January 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - The Red Shoes, True Detective: Night Country viewing diary & 2023 American Generations Reflections + ADVANCE - TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry

January 2024 was the busiest month on my Patreon in five years - maybe ever. Not only did I offer the usual Twin Peaks character study for all patrons, kick off a new film podcast, and initiate a new reward system involving patron selections (including ten different polls or updates), I also offered bonus features for the $5/month tier: an ongoing viewing diary for the series True Detective: Night Country (the fourth season of the show whose every episode I covered in the past) and an essay reflecting on the past year in culture and politics through a generational lens. The crown jewel, however, was a podcast on Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's Technicolor ballet masterpiece The Red Shoes - a film I'd never covered and barely if ever even mentioned in my previous work. Suggested by longtime patron Laurence Figgis, the popular pick cleared two rounds of voting including a run-off against Punch Drunk Love, with which it was tied after the first round. Watching this movie for the first time in decades, I was struck by the complexities of the art vs. romance, passion vs. comfort menage a trois trapping rising ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) between composer/lover Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and impresario/mentor Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook)...

What are the January rewards?

Now on Patreon: True Detective: Night Country viewing diary through February 25

Although pieces of it will be shared in the January and February round-ups (and the larger True Detective directory will be updated as each part is written, as will this post), I wanted to create a separate public announcement for a bonus feature on my $5/month tier. In addition to this month's official reward - currently being decided between Punch Drunk Love and The Red Shoes in this poll (ends tomorrow at noon) - every week I am going to publish a response to the new episodes of True Detective: Night Country, the fourth season of the HBO show I've covered extensively in the past. This time, the series stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, is written and directed by Issa Lopez rather than the show's creator Nic Pizzolatto, and follows a couple investigations in a remote corner of Alaska where the sun disappears for months at a time in the winter. My format will be slightly different than those older entries, adopting the summary/response approach I used for Mad Men and other viewing diaries, and I'm hoping these reviews will be relatively short although I did not succeed in that effort when discussing last week's premiere. Here is that entry, published yesterday, with more to come following tonight's Part 2 and Parts 3 - 6 in the coming weeks.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Four Great Scenes to Enjoy • group discussion w/ the "Twin Peaks Grammar" Artists Love Twin Peaks podcast (w/ guests Colin, Andrew Cook & John Thorne)

A couple weeks ago, Anthony - the host of the "Twin Peaks Grammar" YouTube channel - suggested a "scene analysis idea". What if a group of commentators got together, each picking a different scene, and each focusing on a particular formal element (editing, cinematography, performance, and so on). The idea stuck with me after I listened and I encouraged Anthony to pursue the concept. And so he did, as a birthday present to himself, featuring not just both of us - for the fourth time after his guest appearance, mine, and another group discussion - but also Wrapped in Plastic publisher (and my own frequent guest) John Thorne, Creamed Corn and the Universe podcast host Colin (with whom I've previously discussed Sarah Palmer and Ronette's angel, in addition to his project more broadly), and film/TV commentator Andrew Cook (with whom I've previously discussed Eyes Wide Shut and Southland Tales).

With links to the discussion timecodes (the clips themselves can be watched here and here), John selected the Winkie's diner exchange and trip out back from Mulholland Drive, Andrew the Tremond's Meals on Wheels scene from the original series of Twin Peaks, myself the Mike in traffic/Teresa flashback sequence from the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Anthony the nighttime Cooper/statue passage from Twin Peaks: The Return (Colin joined last-minute and took part in the commentary without picking a scene himself). Before each clip, we'd choose our focus and begin with observations on that before expanding to a broader back and forth. This was a great conversation, and hopefully a format that will be pursued in the future with other guests, scenes, and even concepts (I'd love to see this applied to non-Peaks work as well, even to scenes from films the guests aren't familiar with and are watching for the first time).

In addition to this YouTube video, Anthony has also posted this episode in audio form on the Artists Love Twin Peaks feed.

On a side note (mentioned at the end of the episode), this week I've been conducting a poll on Patreon for the $5/month tier to determine what film I'll cover for this month's reward. Based on suggestions from patrons, so far The Red Shoes is in the lead but others include Brick, City of Pirates, May December, Punch Drunk Love, Ruthless, and Trenque Lauquen. Make sure to jump in if you're interested, as the poll closes at noon on Friday.

belated December 2023 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Twin Peaks Conversations podcast w/ Rob King, editor of David Lynch and the American West (including public teaser) + ADVANCE - TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry & new introduction to patrons (w/ public status update/32 Days of Movies video revision)

David Lynch's work is often connected to specific locations like sunny suburbs, industrial cities, and the backlots and bungalows of Hollywood, as well as to genres like noir, horror, and melodrama. The broad Western landscape, and the Western genre, are less frequently associated with Lynch (aside from Lynch's short film The Cowboy and the Frenchman and his cameo as none other than John Ford in The Fabelmans). In his recent anthology of commissioned essays, David Lynch and the American West, Rob King gathers a number of perspectives particularly focused on how Lynch's works play with the history and mythology of the actual region. The terrain stretches from the parched deserts of the Southwest to the foggy forests of the Pacific Northwest, the timespan from ancient indigenous civilizations to the modern highways running across this landscape today. I spoke with King a couple months ago; technical difficulties unfortunately cut our discussion short and we were unable to resume, but for a half hour we dug into how he and other scholars approach this material. Because this is a shorter Twin Peaks Conversations episode than usual, most of it has been reserved for $5/month tier patrons. I published a brief teaser on YouTube, rather than the much longer public "first half" I normally share.

I'm also previewing another character entry for the $1/month tier - in this case, very interesting revisions to someone featured in the earlier series. And I've officially updated my tier structure, as explained in the following video:

+ read the public announcement:

Updated tiers, new intro & new directories (+ December update)

For more details and other updates, check out the above public post, shared in mid-December. As mentioned in there, I've recently added some new pages to this site's directories so that now you can navigate patron rewards without having to scroll past public material. The directories are as follows:

All Available rewards (by Topic) // EXCLUSIVE Films in Focus // Twin Peaks // EXCLUSIVE Film Capsules // Political Topics on Podcasts // Random Topics on Podcasts // All Available rewards (by Entry/Episode) // Essays

What are the December rewards?