My Thoughts on Mulholland Drive (2001)- David Lynch: Part 2

*Minor Spoilers- Check out the movie before reading this.*

So in a previous post I talked about how Mulholland Drive came to become one of my favourite movies; a little bit about my history with the film.  In this post I'll talk in more depth about my thoughts on the film itself.  Where do I begin with this film?  The dream-like effect of the film is completely unrivaled.  Lynch knows exactly how to make us feel like we are watching a dream, which is something that i find absolutely fascinating.  I have always been really fascinated by dreams and what they mean and tell us about our lives.  I'll start by talking about one of my favourite scenes in the film, as well as one of my favoutite movie scenes ever: The Winky's Diner scene.  Dan describes his dream to Herb across a booth.  Just everything in this scene is so beautiful.  The way the camera seems to be floating.  The way that Dan describes the dream, it's just impossible to look away.  Just a wonderful scene.

Mulholland Drive also has a lot of humour in it.  Another great scene in the film is where Justin Theroux's character goes up to the producer's building and they're trying to force him to choose the an actress he doesn't want for a main character in his new film.  All the little subtleties in this scene are just laugh-out-loud hilarious.  Obviously the key aspect is Angelo Badalamenti's character's intense desire for an amazing cup of espresso.  It's just so ridiculous.  And all the little close-ups on characters' eye movements and things of that nature just make the scene brilliant.  And of course Dan Hedaya from A Night at the Roxbury. 

Justin Theroux gazing back at Naomi Watts.

MD's also got a great cast of characters.  I've always been a big fan of Naomi Watts.  Love her in King Kong as well.  She plays Betty perfectly.  At the beginning of course, all positive and looking forward to becoming a famous actress in Hollywood.  Laura Elena Harring is also awesome.  Ah, another scene is coming to mind which is fabulous.  There are just so many amazing scenes in the film, it's ridiculous.  I guess that's why it's my favourite movie.  The scene where Betty shows off her acting chops with Jimmy Katz.  That scene is so mesmerizing it's unbelievable.  Then right after that scene comes another amazing scene: Justin Theroux trying to choose the girl for his movie, listening to the lip-sync recording sessions.  The songs that are played are so mesmerizing.  Then Theroux's intense gaze with Betty as she walks in to the session.  Just classic.  He clearly wants her for his movie but he can't.  And there's clearly something more going on there too. 

What else can I say?  If you have yet to see this movie, seriously check it out.  Be prepared to be confused, but also just completely enthralled from beginning to end.  10/10 from me.  Give me your thoughts.  Hope you enjoyed.  And check out some of those video clips for some great key scenes.  Don't worry, they don't really give too much of the movie away if you have yet to see it.

Jim's Story Part 2

 Part 2 of story about Jim.  Enjoy!

Jim looked around his apartment approvingly.  It wasn’t much.  He was aware of that.  But Jim never really felt that he needed much from life.  He supposed perhaps it was because of his ability to lose himself in his mind whenever he wanted to.  He didn’t need things around him, and perfect surroundings.  Jim was the kind of person who could just sit on the porch watching the passers-by, or sit at his window and look down on the street, or take a walk around the city and just take in the surroundings.  All on his own.  It is surprising the amount of people who are simply unable to do these things.  They would consider it boring.  Jim really did not know the meaning of being bored anymore.  He hadn’t felt that feeling in ages.  He could vaguely recall when he was a child, telling his parents that he was bored at certain times.  They would always respond by asking him how he could be bored; there were an endless amount of things that needed to be done.  Jim wasn’t interested in doing these things that needed to be done.  And now Jim didn’t get bored.  And he didn’t need to do these things that needed to be done in order to not be bored.  He could do nothing and not be bored. 

Mulholland Drive (2001)- David Lynch :Part 1

Well I figured the first movie I would talk about a little bit is my most often number one favourite film, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive from 2001.  So much to say about this movie.  I first watched it in the summer of 2009.  I liked it a lot, but it wasn't close to being my favourite movie at the time.  I rated it an 8 out of 10.  I felt that I didn't understand it enough in order to really love it.  I looked on IMDB for the most popular interpretation of the events that transpired in the film.  Because trust me, if you see the movie you will understand that this is a movie that is pretty much impossible to interpret on your own, unless you watch it dozens of times.  But over the next few months, I kept thinking about it.  It really is the kind of movie that keeps you thinking about it.  So, for Christmas of that year, I asked for the DVD.  So I watched it again around Christmastime, really liked it a lot.  Still didn't absolutely love it though.  I think around then I raised my rating to a 9 out of 10.  Actually, my mistake, this was one of those rare times where I actually raised my rating without actually seeing it again.  It was during fall of 2009 when I raised my rating of the film, just from thinking about it.  Then, interestingly enough, I didn't watch the movie again until the next summer.  Incidentally, it was in between those times, in the Spring of 2010 when I became obsessed by my now second favourite film, The Shining.  But more on that later.

Now this is when I became obsessed.  I watched it around August 2010.  Then again in September.  And after that viewing I checked out this Mulholland Drive website devoted to uncovering all the mysteries of the movie, called mulholland-drive.net.  A very informative website.  Analyzes everything in the movie, and I mean everything.  Seriously check it out if you're a fan of the film.  Now the movie was a perfect 10/10 for movie and one of my favourites.  From then until about May 2011 I literally tried to watch Mulholland Dr once every month.  That's how obsessed I was with it.  Again, I'll talk about this more in my post about that film, but I was doing the same thing with The Shining at the time.  I didn't always get the chance to do this as I was working at the time and buying a lot of Blu-Rays that I was watching, but i did my best.  Funny enough, if I'm not mistaken, I actually haven't watched Mulholland Drive since last may at this point.  I may go into this more in another post, but there is something about when you love a movie or TV show so much that you can't watch it too much.  I don't know what it is exactly.  Hard to describe.  That's kind of what's happened with Mulholland Dr. 

Anyway, so that's my general history on Mulholland Dr.  In the next post I'll talk more about my thoughts on the actual film, the characters, the actors and such.  Until next time, hope you enjoyed.

Jim's Story

Hey guys I thought I would post just a taste of a story I'm writing about a guy named Jim.  I'm not 100% on where the story is going just yet and I don't know if it will expand into a novel or will just be a short story or what, but I'm just working on it.  I have another story going too about another character that I may connect with this.  Check it out and let me know what you think.

Jim sat motionless on the couch in his one bedroom apartment.  He was staring into space, really looking at nothing, not even thinking about anything.  It was Los Angeles, 1993.  Jim’s cigarette laid smoking idly in the ashtray beside him, smoke curling up in a thin gray line.  Outside the window, the night-life went on.  Suddenly, lost son deep in his dazed state, Jim suddenly had an unexpected thought.  Am I really here right now?  Jim could really lose himself inside his head.  It could get so intense that he would lose sight of where he was in the world at that moment.  Yes, I’m really here.  He looked around at that shitty place that he now regarded as his home.  He really didn’t mind all that much.  Jim was able to get used to any surroundings after a certain matter of time.  He always heard people complaining about where they lived, but to Jim, that didn’t really make sense.  He was extremely adaptable.  It just took a little time.  At first, he would be homesick for his previous residence because he had developed such a familiarity for it.  But after maybe a few weeks, sometimes a month, his new place would simply become home.  Jim was different from most people.  And he knew that.  He often wondered if there was anyone else in the world that was actually the way he was.  He figured it was probable, with the amount of people that were actually out there.  Jim had never met that person though.  Did he really want to?  Suddenly, he popped himself off the single bed out of his trance and went to the cupboard, grabbed himself a cup, and poured himself some water from the tap.  He analyzed the cup he held in his hand.  It was plastic.  Jim hated plastic cups.  He didn’t know why exactly.  He supposed they reminded him of his childhood, when everything was always decided for you and things were left out of your own hands.  He always felt that water tasted so much better when it was drunk out a very nice glass.  The taste definitely wasn’t any different, he didn’t think.  It was just something about the aesthetic that psychologically made the water taste better.  This was the kind of thing that Jim often thought about.  He liked to analyze things that other people might overlook.  Things that had to with the mind; how the way we look at the world and think about it directly affects the way we behave.  Although, most of the time, we’re not consciously aware of these connections.  And he realized that a lot of it does have to do with childhood experiences.  However, it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact experiences from our childhood that affect our behaviour today.  No, Jim was not a psychiatrist or a psychologist.  Although he often thought that he could have benefited from seeing one.  He had never gone though.  He also often felt that he could have been a great psychiatrist himself.  Often, the best psychiatrists are those who have the most issues of their own.  And Jim did have issues.  He knew this.  He even knew what a lot of his biggest issues were.  But he also knew even though he knew that he had problems, he was powerless to fix them.  Well, yes, he could go to doctor.  But he never did.  There wasn’t really any reason for it. 

Second Post

Hey guys how's it going.  Just thought I would follow up by talking a little bit about my interests in works of fiction are and some of the things I'm going to be talking about on this blog.  First off I'll say that I'm a big David Lynch fan.  Love Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive is one of my favourite films.  For any one that hasn't heard of David Lynch, if you like surreal, weird stories with very unique characters, you should check him out.  Also am a big fan of Angelo Badalamenti's music,a  composer that David Lynch uses a lot for his works.  I'm also a big Stanley Kubrick fan.  I pretty much love all his films.  My favourites are Lolita and The Shining.  Now I've watched a lot of TV shows as well, and one of my favourites is definitely Freaks and Geeks.  For fiction books, Stephen King is definitely my favourite author.  I've read a lot of his novels but still have a long way to go- he has written a lot.  Am also a fan of graphic novels, read the Scott Pilgrim books which are awesome and the Sin City series is just stunningly amazing.  If I didn't control myself, I could get obsessed over those.  I am also a big fan of the classic novels, my favourite being The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

How did I really start getting into watching films in a serious fashion?  Interestingly, I made it a goal of mine to watch all the movies on IMDB's Top 250 movies.  If anyone doesn't know, it the Internet Movie Database's list of the top movies as voted by users.  Now I totally get that this list isn't in any way definitive.  But, it's a great starting point for getting to know great movies and it started me off to becoming extremely familiar with a lot of great movies and directors I had never known of before.

So I just wanted to give an overview in this post of a lot of the things I would be talking about in this blog.  A lot of the things you see here in this post I'll be talking about more in depth in my next posts.  I'll start off talking about my favourite things; favourite films, TV shows, books, authors, directors and such.  Then from there I'll go on to a more variety of these things, not only my favourites.   

Welcome to Movies and Stories!

Welcome to my blog, Jim's Movies and Stories.  Bit of a strange title isn't it?  I'll be talking a lot about films, television shows as well as fiction novels.  Sometimes maybe about certain actors, writers, directors or writers.  I won't necessarily be reviewing or critically analyzing them.  I'll really just be giving my general views on them.  My thoughts, my ideas, my opinions.  Sometimes they might just be long rants.  I have some interesting thoughts, so bear with me.  I like connecting people's actions to the way they think psychologically and how life experiences affect the way people think psychologically.  So I'll be looking at a lot of these types of things in reference to fictional characters.  I love deep character development in fiction.  So if you're into that kind of stuff, check me out.  I also might post some stories that I'm in the process of writing myself, which may or may not meld together to create a novel.  A lot of what I'm writing has a lot to do with what I've talked about above; very psychological but at the same time relatable on a ground level.  I'll leave it there for now.  In the next post I'll talk a little bit about what some of my favourite works of fiction are.