TWIN PEAKS: ONE AND THE SAME

Question: What is that shadow that passes across the curtains in Agent Cooper's Red Room dream sequence in Twin Peaks Episode 2?

35 YEARS OF DAVID LYNCH TRAILER

DEADLY PREMONITION (2010)

The Score: 8.5 out of 10

Is Deadly Premonition (2010) the the closest we will get to Twin Peaks: The Video Game? Japanese video game designer Hidetaka "SWERY" Suehiro loves David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and it shows in nearly every aspect of his XBOX 360 game Deadly Premonition. He unveiled the first glimpse of the game under the title Rainy Woods at the 2007 Tokyo Game Show, having originally designed it for last generation gaming systems, like XBOX and Play Station 2. Minor SPOILERS follow, but major plot developments will be withheld, including the identity and motives of the killer.

THE TWIN PEAKS PODCAST

I was recently invited as a guest on the Twin Peaks Podcast where we discussed one of my favorite episodes of the revolutionary 90's TV series. This entertaining podcast features four regular co-hosts: two first-time viewers and two Twin Peaks veterans. They discuss the show episode by episode each week until they eventually finish all 30 episodes of the series and its prequel feature film: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The show's hosts told me they are also toying with the idea of later transitioning into the other films of David Lynch, too.

CLUB SILENCIO

David Lynch is opening a new night club on the Rue Montmarte in Paris patterned after a club of the same name in his 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Dr. (2001). "CLUB SILENCIO" is scheduled to open in September of 2011, just over ten years after the film's release. The club will feature furniture personally designed by Lynch, a concert hall, a movie theater, and an art gallery (news source).

THE DAVIDS: MASTERS OF CEREBRAL HORROR

Over the years we frequently hear horror fans and film critics comment on a vague sense of similarity between visionary film directors David Cronenberg and David Lynch, but we never encountered a significant comparative analysis to explain why. In hopes of stimulating a more thoughtful look at the two filmmakers, we will discuss some of their basic similarities, some of their basic differences, and briefly compare several of their films to each other. We also propose a series of double features that you can watch at home to take advantage of the Davids' oddly poignant similarities, while contrasting beautifully their differences in style.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

One of David Lynch's artistic influences is acclaimed Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, who once remarked: "No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of our soul." Lynch was an apt pupil of Bergman's school of thought, leading him to develop a similar style utilizing many elements of drama, comedy, and horror in concert. This leads to some confusion when categorizing their films, since "thought provoking" and "soul stirring" are phrases typically not associated with the horror genre. But as you look over the work of Bergman and Lynch, you are hard-pressed to find a better way of describing their bodies of work.

SHORT FILMS, WEB PROJECTS, AND COMMERCIALS

David Lynch Painted by Alessandro Fantini (2003)

Most filmmakers use the short-film format to train themselves in filmmaking basics and to open doors for professional employment to direct feature films. Once these new directors make the transition into features, they rarely return to this format. David Lynch is an interesting exception to this pattern, who took his first steps toward film production with an experimental animated painting in the late 1960's and who continues to direct a sizable number of experimental shorts to this day.

INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

The Score: 9.5 out of 10

We hear many complain about the mountains of exposition-driven dialogue in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), but can you imagine what the film would have been like without it? You do not have to, thanks to David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006). Where Inception takes place on five different levels of reality with continual clues orienting the viewer over its 148 minute running time, Inland Empire takes place on no less than eight levels of reality—perhaps more—with only sporadic clues peppering David Lynch's 180 minute movie.

MULHOLLAND DR. (2001)

The Score: 10 out of 10

A young starlet moves to Hollywood to pursue her acting dreams and a hot-shot young director sets out to cast an exciting new 50's-60's period piece. But both get caught in a dark undercurrent swirling just below the town's surface, and try to find their way through it alive. David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. (2001) perfectly captures the awe and wonder of first moving to Hollywood and the disillusionment that follows soon after. As Naomi Watts's Betty declares early in the film: "I mean I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this dream place." Unfortunately, Betty's dream soon turns into an all-too-real nightmare.

THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999)

The Score: 10 out of 10

David Lynch made a Disney movie. We will give you a few moments to let that sentence sink in.

"This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality. You're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable. Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. Next stop, the twilight zone."–Rod Serling clearly anticipating the production of The Straight Story (1999) forty years before the film's release.

LOST HIGHWAY (1997)

The Score: 8 out of 10

Lost Highway (1997) is an important milestone in David Lynch's career and launches his unofficial identity confusion trilogy, which he would continue with Mulholland Dr. (2001) and later complete with Inland Empire (2006). Clearly drawing on his experience depicting inner conflict in Twin Peaks, (1990-91) Lynch takes the concept of inner struggle to a whole new level in a visceral film experience centering on a husband's disturbing jealousy and denial.