Outlandish ‘Empire’
Omar and I were fortunate enough to score tickets to the premiere of David Lynch’s Inland Empire at the Paramount theater in Austin last Wednesday. That actually may be part of the reason for no second comic last week. Our bad. In any case, you can read more about the experience here.
I don’t know about Omar, but I have to say the movie is quickly growing on me as I think back on it. We walked out of the theater ecstatic about having been in the same theater as David Lynch, but pretty disappointed with the film itself. Now I find myself thinking about it randomly. I just probably needed to let it sink in which I guess is not different from how any other David Lynch film is digested. I didn’t know what to expect going in, and I think I was expecting another Mulholland Dr. Once I disassociated it from that disappointment I realized I couldn’t wait to get a second viewing.
Lynch’d
As PJ says, we were lucky enough to score tickets to the premiere (PJ stood in line and got them; he’s awesome like that).
I think there’s a very cool, mind-bendy 1 1/2 hour movie inInland Empire that could easily have been carved into a semi-cohesive narrative, but that’s very obviously not what David Lynch is about these days and that’s both frustrating and incredibly inspiring. The movie, as an experience, is without peer. But like most roller coaster rides, some people simply won’t abide it, won’t get on, won’t risk the nausea.
To echo some of the reviews, the movie is to be studied, maybe to be learned from. For all the confusing and sometimes extraneous moments in the movie, there are bits that are wholly original, that easily stand on their own, that evoke sensations that you simply don’t get from 99.9999 percent of other movies.
Meany, obviously, gets his mind blown by such things.
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