david lynch, he is fustrating in his weirdness! why can't he make a movie for once that didn't leave me scratching my head afterwards? okay, he had that one movie about that old guy who drove his tractor to visit his sick brother, but i don't consider it a lynch movie even though he directed it. the movie started with so much promise but quickly disintergrated into this swirling, weird mess, like most of his movies. i guess it's an acquired taste. 
i'm not saying i don't like it, i like weird movies, and david lynch is the master of extremely well made weird movies, but the side of me that wants to see a good coherent story presented on the big screen will always be disappointed. i feel like i need an interpreter to help me make sense of mulholland drive, like i need cliff notes in order to understand the movie.
so what does this movie have, in a nutshell? a poorly executed murder, lesbians, masturbation, naked woman in the shower, infidelity, suicide, extortion, and perhaps madness. hey, aren't those the telltale hallmarks of a david lynch classic?
where did this movie start going wrong? spoiler i think it happened right after naomi watts and laura harring make sweet sapphic love. i was cool with that. 
if you see laura harring in this movie, i don't care if you're a man or a woman, she is pretty hot, i think anyone would want to make love to her. but then in the middle of the night she wakes up naomi to go out and watch this avant garde performance (roy orbison's "crying" lip-synced in spanish). they discover a mysterious cube in naomi's bag and when they take it back to the apartment, the film comes apart. it's like the entire movie up to that point was a dream, and i hate movies like that. if lynch could've played it straight and not delve into the supernatural (some weirdness is fine, and i don't mind the kinks either, just no mysterious forces from beyond thank you very much), this could've been a great movie. but no, he's got to mix it up thick with the weirdness and i'm left scratching my head big time.
some other comments:
- i always read too much into the whole blonde & brunette thing. anytime i see a blonde and brunette paired together on the silver screen, i immediately start looking for the whole blonde/brunette tension.
likewise with this film, the blonde naomi watts (whom i believe is actually a natural brunette, from her days as jet girl in the movie tank girl) paired with the brunette herring. in this film however, the brunette seems to have the upperhand, so this is definitely a pro-brunette movie.
- if nothing else, this movie contains quite possibly one of the funniest botched murder i've seen in a long time! a simple murder made out to look like a suicide goes horribly wrong and more than one innocents end up paying the price! but trust me, it's funny, even though you should totally feel guilty for laughing.
- bulging buttoned sweaters, is that the new hot look? naomi watts first appears in a red buttoned sweater one size too tight for her, bulging at the seams, the buttons dangerously close to being pulled off. later, laura herring is wearing a black buttoned sweater, held together by a clutch of precariously fastened buttons.
- the midwest has lost its status as the home of innocence! naomi watts, when she first arrives in los angeles, is all sweet and polite. widwesterner? no, ontario, canada!
recommendation? if you're a fan of david lynch, you owe it to yourself to see the movie. more of his usual tricks, the creepy music, the strange characters, the sort of evil underlying all that is innocent, a deviant reality. his imagery is so unique and so disturbing, you'll probably still think about them even after the movie is long over. plus, if you like the ladies, this movie delivers eyefuls of the stuff, enough to make you blush if you don't know what you're in for.
on this cold and rainy day (that's more like it!), i drove to davis square to watch mulholland drive at the somerville theatre, one of the two remaining places in the greater boston area that was still playing this movie (the other being the arlington theatre). david lynch has always been one of my favorite filmmakers, even though most of the time i have no idea what he's doing. i got ticketed, got my small popcorn and small coke, and went downstairs to the small screening room with half an hour to kill. goes without saying that i was the first person there, and i spent it writing in my journal, expounding on the meaning of life, extrapolating on various recent life data to finally develop a unified theory of existence (the usual).
the film quality of mulholland drive at the somerville theatre was very bad, a lot of scratches. the man sitting behind me was a loud snorter/throat clearer, and i almost on several occasions turned around to punch his mucous filled face (at least he wasn't kicking my chair). about 30 minutes into the movie the film suddenly stopped and the lights went on, obviously the projectionist fell asleep on the job and forgot to spool the second reel. seconds later the movie came back, but the lights were still on for about 10 minutes, people in the room shouting "hey!" and "kill the lights!" but nobody wanted to get up and complain, because nobody wanted to miss the movie. fortunately the lights eventually did dim.
after the movie i drove to microcenter to see if they carried some technical books i wanted to get (a book on game physics, a book on actionscripts, a book on the future of artifical intelligence), but i couldn't find them (looks like a job for amazon.com). i browsed around the store some more, a little out of placed in my flamboyant red pants amongst a sea of weekend nerders. i ended up buying a mico-textured scotch-brite cleaning cloth for my computer monitors and then drove home.