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TravisR

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Did anyone else notice that ELEPHANT MAN had no chapters?

Criterion ALWAYS has chapters and a timeline! What happend on this release?
David Lynch doesn't like chaptering movies so Criterion respects his wishes and doesn't have any chapters on their releases of his movies (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland Drive).
 

battlebeast

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David Lynch doesn't like chaptering movies so Criterion respects his wishes and doesn't have any chapters on their releases of his movies (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland Drive).

Oh, really? That's bizarre. But I respect Criterion for honoring his wishes.

Thanks!
 

titch

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The Zavvi edition looks much more practical than the version Amazon UK were selling - the one with a pop-up model of the cathedral. That package was really impractical - almost impossible the reassemble, after removing the disc. As I've said before, the 4K disc is one of the very best 4K discs mastered to date. Exquisite.
 

cda1143

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Zavvi looks to be the steel book which is now available in France. As they are still out of stock in Germany, I’ll be curious to see if these actually ship from Zavvi this time.

Please post if you receive one. Thank you.
 

JoshZ

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Oh, really? That's bizarre. But I respect Criterion for honoring his wishes.

Thanks!

David Lynch's weird hatred for chapter stops was discussed in another thread recently.


straight-story-jpg.82397
 

lark144

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Oh, really? That's bizarre. But I respect Criterion for honoring his wishes.

Thanks!
It really isn't that bizarre. He wants you to watch the movie in one sitting, without interruptions, as if you were sitting in a movie theater. His films were designed that way, not be be seen in bits and pieces, but as a total experience. They build through a sense of continuity, and get their creative as well as narrative impetus from the way they develop over time, and breaking them up would destroy that effect. It's similar to a piece of music. Imagine listening to Beethoven's Ninth in five minute increments over the course of two weeks. I guess people do, but it would destroy the essence of the music, that it be listened to in one piece continuously, as that is how it was intended to be listened to, as it was intended for a concert hall, long before people had home entertainment centers. Likewise, these films of David Lynch were intended to be seen in a movie theater in one sitting. They were shot and edited with that in mind. Therefore, he requests that there be no chapter stops.
 

dpippel

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It really isn't that bizarre. He wants you to watch the movie in one sitting, without interruptions, as if you were sitting in a movie theater. His films were designed that way, not be be seen in bits and pieces, but as a total experience.
Did Lynch have the Pause function disabled as well? How about FF/REW, Stop, Power Off, and Eject? ;)
 

TravisR

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Did Lynch have the Pause function disabled as well? How about FF/REW, Stop, and Power Off?
And all the Criterion discs have a resume function so you can still just stop the disc and come back to the movie later so not having chapters doesn't do much.

Lynch was involved with the Twin Peaks box set but the episodes have chapters and I think that box's Fire Walk With Me disc has chapters too. I can't remember about the revival series or Lost Highway (from Kino) but I think Criterion is the only one who follows his no chapter policy at this point.
 

lark144

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Did Lynch have the Pause function disabled as well? How about FF/REW, Stop, Power Off, and Eject? ;)
Polanski did request Criterion to disable pause & also FF/RE for the DVD of "Knife in the Water", or at least that's what I read, as the disc wouldn't play in my machine, and I returned it. I always was under the impression that Lynch, in addition to getting rid of chapter stops, also disabled Pause & FF/RE like Polanski did on "Knife in the Water", but I just put "Blue Velvet" in and yes, you can pause as well as fast forward or reverse. So I take back what I wrote before. It's bizarre.
 

JoshZ

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His films were designed that way, not be be seen in bits and pieces, but as a total experience. They build through a sense of continuity, and get their creative as well as narrative impetus from the way they develop over time, and breaking them up would destroy that effect.

That's not entirely true. Some of Lynch's movies, especially Wild at Heart and Inland Empire, are decidedly episodic in structure. They're assembled from a collection of individual ideas and set-pieces that he strings together, often with little narrative cohesion. I'd even say that's true of Mulholland Drive. Lost Highway was probably the last film of Lynch's that I'd call tightly structured.

The Twin Peaks revival series was a TV show so of course you'd expect it to be episodic, but even to that end, every episode had a feeling of "Let's throw a bunch of stuff at a wall and see what sticks."

It's similar to a piece of music. Imagine listening to Beethoven's Ninth in five minute increments over the course of two weeks. I guess people do, but it would destroy the essence of the music, that it be listened to in one piece continuously, as that is how it was intended to be listened to, as it was intended for a concert hall, long before people had home entertainment centers. Likewise, these films of David Lynch were intended to be seen in a movie theater in one sitting. They were shot and edited with that in mind. Therefore, he requests that there be no chapter stops.

As I said in the Mill Creek thread, anyone who considers film an art form worthy of study and dissection will find value in the ability to cue up a specific scene for rewatching. I'd imagine that music scholars do the same for Beethoven.
 

JoshZ

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Polanski did request Criterion to disable pause & also FF/RE for the DVD of "Knife in the Water", or at least that's what I read, as the disc wouldn't play in my machine, and I returned it. I always was under the impression that Lynch, in addition to getting rid of chapter stops, also disabled Pause & FF/RE like Polanski did on "Knife in the Water", but I just put "Blue Velvet" in and yes, you can pause as well as fast forward or reverse. So I take back what I wrote before. It's bizarre.

Is it even possible to disable pause, fast-forward, and rewind functions?
 

lark144

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That's not entirely true. Some of Lynch's movies, especially Wild at Heart and Inland Empire, are decidedly episodic in structure. They're assembled from a collection of individual ideas and set-pieces that he strings together, often with little narrative cohesion. I'd even say that's true of Mulholland Drive. Lost Highway was probably the last film of Lynch's that I'd call tightly structured.

The Twin Peaks revival series was a TV show so of course you'd expect it to be episodic, but even to that end, every episode had a feeling of "Let's throw a bunch of stuff at a wall and see what sticks."
While many of David Lynch's films are episodic in structure, those episodes build, and gain in emotional and artistic power from being viewed as a whole, rather than seen in pieces. Also, those episodes have a tendency to repeat images and themes that resonate as the film develops, and if seen in a linear way, from beginning to end, turn out not to be really episodic at all, but part of one thematic and artistic world view, so that a single image repeated in different contexts throughout the film--as in WILD AT HEART, BLUE VELVET, MULLHOLLAND DRIVE & LOST HIGHWAY--can suddenly change one's entire view of the film. This is my own experience from watching the films multiple times, piecemeal as well as straight through. I managed a movie theater in the 1980's, where many of Mr. Lynch's films were shown. (I'm referring specifically to the films that were designed to be seen in a movie theater, and which Criterion has been releasing on Blu-Ray; not TWIN PEAKS or INLAND EMPIRE.) Of course, that's only my opinion, and you certainly have the right to yours. However, we're talking about Mr. Lynch's rights as an arbiter of his works on home video. While you may prefer to watch some of Mr. Lynch's movies piecemeal, that doesn't negate his right to want viewers to watch them straight through, and doing what he can--such as omitting chapter stops--to help that aim.
 

Josh Steinberg

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I honestly don’t see what difference it makes. The disc has stop, pause, fast forward and rewind functionality. Lynch‘s preference for omitting chapter stops in practice doesn’t prevent the viewer from watching the film in pieces or skipping to a specific portion of it.
 

dpippel

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I honestly don’t see what difference it makes. The disc has stop, pause, fast forward and rewind functionality. Lynch‘s preference for omitting chapter stops in practice doesn’t prevent the viewer from watching the film in pieces or skipping to a specific portion of it.

Right, which is why it makes Lynch's exclusion of chapter stops even more illogical. He's trying to control something that can't be controlled.
 

JoshZ

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I honestly don’t see what difference it makes. The disc has stop, pause, fast forward and rewind functionality. Lynch‘s preference for omitting chapter stops in practice doesn’t prevent the viewer from watching the film in pieces or skipping to a specific portion of it.

He can't stop people from doing it, but he has made it more difficult and annoying. If you wanted to rewatch just the last half-hour of Mulholland Drive, you have to scan forward through two hours of movie to get to it.

At the end of the day, he's just being a jerk about this issue for no reason other than old-fashioned stubbornness.
 

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