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“Portrait Of The Artist As A Young And Old Man”

By Raymond Benson

David Lynch is today’s foremost surrealist. In many ways, he has taken up the mantle begun by those artists of the 1920s who attempted to present in tangible, visual forms the juxtapositions, bizarre logic, and beauty/horror of dreams. Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Man Ray, Germaine Dulac, René Magritte—to name a few.

Most people know Lynch from his films, but as this thoughtful and insightful documentary reveals, he is and has always been primarily a painter. Lynch began his career in the “art life” studying and practicing fine art… and he sort of fell into filmmaking along the way. Even today, despite his recent foray back into television with Twin Peaks—The Return on Showtime, Lynch spends most of his time in his home studio drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and painting.

The film is narrated...

Author: Daniel Goodwin

“You have to sometimes make a huge mess and big mistakes to find the thing you are looking for,” an at ease David Lynch imparts while painting and smoking in a sun soaked yard as his young daughter swirls about before him. In David Lynch: The Art Life, the genius artist/director reflects on his early years, recalling childhood memories, troubled youth and identity crisis’.

Combined with insights from the man himself, Director Jon Nguyen captures petite ticks, character traits and scenes which shed light onto Lynch as painter/film-maker and old/young man. New filmed footage of Lynch tearing up a croissant and staring curiously at a stick as though seeking inspiration, is both endearing, wry and enlightening, alongside his stories of infancy (playing war) and the living “hell” of adolescence due to routine intestinal spasms and living with a conflicting personality.

What isn’t explored...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesRECOMMENDED VIEWINGThe first full trailer for Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve's sequel to Ridley Scott's original starring Ryan Gosling alongside Harrison Ford, looks like a storyboard come to (digital) life.An all-too-brief look at some kind of footage from the new Twin Peaks, with Everett McGill, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, Harry Goaz, Michael Horse, and Kyle MacLachlan looking like figures in an eerie waxworks.Milestone will soon be theatrically releasing a new restoration of Billy Woodberry's debut film, Bless Their Little Hearts (1983), written and shot by Killer of Sheep's Charles Burnett.Philippe Garrel meets David Lynch? Indeed! In a new video essay, Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin look at the "holy family" (mother, father, and child) in early experimental films by each director, Lynch's The Grandmother (1969) and Garrel's Le révélateur (1968), the latter of which is now playing on Mubi.

There was a time, not very long ago, when obtaining a decent copy of David Lynch’s first masterpiece, Eraserhead, was problematic. Selected in 2004 for preservation in the National Film Registry, nearly four decades of overriding nearly every other piece of flotsam and jetsam comprising the cult classic continuum, one of the most exquisite directorial debuts of all time gets a lavish Criterion Collection treatment. A film whose aural devices equal its bizarre and unforgettable visuals, outside of a theatrical screening, it’s the definitive way to experience this dream of dark and troubling things.

To outline the narrative of Eraserhead feels rather reductive since the film is a visual and auditory experience that requires first hand exposure. But, basically, it’s about a guy named Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) who is forced to marry a neurotic girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) because she gave birth to a creature/baby he impregnated her with.

“Eraserhead” (Directed by David Lynch, 1977)

(The Criterion Collection)

Everything Ugly Is Beautiful

By Raymond Benson

One of the many excellent supplements that appear on this disc is a rare video interview from 1979 with David Lynch (and cinematographer Frederick Elmes). For those of us who have aged along with the director, it is a striking glimpse at a young artist at the beginning of his strange and wonderful career. In it, he explains that he is attracted to sometimes harsh, oppressive settings, such as the nightmarish industrial cityscape in Eraserhead. “What everyone else finds ugly, I find beautiful,” he says proudly. And the director has pretty much remained true to his word, hasn’t he?

Eraserhead is a landmark picture, but its original release in 1977 was slow to reach an audience. It gained its must-see reputation only after the film was picked up to run on the midnight movie circuit that...

At last, on Tuesday September 16, David Lynch's iconic artifact of the unconscious "Eraserhead" -- long in the Janus Films archives -- gets the Criterion Collection Blu-ray treatment. Accompanying the 1977 classic will be Lynch's eerie short films "Six Men Getting Sick" (above), "The Alphabet," "The Grandmother," "Premonitions Following an Evil Deed" -- a Lynchian title if there ever was one -- and more. Here are eight spooky images from the newly burnished shorts, all presented in new transfers and of course supervised by Lynch himself, who was closely involved in the vibrant Blu-ray restoration of "Blue Velvet." Will we ever see "Mulholland Dr" on Blu-ray in the Us? "Inland Empire"? "Lost Highway"? Various region-free versions float the Amazon Marketplace, but Criterion has teased a possible "Mulholland" Blu-ray in the past. We shall see. You can watch the shorts on Hulu here,...

David Lynch’s 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes and Herbert Cardwell, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey remains one of American cinema’s darkest dreams. Director-approved Edition: ● New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray ● “Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by David Lynch on the making of the film ● New high-definition restorations of six short films by Lynch (all with video introductions by Lynch): -- Six Men Getting Sick (1967) -- The Alphabet (1968) -- The Grandmother (1970) -- The Amputee, Part 1 and Part 2 (1974) --...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 16, 2014

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Jack Nance stars in David Lynch's Eraserhead.

David Lynch’s (Blue Velvet, Dune) 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, is both a lasting cult sensation and a work of extraordinary craft and beauty. With its mesmerizing black-and-white photography by Frederick Elmes, evocative sound design, and unforgettably enigmatic performance by Jack Nance, this visionary nocturnal odyssey remains one of American cinema’s darkest dreams.

Yeah, yeah, we’re just running Criterion’s press release write-up for the film but, jeez, there’s been so much said about it over the years, that we’ll wait for our review to lay on some editorial gravy…!

Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD releases of Eraserhead contains the following features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray

• “Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by David Lynch on the making of the film

• New high-definition restorations...

One of the most prestigious honors a film can receive is to be added to the Criterion Collection, which solidifies a movie's status as an important piece of cinema. At long last the honor has been bestowed upon David Lynch's Eraserhead, and we've got all the release details on tap for ya today!

Hitting both DVD and Blu-ray, the Criterion release of Lynch's 1977 feature debut comes our way courtesy of a brand new 4K digital restoration with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray.

As always, a handful of new special features will be included on both discs, and you'll find a full listing below along with the cover art.

In the film Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is left alone in his apartment to care for his deformed baby and has a series of strange encounters with the beautiful girl across the hall and the woman living in his radiator.

It's the middle of the month, and we know what that means. Well, for us, it means realizing we have $70 to last us until payday, but for the more frugal cinephiles among you, it means that it's time for Criterion to announce what they've got coming up three months down the line. And once more, there are some treats in store. Kicking things off, and certainly the headliner, is David Lynch's seminal 1977 first feature "Eraserhead," the first of the director's features to make the collection. The film will be displayed on a new 4K digital restoration, along with new restorations of six Lynch shorts (1966's "Six Figures Getting Sick," 1968's 'The Alphabet," 1970's "The Grandmother," 1974's "The Amputee Part 1 and 2," and 1996's "Premonitions Following An Evil Deed," plus interviews and a 2001 documentary by Lynch called "Eraserhead Stories." So yeah, pretty much a must buy when it lands on September 16th.

David Lynch fans are certainly getting a treat as of late. On July 29 Lynch's "Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery" comes to Blu-ray and now Criterion has announced come September 16, Lynch's Eraserhead will be released on Criterion DVD and Blu-ray. The Eraserhead release will include a new 4K digital restoration of the film, a 2001 "Eraserhead" Stories documentary, a new high-definition restorations of six short films by Lynch including Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970), The Amputee, Part 1 and Part 2 (1974) and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996), all of which include a video introductions by Lynch. Finally it will include new and archival interviews with cast and crew as well as the film's trailer. Also coming in September is the release of Roman Polanski's Macbeth on September 23. The release includes a new 4K digital restoration, new documentary, the 1971 documentary "Polanski Meets Macbeth" and much more. Jack Clayton's 1961 supernatural film...

Cinephilia & Beyond has quickly become one of my favourite online daily stops. Today they posted a rare, hour and a half documentary titled Eraserhead Stories, which features David Lynch reminiscing about the six years he spent putting together his first feature length film, Eraserhead. The doc itself has quite a few Lynchian qualities of its own; shot in black-and-white, and in front of a curtain, with Lynch explaining in great detail, the nuts and bolts of creating a bizarre and disturbing look into a man’s fear of parenthood. Lynch was thirty at the time of the Filmex premiere of Eraserhead and he had only two previous short films to his credit (The Alphabet, The Grandmother). Filmed intermittently over the course of a five-year period, Lynch’s radical feature was no easy task to shoot, but with persistence and dedication, he completed the project, and Eraserhead went on to become...

There is so much great content published every week here at Sound On Sight, that even we have trouble keeping up. So, every Sunday, we drop a list of popular articles posted by our hard working, and extremely talented staff.

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5 Mind Boggling Casting Decisions (that nearly happened)

Casting sometimes is fate and destiny more than skill and talent, from a director’s point of view. – Steven Spielberg Ah, the joys of hindsight, such as they are. It is so easy…

Ricky D’s Favourite Cult Films #28: ‘Wild at Heart’ and the best David Lynch characters

Wild at Heart Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 1990, USA David Lynch evokes a surreal world in Wild at Heart, a film brimming over with explicit sex, murder, rape, eccentric kitsch and…

Wild Rover One-Shot: On Alcoholism and Monster Slaying

Wild Rover & The Sacrifice Written and drawn by Michael Avon Oeming With...

The Grandmother

Written by David Lynch

Directed by David Lynch

USA, 1970

Mrs Bates lived on inside Norman’s fractured psyche.

Her continued residence compensated for the guilt her son felt following her murder. Ever present, her spectral presence kept watch in the guise of a maternal superego overlooking the Bates motel from close quarters.

Psycho was one of many Hitchcock films in which the master of suspense would allow the repressed trauma of the Real to trickle through and threaten the stability of a carefully constructed ‘reality’. Maternal anxiety would again occur in The Birds by way of its eponymous creatures wreaking havoc on the townsfolk. The verbal contract in Strangers on a Train, epitomised in the kernel of a single cigarette lighter, refused to die a quiet death. And in Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart’s Lb Jeffries saw in the apartments opposite his own – surrogate frames for the cinema...

Few filmmakers have had as profound an effect on me as director David Lynch. When I was exposed to Twin Peaks during its initial run back in late 1990 my mind was blown out the back of my head by the possibilities of what film and television could be.

For many it was first seeing Star Wars and for other more recent generations it will be their first viewing of Fellowship of the Ring but for me it was the scene where an older Kyle Maclachlan speaks to a backwards talking dwarf in a red room and my life was changed forever.

As a result I have eagerly watched all of David Lynch’s directorial work many times over the years and await each new project eagerly. Sadly he seems to have slowed down somewhat from the productive decades of the 80’s and 90’s and has only directed two movies in the last ten years.

Second #6251, 104:11

Sounds

1. “He put his disease in me.” (Dorothy to Sandy, around three seconds before this frame.)

2. Blue Velvet’s sound designer was the late Alan Splet, who had worked with Lynch beginning with his short film The Grandmother, in 1970.

3. In the distance, growing louder, the wail of an ambulance siren, which will arrive immediately after this shot for Dorothy.

4. The sound of Sandy crying, gradually drowned out by the wail of the siren.

5. What if the siren is, secretly, Sandy’s red thoughts at this moment, an outward auditory expression of her inner turmoil? Sergei Eisenstein, from “A Course in Treatment,” 1932:

How fascinating to listen to one’s own train of thought, particularly in an excited state, in order to catch yourself looking at and listening to your mind. How you talk ‘to yourself’ as distinct from ‘out of yourself.’ The syntax of inner speech as distinct from outer speech.

Sailor (Nicolas Cage) has just been released after a two-year stretch for manslaughter and is picked up outside the prison gates by Lula (Laura Dern), who has been desperately awaiting his release. They set off across the southern states of the Us, heading for California despite Sailor’s parole restrictions and relatively unaware that Lula’s mother (Diane Ladd), who wants to keep Lula and Sailor apart, but is becoming increasingly unhinged, has despatched a series of peculiar/demented individuals to find them and kill Sailor.

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David Lynch was awarded the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 for this, his fifth theatrical feature as a director and at that point arguably his most accessible film. Although Lynch’s distinctive dream-like visuals are laced throughout once again, disrupting the narrative and evoking something more impressionistic, that core narrative is in fact very conventional and wholly coherent. Young couple in love,...

This is perhaps one of my favourite competitions we’ve ever run on HeyUGuys. If I could enter I would, but I can’t – but you can!

To celebrate Universal Picture Centennial Anniversary year and the release of a Limited Edition David Lynch Box Set out on 4th June, containing six of David Lynch’s classic films plus exciting never-before-seen footage, it includes classics such as Eraserhead and Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me and Hey U Guys has 1 special David Lynch Box set to give away.

I’ve copied in a list of the films and the assorted extras (gathered onto a single disc in this box set) so you know exactly how much Lynchian madness you’re getting. There are interviews, outtakes, short films and other experimentia secreted within and this is a must for fans of the director.

Here’s a list of what’s on what,...

Last week, in partnership with Watchmaker Films, we presented Tobe Hooper's rarely seen comedic short The Heisters (1964). This week: the main attraction, Hooper's debut feature, Eggshells, (1968/69), long believed to have been lost until, four decades on, it was rediscovered, restored and presented at the 2009 edition of the South by Southwest Festival.

That's when Louis Black, a co-founder of both the Austin Chronicle and SXSW, wrote that "Eggshells makes explicit what many have long assumed — that Hooper's sense of cinema is the defining characteristic that makes [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)] great. Eggshells is a true 1968 film, psychedelic and political; it seems clear that Hooper had watched more than a film or two by Jean-Luc Godard. The film celebrates alternative lifestyles and politics and people and an odd, kinky semi-mysticism that is grounded more in humor than the supernatural. It captures what Austin looked like in the Sixties as well as the political sensibility shared...

A lot of hay has been made lately about the future of Netflix streaming movies over the Internet for its subscribers as opposed to their original business model of being a mail-order DVD rental service. A good recent article on the subject was written by Chuck Tryon, who waded through all the hype and arguments against to try to figure out what impact Internet streaming of movies has on the movie industry.

Well, forget about the industry for the moment. How is Netflix streaming affecting the underground filmmaker?

Personally, I’m not a Netflix subscriber, so wading through their offerings is a bit more difficult for me. However, I was still curious if the company was streaming any underground movies. To find out if they were, I ended up searching a website called Instant Watcher, which is a company independent of Netflix, but uses a Netflix developer Api to scan...

Filmmaker David Lynch has been announced as the first-ever guest artistic director of AFI Fest 2010. The American Film Institute Fest presented by Audi will take place from November 4 to 11 in Hollywood.

Lynch said, "I said yes to being the Guest Artistic Director of AFI Fest 2010 because I love the AFI. AFI can do for others what it did for me. AFI gave me an opportunity and money to make a short film, 'The Grandmother,' and my first feature film, 'Eraserhead.'"

"AFI put me on the map."

He will program a special sidebar of films that influence and inspire him and will present these films in November. The film selection will be announced in October.

David Lynch has been handed the ultimate honour by the American Film Institute - the director has been put in charge of the upcoming AFI Fest.

The Mulholland Drive moviemaker has been named the first ever Guest Artistic Director of the famous film festival, which takes place in Los Angeles in November.

Lynch, who studied at the AFI before becoming a director, will help co-ordinate the festival and will choose a selection of movies which inspired him throughout his career. He has also helped design the promotional posters for the event.

He says, "I said yes to being the Guest Artistic Director of AFI Fest 2010 because I love the AFI. AFI can do for others what it did for me. AFI gave me an opportunity and money to make a short film, The Grandmother, and my first feature film, Eraserhead. AFI put me on the map."

The AFI Fest will run from 4-11 November.

Iconoclastic director, David Lynch, the quintessential purveyor of the weird and wonderful, has been hired as the first ever guest artistic director for the upcoming AFI Fest in Hollywood, Ca.

Some of his duties will include the creation of artwork to serve as the official image of the 24th annual event, as well as the creation of a sidebar program composed of films that have influenced and inspired him. His film choices for the program will be released in October.

“I said yes to being the Guest Artistic Director of AFI Fest 2010 because I love the AFI,” Lynch said in a statement. “AFI can do for others what it did for me. AFI gave me an opportunity and money to make a short film, ‘The Grandmother’, and my first feature film, ‘Eraserhead.’ AFI put me on the map.”

Lynch was one of the first fellows of the famed AFI Conservatory...

David Lynch will serve as the first-ever guest artistic director of the AFI Fest film festival, which runs Nov. 4-11 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Mann Chinese 6 theatres, the Egyptian Theatre and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The filmmaker has created artwork that will serve as the official image of the 24th annual festival, presented by the American Film Institute.

In addition, he will program a special sidebar of films that influenced and inspired him, which will be announced in October.

"I said yes to being the guest artistic director of AFI Fest 2010 because I love the AFI," Lynch said. "AFI can do for others what it did for me. AFI gave me an opportunity and money to make a short film, 'The Grandmother,' and my first feature film, 'Eraserhead.' AFI put me on the map."

Lynch was one of the first fellows of AFI's Center For Advanced Film Studies,...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: AFI Fest 2010 just got a little more creative, a little bit more challenging, a little more intelligent, and a little bit more offbeat.

Those are all great things.

Fest organizers announced that David Lynch will serve as AFI’s first-ever Guest Artistic Director when the annual event takes place Nov. 4-11 at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Mann Chinese 6 theatres, the Egyptian Theatre and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.

“I said yes to being the Guest Artistic Director of AFI Fest 2010 because I love the AFI,” the director said. “AFI can do for others what it did for me. AFI gave me an opportunity and money to make a short film, ‘The Grandmother,’ and my first feature film, ‘Eraserhead.’ AFI put me on the map.”

Lynch was one of the first Fellows of AFI’s Center For Advanced Film Studies,...

To say David Lynch is a fascinating man is like saying saying the people on MTV's Jersey Shore are insipid. The words are starting descriptors but their subjects go far beyond such simple terms. But I'll settle for fascinating, as I'm not quite sure I could ever summon a single world to encapsulate the director of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. and so many others. In case his films don't make it clear, Lynch is a hard intellect to pin down, although the below video should help give some insights into the artist's creative process.

Don't be startled off by its nearly two-hour long run time. Lynch's solo portion starts around the seven-minute mark and runs for about half an hour before quantum physicist John Hagelin takes the podium. While Lynch has the stage to himself, though, he fields all manner of questions concerning Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain (the...

By Michael Atkinson

Who is Lech Majewski? Among other things, he's something of a newfound challenge for the critic and budding cinephile. A tireless and passionate Euro artiste of a kind that gets often relegated to the "underground" or "experimental" categories in this country, but who also employs old-fashioned surrealism and sometimes nets name actors like Viggo Mortensen (pre-"Lotr"), Majewski does everything on his films but make the coffee, and thus they are his works, uncorrupted by business and audience. Which may be the trouble . based upon the set of features released by Kino, Majewski may be one of the most pretentious filmmakers alive and working. Or is he a visionary? What separates the two quantities, except taste and argument? When does Majewski's brand of rampaging, overtly symbolic experimentalism dip below the line of transformative art and into nonsense? "Gospel According to Harry" (1994) attacks modern society's materialistic failures at...