Has anyone got a quick and dirty review ? ( or a long and comprehensive one )

Thanks

http://www.2000revue.com/community/topic.cfm?topicid=3715

It's better than Beautiful Dark, as far as analysis goes.

thanks 12

Hey Suave ! good to see you here stranger. Just don't go postal on me : )

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

 The book is only about 'decoding' - its not a very long read at all - its a very short book. Its not great.

 I have to add that BEAUTIFUL DARK is a lot better, but then its much longer; I disagree that it has less analysis than this Decoded thing.

Okay, I have to disagree though. The Decoded book is a nice little pocket manual with brief summaries of certain images and motifs in DL's films but the quality of insight is better, for me, in BEAUTIFUL DARK.

I don't understand your love of this mediocre book /pamphlet.

Like I said, it's short and sweet. Solid, concise language. No lily-gilding or hero worshiping.

Decoded is no magnus opus, but there IS a wealth of fantastic analysis out there (Marth P. Nochimson's The Passion of DL for the features; David Lavery's Full of Secrets for Twin Peaks) that Olson's book just is not in the same league as.

For trivia, Beautiful Dark is just fine.

Beautiful Dark is more of a biography - those others are great books I agree, academic books/ studies.

I think you're doing Beautiful Dark a big disservice by saying it contains 'trivia' though - I found its insights into Lynch's family life and relationships etc to be of definite interest and not in a trivia or gossipy way.

What do you mean by a Lynch flack?

Whilst I can see Olson is certainly a fan of Lynch, I don't think his writing is non-stop fawning. What more did you want in terms of critique or objectivity? Did you want some character assasination of Lynch?

In terms of books on Lynch, I think its actually the best one out there, BEAUTIFUL DARK.

 It's impossible for both "fan" and "objectivity" to come across at the same time writing biography. In other words, if you're getting super-personal and it's all gushingly positive commentary instead of delivering "just the facts" for your readers to interpret, and you never really reveal anything that's not known, and it's not scholarly, it's a press release.  No credibility.  The Peggy and Jen insights are the best part.

(Actually, it's close to fan fiction. The prose is more flowery than the some of the crap I had to read in freshman comp.)

Not only does he make sweeping, amateurish assumptions about the motivations behind DL's artistic decisions, he even interprets decisions DL made in his personal life and states it as fact (!!!)

For example, Lynch fell in love with Emily Stofle because she has dark hair, like Isabella Rossellini. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the kind of editorializing you get from it.

What really bugs me is that most of this massive volume is Olson describing what you seen on the screen. Scene by scene, in detail. If you're reading the book, you've seen the $%#& movies! Save a tree, why don't ya?

But Chris Rodley's Lynch on Lynch  or Fred Hughes' The Complete Lynch  are always going to be superior for their quality of content and professional disinterest.