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luridedith wrote:Am I the only one who finds Lynch's names and artwork choices for his DVD boxsets far odder and esoteric than his actual films? I mean, seriously. First the Twin Peaks gold box set and now... "lime green"? Is it a cross-promotion thing? Is he going to be selling iced tea along with his coffee?

I made a similar post to Dugpa.com a few days ago,when i first heard about this.

Copied from my post at the dugpa.com forum:

1.ERASERHEAD
I think and i hope it's true,that this is the version from the newly remastered print.The only problem would be its quality;Has anyone seen this and can confirm of its superior quality to the prior release?Well,i didn't buy the deluxe release on November awaiting for this new print and i hope that this is the real deal.
2.SOUNDTRACKS
What about the Eraserhead soundtrack?Why Absurda doesn't release a complete CD Set of soundtracks and David's personal releases (especially Air Is On Fire) and title it Earl Gray?Although,DL has stated that no more music from TP will be released.
3.ELEPHANT MAN UK EXTRAS:
Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man (19:57)
John Hurt Interview (20:14)
David Lynch Interview (24:50)
If there are more on this set are welcome,but i don't have many expectations on this front.
A new 3-disc DVD set of Optimum is available including the new Elephant Man release (as i am aware),MH and IE (the last two without the Region 2 extras).
4.PRICE
With the 30% discount of the pre-order policy of some major retailers the price will be near 125$.If it doesn't sell well it may drop off to 50% a few weeks after its release.
5.BLUE VELVET,WILD AT HEART
Will we have the uncut verion or the censored MGM transfer of WAH?Also,I would love to see Frank in Lumberton,but as dugpa said no new extras on these.
7.ANOTHER SET?
The original name of the set implies that maybe it is part of a series and not a greatest hits collection.But with the release of IS and the Mystery Disc,i wonder what would attract the hardcore fans.
8.MYSTERY DISC
Maybe it will contain some on-set footage or insightful new interviews.Although, it may be just some things made for David’s personal website.
9.INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY
Will it contain the promo documentary made for the VHS release of IS?
10.BOOK
A book like Beautiful Dark would justify the high price.
11.BLU-RAY
It will be a complete rip-off only if this set (or the majority of its titles) will be released in a short time period in Blu-Ray format.

FINAL THOUGHTS
a.THE MOVIES
When we will see a good release of Lost Highway?The recent transfer is decent but lacks many extras.I am always intrigued of what the complete DL version of Dune could be.Only imagine a Blu-Ray set like Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

b.THE SET
I think the lack of extras in R1 has made some DL fans (including myself) to avoid buying all the R1s,because of the superior R2 releases at the bonus materials section.So,i count myself a little lucky not having duplicate inferior releases.I can’t say that I waited for a box like this,but while waiting for better releases,I am relieved that I won’t have to double-dip.Depending on the importance of the exclusive material and the price,this is the best way for newcomers to own these works on DVD ,but I don’t think that the dedicated fans will be disappointed.

The current Lynch Eraserhead DVD is from the original negative, you're not going to get any better, at least not on SD. The current release of Lost Highway is also very fine for SD.

Wow. I can't believe what a crock this box set is. I really want Industrial Symphony but not that bad.

It's a shame that Lynch didn't scoop up the rights to the Fire Walk With Me Deleted Scenes to be included with this set. I've been hearing about them for years now and would not even hesitate on that steep price tag if included them.

Drake wrote: It's a shame that Lynch didn't scoop up the rights to the Fire Walk With Me Deleted Scenes to be included with this set. I've been hearing about them for years now and would not even hesitate on that steep price tag if included them.

Everybody comments on that, but there are people who would really pay the double to get the deleted scenes. However, if the interest continue to be so high and this set sells well, I am sure that eventually they are going to be released.

Drake wrote:It's a shame that Lynch didn't scoop up the rights to the Fire Walk With Me Deleted Scenes to be included with this set. I've been hearing about them for years now and would not even hesitate on that steep price tag if included them.

People discuss the reasons for the possible absence of the FWWM deleted scenes on the first page of this thread, and general consensus is that it has nothing to do with the rights.

I found this article over at MTV:

MTV: Are you planning to go back to any of your earlier work and add bells and whistles to the DVDs?

Lynch: The only one that's been talked about is "Fire Walk With Me." There are many short scenes that weren't in the final film that on their own are interesting. They just never fit in the film. There's talk of me editing and mixing those. There's a scene with Jack Nance. It's a short scene with Ed [Wright], who played Mr. Mibbler. I loved this guy. He was in "Wild at Heart" as well. Both of them are gone, so to fix those scenes, for the memory of them, it's real important.

This is what Lynch said almost a year ago. Hopefully this is a good sign of things to come.

Could we end the discussion about FWWM here? Make a thread of its own if it doesn't exist.

perkizitore wrote:Could we end the discussion about FWWM here?Make a thread of its own if it doesn't exist.

Why not wait and see what is on the mystery disc. Although I'll be very surprised if it's the deleted scenes...

I recently found this on Amazon.

anyone know anything about it?

Yeah, I saw it. It follows him around as he's working on Inland Empire, it's not a straight-up doc of his career. But if you like David Lynch, you can't go wrong with just getting to kind of hang around him for an hour or so.

perkizitore wrote:Could we end the discussion about FWWM here? Make a thread of its own if it doesn't exist.

Yeah, how weird for people to discuss FWWM and the possibility of finally seeing deleted footage in a David Lynch box set thread. Lighten up, champ.

OliverB wrote:Dumbland sucks and is a chore to sit through.

agreed. however, it did provide me with the phrase "FUCKING ANTS!" with which my wife and I occasionally pepper our conversations.

OliverB wrote: Dumbland sucks and is a chore to sit through.

Street Dude wrote:And Dumbland blows.

Sucks and blows? Hmmm.
Looks like I'm the only one who likes it...

I am of the opinion that Dumbland is Lynch's own personal inside joke to himself. He wanted to prove that he could literally do anything -- no matter how amateur, juvenile, or ridiculous -- and have it called "genius" by his sycophants.

I really have tried with Lynch's work, but far too much of it seems to be nonsense masquerading as profundity. Dumbland probably sticks out because it lacks the cinematic touches, the artistry, the facade of quality and "importance" if you will, that characterizes much of Lynch's other lesser works.

Just curious but how do you fake "quality"?

Reminds me of a practical joke perpetrated by Vladimir Nabokov when he was an emigre in Berlin. Nabokov was disliked by a certain prominant critic working for one of the many Russian emigre papers, who would condemn and dismiss each of Nabokov's new productions like clockwork. So one day Nabokov wrote a poem which he submitted to a paper he did not usually publish with, and signed it with a fake name (Vasiliy Shishkov I think). Sure enough, when this critic read the poem he became ecstatic and praised it warmly in print, proclaiming a new star had arrived on the scene. In return, Nabokov published a short story titled Vasiliy Shishkov, in which the Nabokovian narrator and Shishkov meet, and the two poets seem to dissolve into one another. The ruse was soon outed by intelligent readers; and in the critic's next column, he offered by way of explanation that Nabokov "was a sufficiently skillful parodist to mimic genius."

The Nabakov anecdote is really terrific.

By a "facade of quality," I wasn't making an aesthetic judgment concerning the merit of Lynch's work as a whole as much as I was referring to the cinematic touches, production values, etc. that distinguish feature films like Lost Highway or Inland Empire from, well, whatever Dumbland was. For me, the problems that plague Dumbland -- i.e. the juvenilia, pseudo profundity, and vacuous surrealism -- are also evident in some of Lynch's more "cinematic" work. The problems that I have with much of Lynch's work aren't as apparent in something like Lost Highway precisely because Lynch is such a talented film technician and visual aesthete. Dumbland, on the other hand, is so gratingly unappealing and sophomoric that its ultimate pointlessness is left unobscured by the usual layers of artistry.

I appreciate non-narrative and avant garde filmmaking, and I certainly don't subscribe to a reductive "all surrealism is nonsense" school of thought. I admire The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, and I genuinely enjoy Mulholland Dr., but the rest of Lynch's oeuvre largely eludes me.

Tom Hagen wrote:I really have tried with Lynch's work, but far too much of it seems to be nonsense masquerading as profundity. Dumbland probably sticks out because it lacks the cinematic touches, the artistry, the facade of quality and "importance" if you will, that characterizes much of Lynch's other lesser works.

Bloody Hell, you really have tried with Lynch if you made it all the way to Dumbland...

Anyway, The Angriest Dog In The World > Dumbland. I'd like to see some kind of collection of it...

I decide that a Lynch film is successful if it inhabits my dreams later on.

Adam wrote:I decide that a Lynch film is successful if it inhabits my dreams later on.

By any chance, is that from a Joseph Campbell perspective?

Tom Hagen wrote:By a "facade of quality," I wasn't making an aesthetic judgment concerning the merit of Lynch's work as a whole as much as I was referring to the cinematic touches, production values, etc. that distinguish feature films like Lost Highway or Inland Empire from, well, whatever Dumbland was. For me, the problems that plague Dumbland -- i.e. the juvenilia, pseudo profundity, and vacuous surrealism -- are also evident in some of Lynch's more "cinematic" work. The problems that I have with much of Lynch's work aren't as apparent in something like Lost Highway precisely because Lynch is such a talented film technician and visual aesthete. Dumbland, on the other hand, is so gratingly unappealing and sophomoric that its ultimate pointlessness is left unobscured by the usual layers of artistry.

Adam wrote:I decide that a Lynch film is successful if it inhabits my dreams later on.

I haven't actually shelled out money to see Dumbland, instead watching it on YouTube, so I don't know if that affected my reaction to it which was similar to yours but from a positive perspective. I thought it was a brilliant attempt to cut a Lynch world down to the absolute minimum with the potential violence of a nuclear family seeming to be a response to the insanity of the 'normal' world outside (I felt the shaky animation added to that sense of potential violence). Not only the brutish father but the whining son and mother constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown! The films also use that tactic of taking something stupid, making it briefly funny (such as the man with the stick in his mouth episode) and then developing it into either violence or to disturbing heights. It becomes comic, horrific and, well, dumb all at the same time! I'm not sure whether I'd pay big bucks to see them but I don't think the shorts are worthless at all - it certainly inhabited my dreams for a while after seeing it!

I think my favourite episodes would be either the one about the pressures of modern life, "My teeth are bleeding" or the disturbing escalations of Uncle Bob.

I just checked Dugpa.com and they've announced that Amazon.com has it available now for pre-order for 125.99.

Not too bad. That's about $13 a disc. I wish they would give some details on the Mystery disc though as that is what I would be buying it for at this point.

The set is available from DVDplanet for 116$ delivered.Also,you can use the OCT52008 coupon to have 5$ off your order.There are 2 more coupons but your order has to exceed 125$ or 175$ for the best discount.But,you can pre-order Sunset Boulevard too,one of Lynch's favourite films.

The bonus disc contents:

David Lynch wrote:One of the things it has is 32 scenes never seen before from Wild at Heart. Partial scenes, extended scenes and complete scenes from a work print that was found, so it’s funky quality, but all of them have been edited as much as I could edit them with what was available and all of them have been mixed. Also on that disc is, I had a foot locker, and this foot locker hadn’t been opened, well it was opened I guess in ’86, and but it hadn’t been open since the ’60s. It has 16mm experiments I did in Philadelphia in the late ’60s. One of the things is a fictitious Anacin commercial. Do you know what Anacin is? Anacin is like Aspirin. I don’t know what happened to Anacin. And then it’s got a thing called “Absurd Encounter with Fear.” And then a kind of montage of these 16mm experimental things with a few pieces from [short films] “The Alphabet” and “The Grandmother.”

[...]

The original episodes of “Rabbits” are on the mystery disc. “On the Air” is not on there, nor is “Hotel Room,” but we’re working on those things. It’s always rights issues.

[...]

The Elephant Man Extras is the story of the Elephant Man and the story of The Elephant Man film itself.

More info at the link.

Thank goodness. I was afraid it would be something irresistible, but I can definitely pass on deleted scenes from WAH. Some of the odds n' ends sound interesting (I like the Rabbits stuff) but nothing that would make me shell out for the set.

Well, it does change it for me, anyway. I was thinking of passing on this release but I've been wanting to see those scenes from WAH ever since it won the Cannes Festival. Don't forget that whoever were at the Cannes original screening got to see them but afterwards all we got until now is the version currently out on DVD. So yeah, the table has turned for me. Definitely.