Jedi Mastah adventure.

Unfortunately, in the interest of film being primarily a visual medium, we see next to nothing in the film about either of these and more than we need of second-rate Jedi Mastah adventuring.

My2 bits there

Twin Peaks- Fire Walk with me is excellent and Lost Highway is worth a look

Well, I really loved Mulholland Drive, I think it's his most well-rounded film, it doesn't go over-exploratory or narcissistic. Also it had awesome cinematography and the super-cute Naomi Watts to boot, and lastly but not the least, being coherent. The next up would be The Elephant Man, you'd be lying if it didn't genuinely tickle your emotional sensors. I also liked Wild at Heart quite a lot, also Eraserhead wasn't all that bad, but I loathe Blue Velvet and Lost Highway with a passion. Both of them gave me the most frustrating and disappointing viewing experiences of my life, the only other ones I can think of right now is Scorcese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.

See, when you start out masturbating, you barely worry about the techniques. You jerk off with the sole intention of making the goo appear in whatever form it chooses to, but then later on, it all gets quite boring and you incorporate certain sudden sideway twists every 20 seconds anticipating something you haven't yet experienced. You put too much effort into all these trivialities, that the end-product definitely highlights those eccentricities. I guess that's the problem with Inland Empire, from what I've seen of certain 5 minute parts on youtube, it sure as hell is overdone and might as well irritate the calmest of the erudites.

I haven't yet seen Dune or The Straight Story, but I hear the latter is his most free-flowing work as in it can be grasped even by a 5 year old at most. I'm currently downloading the Twin Peaks series, and from what I read on other film boards, it's a murder mystery primarily, then comes his usual surrealistic hoopla, rather than the latter taking the forefront as always. So, I have a feeling I'll dig it or at most everyone can dig it, 'cause Lynch's hardcore detractors, go onto say they tend to like most of it. The film is also vastly underrated going by their opinions.

The only real beef I have with him is that he NEVER discusses anything about his film plots, explaining that the interpretations are exactly what each viewer decides to come up with, and that he himself doesn't know where and what it all starts. There's something very wrong about that.

@Suresh: Fair enough. I'd have liked the movie if they kept the Jedi adventuring as lively as I'd felt in the book (and portrayed Paul as more of the bastard that he was). If they'd started with the trade guilds and ecology in detail, I suspect it'd have come off like the Star War prequels.