Review: 'Lost Highway' Blu-ray

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me was such a tremendous (and underserved) critical and commercial flop that former golden boy David Lynch had a hard time following it up. Waiting for inspiration, he read a single line in a novel by Wild at Heart-scribe Barry Gifford that finally set off that old lightbulb above his quiff, and he knew he wanted to make a movie called Lost Highway and he wanted Gifford to co-write it. 

Watch New Edit of David Lynch's "Rabbits"

A few weeks after releasing the haunting short film "Fire (Pozar)", David Lynch's You Tube channel continues to host interesting content. Today, Lynch has unveiled a new edit of his bizarre-even-for-Lynch Internet series "Rabbits". 

"Rabbits" originally appeared on the long-defunct website DavidLynch.com. Each episode consists of Mulholland Dr. stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Scott Coffey having non-sequitur conversations to the delight of a sitcom laugh track. Plus, they were dressed like giant, feature-less rabbits.

"Rabbits" found a more formal and permanent home scattered among the disturbing debris in Lynch's most recent feature film (assuming you don't subscribe to the theory that Twin Peaks: The Return is an 18-hour film), 2006's INLAND EMPIRE. This latest edit is titled "Rabbits 1", which implies that additional installments will follow. Watch it here:

6/26/20 Update: Part 2 is now up:

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 234

The Date: May 21

The Movie: Mulholland Dr. (2001)

What Is It?: David Lynch salvages a rejected TV pilot and makes the greatest film of the 2000s as cute starlet Naomi Watts and car-crash victim Laura Harring prove to be otherwise in a creepy Hollywood dream world. Beware the dumpster behind Winkie’s!

Why Today?: Today is the first day of the Gemini star sign—the perfect day to revel in doublings and shifting personalities!

Review: 'Mulholland Dr.' on Blu-ray

Getting into “Twin Peaks” in the nineties hipped me to the idea that television could be cinematic, experimental, genuinely scary, and uncomfortably challenging. I tried to sate my yen for such shows with things like “Northern Exposure” and “The X-Files”, but nothing came close to recapturing that air of dreamy creepiness and creeping dreaminess unique to “Twin Peaks”. So when I read that David Lynch would finally be returning to the little screen with a new show called “Mulholland Dr.” for ABC in 1999, I was thrilled. Unfortunately, after seeing Lynch’s pilot, the confounded ninnies at the network passed on it in favor of contemporary classics like “Oh, Grow Up” and “Odd Man Out”. Though heartbroken, Lynch has never been a guy who allows a good idea to go to waste. He reclaimed his 90-minute pilot, shot a new ending for it, and released it theatrically in 2001, thus cobbling together the best feature film of a decade that had barely begun.

(Spoilers Ahead, so you may want to skip to the next bolded heading.)

Criterion's 'Mulholland Dr.' Blu-ray Has Finally Been Announced for October!

Fans of the Criterion Collection tend to look forward to the company's mid-month new-release announcements with crazed anticipation, and perhaps no long-rumored Criterion release has been more crazily anticipated than David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. Well, today Criterion announced its October 2015 roster, and I'm thrilled to announce that the release of Lynch's magnificent mind-bender is finally official. On October 27, we'll get a 4K digital transfer of Mulholland Dr. with vintage and brand new bonus interviews with David Lynch, stars Naomi Watts and Laura Harring, soundtrack composer Angelo Badalamenti, and casting director Johanna Ray. Some of the bonus features details are a tad sketchy at this moment (Criterion's site simply says "More!"), but I'm sure many fans are hoping that the unaired "Mulholland Dr." TV pilot might be included. In any event, this is one of the most important Blu-ray releases of 2015. It will be a tough one to top, though Criterion also has some other great titles--including Japanese horror portmanteau Kwaidan and David Cronenberg's The Brood--in store for October.