Showing posts with label sam wood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sam wood. Show all posts
Our Town as TWIN PEAKS CINEMA #10 (podcast)
Kings Row as TWIN PEAKS CINEMA #9 (podcast)
With the new year comes a new themed miniseries for my Twin Peaks Cinema podcast: "Small Town Blues" (the last series, "What's in a name?" explored Laura, Vertigo, and Sunset Boulevard as seminal influences on Peaks). One of the most fascinating things about the work of David Lynch and Mark Frost is their world creation, the way they explore the social fabric of a complex community. "The bucolic small town with a dark, seamy underside" has been a particular American mainstay for generations, with Lynch's own Blue Velvet preceding Peaks for several years, itself drawing upon melodramatic tropes of fifties cinema. One of the best examples of this "genre" (if we can call it that) may not have had any direct impact on Peaks at all - I don't think Lynch or Frost ever referenced it - but it certainly feels like a kindred spirit. Kings Row explores the old-fashioned charm of nineteenth century life alongside a fascination with (explicit) Freudianism. Its characters cavort in sunny fields and lurk in delipidated old houses; they travel as far afield as Vienna and also venture across the wrong side of the tracks for romance - a shabby, more urban-feeling neighborhood that in some ways feels even further from their home than Europe. Like Twin Peaks, Kings Row contains worlds. Thematically, the connections are quite striking, especially when it comes to Cassandra Tower (Betty Field), a troubled young woman whose aura of mystery and repressed secrets torment the protagonist (Robert Cummings) as he comes of age. Of course Kings Row's lasting legacy was that it provided Ronald Reagan's most acclaimed role and the notorious line that he borrowed to title his memoir (before launching a political career dead set on denying the dark undercurrents that Kings Row unearths beneath America's optimistic topsoil). "Where's the rest of me?"
belated February 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #25 - Season 2 Episode 17 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #76 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Kings Row / Political Reflections: Pandemic, Protest, Election, Insurrection & The Future (+ Us, Brideshead Revisited, documentaries on the Roosevelts, Reagan, and Lee Atwater, podcast recommendations, listener feedback, Twin Peaks Reflections: Nicky, Dougie, Hide-Out Wallie's, Timber Falls Motel, Milford family/The Secret History & more)
I promised this one - or rather, these ones - a long time ago, but kept postponing. The bonus sections, featuring film capsules, podcast recommendations, political reflections, and listener feedback, were originally planned for the summer but work on Journey Through Twin Peaks videos pushed them back to February (same with my "Twin Peaks Cinema" coverage of the dark small town melodrama Kings Row, starring Ronald Reagan, which I wanted to discuss in conjunction with a documentary on the fortieth president). Then, for complicated reasons, I found myself working on several projects simultaneously while also traveling for the first time since the pandemic began (as well as getting sucked into the drama surrounding the stimulus vote in Congress) - so the "February" podcasts ended up getting published in March.
Hopefully, the material was worth the wait. Kings Row was a particularly fascinating work to dig into between its social drama, psychological motifs, and dark family dynamics; it makes an interesting comparison point not just to Peaks but to other films discussed as "Twin Peaks Cinema" like Peyton Place and Our Town. Only after recording was I reminded that the same director, Sam Wood, helmed both Our Town and Kings Row - so perhaps I'll have more to say on those films from that angle in the future. At one point, I also hoped to offer full "film in focus" reviews on the 2019 horror film Us, Jordan Peele's clever, twisty follow-up to Get Out (which I reviewed a couple years ago), and Brideshead Revisited, the definitive arthouse-TV literary adaptation. Although I ended up shaving them down to extended capsules, I will definitely be revisiting both titles in other mediums.
Elsewhere, listener feedback ranged across numerous aspects of Twin Peaks (from the zeitgeist of its different eras to the collaboration between Lynch and Frost to its impact on multiple video games). Podcast recommendations on historical, cinematic, and political subjects were divided into four mini-episodes with all the accompanying links in the show notes. And my political reflections ended up standing on their own as a ninety-minute episode...unsurprisingly, given that 2020 was arguably the most historically significant year in America since 1968 even if just for the pandemic (which takes up less than ten minutes, although it hovers in the background of everything else).
That's just a small sample of what's in these podcasts; I even had to excise and save more than half the film capsules and the Journey Through Twin Peaks feedback for upcoming episodes. I did get up my belated Lost in Twin Peaks coverage of the comeback (?) episode where the late second season really begins, which was also meant to publish in February. My "March" rewards will be a little late too, but only by days in this case. So stay tuned. Meanwhile, here are links to all the podcasts, followed by a detailed rundown of the content for each one....
Podcast Line-Ups for...
Remembering the Movies, Dec. 24 - 30
Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past
Despite the holiday season, there is not much Yuletide spirit on display this week - only drug lords, gangsters, and mad scientists, as well as a dumb blonde and brunette Ginger. As with last week, we must reach back 100 years ago to find something Christmas-themed (also as with last week, there's no capsule by me; I'm hoping to be able to resume the full-fledged approach in the new year). If you're looking for something in the spirit of the season, check out yesterday's visual tribute to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Otherwise, follow the Ghost of Christmas Past through the jump...
Remembering the Movies, Oct. 29 - Nov. 4
Welcome to Halloween weekend, when masked men, manmade monsters, and ghosts (friendly or very much otherwise) wander those darkened streets - and darkened movie theaters. Most of the films here could be tied at least loosely to the holiday, even though only the silent horror picture is an outright creature feature. Yet we also have a traumatized visionary haunted by supernatural hallucinations, a junk yard filled with the despairing outcasts of civilization, and a memorable thriller villainess who terrorizes the family she works for. With a little stretching, even the Jimmy Stewart comedy could fall into the "trick or treat" category (his winning lottery ticket begins as a treat, and turns into a trick). By the way, if you're thirsty after pigging out on M&Ms and tootsie rolls, why not wash that candy down with an Italian soft drink (and then just try to get that jingle out of your head!). Enter if you dare...
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