That’s right, baby niece, I would say to her right now if we were hangin’ out together, dreams really do come true!
Last Sunday, for instance, I ran a humble little hand-me-down reel mower across my own patch of grass. As I’ve dreamed of doing. It was bliss!
And this weekend, David Lynch’s Inland Empire, the most anticipated movie of the biennium here at Pedestrian Saga, is actually playing…at…the Darkside.
I know next to nothing about it, but the personal hype is totally intense. I know I must be calm, approach the experience stoically. But, oh, how I hope hope hope it’s even more beautiful and weird than Mulholland Dr. (warning: spoilers at the other end of this link*). I must show restraint; cautious optimism is the key.
Because I’m suffering a nasty streak of letdowns here. With expectations soaring at precarious heights and nostalgia in overdrive, O my brothers, the disappointment has not been pretty:
- Broken Flowers paled in comparison to Ghost Dog
- Art School Confidential ditto Ghost World
- Breakfast on Pluto left me craving The Crying Game (and In the Name of the Father)
- The Science of Sleep couldn’t hold a candle to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- King Kong was no Return of the King
- Something about Marie Antoinette must’ve gotten Lost in Translation
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire didn’t come close to captivating me like the Prisoner of Azkaban
I don’t even bother with Woody Allen anymore. Or Marty Scorsese.
*Like, six pages’ worth. I linked the article to remind myself to read it again thoroughly. If you haven’t seen Mulholland Dr., rent it as soon as possible and revel in the beauty and weirdness.
Having read both reviews I must say that I will most likely stay way from Mulholland Dr. It looks to disconnected and weird for me. However, Inland Empire looks entertaining and manageable. But I don’t think it looks as weird as Lynch’s former movie. Keep me posted, if you end up not liking inland Empire because it is not as weird, then I might be more inspired to add it to our que. : )
Yeah, that list you wrote is very true. And I too was very disappointed with Pan’s Labyrinth. Inland Empire–Lynch at his Lynchiest, a three-hour endurance test shot on DV. I loved it!
Um, Michael, wherever you got the idea that Inland Empire might be “entertaining and manageable” compared to Mulholland Drive, you have been grossly misinformed!!!! Mulholland Drive is like an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 compared to Inland Empire. (Consider Bob’s “endurance test” comment a very strong hint.) Maybe you got them mixed up?
I’ll be interested to hear psaga’s reaction as a fellow Lynch fan. I’ll keep my reaction private for now so as not to interfere with psaga’s viewing of the film. (I saw it with Haruka and Max at the Sunset 5. Mr. Dennis Cozzalio was also supposed to be there, but, alas, couldn’t quite make it out.)
Psaga, our movie-watching seems to be on a similar wavelength as I was sorely disappointed by the horrendously lame Art School Confidential and fairly underwhelmed by Broken Flowers (a high-concept Jarmusch movie? Fabulous idea). King Kong was so horrible, that I promptly rated all the Lord of the Rings films “not interested” on Netflix. I had been planning eventually maybe to watch them, but I couldn’t see how anyone who could approach King Kong in such a ridiculously maudlin way could be worthy of my attention. With that I’ll sign off, because I think I’ve just said something sacriligeous and anathema to this particular blog!
-BOZWIGGLE
I forgot one: A Scanner Darkly didn’t do it for me like Waking Life. (Though with the triple threat of Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, AND Robert Downey Jr., I wasn’t exactly hoping as much.)
Thanks for letting me get that list off my chest. Y’all are very supportive.
Bozwiggle, what you have to understand about Michael (and Emily) is that they will take most any recommendation of mine and reverse it. It’s a pesky, little sibling thing. They would probably hate anything by David Lynch. Though I think I made most everyone in my immediate family watch The Straight Story when it came out on DVD. (My pitch was “David Lynch does Disney, and it’s a must-see for every Midwesterner!”) I think some of them liked it okay?
I hope you’ll be able to make it to my next Lord of the Rings movie marathon anniversary reunion. You’d make an adorable Gimli!
As for your nom de blog, BOZWIGGLE, have you too been recently inspired by the late ’90s comics of Daniel Clowes? [end teasing] (Drop in again soon!)
Psaga: I’m going to have to engage you in greater detail regarding PAN’S LABYRINTH sometime for, as you know, I kinda liked it!
But I’m with you on BROKEN FLOWERS. And I’m rather bored with having to defend Peter Jackson’s KING KONG, but, dear Bozwiggle, you’ve gotta come up with something better than “maudlin.” Your biases against anything that smacks of popular blockbuster are showing like a worn and wrinkled slip. The disappointment factor seemed built into ART SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL so I passed on it, but I wanted to see BREAKFAST ON PLUTO (settled for revisiting THE BUTCHER BOY instead– a classic). I liked MARIE ANTOINETTE a lot more than I thought I would, though, even though I can barely remember it only a month later. And AZKABAN was indeed brilliant. I tried to see number four, but got stuck at the drive-in with a malfunctioning radio and couldn’t hear the audio, so I ended up leaving. Yet to catch up with it. One final word: I tried– oh, how I tried– to make it through A SCANNER DARKLY. Three times I fired up the DVD, and three times I was sent into the deepest of sleeps. After tracking approximately an hour of the movie, I sent it back to Netflix, defeated. I wasn’t much on WAKING LIFE either, but at least it embraced its pretensions. Other than that identity suit, why did this movie need to be animated? Gimme DAZED AND CONFUSED (or, hell, the BAD NEWS BEARS remake) any day over this. Two final recommednations, when they make it to Corvallis: ZODIAC and THE HOST, the two best movies of 2007 so far.