The Prisoner - "Once Upon a Time"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

I knew a couple things going in. One, I knew this was by general agreement the penultimate episode. Two, I knew...well, I knew Two - specifically that Leo McKern would return to play him. First the episode order. No listing I've seen has placed this anywhere else (although its shooting order and production code - whatever that is - were sixth and thirteenth according to Wikipedia). So clearly something important was going to happen in "Once Upon a Time." And indeed, at the end of the episode Number Six asks be taken to see Number One and apparently gets his wish. That would be pretty hard to slot elsewhere in the lineup, especially if the finale does indeed begin with Six meeting One. As for Number Two, while I knew about McKern's casting I wasn't sure how it would be handled onscreen. To my mild surprise, it was fully acknowledged. "I know you," Six remarks on hearing Two's voice, and to both his superiors (over the phone) and to Six, Two says, "I've been here before." This in itself is an anomaly; every episode is usually careful not to reference the events of others (although the earlier repeat Two appearance edges pretty close to this line). While both of these facts are small, they - especially the first - affected my attitude going in. I wonder if I would have experienced "Once Upon a Time" as something more routine had its placement been more random, or if I would have sensed something afoot right away. In other words, was the episode's unique quality in my own head or inherent in the material? I'm not sure, and that uncertainty is indicative of the episode as a whole. This is a thoroughly strange fifty minutes, fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. It's pretty brilliant, and I'm not sure I liked it. The episode crawls inside your head and insinuates itself in your consciousness, appropriately for a show about brainwashing.

The Colors of Daisies (video for Fandor Keyframe)

Near the end of March, I was finally able to create something I've been anticipating forever: a video essay on one of my favorite films, the anarchic Czechoslovakian masterpiece Daisies, by Vera Chytilova. If you've been following this blog for a while you probably know my affection for this movie. I have written a full-length review for my "Sunday Matinee" series, included it on my Favorites list (with the accompanying capsule entry coming up in a few months), devoted a visual tribute to its smorgasboard (with bonus images in the mix here), recommended it as part of my Hulu round-up, featured a clip in my "32 Days of Movies" series, and awarded it best editing and runner-up for best picture of '66 in my "alternate Oscars". In fact, Daisies marked my first semi-popular post on this blog back in 2008, when I proposed a set of double features (I paired Daisies with Pandora's Box) and topped the entry with a picture of one of the Marie's floating heads - which has since become my YouTube icon. Aside from Fire Walk With Me and Fists in the Pocket, Daisies is the most-featured title on this site. So yeah, I love this film!

Nonetheless I had no idea what approach I wanted to take for my video beforehand, and the whole thing came together very quickly. Seeking an organizing principle, I was reminded how dazzling and varied the color palette of this movie is. Looking for music to cut to, I randomly stumbled across Bow Wow Wow's "C30, C60, C90," which I didn't even realize I had on my computer. The cheerfully defiant pro-piracy lyrics and persona of singer Annabella Lwin were a perfect match for Chytilova's images. This is probably my shortest video (just about a minute) but it packs a lot in and bears re-watching. I'm pleased to see that by the time it was promoted a few weeks ago (Fandor had to wait in respect to the other filmmakers they were honoring each day of the month), it had already racked up a decent audience and received notice on Indiewire and FilmStage. If you haven't seen the film yet, please let this be your gateway.

Here is the description I wrote for Fandor Keyframe:

"When I saw Daisies for the first time, about a decade ago, I had never heard of the film, nor its director Vera Chytilova. So I entered blind, and received a dazzling, unexpected vision as my reward. There were so many things to adore about Daisies: the sociopathic charisma of its two heroines (helpfully dubbed Marie I and Marie II); the casual free association of the montage, leaping across time and space; the propulsive drive of the film, which carries the viewer through a virtually narrative-less 72 minutes on the sheer energy of its imagination. But if anything epitomizes Chytilova's fearless trapeze act, it's her use of color. Every shade in the spectrum appears in short succession, not only through props and costumes but via monochromatic filters that drench the whole screen in red, or blue, or purple.

After the movie was over, I felt as if I was drunk on color, so it's not surprising that my first video tribute to Daisies focuses on that element. "The Color of Daisies" is a quick, whimsical take on the kaleidoscopic texture of the film, organizing the shots by dominant color from lush green (perhaps the movie's most striking hue) back around the wheel to cool turquoise. It is scored by a pop song as energetic and playfully disruptive as the movie itself and the whole thing lasts only a minute, channeling the film's own sense of anarchic brevity. If you've yet to experience the movie yourself, hopefully this will encourage you, and if you have, the video can serve of a reminder of how masterfully Chytilova utilizes her palette moment-to-moment.

Like many Czechoslovakian films of its period, Daisies was immersed in controversy, a relic of the brief New Wave that climaxed with the Prague Spring in '68 and was crushed by Soviet tanks soon after. Daisies, however, was censored even before the crackdown (humorously, the only official charge the authorities lodged against it was that it wasted food, certainly an accurate accusation). Not only stodgy bureaucrats objected to the film - Jean-Luc Godard grumbled that it was "apolitical and cartoonish." That isn't fair (at least the first part; the film IS proudly cartoonish) but the film's rebellious ferocity is a matter of visceral sensation rather than cerebral contemplation. Fifty years old this year, Daisies remains iconic because its spirit is so deeply embedded in its style. Even a glimpse at its wonders assures us that Chytilova was a master."

Vera Chytilova, director of DAISIES & Annabella Lwin, lead singer of Bow Wow Wow

Images from the full spectrum follow the jump.

A Year of Video Essays from Lost in the Movies

A complete line-up of all my video work from the past twelve months

A few days from now marks the first anniversary of my involvement with Fandor Keyframe as a freelance video essayist, and with it the opening of a sustained period of video-making for me. I began work on "Manufacturing Dreams," my first Fandor submission, on April 2, 2015, and last week I completed work on my most recent submission, which will make its official debut in three days. At first my pace was about one video a month, maybe even a little less (although I did revamp and upload my entire "32 Days of Movies" clip series to Vimeo around this time). But by late summer I had picked up the pace, supplementing my Fandor videos with (roughly) biweekly entries on my YouTube and Vimeo channels. I was also invited to participate in the Out 1 video project, offering my first opportunity for video essay collaboration. Meanwhile the audience for my "Journey Through Twin Peaks" videos was growing throughout this same period, making it truly the year of the video essay.

Seeing the Big Picture: Twin Peaks comment collection #2 (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.

Due to a variety of circumstances, primarily the loss of my computer monitor for a week, the next Favorites entry - on Barry Lyndon - will not go up on Friday for the only time during this series. Instead it will appear this coming Thursday, a day before the regularly-scheduled following entry.

When we left off last time, it was the summer of 2014 and I had just seen the deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me. Unexpectedly, they had a big impact on how I viewed all of Twin Peaks, leading me to see it as a messy but complete whole for the first time. In the following comments, left on a variety of forums of under several different articles, the impression is of a blurry view slowly swimming into focus. I am beginning to envision everything - the series, the spin-off books, the film, the deleted scenes, even the Log Lady introductions - as contributions to some greater saga. In August 2014, after several weeks of owning the blu-ray set, I was finally able to find several days to marathon the entire series, film, and even books, scribbling notes as I watched and read (a plan I suggested in the very first comment here, before quickly laughing it off as unlikely). This experience would form the nucleus of what eventually become my video series Journey Through Twin Peaks but was initially conceived as a book-length prose piece.

I assumed that I would write this massive all-encompassing essay slowly, maybe an hour each day over many months and that - aside from this exercise - I would finally take a step back from Twin Peaks to focus on other matters. Boy, was I wrong. Several weeks after declaring the conclusion of my Twin Peaks obsession, I was posting more feverishly than ever before.

Welcome to Dead Dog Farm: discussing Twin Peaks episodes 17 - 23 with Twin Peaks Unwrapped

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.

UPDATE: This YouTube upload, added two years later, has replaced the now-defunct embed featured originally...

By now, thanks to the generous invitations of hosts Bryon Kozaczka and Ben Durant, I've become something of a regular guest on the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast. Previously I've made two brief appearances on the show (for about 10 minutes) - to discuss Mulholland Dr and "Twin Peaks Day" - and two longer co-host spots - to discuss the first season and then the killer's reveal. My appearances seem to follow a certain pattern: every eight or nine episodes, I return to cover a specific epoch in the series (and it does break down into some pretty specific units).

This time I'm on to discuss one of the more underwhelming sections of the show, episodes 17-23 in which the Laura mystery is over and the characters (and writers) stumble around looking for something to do. Nonetheless, this was one of our liveliest conversations, with Bryon sticking up for the maligned Diane Keaton episode, my own out-there theory about why Laura's portrait does or doesn't appear in the end credits of a given episode, and plenty of musings on all of our parts about that baffling "drawer pull."

We also have fun at the end of the recording, when I ask Bryon to speculate about the rest of the season and the film. Right now he knows very little, especially about the movie's subject or approach so it's fascinating to hear his thoughts. You can only watch Twin Peaks for the first time once, which is one reason Twin Peaks Unwrapped makes for such a great listen. At least two more appearances are scheduled.

In a couple weeks I will talk about the end of the show and the development of its mythology (Ben and Bryon are recording way ahead of time right now, so this interview won't go up until June). Eventually I'll be returning for the conversation I'm most excited about: one of at least four episodes devoted to Fire Walk With Me (the hosts will be bringing on a different co-host for each episode, to tackle a different aspect of the movie). We'll be focused on the film's ending. In the mean time, they have plenty of episode coverage to come, and some really great interviews in the offing so stay tuned.

The Prisoner - "The Girl Who Was Death"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

Well, this one was a whole lot of fun. I was initially nervous - the first thing I ever heard was, "I don't envy you having to watch 'The Girl Who Was Death.'" Then I was excited, because the next thing I heard was, "This is one of my favorite episodes of television ever." Whether or not the episode would be good or bad, I knew it would definitely be interesting. In that sense, it didn't disappoint although I completely understand why people would be turned off. It's ridiculous, silly, and flamboyantly irrelevant to the overall series, taking the challenge of creating a filler episode as an excuse to completely cut loose. There are Indiana Jones-esque booby traps, absurd disguises that would make Windom Earle blush, about a dozen and a half "villain gives hero opportunity to escape" tropes, and a goofy, gleefully dated uber-sixties style with lots of zooms and quick cuts and zany camera tricks. The whole episode takes place not only outside of the Village but without the slightest reference to it (until the end). As if to further thumb its nose at an audience irritated with this diversion, it frames the entire story as a tall tale "read" to children into a nursery. Like "Living in Harmony," "The Girl Who Was Death" flirts with creating an episode that exists in isolation from the rest of the series only to eventually contextualize it as a spin-off of the main thread (using those cute page flips interspersed throughout to tip its hand). We discover that characters we met within the story are actually authorities in the Village, as the old Wizard of Oz "and you were there, and you were there..." trick retains its charm. I can't call this my favorite episode of The Prisoner (let alone of television) nor can I dismiss it as the worst of the show or deny its delightfulness. Will it hold up on further viewings? Maybe, maybe not, but my first experience with it went well.

The 3 1/2 Minute Review of The Dark Crystal

Continuing the fantasy/sci-fi trend of the previous "3 1/2 Minute Reviews" (the next one will culminate this approach before looking elsewhere), I cover The Dark Crystal, focusing on its ambivalent status as children's entertainment, my own diverse responses on different viewings, and the film's odd genre status. If you've never seen or even heard of this ghoulish fairy tale, a dazzling display of puppetry and animatronics, I encourage you to watch the video and check out the film (there are vague spoilers, I guess, but the outcome of this fable isn't really supposed to be a big surprise and I don't discuss the plot much at all). I also wrote a review of The Dark Crystal in 2012.

Vimeo upload & an additional note after the jump.

The Medium & The Message: 7 Forms of Filmmaking in Lynne Sachs' STATES OF UNBELONGING (video from Fandor Keyframe)

This month on Fandor Keyframe, a different female filmmaker is being celebrated each day. I'm happy to contribute with an entry on Lynne Sachs, an experimental and documentary filmmaker whose work I recently discovered through Fandor where she was honored on March 19. This video essay was created for the occasion, as a tribute to her moving essay film States of UnBelonging (which can be watched here).

Description & images follow the jump.

The Favorites - 42nd Street (#63)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. 42nd Street (1933/USA/dir. Lloyd Bacon, chor. Busby Berkeley) appeared at #63 on my original list.

What it is • There's a show going up, but it's no big deal. Just another Broadway spectacular, and anyway, tonight's the Philadelphia opening not the big New York premiere. Besides, the big star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) has fractured her ankle and some ingenue named Peggy (Ruby Keeler) is going on in her place, a kid who has no previous experience and is guaranteed to flop. At best, it will be a good night's entertainment - who cares? Well, just about everyone. Everyone involved with the show anyway, which means several hundred people from the chorus girls who are one dance step away from sleeping on a park bench to the pathetic producers who want to play sugar daddy for queens of the stage to the not-even-understudy-turned-star whose life is about to change to the strained, exhausted, but dedicated director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) whose life is maybe about to end (when we meet him, he's receiving a call from his doctor, warning him that if he proceeds with this new production he very well may have a heart attack and drop dead). Even when the show, against all odds, turns out to be a rousing success, Marsh hovers near the exit and listens to the audience members dismiss his accomplishment, claiming that Peggy - whom Marsh tirelessly trained at the last minute - deserves all the credit. He doesn't get mad or frustrated or depressed, he just sighs and chuckles to himself and sits down on the fire exit, unable to move after tossing his body and soul into the raging fire of this performance. If there's any film that better demonstrates the blood, sweat, tears and perverse sense of satisfaction that go into creative endeavors, I don't know of it. Beyond just demonstrating all of the hard work, 42nd Street mythologizes the result: the climax of the film is choreographed by Busby Berkeley to resemble nothing that could ever actually be accomplished on a theater stage (and even if it could, you'd lose the thrill of what we see, reliant as it is on cutting, angle, and camera movement). Instead, it's the fever dream of what these desperate adventures look like in the imaginations of those who envision and enact them. This is pure cinema, but it's a tribute to all forms of artistic accomplishment or, in the parlance of the unpretentious characters of this movie, show biz.

Why I like it •

The Prisoner - "Hammer into Anvil"

Welcome to my viewing diary for The Prisoner. Every Wednesday I will review another episode. This is my first watch-through of the 1967 British cult TV show so there will be NO spoilers for upcoming episodes. But I will be watching the series in this order so if you are watching along with me, keep that in mind.

After a ridiculously elaborate set-up last week, we're back to simplicity with "Hammer into Anvil." In fact, this is one of the cleanest, most straightforward scenarios of any Prisoner episode, a battle of wills and wits. In one corner is Number Six, of course, and in the other is Number Two (Patrick Cargill), who has never seemed more sniveling yet sinister. I thought Cargill looked familiar - presumably as the heavy in some British film from the sixties or seventies - but scrolling through his Wikipedia page I didn't recognize any of his other roles...at first. As it turns out, he was already in The Prisoner! Apparently he was "a colleague from Number Six's pre-Village days" in "Many Happy Returns." I checked up and sure enough, that's him although oddly enough he looks somewhat older and more sedate (if still with a touch of the saucy sneer). I don't suppose these are intended as the same characters although given The Prisoner's playful ambiguity, who knows ("Many Happy Returns" also features another repeat actor, the woman who plays Number Two - so in both cases repeat guests are cast as Two). In Six's eyes, Two may not be familiar, but he is fleeting, wryly observing Two's discomfort with his own superiors, and noting that other Twos have tried - and failed - to break him. This is an episode that both benefits and suffers from a late placement in the viewing order. On the one hand, we've seen so many Number Twos come and go that the fragility of his position comes as no surprise. On the other hand...we've seen so many Number Twos come and go that this very lack of surprise hinders the drama. For that reason, and because of how Two is scripted, the confrontation doesn't seem evenly matched.

Dinosaurs, Sharks, and Aliens: a visual tribute

images from Steven Spielberg's first four creature features

The Favorites - The Best Years of Our Lives (#64)

The Favorites is a series briefly exploring films I love, to find out what makes them - and me - tick. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946/USA/dir. William Wyler) appeared at #64 on my original list.

What it is • The war is over...the big one, the one that galvanized the country and affected every life, at home or abroad. Of course it didn't have the same effect across the board. Some, like soldier Al Stephenson (Fredric March), sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), and airman Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), experienced the battlefield for themselves and are returning with wounds psychic (in Fred's case) or physical (in Homer's - he is played by a real-life double amputee). Others, like Al's wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), experienced its shocks more indirectly, through the absence of their loved ones and more subtle social and economic changes on the homefront. And still others, like Al's banker boss Mr. Milton (Ray Collins) or the right-wing isolationist who gets in a fight with two of the veterans at a soda fountain, barely seem to have been affected by it at all except as an abstraction or an imposition. This diversity of experience is one of the brilliant qualities of The Best Years of Our Lives, which centers around the three veterans (attempting) to adjust to their old lives, only to discover that those lives don't exist anymore. It doesn't simply offer one prepackaged notion of how the war impacted America and the individuals in this story; it explores many different points of impact with rapt fascination. In telling this story, William Wyler's attention to detail and Gregg Toland's astonishing deep-focus camerawork create a world so textured that after nearly three hours we feel as if we live there ourselves.

Why I like it •