Entering Twin Peaks: comment collection #1 (summer 2014)

Every month, I will be offering at least one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

This has been a busy week, with more posts than usual. I might as well use the opportunity to post every weekday - so today I'm sharing another Twin Peaks post. It takes a format I've used for film in general but not yet Twin Peaks itself: digging through my old comments on various forums and threads, where I first attempted to work my way through many different ideas.

Last summer, I actually began archiving comments and discussions that seemed worthwhile in one way or another (a good idea as some of these sites, including IMDb, delete old threads when they become inactive). Looking back I can see that much of the "grunt work," so to speak, for my Journey Through Twin Peaks series was conducted via this format (although there are also a lot of concepts or tangents never pursued in those videos). In May 2014, I had mostly completed the work for my upcoming David Lynch Month series of posts. I knew the blu-ray was coming out soon, including The Missing Pieces (ninety minutes of deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me), and expected that would attract some of my attention but figured this event would be the conclusion of my recently-renewed Twin Peaks obsession, not the initiation of an even deeper phase. But by the time Lynch and Mark Frost announced the series' return on October 2, 2014 (an event that will be included in the next comments round-up, or even the one after that), I was deeper into the world than I'd ever been.

These mostly unedited comments are from different forums (or under different articles, which are linked), and occasionally may overlap although I tried to remove blatant redundancies. They are mostly concerned with the relationship of the series and the film - I began this period by seeing them as essentially different entities, with the film very much a pure subversion of the show, but ended it by realizing their essential links, thanks to The Missing Pieces. This collection concludes shortly after I'd seen the deleted scenes, as I grappled with how they fit into the larger saga. It's worth noting that I was trying out different ideas, exploring different options, and as such I would not necessarily stand by all the conclusions or speculations drawn below. In particular, I had no idea that the series would be returning and so my primary goal was determining the legacy of Twin Peaks as a complete entity.

Needless to say, there are major spoilers.

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. V

If you're looking for further details on the Maya Deren video I just posted on YouTube, here is the blog post mentioned at the end.

Short thoughts on: Fists in the Pocket • Michael Medved • Goodbye, Mr. Chips • Russian Ark • My Night at Maud's • Claire's Knee • Paris Belongs to Us • 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her • Jean-Luc Godard • Europa '51

I've become a broken record on this subject, but I swear that within a few weeks I will have a huge backlog of Monday posts, more than I know what to do with - including a video that relates to the above picture. January is going to be very busy (although the work is mostly done, I'm waiting for other sites to cross-post). Unfortunately at this moment an interview, a guest post, at least four videos, and a podcast appearance are all waiting in the wings rather than in the bag. (That said, I did finally upload the "Cinepoem" video I blogged about back in November.) So I'm turning to one of my old standbys today, the archival of my old IMDb comments, where my online film commentary began. I've done this four times before, each time moving a bit further into the past. Some of these comments are actually almost a decade old, so be advised that they may no longer reflect my opinions (hell, I even left in some of the typos!). In many cases they represent my first engagement with the work in question, as a 23-year-old hungry for as many cinematic experiences as he could devour.

In fact 2006-07 was in many ways a peak viewing period for me; I was falling back into cinephilia after many years of caring more about music than movies. Most of the topics below relate to mid-century European films, particularly French filmmakers like Rohmer, Rivette, and Godard. Some of these films I loved, some I did not, but all of them seemed to me worthy of discussion - and still do. I would like to hear your thoughts as well, if you've seen these films (and if you haven't, I hope this serves as encouragement). Did Fists in the Pocket surprise you? Is Europa '51 too didactic? Does Goodbye Mr. Chips need a stronger narrative throughline? Is Rohmer subtly encouraging us to criticize the protagonist of Claire's Knee? Is Godard an incredibly consistent genius, an emperor with no clothes, or a hit-and-miss experimenter? Let me know what you think, and I'll let you know where I do and don't agree with the old me.

(I originally used a different image, culled from a Wonders in the Dark post several years earlier, but I replaced it with this one in 2017 when I cross-posted that Wonders piece on this site.)

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. IV

Short thoughts on: Love Exposure • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm • Kwaidan • The Honeymoon Killers • Richard Linklater • Les Bonnes Femmes • Running on Empty • Phantom of the Cinematheque • Out 1

My response to Boyhood, The Giver, and the recent spate of "death of adulthood" articles is almost entirely written but won't be ready in time for Monday morning. Hence I'll hold off on it till next week and present some oldies instead. For the fourth time (but the first in two years) I am collecting IMDb comments (mostly) left many moons ago during the era when those boards were my main online cinematic stomping ground. Most notably, my first response to the epic and enigmatic Out 1 is recorded below: I wrote these words in the immediate afterglow of a very memorable screening. Enjoy. (And if you do, make sure to check out the previous round-ups.) Disclaimer: my opinions circa 2007 are not necessarily still mine although I suppose I wouldn't re-post them if I didn't think they had some merit (even if 2014 me disagrees with their premises).

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. III

Short thoughts on: The Honeymoon Killers • Forbidden Games • Tout Va Bien & Masculin Feminin • Moby Dick • Robert Bresson • Yasujiro Ozu and Early Spring • My Dinner with Andre • Stanley Kauffmann • Sweet Movie

As I prepare a batch of fresh posts for the fall (a dozen new reviews are already written, with dozens more on the way), here are some more oldies but goodies. These sporadic notes and musings were originally comments on IMDb. Many of these thoughts led to longer conversations, and you can click on the date to see the original thread. Some of the responses are pretty interesting; in fact under the final fragment, on the extremely controversial Yugoslavian film Sweet Movie, I actually included some samples of the ensuing discussion (most of which I didn't see until now). And if you've viewed the film in question, I'd be really interested in your own opinion on the matter.

(See here for Pt. I and Pt. II of this archival project.)

Fragments of Cinephilia, Pt. II

Short thoughts on: The deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni • The Wild One • The Virgin Spring • The Departed and Infernal Affairs • Bus 174 • Pan's Labyrinth and The Spirit of the Beehive • John Cassevetes and Noah Baumbach • The Stranger • Benito Mussolini's weenie

A year and a half ago, I transferred ten of my old comments from the Internet Movie Database to The Dancing Image, in a post called "Fragments of Cinephilia". This here is the follow-up: ten further memoirs of my pre-blogging days, in this case recycled from the summer of 2007 and including some great quotations from others. The topics range from heady to trivial: we start on a silent Olympus and end with a castrated dictator. Feel free to leave your own musings below - one of the pleasures of my old hunting ground (the IMDb) was the give-and-take, and I'd love to see it continue here. Enjoy.

Discussing The Rules of the Game

This is an entry in "The Big Ones," a series covering 32 classic films for the first time on The Dancing Image. There are spoilers.

About nine years ago, I saw The Rules of the Game for the first time. It left me completely cold. It wasn't that I disliked it per se, it just did nothing for me. A few years later I saw it again, and it still didn't quite click. Frustrated, feeling that I was missing something but unable to get a grip on exactly what it was, I jumped to my keyboard and left a post on IMDb: "Is this film overrated?"

Fast forward two years, when I saw the film again and returned to update my response. In doing so, I noticed that my question had really struck a chord; five or six pages of very thoughtful responses, pro and con, had resulted from that initial inquiry. Tonight I watched the movie again, in preparation for this series. However, rather than write a conventional review of the film, I decided to re-post highlights from that IMDb thread, since such an interesting discussion emerged.

I am also including, as a postscript, a response written freshly for tonight. However, the bulk of the post belongs to my initial and concluding post, and selections from the replies in between. They make for great reading - feel free to leave your own thoughts on the film below. Thanks to all those participants back in the day. Keep in mind these are just a small sampling of a long and at times contentious conversation; I stuck with the meatiest posts here but a lot of the shorter ones had some great insights too.

Fragments of Cinephilia

Short thoughts on: The River • Stranger Than Paradise • L'Avventura • Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer • Howard Hawks • AFI lists • Wilford Brimley's physique

These fragments were originally comments on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) left by yours truly in his pre-blogging days. The jump into blogging was a good move, all things considered, but sometimes I miss the spontaneity and clarity offered by commenting. Since I don't really do capsules or random observations these days, I'd like to revive some of these comments here; they are generally quick and to the point, no padding. These selections (dating from September 2007 to June 2008) are the first 10 I found worth reprinting. Some are general musings, some are focused on a particular film or moment, some are just amusing observations (amusing to me anyway). If you enjoy this sort of thing, let me know and I'll continue from time to time; there's plenty more where these came from. I've already noted that I'd occasionally like to reproduce older writing on this blog - to give myself a break once in a while, if nothing else. Before blogging, IMDb was my movie home, so here's a walk down memory lane. Comments begin after the jump.