June 7
June 14
1641.) A birthday (mine) tribute to the Mothra films from the kaiju world of Japan.
June 7
1640.) David Lynch was a major American filmmaker and so I was looking to show something to honor his passing that hasn’t been readily available in the mainstream. The result is this episode, centered around actor Richard Beymer’s documentary It’s a Beautiful World (2014), about Lynch’s pilgrimage in India to the places visited by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s when he began teaching transcendental meditation. Beymer had already acted in “Twin Peaks” when he was asked by Lynch to film this pilgrimage; Beymer was an avant-garde filmmaker (whose Innerview is super-trippy) who was also a follower of the Maharishi. Lynch was planning a feature on the Maharishi’s life (either as a biopic or a documentary wasn’t quite clear); what remains is this documentary, in which he is seen having a film crew shoot the places he visits. Since much of the trip was spent getting into and out of cars, trucks, and helicopters, Beymer also wound up getting Lynch’s remarks about the beauty of the places he was traveling through, as well as some prime anecdotes about his life as a filmmaker. Beautiful World might not be *the* ultimate David Lynch doc, but it is a highly personal work that shows the filmmaker at his happiest, moving in the footsteps of someone he had a massive respect for.
