(photo by Bonnie Schiffman)
Showing posts with label dune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dune. Show all posts
The David Lynch Experience • group discussion w/ the Obnoxious and Anonymous podcast (& guests Joe Anthony, Ted Arn, Max Evry, Joey Pedras & Mandy Singleton)
belated December 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE MOVIES #86 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Mysterious Skin (+ old/new Dune archive reading/capsule, Twin Peaks Reflections: Pinkle, Mayor, Lana, Big Ed's Gas Farm and house, Who's Donna's father?/Eraserhead & more) plus TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS
The last new "Twin Peaks Cinema" topic of 2021 was actually, in terms of publication, the first of 2022, since it went up on New Year's Day. I've had Mysterious Skin in mind for a long time, as it's probably one of the closest films to Fire Walk With Me both in terms of its subject matter and how it chooses to deal with the heavy theme. This makes for a wide-ranging discussion, with a long aside on Parts 17 and 18 of The Return and the question of how it relates to the seemingly unsurpassable conclusion of Fire Walk With Me (also a major topic in recent Twin Peaks Conversations, including one linked below). Other parts of this main podcast episode use the "Miss Twin Peaks" episode as a springboard for lighter aspects of Peaks - particularly a trio of goofballs from the second season - as well as thoughts on old and new Dune alike in the wake of my first trip to a movie theater in nearly two years. I wasn't able to include the various bonus sections - feedback, podcast recommendations, etc - this time, and they'll probably have to wait until my Olympics series is over (if all goes well, I'll be resuming that in a week and a half; if all doesn't go well, it will go the way of other recent abandoned projects). But I did want to make room for that one film capsule since it ties into my choice of archive reading. It's also interesting to consider that despite their many differences, both Dune and Mysterious Skin belong to the science fiction genre...after a fashion.
January 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #24 - Season 2 Episode 16 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #75 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Rebel Without a Cause (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Hardy, Mountie, Harry's cabin, high school, Super Nadine/Dune & more)
In another surprise last-minute pick, "Twin Peaks Cinema" focuses on the iconic James Dean classic, whose most obvious influence on Twin Peaks is the moody motorcyclist James Hurley, although its impact can be felt in more subtle ways too. My archive reading highlights another Nicholas Ray-directed fifties film set in Los Angeles and starring a soon-to-be-deceased mythic legend, while "Twin Peaks Reflections" settles on some minor characters, brief but evocative locations, and the pairing of one of the wackiest comic subplots with one of Lynch's more humorless films.
My newest Lost in Twin Peaks episode this month (between $1 and $5/month patrons, I'm bracketing the midseason) is an unexpected two-parter. There's a lot of plot to digest before Josie ends up in that drawer pull, but I also dig deep into the C.O.O.P. campaign to bring the show back (as well as the subsequent political career of one of its founders) and contemporaneous events like the release of The Silence of the Lambs and the breakthrough of Tonya Harding. There is a mini-history podcast inside every Twin Peaks episode recap!
Podcast Line-Ups for...
It's a Strange World: A David Lynch retrospective, 1967 - 2013 (part two: the forest)
This is my fifth and final entry in David Lynch Month, an essay examining long-term changes in Lynch's work. You don't necessarily need to read "part one" first, particularly if you're already familiar with Lynch. There are spoilers for all of his films.
This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: What does the term "Lynchian" mean to you? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).
David Lynch has been making films for almost half a century. Because it took him another ten years to release his first feature, and nearly another decade to achieve his full-on "Lynchian" breakthrough into the mainstream, we tend to forget he's been around for so long. But Lynch's work stretches from the avant-garde cinematic renaissance of the late sixties (with its reliance on celluloid and aesthetic discipline) to the digital free-for-all of the twenty-first century teens (unmoored and immersed in its own video hyperactivity). He has both shaped his times and been shaped by them, but he's also stood apart - a one-man band beating his own crazy clown drum, sometimes celebrated as a true and timeless American original, sometimes scorned as a self-indulgent sideshow to the larger world, societal and cinematic.
From my recent Lynch marathon, two distinct and somewhat paradoxical observations emerged: a sense of unpredictability alongside an awareness of trajectory. On the one hand, Lynch's body of work is more wildly diverse than is usually credited: yes, there is a special "Lynchian" mood, style, and sensibility, but within that world there is incredible flexibility, ranging from the gentle, G-rated sincerity of The Straight Story (1999) to the raw, hallucinatory terror of Inland Empire (2006). Not only does Lynch's oeuvre feature wild fluctuations in tone, look, and subject matter, these wild fluctuations often occur from one project to the next. This marathon reminded me that the wacky, light-hearted TV pilot On the Air (1992) premiered a mere month after the intensely dark and emotional Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), while Lynch's tragic, stylish Mulholland Drive (2001) was shot around the time he recorded the gleefully juvenile Thank You Judge (2002).
Yet if Lynch can't be simplistically pigeonholed, he can - with caution and qualification - be placed. Over nearly fifty years his work, and the voice expressed in that work, has undergone gradual and long-lasting transformations: despite the variations film to film, strong patterns and an overall evolution emerge when looking at the big picture. This means not only recognizing links and echoes between far-flung films (say, the mirrored endings of Eraserhead (1977) and Fire Walk With Me) but also observing a tidal flow to the themes and styles presented onscreen. There is a chronological march in which claustrophobic panic gives way to rootless wandering, classical restraint dissolves into multilayered impressionism, and recognition of corruption from within slowly overtakes the quest against external evil. Just as in Lynch's films random experimentation and apparent non sequiturs coalesce into powerful, perhaps unintentionally resonant psychodramas, so several narrative arcs emerge when examining the totality of Lynch's expression.
The Eye of the Duck: A David Lynch retrospective, 1967 - 2013 (part one: the trees)
This is my fourth entry in David Lynch Month. It is a chronological overview of his career, including full reviews of every single feature and capsules on every available short.
This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: Do you see particularly important turning points in David Lynch's career? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).
Over three days, I watched almost every single film Lynch has created since 1967, and as "film" I include not just features or shorts, but commercials, music videos, TV pilots, even the occasional promo tag. Next week I will examine the overall evolution of his career, in theme, storytelling, and visual style. Today I'm going to focus more on the nitty-gritty, the "trees" that make up the Lynchian "forest" (if you want to avoid spoilers, just read about the films you've seen - the only entry that contains a spoiler for a separate film is Inland Empire, which discusses the end of Eraserhead in its last paragraph). I will examine each of his works in turn, starting with Six Figures Getting Sick, a painting-in-motion installation he created as an art student in the late sixties, and concluding with Came Back Haunted, a Nine Inch Nails video so rapid-fire it contains a health disclaimer. Thus his filmmaking work begins and (for now) ends in the service of other arts - painting and music - but along the way he emerged as one of the greatest filmmakers of the twentieth century, his work appearing in cinemas, on television, and eventually streaming over the internet. He's bridged all motion-picture mediums and approaches, told stories and immersed himself in irrational imagery, accomplished himself as a humanist director of sensitive performance and a formalist photographer of abstract images.
Despite his surprising range, there is a distinctly "Lynchian" flavor to all of his films, which we'll discover as we move through them one by one. Each feature film is covered in five paragraphs (except for Blue Velvet, Fire Walk With Me, and Inland Empire, which get six, and Mulholland Drive, which gets ten), his seven TV episodes are covered in three, particularly distinctive short projects in two, and the rest of his work in single short paragraphs (often a couple commercials are discussed together). Here's what I couldn't see: a fictitious Anacin commercial (1967), the "Champions" episode of the Lynch-Frost American Chronicles (1990), a low budget video for his song "A Real Indication" (1993), HBO's Hotel Room sketch Blackout (1993), advertisements for Alka-Seltzer and American Cancer Society (both 1993), video documentary Lamp (2007), the Wild at Heart deleted-scenes "sidequel" (2008), playful greetings to the 2008 Hollyshorts awards and the 2010 Twin Peaks festival, a concert film for Duran Duran (2011), and probably dozens or even hundreds of short clips from DavidLynch.com, which aren't listed in online filmographies unless they also appeared on DVD (all I can verify missing are two episodes of his goofy Over Yonder web series, but there must be plenty more where that came from). Even with those exclusions, I covered sixty-seven titles below. For a filmmaker with only ten features under his belt, Lynch has been shockingly prolific.
Feel free to browse for the projects that interest you (it may be best to bookmark the post and return for several visits) or follow the entire overview chronologically - this retrospective can be read either way. Indeed, one could say the same of many of his films...
Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death: a video tribute to David Lynch
This is my third entry in David Lynch Month. It is a video essay covering his early work.
This week's "Question in a World of Blue" is: Does Laura Palmer have special significance in David Lynch's body of work? You can respond in the comments below or on your own blog (please tag this entry in your response).
With a title inspired by a passage from The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (by Jennifer Lynch), Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death focuses on David Lynch's first six features - through Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) - as well as the TV show Twin Peaks (1991-92) and a few audio samples from later works. Allowing the interweaving of assembled footage to speak for itself, this non-narrated video essay emphasizes the complex, evolving portrayal of violence and abusive characters in Lynch's early work. Needless to say it contains both spoilers and graphic content, so proceed with caution. At 23 minutes, this is my longest video, but that's down from a 45-minute rough cut (not to mention a 4 1/2-hour assembly!) so the results are pretty tight. You can watch Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death as one continuous video on Vimeo below, or as three separate chapters on YouTube:
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