David Lynch

E. B. White once wrote, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” Analyzing trilogies seems to the same. The entire point is to enjoy them. Still, given the many sins to be found in film, there are worse things than movie trilogies but few have …

Wild at Heart Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 1990, USA Wild at Heart, a hyper, often violent and oddly romantic take on The Wizard of Oz, starts off with a lit match and a brutal attack, and ends with a visit from Glenda the Good Witch and Nicolas Cage singing “Love me tender”. …

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 sleaze. There is some rather horrifyingly violence, beginning with the opening scene where a man is beaten to death, to a moment …

How many filmmakers can you think of that have their own verb? “Lynchian” is a part of even the most casual cinephile, though it’s often used erroneously. All too often, anything a little out of the ordinary, with a vague sense of the uncanny, earns the term. Looking back at the man’s filmography, however, it’s …

Haptic visuality is a term coined by Canadian media theorist, Laura U. Marks. Taking the idea of haptic perception, the process of recognizing objects through touch, Marks integrates the role of eye-sight as part of a greater sensual experience. She says: Haptic images can give the impression of seeing for the first time, gradually discovering what …

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 …

Blue Velvet has plenty of the makings of noir: a sultry and dangerous atmosphere, big city fear, femme fatale (Dorothy Vallens/Isabella Rossellini), an intrepid detective working outside the police force (Jeffrey Beaumont/Kyle MacLachlan), and, of course, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath akin to the best of late-period classic American noirs. By stirring the pot …

Mulholland Drive Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 2001, USA I have never seen a David Lynch film. I know very little about him. I doubt that I truly grasped that Lynch was a surrealist filmmaker before now, yet Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive have been on my to-be-watched list for a decade. So …

Picture the scene – a storm-swept, wintry night, with the hail and rain lashing at the flimsy, sodden windows. One hour beyond the witching hour and in a lightless living room the VHS player whirls into stuttering activity and a grainy image materializes, a floating head emerging out of the pitiless darkness to the sounds of a throbbing industrial score, and a trauma inducing title expands across the screen – Eraserhead.

In 1986 it was a strange world and it was about to get weirder, as the irradiated detritus from the Chernobyl disaster infected Northern Europe a similarly radioactive event was contaminating cinema screens worldwide, as we alight upon the first masterpiece of Lynch’s career – I just thought I’d be up front about that. After the painful critical evisceration of Dune a wounded Lynch retreated to his lair and decided he needed to go back to his roots and make a smaller, more personal and manageable film, without the distractions that an interfering studio, costly SFX and adjacent marketing concerns which had partially diluted his creative essence and drive.

The Straight Story Written by John Roach & Mary Sweeney Directed by David Lynch France/UK/USA, 1999 A film entitled The Straight Story seems like a lie in the bizarre hands of a director like David Lynch, famous for injecting art house storytelling and theater styling into his more mainstream fare. An adaptation of an Iowa farmer’s journey? …

Ever fascinated by the American way of life, Lynch’s career is rooted in the American experience, be it small town life or the magical land of Hollywood. The contradiction of the sense of community, magic and folksiness with the underbelly of violence and perversion is at the heart of most of his projects. He explores …

There’s something mind-boggling about watching Twin Peaks all these years later. It’s an easy show to dismiss now; after all, the TV landscape is littered with bizarre characters in even stranger situations. Twin Peaks might not have been the first show to explore the stranger, darker side of seemingly normal characters, but it certainly set …

Today’s film is the 2012 short Idem Paris. The film is by David Lynch, and focuses on the workings of a lithograph. David Lynch is known in the film community for his offbeat cinematic ventures, many of which have ended up in top 10 lists during their respective years. He was last seen in theatres …

Every month we choose a theme for our Movie/TV Club. In the past we’ve highlighted directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock and David Cronenberg. Other times we’ve concentrated on events such as the Academy Awards. February’s theme spotlights actor Keanu Reeves. Now we are asking our readers to decide what we should do in …

With ABC cancelling Last Resort and 666 Park Avenue recently, we decided to look back on other TV series that were cancelled too soon. 10. Ringer (1 season, 22 episodes, ended in 2012) Sarah Michelle Geller plays a pair of twin sisters who are complete opposites. There’s Bridget, a recovering drug addict and stripper, and …

Inland Empire Written by David Lynch Directed by David Lynch USA, 2006 So much has been written and posited about the works of David Lynch – not just his films, but his art and music as well – that more column inches will always struggle to unearth any new readings or insights. Lynch is probably …

Louie, Season 3, Episodes 10-12: “Late Show” Written by Louis C.K. Directed by Louis C.K. Airs Thursdays at 10:30pm ET on FX For all of its open disregard for TV norms, Louie hasn’t often strayed from its pattern of getting the job done, story-wise, in 22 minutes or less. Even when the show attempted a …

How do you measure the value of art? Influence, innovation, inspiration…  Every ten years since 1952, the London based magazine Sight & Sound has compiled the lists of the best critics and filmmakers in order to compile the ten best “greatest” films of all time. The 2012 edition marks the first time since 1962 that …

The Tumblr round-up is a compilation of images, links, posters, stories, videos and so on, taken from the Sound On Sight Tumblr account. We simply do not have the man power nor time to write articles on every interesting movie related goody we find, so this is our way of still promoting some of the …

March, 2011: After their rights to the source material elapse after a failed four year venture, Paramount officially drop their in-development film Dune, ending a frustrating and ultimately fruitless effort that served better as a topic of heated discussion than an actually feasible movie. Such an announcement had been on the cards, and the prospect …

Throughout January, SOS writers will be biting the bullet and finally sitting down with a film they feel like bad film buffs for not having seen already. Eraserhead Directed by David Lynch Written by David Lynch 1977, USA Watching David Lynch’s Inland Empire in a near-empty cinema one Tuesday afternoon, is still the most terrifying …