Moving near the edge at night... • discussing the killer's reveal episode w/ Twin Peaks Unwrapped (+ John Thorne & Josh Minton)

A year after my last visit to the Twin Peaks Unwrapped community rewatch series (for the first season finale), I'm back to mark another milestone: the killer's reveal in episode 14. I've discussed this arc with hosts Ben and Bryon before, but this time we hone in on the particular episode, joined by fellow guests John Thorne and Josh Minton - who have recently launched their own freeform Twin Peaks podcast, In Our House Now. The discussion is divided into two parts, interspersed with Schäffer the Darklord's re-enactments of the original teleplay (with some intriguing differences from the broadcast version). Topics include Lynch's bold aesthetic transgressions of TV style, whether or not Leland (not Bob) has a motive to kill his niece, the missing "Ben killed Maddy" footage, critics who avoided and confronted the reveal's troubling nature, the appropriateness of "dead Laura" merchandise, and how all of us responded to the shocking climactic moment on our first viewing. It was a great conversation on an iconic moment of television that just celebrated its 30th anniversary.

References: the "Laura Palmer Funko Pop doll" Twitter thread by findom earle (@coherentstates) • excerpts in my Gone Fishin' media round-up: scroll down to December 21, 1990 for the "Incest for the Millions" essay & September 6, 1992 for Jeff Simon's Fire Walk With Me review • my "Dream Souls" video essay on David Lynch & Mary Sweeney • my Patreon coverage of episode 14 (now available for all tiers of patrons)

PART 1

PART 2

Class violence in 4 films: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Parasite (LEFT OF THE MOVIES podcast #2/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #10)

For the second time (I previously covered Medium Cool in August, in light of the Democratic convention), I am turning my public platform over to Left of the Movies, my nascent political cinema podcast. The episode offers five-to-ten minute capsules of some of the most hyped films of 2019: Quentin Tarantino's reimagining-Manson late sixties dream Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Martin Scorsese's possibly apocryphal Hoffa portrait The Irishman, Todd Phillips' controversial DC-meets-gritty-seventies-crime-film reboot of Joker, and Bong Joon-ho's Best Picture-winning architectural horror portrait of inequality Parasite. All four films climax with violence that can be viewed through a class-based lens - destruction as an almost ritualistic way to either destablize or reinforce the social order. My discussion focuses on how these climaxes express their respective films' political visions.

The bulk of this episode was originally recorded in January 2020 but in the wake of Donald Trump's contentious loss, the Black Lives Matters protests and left-right clashes in the street, the coronavirus pandemic and its unequal economic fallout, and the electoral defeat of Bernie Sanders' populist movement in the Democratic primaries, it seemed like a good idea to revisit these films again in the light of such a world-historic ten months. So I recorded an extra ten or so minutes extending the previous discussion, including Trump supporters' image of him (vis a vis Hoffa and the Mafia in The Irishman), the irony of "white male rage" Joker anticipating the BLM protests six months later, and especially the way that all of these films explore individual outbursts rather than collective action. There's still much to dig into, so I hope some of the listeners will offer feedback that I can further engage in upcoming episodes.

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You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

LINKS FOR EPISODE 10

Debunking Quentin Tarantino's 'Mockery' of Bruce Lee by Eugene S. Robinson (OZY)

'Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood' Review: We Lost It at the Movies by A.O. Scott (New York Times)

SEVEN AMERICAN GENERATIONS: iGen, millennials, X, boomers, silent, greatest and lost by Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies)

Boomer Reunion: The Big Chill vs Return of the Secaucus Seven (video) by Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies)

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Episode 73: Twin Peaks cinema - Belladonna of Sadness (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Norma, Vivian, Ernie, Red Diamond Motel, Golf course, MT Wentz/The Final Dossier, The Devil's Bride & more) & Lost in Twin Peaks #16: S2E8 (Drive With a Dead Girl/"Episode 15")

(for $5/month)

Lost in Twin Peaks #17: S2E9 (Double Play/"Episode 21")

New on my site

(accidentally mentioned in previous episode too)

Post-election status update & explore the directory pages linked on my home page for new, sharp images on mobile

Training Day (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #9) ... + a quick election/Journey Through Twin Peaks status update

First, since this podcast was scheduled to go up last week, some housekeeping is in order. I've been trying to keep up with the new "Path through Journey Through Twin Peaks" schedule I created a month ago, even to the point where I fell behind on podcast deadlines, but eventually it became clear that between holiday travel and news distractions, November was going to set me pretty far back if I kept going that way. So the next Journey video chapter, on Mark Frost, will wait until December; in the mean time I'll be focusing on November and early December podcasts, be they for patrons or the public. I've updated the "Path" post and thread to reflect this.

Also, I obviously decided not to do the election night week tweet round-up that I was considering in last week's status update. If you're curious what I had to say about all of it, here are my tweets from those five days - scroll to the bottom to start on Election Day (here are my retweets from that period...and to go full circle, my last tweet on the day the race was decided was a reply to my last tweet from Election Night 2016).

Onto Training Day. Although covered as part of my ongoing Ethan Hawke survey (one more film remains for December, probably my favorite of the bunch), Denzel Washington is obviously the big draw here as the diabolically clever corrupt cop taking Hawke's rookie for a ride. Nonetheless, I found that more subdued character fascinating to tease out as well. To what extent are his reactions driven by morality vs. fear of getting into trouble? I love how the film plays with our conceptions of what is and is not acceptable based on social context. I also discuss how director Antoine Fuqua seems less interested in judgement than understanding even within the genre constraints he's operating under.

And as I mention in the episode itself, next week I will be discussing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite, Joker, and The Irishman - if you have thoughts on any of these, please send them my way via comment, tweet, DM, email or whatever form suits you. I’ll share any feedback on that episode itself if I receive it in the next few days.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts

You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

LINKS FOR EPISODE 9

clip from Training Day in "The Millennial Mood", a chapter of my film clip series

+ inclusion of Alonzo/Denzel Washington in my favorite characters & alternate Oscars lists

New on my site

Post-election status update

New guest appearance

Twin Peaks Unwrapped - Episode 14 Community Rewatch, part 1 (w/ John Thorne & Josh Minton)

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Episode 72: Twin Peaks cinema - Back to the Future Part II (+ Laura Palmer & other Twin Peaks Reflections: The Singer, Maddy, Palmer house, Roadhouse, Palmer family breakdown/Season 3 Part 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, other Robert Zemeckis films & more) & Lost in Twin Peaks #15: S2E7 (Lonely Souls/"Episode 14"), part 1 & part 2

A Week on Hold: status update

For obvious reasons - the presidential election which is, as of this writing three days later, still ongoing - much of my activity has ground to a halt this week. Normally a new podcast would have gone up Wednesday, but I already knew that would be delayed due to the order of events in the new "Path through Journey Through Twin Peaks" I laid out a month ago, and have been sticking stubbornly to ever since, even though it leads to some of my normal deadlines falling by the wayside. That episode, on Training Day, will hopefully appear in about a week and a half but I have a whole video, among other priorities, to create in between so I won't be surprised if I end up having two overdue podcasts when November ends. A busier-than-usual work schedule and tentative travel plans for Thanksgiving are also pushing things back and back - it's another perfect storm of distractions like I experienced this summer. It's now patently obvious that I won't come anywhere close to reaching the "weeks/month for random online work before December 1" that I penciled in as long as I finished a six-months-ahead backlog of patron and public podcasts, viewing diary entries, and even a non-Twin Peaks video in a timely manner. That backlog probably won't be wrapped until December or even January or February at this point; I'm even wondering if I should extend this backlog through September 2021 rather than June, in order to buy myself even more time once I do begin work on the next phase of Journey videos. It's a bit of a dog chasing its own tail as I weigh short-term delay against long-term breathing room.

As for the election, I have plenty of thoughts - or, at any rate, tweets - that I may eventually share as I did four years ago. Since I probably won't have any other material to share next week, and since we'll hopefully see a final result by then (though it's looking increasingly plausible that Donald Trump finally received some form of - temporary? - comeuppance in a night that otherwise went terribly for Democrats), I'll probably collect and slightly expand on these reflections in seven days. Also pushing back my public podcasts, the desire to finally record an expanded political commentary on the patron podcast is something I've been hoping to do since May. Incidentally, the above image is not just a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the current disaster surrounding the occupancy of that building, nor just a visualization of my own cluttered schedule. I also recently caught up with the Independence Day sequel, which will be touched on in that upcoming patron episode, along with a half-year of other film capsules - including quite a few with at least tangentially political subjects. It's been a hell of a year, in all senses, and it's not over yet. But the online work I've enjoyed creating has been one of several silver linings for me. I look forward to continuing it in the days, weeks, and months to come. Thanks for riding along.

ELECTION UPDATE 11/12: I did not end up creating an additional post with embedded tweets but if you're curious what I had to say about all of it, here are my tweets from that period - scroll to the bottom to start on Election Day (here are my retweets from that period...and to go full circle, my last tweet on the day the race was decided was a reply to my last tweet from Election Night 2016).