Mental Map

Get L O S T again with this high-res map of the island. (Keep clicking it.) It reminds me a little of the Treasure Island map, except upside down.

Quote of the Day

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."
--Henry David Thoreau

L O S T Finale Recap: Case Closed. Tracie explains it all....

And by the way, what is "dog" spelled backwards?

alternate ending

Quote of the Day: Laura Harring

"...And I'm working with the David Lynch Foundation as a goodwill ambassador, so I'm meeting with David and the rumor is that he's writing something. So we don't know what the future holds. I see another movie in David's future, that's for sure.

That you might be a part of?

(Laughs.) I can say no more."

More here.

"I Have a Bad Feeling About This"

The 'Lost' Books

GalleyCat, the book publishing industry blog, has a list of favorite books mentioned in the TV series Lost, with links to reviews of said books. The ones I've read are Valis by Philip K. Dick and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. Both are pretty mind-bending, but in very different ways.

Valis is a...a...gnostic sci-fi novel, I guess you could say. It's one of those books that is very difficult to categorize. But those are the kind I like best. (Those are the TV shows and films I like best, too.)

Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of twisted Southern Gothic short stories as only O'Connor could write them. They are all about broken people finding violent redemption. Sound familiar?

L O S T

Jack loved Kate but unlike Jack, James hated Kate. Kate loved James, but Jack, James hated; unlike Jack, Kate hated James. Jack loved James, but Jack, James hated, but unlike Jack, James hated Kate. James loved Kate, hated Jack. But Kate, James hated, unlike Jack. Kate hated Jack, James hated Kate, unlike Jack, who loved Kate but hated Kate. James, unlike Jack, loved Kate, but hated Jack; James hated Kate and Jack. Jack hated James, but James, unlike Jack, loved Kate and hated Kate. Jack loved James but hated Kate, but unlike Jack, James loved Kate and hated Jack....

Quote of the Day

"David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' has been named the best film of the decade in a Film Comment survey of nearly 200 critics, filmmakers and other cinema insiders from around the world." More here.

No hay banda!

Sexy Sadie, What Have You Done?

Right now, David Lynch is in India, filming "kind of" a documentary about guess who? How interesting this will be depends on those two little words "kind of", I think.

"Machines, Abstraction and Women"

Photos of David Lynch's exhibition at Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

Eh... make a film.

The Big Fish

David Lynch's photograph of his fish is here. It's a rainbow trout. Looks happy. Looks like it might have something to say.

Weekend Netflix Report: Surveillance (2008)

Poor Jennifer Lynch. The first film she directed, Boxing Helena (1993), was torn apart by the critics, though it wasn't nearly as bad as they said. (Nor was it a bloody film, despite what you might gather from a plot summary, but that's another story.) Being the daughter of David Lynch, critics were not going to cut her any slack, but a lot of them have had to with her new (and second) film, Surveillance. It's a very well made thriller, though an extremely violent and cold one. There's no one to really root for among the characters, except maybe for a nine-year-old girl, but even she seems to be 90-percent ice water.

The plot borrows some devices from Lynch's father, especially his Twin Peaks cult TV series and his Fire Walk With Me feature film. Two FBI agents visit a small-town police station to investigate some horrific serial killings -- but there's something a bit "off" about these agents. Now there's nothing unusual about FBI agents acting strange in a Lynch-family project, but what's odd about these J. Edgars turns out to be the key to the whole mystery.

Lynch uses some intriguing Rashomon flashback techniques to tell her story, including different film stocks as she shows what various witnesses to the crime saw, or say they saw, or think they saw, as the FBI agents videotape their testimony. A drug addict's tale, for example, is shown over-exposed, while the only fully reliable witness report (the little girl's) is shown with aching clarity.

This is an admirable but depressing film. Despite some similarities to Lynch's father's work, I don't think it's a film he would have made. (He reportedly called the script "sick," which is saying something, coming from him.) There's no surrealism or humor in it, nor is the ending uplifting. Even a more hopeful alternate ending included on the DVD isn't all that hopeful. This isn't the type of film you watch for pure entertainment; it's the type you watch if you find the darker aspects of human nature interesting and admire artful movie-making.

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

It's 9/9/09, and the remastered Beatles CDs have finally been released, about a dozen years after they should have been, but oh well. With them, it's almost always worth the wait. I'm looking forward to buying the "White Album" again (for the third time), my favorite album of all. I like every song on it (except maybe "Wild Honey Pie" and "Don't Pass Me By", sorry Ringo), including "Revolution 9". I like eclecticism. I like collage. Culturally, in the West at least, we live in a fragmented time (still), and this double album, more than anything I've heard, captures the essence of that while still being engaging, entertaining, and fun.

The illustration above is the rejected cover art for what eventually became known as the White Album. I wonder if, had they used it, we would be calling it the "Animal Album" today.

Postscript: It sounds great. The muddiness of the original CDs is gone, and it almost sounds like you're in the same room with them. This is especially evident on the quieter tracks, like "Julia" and "Blackbird".

Codex Seraphinianus

"The Codex Seraphinianus was written and illustrated by Italian graphic designer and architect Luigi Serafini during the late 1970s. The Codex is a lavishly produced book that purports to be an encyclopedia for an imaginary world in a parallel universe, with copious comments in an incomprehensible language. It is written in a florid script, entirely invented and completely illegible, and illustrated with watercolor paintings."

You can read more about this strange book and see examples of the Bosch-like illustrations here. It shares some similarities with the famous (infamous?) Voynich Manuscript.

T'would be an interesting volume to possess, if it didn't cost $550 on Amazon....

"Take this brother, may it serve you well"

The complete lyrics to the Beatles' Revolution #9 are here.

"I'm not in the mood for whirling" either.

Ha ha ha ha.....

We need to see more of Special Agent Dale Cooper, I think. Hmm, Dave?

"Coffee not for children under 3 years"

'Dark Night of the Soul' Photos

A gallery of David Lynch photos originally intended to accompany this mysterious, unreleased album (of music) is here.

'Fox Bat Strategy' Considered

I received the CD today. It has that 1950s-meets-1990s sound that I find appealing in a lot of, uh, Lynchian music (for want of a better term). "Ricky Nelson on acid," someone said to describe the Fox Bat sound, and I think that's somewhat apt. The band is the same one featured in the jaw-dropping Pink Room sequence in Fire Walk With Me, and if you're familiar with that music (which is on the FWWM soundtrack), you know what this group is capable of -- though nothing here is as heavy or ominous as "The Pink Room" or "Blue Frank." The album is dedicated to the late Dave Jaurequi, who provided the smoothly appealing lead vocals and guitar work. Lynch produced and wrote the surreal lyrics.

For some reason, the (ahem) online retailer I ordered this from sent me two copies, though I only ordered and paid for one. Have to think about who to give the extra one to....

The Magick of James Bond?

Hmmm. This review of The Bond Code by Philip Gardiner points out the numerous examples of esoteric codes and references to occult, gnostic and alchemical topics in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, such as the odd character names:

Auric Goldfinger (alchemy)
Le Chiffre ("the cipher, or code")
Sir Hugo Drax ("the Dragon")
etc., etc.

"...touchstones to the esoteric appear in many places in Fleming's writings. There is a Bill Templar in Diamonds Are Forever, alluding to the Knights Templar. The Ourobourous (the alchemical symbol of a serpent eating its own tail) is part of the name of the Ourobouros Worm and Bait Company in Live and Let Die....Gardiner points out the resemblance in the novel Casino Royale of the first Bond villain, Le Chiffre, to the occultist Aleister Crowley."

And Fleming apparently corresponded with Crowley, had an intense interest in Jung, knew of an esoteric meaning behind the number 007, and so on.

Interesting. Still, I don't think the character "Pussy Galore" was intended as a reference to the ancient Egyptians' worship of felines.

'Dark Night of the Soul'

This is an NPR page with a link to a stream of the recent album collaboration by Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, David Lynch, et al ("one of the year's most mysterious albums"), that EMI has banned from release.

Sexy Sadie, What Have You Done?

Originally uploaded by David Lynch Foundation Television

This is something I never thought I'd see. But it makes sense to me. A weird kind of sense, but sense. Click it bigger.

~~~
David Lynch & Crispin Glover's Big Blockbuster

These videos are dumb, but the guys nail the vocal impressions.