Twin Peaks

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whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1201 Post by whaleallright » Sat Sep 15, 2018 4:33 pm

H&M has announced an utterly bewildering, hideously ugly clothing line that they are boasting is "Twin Peaks-inspired."

(that they misspell Donna's last name seems wholly appropriate)

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dadaistnun
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:31 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1202 Post by dadaistnun » Tue Sep 18, 2018 12:21 pm

I was beginning to think this would never see the light of day: the Thought Gang album is finally being released some 25+ years after it was recorded.

Posting this here rather that the Lynch thread since it has numerous connections to Fire Walk with Me (including The Missing Pieces) and The Return.

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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: Twin Peaks

#1203 Post by zedz » Tue Sep 18, 2018 4:56 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Sat Sep 15, 2018 4:33 pm
H&M has announced an utterly bewildering, hideously ugly clothing line that they are boasting is "Twin Peaks-inspired."

(that they misspell Donna's last name seems wholly appropriate)
Way back in the 90s, the only five minutes I ever saw (and ever will) of Beverly Hills 90210 featured a character who was running for class president, or dog catcher, or some meaningless position, fretting that his sister's eccentric dress sense was ruining his election chances. One of his friends cattily called out said sister, saying "Don't you know Hippywitch is so '87?" To which the sister petulantly replied, "It's not Hippywitch, it's Twin Peaks, and it's very IN!" before flouncing off. As I recall, she was dressed like a thrift store Stevie Nicks, with a floppy floral hat, and for the life of me I couldn't imagine which Twin Peaks character she thought dressed like that.

The scene might have worked if the sister was Dawn Davenport. . .

Of course, the moment has been preserved on YouTube.

Peter-H
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Twin Peaks

#1204 Post by Peter-H » Wed Sep 26, 2018 2:41 pm

The interview Lynch did for the French magazine Cashiers Du Cinema is the best interview about the Return that I've seen but I can't find the full translation anymore, but luckily I can find a translation of what I thought was an especially interesting part. In an earlier part of this interview, Lynch talked about the four ages in Hindu religion: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron. Human beings are currently living in "Iron" age, aka Age of Vice, which is a dark period. He says that humans will reach the golden age once we attain enlightenment and then goes on to talk about transcendental meditation and stuff. After he says all this he's asked this question (google translation):

Cahiers: In Twin Peaks, you show the violence, but also how to find the energy to reach the golden age. but you do not show the golden age. One could imagine that the season would end in an apotheosis, a golden age. But no, we end in the night, in front of the Palmer's house, with a scream ...

DL: (Laughter) If we lived in the golden age today, we would be at the end of Twin Peaks ... But we do not live there, we are in front of the Palmer house.

Full interview
Last edited by Peter-H on Wed Sep 26, 2018 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1205 Post by mfunk9786 » Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:16 pm

What a profound thing to say. Anyone who accuses Lynch of throwing things against the wall and not having a profound understanding of his own work is kidding themselves.

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Murdoch
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1206 Post by Murdoch » Thu Oct 04, 2018 10:27 am


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TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1207 Post by TMDaines » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:23 pm

Sorry to say that I found this new series very disappointing. I know many from reading this thread love the emperor's new clothes, but he looks completely naked to me. The entire series feels completely indulgent and the plot borderline amateurish. There's a happy medium between TV shows being overwritten by committee and being the work of a single mind, and this is so far in one extreme. There's real inspired moments and sequences, but they are just loss in a sea of excess and waffle. I'd genuinely love to know if the cast and contributors to the show thought this was a coherent, interesting work, or just a muddled mess? A load of nonsense that would always likely find a sufficient audience given the clamour for the return of the show. Episode 8 was a work of genius. The rest, I am not at all convinced.

I don't get it. I didn't get it. Clearly there's a lot of people who think otherwise, but I can't get on board. Sixteen fucking episodes to get Cooper back.

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whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1208 Post by whaleallright » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:26 pm

what did you make of Inland Empire? I think it's worthwhile to think of The Return (or whatever it's being called now) along these lines—with scenes elaborating moods and riffs, visual motifs, places and things, rather than adding up to a conventionally diagrammable plot. the difference being that Twin Peaks season 3 consistently—through the penultimate episode—raises expectations of narrative closure and then, ultimately, dashes them, or satisfies them in such a desultory way as to make the whole thing seem like a nasty joke. I do think "amateurish" is not a bad word to describe this, though I think that could be valenced in different ways. (remember Charles Laughton's response to Hitchcock calling him an "amateur.")

I'm not certain how this all came about, if it was all deviously designed from the start—unlikely—or if it's the utterly singular result of Mark Frost's overelaborate (and often deeply corny) plotting getting strangled by Lynch's emphasis on the internal dynamics of a scene or a performance at the expense of the sort of intricate balance of resolving mysteries and raising new ones that most "quality TV" performs. Or maybe even trying to parse this between Frost and Lynch's contributions is a fruitless exercise (even though their solo work is so far apart as to make it very tempting).

I came away from it with a very good feeling, but I'd be lying if I denied that much of my experience of watching the third season was one of frustration.

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Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

Re: Twin Peaks

#1209 Post by Persona » Thu Feb 28, 2019 6:21 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:23 pm
I don't get it. I didn't get it. Clearly there's a lot of people who think otherwise, but I can't get on board. Sixteen fucking episodes to get Cooper back.
It certainly helped that I enjoyed the Dougie stuff as Lynch's almost Tati-esque tragicomic take on extreme PTSD, but I'll also just say that the very delayed gratification gave, at long last, "The Return" of Coop an effect unlike anything I've experienced before in entertainment. A really indescribable, divine feeling when that moment hits and then they are all in the office together.

Plus, I mean, episode 8 and the finale are quite simply two of the finest hours of television ever created.

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swo17
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1210 Post by swo17 » Thu Feb 28, 2019 6:29 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:23 pm
There's real inspired moments and sequences, but they are just loss in a sea of excess and waffle.
I don't think anyone would argue differently, it's just a matter of how much each viewer weighs both sides of the show

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tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1211 Post by tenia » Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:13 pm

This is indeed how the response to discussions around the new season has been. I found like TMDaines that the show was dragging too much in a way that was less balanced than S1 (and possibly even S2). I even tend to think maybe it would have been better for Lynch not to get the extra 8 episodes. Sure, Twin Peaks has always been about tons of peripherical quite pointless elements and characters, plus the dilatation of time, but in this new season, I felt it was just too much, to the point even its highlights felt buried in there. Others often argued these added elements always were actually actively creating an atmosphere that worked for them. To each its own, I guess.

I'm also not that fond of the notorious episode 8. For all its typical Lynchian dreamesque quality, I'm not that interested in the contextualisation it offers of the TP universe. There probably are better comparisons, but it felt like with Rob Zombie's Michael Myers' background : it was better without one.

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TMDaines
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1212 Post by TMDaines » Fri Mar 01, 2019 6:20 am

Episode 8 I almost just enjoyed as a very creative, abstract work, which offered sheer relief from the almost banality of the ongoing plot. It felt very inspired, very ambitious, very different. At the end of this episode, I couldn't wait to watch more and felt anticipation that the show was about to begin proper. Nope.

I read nearly this entire thread before posting last night and it was interesting to see a lot of people being generous towards the quality of the show, urging patience. Even I watching the series wanted to keep going, because I thought it would ultimately do something, but it didn't until episode 16! I hated episode 18 too though unlike some.

Just because something is surreal or absurd, it doesn't mean it should escape criticism, and I'm surprised more people didn't come down hard on this one. 16 hours 25 minutes: i can only feel what a waste of opportunity and resource in response.

Anyway, I'm sincerely glad others got a whole lot more out of it, but I needed some catharsis after persevering, and being both underwhelmed and frustrated. If anyone has got some recommended, well written analysis of the series, I'd be interested to read it.

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Slaphappy
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1213 Post by Slaphappy » Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:44 am

I just watched Death and Compass by Alex Cox. It’s based on story by Jorge Luis Borges and was made one year after original Twin Peaks had ended. It made me think, that there’s a parallel between agent Cooper and Borges’ inspector Lönnrot. Both inspect murder cases using very unorthodox and esoteric methods. Both run into
SpoilerShow
scheem by a villain with personal beef who’s leaving clues
and both investigations have a metaphysical climax. Borges and Lynch have a ton of other themes in common too.
Last edited by Slaphappy on Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1214 Post by dda1996a » Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:20 am

And I'm guessing Borges left a big influence on Lynch as he did on Cammel and Roeg and countless others

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Slaphappy
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:08 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1215 Post by Slaphappy » Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:31 am

^True.

Hah, I almost missed the most obvious thing: In Death and Compass each murder is about a letter of Hebrew aplhabet which should in the end spell the secret name of God and naturally in Twin Peaks there were letters left behind in the murder spree.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1216 Post by dda1996a » Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:09 am

And to be honest I'm not sure Borges is the first one to do so, seeing how he cribs a lot of his inspirations from other writings (not a criticism, he's probably my favorite writer of all time)

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Slaphappy
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:08 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1217 Post by Slaphappy » Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:24 am

Yeah, I think Lynch and Borges have a ton of mutual inspirations. Both have used ”life is a dream, but who is the dreamer?” -theme for example and that’s of oriental origin.

MongooseCmr
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1218 Post by MongooseCmr » Fri Mar 01, 2019 12:05 pm

TMDaines wrote:
Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:23 pm
There's a happy medium between TV shows being overwritten by committee and being the work of a single mind, and this is so far in one extreme.
This is what makes me love the show even if I wasn't already fully onboard with what Lynch is doing. I've almost entirely written off prestige tv for writing to runtimes instead of using the extra hours for anything worthwhile, and seeing Lynch take any detour he wants over 18 hours is electrifying. Not all of it works, the stretch between episode 11 when Dougie's story kind of ends and 16 when Cooper returns in particular was a little rough, and I'm not happy with the execution of a pivotal scene in 17, but I was never bored. This all goes around to the debate about writing tv by the episode or by the bingeable season, but I haven't seen any long form drama since that respects the viewers time commitment as much as this. For 18 weeks I was always given something worth seeing. Other shows ask as much in a few sittings and give infinitely less.

Robin Davies
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:00 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1219 Post by Robin Davies » Fri Mar 01, 2019 3:18 pm

I thought Season 3 of Twin Peaks was an absolute triumph and easily the best TV series I've seen since The Prisoner - and that dates from 1967!
Like any full-strength Lynch joint it was always going to be divisive (Check out "The Profoundly Disappointed Support Thread" on the dugpa forum) but for me it delivered the rich atmosphere and intoxicating strangeness that the first two seasons achieved only intermittently.

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Finch
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1220 Post by Finch » Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:27 pm

Season Three has weak points but it's far and above the dreck that makes most of the second season absolutely unwatchable. I liked that it challenged me and others to question what they wanted and expected from it, and it kept surprising us consistently. Can't say that of many other shows or films. Lynch and Frost were true to themselves and that artistic honesty alone makes Season Three better than the second. I can honestly say that even at its worst (Parts 1, 4, 9, 12, first half of 17), Season 3 still had something of interest whereas I always skip from Episode 14 to Episode 29 during Season 2 (though I like Stephen Gyllenhall's direction of Episode 27). Four and a half merely okay parts against 14 absolute stinkers in Season 2 and two merely okay episodes in Season 1: I think Season 3 is doing not too badly, and it has the best all-round hour in Part 8 and the best cliffhanger of all three seasons.

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whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Twin Peaks

#1221 Post by whaleallright » Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:17 pm

Re. Borges, I can't recall many times Lynch has mentioned literature or specific writers as inspirations. can folks cite some examples? he obviously connected to Barrry Gifford, and maybe that suggests he's attuned to genre literature. or maybe not. but to my knowledge, to the extent that Lynch has acknowledged or cited influences, they tend to be from the art world (Francis Bacon, etc.) and cinema.

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Hopscotch
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1222 Post by Hopscotch » Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:28 pm

whaleallright wrote:
Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:17 pm
Re. Borges, I can't recall many times Lynch has mentioned literature or specific writers as inspirations. can folks cite some examples? he obviously connected to Barrry Gifford, and maybe that suggests he's attuned to genre literature. or maybe not. but to my knowledge, to the extent that Lynch has acknowledged or cited influences, they tend to be from the art world (Francis Bacon, etc.) and cinema.
Well, Gordon Cole has a large portrait of Kafka hanging in his FBI office.

Peter-H
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 5:02 pm

Re: Twin Peaks

#1223 Post by Peter-H » Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:47 pm

I think Film Crit Hulk's analysis of The Return is my favorite interpretation so far.
whaleallright wrote:
Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:17 pm
Re. Borges, I can't recall many times Lynch has mentioned literature or specific writers as inspirations. can folks cite some examples? he obviously connected to Barrry Gifford, and maybe that suggests he's attuned to genre literature. or maybe not. but to my knowledge, to the extent that Lynch has acknowledged or cited influences, they tend to be from the art world (Francis Bacon, etc.) and cinema.
Lynch once said “The one artist that I feel could be my brother is Franz Kafka."

Drawingoflamporstick
Joined: Wed Sep 07, 2011 4:16 pm

Re: Twin Peaks

#1224 Post by Drawingoflamporstick » Sat Mar 02, 2019 7:58 pm

"The one artist that I feel could be my brother - and I almost don't like saying it because the reaction is always, 'Yeah, you and everybody else' - is Franz Kafka. I really dig him a lot. Some of his things are the most thrilling combos of words I have ever read."

If the the Bible and the Upanishads count as literature then there's that too.

There's a drawing he did based off of Gogol's The Nose.
Image

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solaris72
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Re: Twin Peaks

#1225 Post by solaris72 » Sat Mar 02, 2019 10:31 pm

Somewhere I remember reading an interview where he was discussing the failure of Dune and talked about how as science fiction goes he prefers Philip K. Dick's smaller scale stories.

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