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Rating: 
Summary: the highway
Review: anything that has to do with david lynch's movie the lost highway is bound to be worth its weight in gold. this book goes into explanations on the nature of the though processes created by the characters in the movie. the situations only lead one to wonder, how is this even possible. the movies concept of change is to show that there are more ways to view a situation, whether they are good or not and it follows the nature of human beings when they are placed in strange surroundings. hope this was helpful.
Rating:
Summary: the highway
Review: anything that has to do with david lynch's movie the lost highway is bound to be worth its weight in gold. this book goes into explanations on the nature of the though processes created by the characters in the movie. the situations only lead one to wonder, how is this even possible. the movies concept of change is to show that there are more ways to view a situation, whether they are good or not and it follows the nature of human beings when they are placed in strange surroundings. hope this was helpful.
Rating: 
Summary: Huh??
Review: I'm a college graduate and I've been told I'm at least somewhat intelligent, but I have to admit I didn't get this book at all. I even did some research on Lacan and Zizek in hopes that would help, but I'm still lost. Better luck to anyone else, because this book did nothing to help me understand Lost Highway, Lynch, or Zizek. A waste of my time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Zizek drops the ball (and much of the film's plot)
Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I am very familiar with Zizek and generally like his work. The Sublime Object of Ideology is a wonderful book as is his recent essay on September 11th. His tendency to quick and sloppy (though often brilliant) arguments is both elucidating and annoying. And for those who read enough of him, you'll notice he tends to recycle shamelessly whole passages from his works (read, for example, his essay on The Matrix side-by-side with the September 11th essay).In this lecture on Lost Highway, Zizek reaches an all-time low. His argument is wild and often unclear (though incredibly entertaining) and filled with more pop culture than analysis. His central thesis - that you can't read Lynch as some sort of postmodern metaphysical flow - is right on the money, but darned if Zizek can present an alternate way to read him. What's most unforgivable about this work, however, is that he's continuously jumbling Lost Highway's plot. He mixes up characters, screws up dialogue, and rearranges the order of narrative events. Despite the mess, he still makes some keen and evocative points, but nothing to excuse his sloppiness. Interviews with Zizek reveal him as an anxiety-ridden, very lazy man, who is not above lying to his students to get out of working with them. (He's admitted to filling in office-hour signup sheets with imaginary names in big lecture classes so as not to have to meet with students). I won't discount his genius as a thinker and entertainer, but this terrible piece on Lynch is only emblematic of his thinking in general. Zizek fans and Lynch fans alike, stay away from it!
Rating:
Summary: Zizek drops the ball (and much of the film's plot)
Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I am very familiar with Zizek and generally like his work. The Sublime Object of Ideology is a wonderful book as is his recent essay on September 11th. His tendency to quick and sloppy (though often brilliant) arguments is both elucidating and annoying. And for those who read enough of him, you'll notice he tends to recycle shamelessly whole passages from his works (read, for example, his essay on The Matrix side-by-side with the September 11th essay). In this lecture on Lost Highway, Zizek reaches an all-time low. His argument is wild and often unclear (though incredibly entertaining) and filled with more pop culture than analysis. His central thesis - that you can't read Lynch as some sort of postmodern metaphysical flow - is right on the money, but darned if Zizek can present an alternate way to read him. What's most unforgivable about this work, however, is that he's continuously jumbling Lost Highway's plot. He mixes up characters, screws up dialogue, and rearranges the order of narrative events. Despite the mess, he still makes some keen and evocative points, but nothing to excuse his sloppiness. Interviews with Zizek reveal him as an anxiety-ridden, very lazy man, who is not above lying to his students to get out of working with them. (He's admitted to filling in office-hour signup sheets with imaginary names in big lecture classes so as not to have to meet with students). I won't discount his genius as a thinker and entertainer, but this terrible piece on Lynch is only emblematic of his thinking in general. Zizek fans and Lynch fans alike, stay away from it!
Rating:
Summary: Ridiculous, but hardly sublime
Review: Probably the most hilarious interpretation of David Lynch ever written, and I'm pretty interested in wondering how Lynch himself would feel if he noticed that his art has been hijacked by the post-modern academic elite. Actually, Martha Notchimson's "Passion of David Lynch" probably got Lynch down better than any of his critics, but to reduce her interpretations to New Agism is really just an exemplification of fringe criticism's dread of Jungian thought in the first place - not that Lynch is a Jungian, but he is all about transcendental meditation and reincarnation, and his pictures seem to have a similar spiritual center and energy. Zizek is extremely intelligent, but ultimately he's fishing for minnows while sitting on a whale. If you interpret Lynch in regards to a system (Lacanian for instance) instead of humanity, you end up with what Lynch would probably call "phoney baloney".
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent but cockeyed
Review: This is my first exposure to the work of Slavoj Zizek, but it probably will not be my last. Undeniably studied, Zizek is able to write with an unusual fusion of irreverent pop-cultural wit and stuffy intellectual jargon. That makes this breezy (43 page) study easy to read and profoundly deep at the same time. But don't mistake "profoundly deep" for "profoundly revealing" or "profoundly correct", as it is none of the above. A self-proclaimed Lacanian, Zizek makes a case for an anti-Fruedian, anti-Jungian psychoanalytic interpretation of what is perhaps David Lynch's most obscure feature film since Eraserhead. As published on Amazon.com and elsewhere, I prefer a Jungian interpretation of Lost Highway, and for good reason: it fits extremely well. To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's own eyes. All the same, Zizek's intellect is beyond dispute, and his reading of Lost Highway should be of great interest to film theorists and serious David Lynch fans alike.
Rating:
Summary: Intelligent but cockeyed
Review: This is my first exposure to the work of Slavoj Zizek, but it probably will not be my last. Undeniably studied, Zizek is able to write with an unusual fusion of irreverent pop-cultural wit and stuffy intellectual jargon. That makes this breezy (43 page) study easy to read and profoundly deep at the same time. But don't mistake "profoundly deep" for "profoundly revealing" or "profoundly correct", as it is none of the above. A self-proclaimed Lacanian, Zizek makes a case for an anti-Fruedian, anti-Jungian psychoanalytic interpretation of what is perhaps David Lynch's most obscure feature film since Eraserhead. As published on Amazon.com and elsewhere, I prefer a Jungian interpretation of Lost Highway, and for good reason: it fits extremely well. To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's own eyes. All the same, Zizek's intellect is beyond dispute, and his reading of Lost Highway should be of great interest to film theorists and serious David Lynch fans alike.
Rating:
Summary: A Hitchhiker's Guide to The Lost Highway
Review: When I first saw "Lost Highway," I almost immediately dismissed it as far too unhinged and complex to analyize. It was at turns fascinating and familiar, then frustrating and detached. I was simply amazed at the ability of Lynch to create a narrative that seemed so disjointed, and yet oddly and strangely complete. Slavoj Zizek however, has no trouble distilling the tale to what he believes are its basic elements. He views the tale through the lens of Jacques Lacan, (A Freudian revisionist.) He exhaustively discusses the implications of Fred's impotence and (possible) fantasy of violence and escape, and the construction of a fantasy that includes a virile version of himself, and a disjointededly evil "Father" figure in Mr. Eddy. He boils the tale down to the implications of such contructions and their inherent and necessary failure, because the very fears that call them into play tear them apart. (As seen by the re-introduction of dark haired Renee and Fred's Physical form in the second half of the film.) He also addresses other aspects of the work, first, as the title suggests, he discusses this work as a film that addresses both a "known" reality, (the convoluted plot) and an ineffable, yet unconsciously addressable sort of hyper reality (the "Real" meaning behind the work.) He does this by exploring many themes, reducing them often to cliche's drawn from popular culture. He looks at Renee/Alice's role as femme fatale in a "neo-noir" setting, the issues of male construction of phallic fantasy and sexual objectivism, the role of ultimate evil and impossible beauty in the Lynch catalogue, and he finally hails Lost Highway as an example of what movies can become in the future, a sort of hypertexed jungle of possibilities and superimposed realities, where the viewer can control (or believe they can control,) the outcome of the film. He really helped me appreciate the forces at play (whether they are intentionally placed there by the author or no,) in a film that I already thoroughly enjoyed. He lets me explore the aspects of this film that "Spoke" to me on a level that I could not previously express, and yet somehow I understood. Finally, a word on the craft aspect of this book. This is less a paperback book than it is a pamphlet or portfolio. Nonetheless, the 40 pages of essay are meaty enough for several readings, and the issues covered will have you watching Lost Highway about eight more times, and getting more and more out of it as you pick up on moments in the plot that help you expound on Zizek's ideas. It is well worth the price, and easily accessable to the reader that has no knowledge of Freud or Lacan. Zizek is an outstanding writer. He does not insult his reader in an attempt to dumb his subject down, nor does he fill his prose with lengthy words that leave one scrambling for the dictionary.
Rating:
Summary: A Hitchhiker's Guide to The Lost Highway
Review: When I first saw "Lost Highway," I almost immediately dismissed it as far too unhinged and complex to analyize. It was at turns fascinating and familiar, then frustrating and detached. I was simply amazed at the ability of Lynch to create a narrative that seemed so disjointed, and yet oddly and strangely complete. Slavoj Zizek however, has no trouble distilling the tale to what he believes are its basic elements. He views the tale through the lens of Jacques Lacan, (A Freudian revisionist.) He exhaustively discusses the implications of Fred's impotence and (possible) fantasy of violence and escape, and the construction of a fantasy that includes a virile version of himself, and a disjointededly evil "Father" figure in Mr. Eddy. He boils the tale down to the implications of such contructions and their inherent and necessary failure, because the very fears that call them into play tear them apart. (As seen by the re-introduction of dark haired Renee and Fred's Physical form in the second half of the film.) He also addresses other aspects of the work, first, as the title suggests, he discusses this work as a film that addresses both a "known" reality, (the convoluted plot) and an ineffable, yet unconsciously addressable sort of hyper reality (the "Real" meaning behind the work.) He does this by exploring many themes, reducing them often to cliche's drawn from popular culture. He looks at Renee/Alice's role as femme fatale in a "neo-noir" setting, the issues of male construction of phallic fantasy and sexual objectivism, the role of ultimate evil and impossible beauty in the Lynch catalogue, and he finally hails Lost Highway as an example of what movies can become in the future, a sort of hypertexed jungle of possibilities and superimposed realities, where the viewer can control (or believe they can control,) the outcome of the film. He really helped me appreciate the forces at play (whether they are intentionally placed there by the author or no,) in a film that I already thoroughly enjoyed. He lets me explore the aspects of this film that "Spoke" to me on a level that I could not previously express, and yet somehow I understood. Finally, a word on the craft aspect of this book. This is less a paperback book than it is a pamphlet or portfolio. Nonetheless, the 40 pages of essay are meaty enough for several readings, and the issues covered will have you watching Lost Highway about eight more times, and getting more and more out of it as you pick up on moments in the plot that help you expound on Zizek's ideas. It is well worth the price, and easily accessable to the reader that has no knowledge of Freud or Lacan. Zizek is an outstanding writer. He does not insult his reader in an attempt to dumb his subject down, nor does he fill his prose with lengthy words that leave one scrambling for the dictionary.
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