funny you should say that.Such wisdom as ' everyday give yourself a present' and a deeper meaningful aspects of our lives as to listen to your inner self more.
At the time, in the UK, a new fashion ( end of 80's) was ' new age ' mysticism and crappy ambient surf sounds and synth tapes, and self-help ' improve your self esteem' books with cod - spiritual ( usually buddhist ) advice. So in the context of watching TP at the time ( 89/90) all that aspect seemed like a comment on the contemporary world at the time as much as it did ' deep and meaningful - and often trod a very careful line between sincerity and taking the piss. It felt sincere, and sarcastic about itself, at the same time. In 1990 that was a new thing for TV - irony. But then postmodernism was fashionable -So it ( TP ) also used that - the yang to new age's yin. You got the brain AND the heart. With great film-making, and a great soundtrack.
Despite having not re-watched it since, apart from the pilot, and ep 29 before this series started, I was definitely a fan at the time - it felt like something genuinely modern and new and set of associations and connections in a way that nothing else on TV did. ( apart maybe from the Fassbinder series Berlin Alexanderplatz, although that is of course a very different kettle of fish). I did try to re-watch it ( TP series 1) ten years ago, but gave in after a couple of episodes, as the soap opera /peyton place teen drama elements felt dated and awkward, and i did not want to destroy my memory of it - in the same way as it is often a bad idea to look out old girlfriends 15 years later. However, as I say, after TP TR finishes, I may have to risk it, prompted by this series...
I re-watched Lost Highway a few weeks ago and it was better than I remembered it. I am not sure i can face a re-watch of Wild at Heart.
Blue velvet. straight story, mulholland drive, eraserhead and elephant man i have seen multiple times and they never date. Lynch is one of a handful of film-makers I have seen everything by - and read alot about, tried to understand and get under the skin. I went to his exhibition in Foundation Cartier and have checked out Club silencio in Paris. So I am not a casual viewer. This series TP TR is way better than I expected. If it was 20% shorter it would be much improved, but them's the rubs. I would like to see a cinema edit, 15 hour, without 90% of the roadhouse bands...
I can totally see why someone who is a mega-fan of series 1 and 2 would be very disappointed as TP TR has gone in a very different direction. In some ways this would have been a better series had it not been billed as Twin Peaks - but then it is setting itself up as the dark evil twin, or doppelganger, of the version 25 years ago - a retread over the same territory through much more jaded and adult eyes. The optimism has gone out the window. But what it does have in common with the first series, for me at least, is that ( despite the occasional total misfires like cockney mockney youtube boy) it feels very modern, in a way that i can quite understand a fan of the first series would hate. You know what they say - nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
[edit] one of the best things about the first series was the cheesy kitsch music, done straight.
one of the most immediately striking things about this series is the sound design being way better than 99/9999% of the rest of TV.
But they are totally different animals. This series is striking in its LACK of soundtrack, and the way real world sounds and diegetic sounds are used so it is often really unclear what it in the reality of the series and what is in the reality of the edit room. The hum in the Great Northern being an obvious example - the explanation is not that there is anyone literally hiding in the wood. It is that the characters in the film can hear the soundtrack. Same as the Monica Belucci dream - the margins between this world and that world are blurred. You might not like Lynch doing this, but that is what he is doing. And then there is that 'other' world....
