TV Countdown - Twin Peaks

This essay was originally published and is still cross-posted at Wonders in the Dark as the #2 entry in their Top 80 Greatest Television Shows countdown (later expanded to 165). It is spoiler-free until noted within the text itself. Readers unfamiliar with Twin Peaks are encouraged to continue up to that point, marked by "***", to build interest.
Fair warning: this is also a very long discussion of a complex series, so you may want to read in installments.

"Twin Peaks is not a TV show." You've probably heard this refrain before, perhaps moderated to "Twin Peaks is not normal television," or, more generously to the medium, "Twin Peaks changed TV forever." However phrased, the essence remains the same: Twin Peaks still stands out boldly from the rest of the televisual landscape, twenty-seven years after its debut on the ABC network immediately following America's Funniest Home Videos. As if to cement this iconic status, when the series returned for an eighteen-hour limited run this summer (dubbed by Showtime's marketing department as Twin Peaks: The Return although filmmaker David Lynch, co-creator with author/TV writer Mark Frost, simply calls it the third season) this transgressive reputation persisted. Even against the tighter competition of "Prestige TV," critics were dazzled by its revolutionary nature, especially the (literal and figurative) atomic blast of Part 8, which could almost have been a program of standalone avant-garde Lynch shorts. Yet the story of Twin Peaks is - like everything else in Twin Peaks - a dual narrative, embedded at once in the world of surrealist cinema (and Lynch's own private universe) as well as TV conventions it embraced, wrestled with, and frequently overthrew.

Sci Fi Countdown - The End of Evangelion (CinemaVille discussion w/ Bob Clark for Wonders in the Dark)

This morning, I posted my only official entry in the Wonders in the Dark Sci-Fi countdown: an audio discussion with Bob Clark on the film The End of Evangelion, which ranked near the very top of my own ballot.

“The End of Evangelion” is an unusual spin-off of a TV series (only “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” might be more unusual). It both concludes and subverts the series, veering way into experimental territory while still wrapping up the narrative which the show “Neon Genesis Evangelion” began. I’ve covered the film in almost every form imaginable – reviews, written conversations, visual tributes, and video essays – so I decided to take a new appraoch this time. With Bob Clark’s permission, I stepped in as a guest host on the CinemaVille podcast and together we analyze the film, exploring its connections not just to the series but to the Czech play R.U.R., and Dante’s Divine Comedy. There’s a lot to dig into here, some grab some popcorn and get ready to start tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down…

Visit my entry for The End of Evangelion on Wonders in the Dark

Last week, I appeared on Bob's podcast Cinemaville to discuss the series Neon Genesis Evangelion (from which the film is spun off); this time, I took over as guest host to introduce, conduct, and edit the conversation myself. Thanks to Bob for allowing me to step into his shoes for an episode, and I hope listeners enjoy the experience.

Here is the podcast itself:



I've also participated in many other Wonders in the Dark genre countdowns over the years. Here are the previous films I've covered: Marty (both versions) and a video essay on Lady and the Tramp for the Romance Countdown; Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid for the Western Countdown (make sure to check out the comments, where the scholar who edited the 2005 version responded to my review and the controversy surrounding his cut); a video essay on Modern Times for the Comedy Countdown; An American in Paris, 42nd Street (including a video essay), and a visual tribute (using Arlene Croce's prose) to The Gay Divorcee for the Musical Countdown.

Obviously, this is not my first rodeo with The End of Evangelion (nor is it Wonders in the Dark's - Allan Fish wrote about it back in 2011). I've created a "3 1/2 Minute Review" video essay; a video essay comparison of Twin Peaks and Neon Genesis Evangelion (including the film); a lengthy prose essay; a two-part printed conversation with Bob Clark about the film's story and style and its characters; an entry in my Favorites capsule series; and screen-cap visual tributes to a battle sequence and the climactic apocalypse. I even devoted an entire week of blog posts to the subject last year.

Sci Fi Countdown - discussing Neon Genesis Evangelion on Bob Clark's new podcast, "CinemaVille"

This is officially Bob Clark's entry in the Sci-Fi Countdown, going on right now on Wonders in the Dark. But since we'd discussed this series Neon Genesis Evangelion so often in the past, he invited me as his guest his brand new podcast "CinemaVille". Both endeavors are worth checking out beyond just this entry, and you can read more about Evangelion over on Wonders:

The Sci Fi Countdown: Neon Genesis Evangelion at #72

Here is the podcast itself:

And that's not it for my involvement with the countdown, the podcast, or Evangelion. On Tuesday, I will be contributing my own entry to the show, taking over Bob's show for an episode as a guest host (with me questioning him this time) to discuss...well, we'll leave that as surprise! See you then.

Meanwhile, make sure to check out Bob Clark's impressive essays on the first six episodes of the series, the film Evangelion 2.0, and the proper way to screen Evangelion films, as well as Wonders guru Allan Fish's own take on the series and film The End of Evangelion, and of course my own episode guide, accompanied by extended chats with Bob for each episode.

A Tale of Two Martys: an essay for the Romance Countdown

Cross-posted at Wonders in the Dark, where the 1955 version placed at #54 in the Romance Countdown.

"I think of this as a great rainy afternoon movie. You're flipping through the channels on one of those great lazy Saturdays...it's summer but it's raining outdoors and you're stuck inside. You come across a classic movie channel (AMC, TCM--take your pick) and pause. What's this? Ernest Borgnine? You always like him, why not stop for a moment and watch. It looks like it's just beginning. 'Marty'? Yeah, you've heard of it, vaguely. Won the Oscar or something, but it's been kind of forgotten. So you start watching and before long you're totally enchanted, completely charmed, by the simple story and realistic characters. Who can't sympathize with Borgnine's sensitive butcher, hanging out with his Italian friends and their goofy conversations about Mickey Spillane, all the while pining away with his heart of gold for a girl that his buddies call a 'dog'? The conversations have the kind of natural humor and warmth that remind you of the old days hanging out with your pals. As you watch the movie, you find yourself enthralled and you never change the channel, watching it till the end, realizing that you've seen this plot riffed on and spoofed on various TV shows, films, and cartoons over the years. When the movie's done, you're really excited--this is one of those films you discovered on your own and nothing can beat that thrill.

"Now, this isn't the way I saw 'Marty'--I rented it and now own it on DVD--but it's the spirit I get from it. I love the conversation between Marty and his best friend, its street poetry that's entertaining without being false, in the diner as their Friday night lays out ahead of them. I love Marty and Clara's walk, their honesty and his enthusiasm; you worry is he going too far, being too gregarious for the shy Clara? Will it work? I love the preparations for Sunday Mass, the fight between the married couple, and Marty agonizing over standing up his girl while his friends have an amusingly banal and silly conversation in which they keep repeating themselves. It's really just a charming and wonderful film, joyful even in its sad moments. If you don't enjoy it, what can I say, but my recommendation comes completely honest and from the heart. This is one of those personal favorites that also happens to be an underrated classic--but just underrated enough so that the joy of discovering it on a rainy Saturday afternoon remains undiluted." - Me, April 24, 2003, my first online review (IMDb)

Lady in Movieland: Lady and the Tramp's Journey Through Promiscuous Genres (a video essay for the Romance Countdown)

• cross-posted at Wonders in the Dark •

Every month I am posting a new video essay. This month's video also doubles as an entry in Wonders in the Dark's latest genre poll, the Romance Countdown, where Lady and the Tramp placed at #57.

Lady and the Tramp is one of the great romances of all time…but it’s much more as well. In fact, the animated classic samples numerous mid-century film (and TV) genres. “Lady in Movieland” explores many of them while also observing Lady’s anxiety and eventual acceptance of a new member of the family (and what this means for her own comfort and independence). Hope you have as much fun watching this as I had making it.

Videos follow the jump. If you're also in the mood for something completely different (although it too involves an unwanted infant and dark nighttime attack), check out last month's video essay on David Lynch.

Western Countdown - Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

This review, my first in over six months (the longest gap since Lost in the Movies began in 2008), is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark western countdown, where the 1973 Sam Peckinpah picture was voted #30. The piece has been cross-posted on Wonders, and you can visit that site for more comments and discussion.

Movies are motifs and moments as well as stories - individual, isolated campfires flickering in the desert dusk and not just landscapes strung together by a stretch of lonesome road. Perhaps Westerns more than most other narrative films rely on this identification with details rather than plot development. Indeed, often the plots exist as clotheslines over which to string the details: the kids playing in the dirt staring up in awe at the outlaws riding nonchalantly through town, the bedroom sequence in which a lonely drifter becomes loquacious with a local whore, the banter over whisky at the bar (nobody drinks beer in saloons, it seems). Audiences go to Westerns - or went to Westerns when they were more popular - less to experience surprise twists and turns in a novelistic story than to gaze with affection and curiosity at a portrait of a time and place both familiar and foreign.

"Revisionist" directors like Sam Peckinpah may have upset and upturned conventions, but they also honored and expanded upon those conventions in the first place. Watching films like The Wild Bunch today, their once-groundbreaking violence no longer shocks; one is struck instead by the ways in which they feel nostalgic or old-fashioned. They exude a sense of affectionate camaraderie which one seldom finds outside of buddy comedies (albeit sans stoicism) in 2013. Perhaps no Western more acutely captures the passage from warm if rough camaraderie into brooding, suspicious isolation than Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Even stylistically, the film - particularly when comparing its various incarnations (three have been released over the years) - is torn between a sense of long, lingering (perhaps excessive) attention to detail and a relentless march toward an inevitable outcome.

Comedy Countdown - Modern Times (a video essay)

My entry in the Comedy Countdown, a video essay on Modern Times mixing and matching three iconic texts on the famous film, from Otis Ferguson, Roland Barthes, and Graham Greene. Enjoy!

Musical Countdown - An American in Paris

This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!

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An American in Paris (1951/United States/directed by Vincente Minnelli & choreographed by Gene Kelly)

stars Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, George Guetary, Nina Foch

written by Alan J. Lerner • photographed by Alfred Gilks (ballet photographed by John Alton) • designed by Preston Ames, Cedric Gibbons • music by George Gershwin, Conrad Salinger • costumes by Orry-Kelly

The Story: Wealthy, debonair Henri (Guetary) loves pretty young Lise (Caron), a girl he cared for during the war. Lonely heiress Milo (Fochs) loves cheerful yet skeptical artist Jerry (Kelly). Unfortunately Lise and Jerry love one another and as they dance their way into each others' hearts against a romantic Parisian backdrop, they must struggle between the pull of money and loyalty on the one hand, and true love on the other.

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First of all, this isn't just an American in Paris, it's an American Paris - not a City of Lights that is or ever was, but rather a Paris dreamed of across miles and miles of sea and continent, far away in Hollywood. That's an important point. This Paris is full of authentic touches (productions of the time attempted to reproduce specific areas on soundstages) and cultural references, but it's also purposefully artificial. Likewise, Jerry is more an idea of a painter than an actual painter - we only glimpse his canvases, and his patter consists of the cliches of bohemian artist life (though Kelly's a rather clean-cut bohemian) rather than technical insight or the passion of vision. For those who don't like musicals because of their gap from reality, this is not the musical to win you over. But for those who love bravura dancing, full of machine-gun-fire taps and the gracefully propulsive gestures and flexes Kelly specialized in, or intensely creative choreography and stage direction, replete with artfully tangling and untangling bodies and sensuous, eye-popping colors, An American in Paris is right up your avenue. And yet it isn't all make-believe.

Musical Countdown - 42nd Street

This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!

This post consists of an essay and a video piece (not just a scene from the movie intended as an addendum, but something I actually created as an important part of my contribution to the countdown). You can take it any order, but I open with the video to highlight its relevance to this entry. It shows through juxtaposition and structure what I am saying in the essay itself, and maybe makes my point better than words can do.

The five-minute video opens with dialogue from the film, follows with a rehearsal montage set to "Getting to Be a Habit With Me" (showing the progression from casting call to finished production), and closes with the dance sequence of "Young and Healthy" in its entirety, just to show what the film was building up to. Altogether the video demonstrates how the raw and often frustrated urges of the characters for sex and power are sublimated and transmuted into the discipline of a creative act, and then shows the end result in all its glory. The essay pursues the same theme.

And don't worry - they're both fun!

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42nd Street (1933/United States/directed by Lloyd Bacon & choreographed by Busby Berkeley)

stars Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Ginger Rogers

written by Rian James, James Seymour and Whitney Bolton from Bradford Ropes' novel • photographed by Sol Polito • designed by Jack Oakey • music by Al Dubin & Harry Warren • edited by Thomas Pratt & Frank Ware

The Story: Determined to direct a hit show, even if it kills him, Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) struggles with romantic entanglements, last-minute injuries, and a nervous ingenue named Peggy (Ruby Keeler). Will the curtain open or come crashing down on "Pretty Lady"?

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"Pretty Lady" - the stage extravaganza at the center of 42nd Street - owes its existence solely to sex. Well, don't we all? Some musicals present themselves as good, clean fun but 42nd Street, God bless its dirty face, is not one of those musicals. At the root of its massive appeal, kinetic energy, and increasingly exciting narrative and musical structure are three simple motivating factors: sex, sex, and sex. Well, a fourth too: money – and in this film the two are wound around each like the two strands of DNA.

As Chaos Theory holds that a butterfly need just flap its wings to spawn a typhoon halfway around the world, so Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) has only to spread her legs. Thus is birthed a larger-than-life production, upon which the career of a broken, possibly dying director relies, through which a naïve young ingénue will become the biggest name on Broadway, and from which two hundred hustling, horny, hungry human beings will draw their daily bread (and dreams of glory). Dirty old man, sugar daddy, and cuckold Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) tells Dorothy he’ll do something for her (finance the show she wants to star in) if she’ll do something for him (guess what?). And with that, we’re off!

Musical Countdown - The Gay Divorcee

This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!

If writing about movies is like dancing about architecture, then writing about musicals is like trying to draw a blueprint for a tap dance. Here I try to make both ends meet.

The words below the fold are from Arlene Croce’s seminal “Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book.”

The images (some fragments, some fully framed) are from a single number, “Night and Day,” the only sequence in the film where Fred & Ginger dance by themselves, three minutes out of nearly two hours but the very essence of the picture and their partnership.

Finally, there is a video clip of the number in its entirety. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, choreography by Fred Astaire, dancing by you-know-who.

The hope is that, senses sharpened by the indirect evocations of Croce’s prose, and the lingering snapshots of motion, you will view the piece with renewed appreciation, much as one might press one’s nose up against a pointillist painting, viewing all those little dots as isolated phenomena before stepping back to take in the big picture, all without losing sight of the magical details which give it its essence.

As Arlene Croce writes, opening her study of the sequence, “This incomparable dance of seduction is a movie in itself.” Enjoy.