One year later - how are we feeling?

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Audrey Horne
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Audrey Horne »

Just by citing His Girl Friday, you’re okay in my book, or script.
God, I love this music. Isn't it too dreamy?
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N. Needleman
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

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I love Peyton's work on Channel Zero.

I think his thoughts on Season 3 have been nuanced and mostly positive. I do at times miss his voice in the show. I thought it was integral to the original series. That said, I was also very happy with S3 and with it being a considerably different animal. It was not structured or delivered the same way. When dialogue scenes did happen I felt they were largely on brand/voice with the original - especially the Horne brothers. "Wings up!"
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
Robin Davies
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Robin Davies »

N. Needleman wrote:When dialogue scenes did happen I felt they were largely on brand/voice with the original - especially the Horne brothers. "Wings up!"
I thought it was "Wheels up!"
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N. Needleman
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by N. Needleman »

You're absolutely right. My mistake!
AnotherBlueRoseCase wrote:The Return is clearly guaranteed a future audience among stoners and other drug users.
IcedOver
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by IcedOver »

As far Lynch's dialogue ability, even though people keep saying he is mistrustful of words, the dialogue of "BV" is absolutely brilliant. It's his most quotable work, and not just the oft-referenced Frank stuff. Jeffrey and Sandy have some wonderful exchanges, and Jeffrey and Dorothy. The "detective/pervert" moment is classic. "WaH" has some great stuff that wasn't in the book. After that it seems his dialogue became more stilted and spare, and I can't say too much good about the dialogue of "MD" (as I feel it is his worst movie) except for perhaps the audition scene.

As far as how I'm feeling almost a year after the show closed, it's hard to say since I haven't even rewatched the final two, much less done a full rewatch. I occasionally look at scenes and find that, even though my feelings fluctuate on many aspects, the one where they have remained constant is on the cinematography. I can't stand it and feel that the show was immeasurably damaged by the decision to go not just digital but such a clear, hi-def digital. Even the B&W of Part 8 doesn't look that great, far too clear and crisp. If they had shot on film (I know, unlikely for budget reasons) or just taken a different tack with their choices, the show would have been helped. Stuff is too bright; it needed degraded, shot with a camcorder.
I DON'T FEEL GOOD!!!!!
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mtwentz
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by mtwentz »

IcedOver wrote:As far Lynch's dialogue ability, even though people keep saying he is mistrustful of words, the dialogue of "BV" is absolutely brilliant. It's his most quotable work, and not just the oft-referenced Frank stuff. Jeffrey and Sandy have some wonderful exchanges, and Jeffrey and Dorothy. The "detective/pervert" moment is classic. "WaH" has some great stuff that wasn't in the book. After that it seems his dialogue became more stilted and spare, and I can't say too much good about the dialogue of "MD" (as I feel it is his worst movie) except for perhaps the audition scene.

As far as how I'm feeling almost a year after the show closed, it's hard to say since I haven't even rewatched the final two, much less done a full rewatch. I occasionally look at scenes and find that, even though my feelings fluctuate on many aspects, the one where they have remained constant is on the cinematography. I can't stand it and feel that the show was immeasurably damaged by the decision to go not just digital but such a clear, hi-def digital. Even the B&W of Part 8 doesn't look that great, far too clear and crisp. If they had shot on film (I know, unlikely for budget reasons) or just taken a different tack with their choices, the show would have been helped. Stuff is too bright; it needed degraded, shot with a camcorder.
Did you watch it in Blu Ray?
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Brad D
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Brad D »

I came into season three with a certain expectation. I expected something different, something in style close to TMP. I also expected an impactful story, mainly from what Mark Frost promised in one of the first interviews about The Return announcement. I was also expecting absolute brilliance, and nothing less. With total creative control and years writing the script, there was no excuse for anything otherwise from L&F.

The first four hours were promising, mystifying. Part 3 remains so, and is likely my favorite hour of them all. But the weeks piled up, going everywhere and nowhere all along. I kept the faith. Surely Lynch and Frost were taking us somewhere incredible. For me, it wasn’t so.

There were fabulous sequences scattered throughout, mainly anchored by Mr. C and Ray. Jackrabbits palace really gave me the feelings I once had in 1990. It turned out there was no master plan. Evil Coop wasn’t nearly as smart as we thought. BOB was killed by a green glove. It was a bunch of stuff that just does not stick together in my mind, and an ultimate disappointment. I watched part 17 and 18 twice the night they aired and was so disillusioned with it I haven’t watched a lick of Twin Peaks ever since. I am actually afraid to go back and watch the pilot, with that awful feeling of Laura’s body, wrapped in plastic, evaporating.

More than the moments of brilliance, the nonsense sticks out. Randoms yacking in the roadhouse, Audrey and Charlie going round and round, whatever the hell Becky and Steven were doing. Never ending YouTube rants. I’m exhausted ticking off my annoyances. And there’s plenty more. Worst of all, I lost a lot of confidence in Lynch. Someone somewhere deemed it all auteur worship or something, and I somewhat agree. The emperor had no clothes when the last credits rolled.

(I will say part 18 carries a significant mood. I can’t quite place my finger on it. Sexualizing Dale and Diane was an abhorrent move, for me.)

We all have our ideals of what Twin Peaks is. Lynch and Frost clearly (sadly) can’t present a unified vision or a shared universe spanning different mediums. An overarching story went kaput in the process. That was all I wanted. My Twin Peaks is a world being saved by agent dale cooper. I got that for five minutes last year. Was it all worth it? The wait? The wondering? Those are more profound questions to me than any posed during eighteen hours of the return, season three, whatever we are calling it. Thumbs remain down, overall. Few questions, or thoughts about season 3 remain.
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by IcedOver »

mtwentz wrote:
Did you watch it in Blu Ray?
I bought the set a few months ago so I wouldn't miss out, but actually haven't even cracked the wrapper yet. I can't imagine it would look any better, and the crispness would be even more evident (I watched the show through my Comcast cable). The show needed to be degraded, softened, darkened. It does have a different look from most TV today which is shot in rooms without lights, but that doesn't mean it was appropriate for the material.
I DON'T FEEL GOOD!!!!!
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eyeboogers
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by eyeboogers »

IcedOver wrote:
I bought the set a few months ago so I wouldn't miss out, but actually haven't even cracked the wrapper yet. I can't imagine it would look any better, and the crispness would be even more evident (I watched the show through my Comcast cable). The show needed to be degraded, softened, darkened. It does have a different look from most TV today which is shot in rooms without lights, but that doesn't mean it was appropriate for the material.

Take a look, the Blu-Ray is a completely different visual experience.
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dreamshake
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by dreamshake »

honestly can't overstate how much better the show looks on blu-ray than it did on either the video stream or cable broadcast.
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Audrey Horne
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Audrey Horne »

I come away one year later just baffled, honestly. Not that they would throw more wonderful ambiguity at us in the end, that’s fine... but in terms of their structure along the way. I felt they needed to streamline and have actual basic bulletproof points to hit when it would go ambiguous. The best example of lack of tension for me is Ed, Norma and Nadine. We learn Ed and Nadine are married minutes before he gets back with Norma, as opposed to learning this info weeks before so we have the speculation and anticipation of what will happen.

Choices like Audrey and Coooer having a child is a strong one, the two characters arguably most fans wanted to see again. But to not explore that, especially as a result from rape, and then tossed aside comes off as more unintentional meanspiritedness to me.

The whole thing as a whole came across as quick sketches in unexplored bleakness, whereas when Peaks was working for me it was more fairy tale goodness while still tackling and sucker punching us with moments of truth.
God, I love this music. Isn't it too dreamy?
Agent Earle
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Agent Earle »

Audrey Horne wrote:
The whole thing as a whole came across as quick sketches in unexplored bleakness,
THIS 100 %!
pinballmars
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by pinballmars »

I stepped away from it, for the most part, last fall and winter to let it digest. Ever since last spring though, I've been perpetually re-watching it. I'm always in the middle of re-watching it. When I finish it, I start it back up again. The Blu-ray set hasn't been on the shelf since April. It sits right by the player. I take my time with it. Never binge-watch. One episode every few days, or every week, is my pace.

So, yeah, I still love it. It's my favorite thing ever. It's going with me to the desert island.

At this point, I've stopped trying to "figure it out". I subscribe to no fancy theory about what happens in the final episode. The best I have is that it reminds me of a recurring dream I've had for awhile in which I'm riding a bicycle around my old neighborhood (a place I haven't, in reality, visited in years). In the dream, I'm an adult and there are no people around. Lots of parked cars, lots of houses. The little pond is still there. It looks exactly like it did in 1987 when I was 11. And I'm just a guy in his 40s riding a bike. That's it. Nothing else happens.

But I wake up strangely sad and I can't explain why. Something about going back home and finding only a yawning void, I guess.

Sounds like the whole point of Episode 18, to me.

I don't claim to know much of anything about the solutions to the mysteries of Season 3, but here are a few things that I THINK I know:

1) I think "We live inside a dream" is the mission statement of the series.

2) I think "Who is the dreamer?" is the show's biggest question.

3) I think "the dreamer" is the audience.

4) I think the outcomes and effects of this series are meant, like a dream, to be FELT rather than explained logically.

5) I think that Lynch, who turned 70 while he worked on this long, grueling production, is not setting up future installments. When he responds to interview questions, I think Lynch has learned his lesson about never saying "never", but I also think that Lynch leaves Twin Peaks here exactly how he wants to leave it. So, as much as I love Season 3, I am not among those clamoring for Season 4. I think this is it. We were never meant to solve this puzzle. We are meant to think about it for the rest of our lives.

6) That said, if Season 4 was announced tomorrow, I'd be over the moon. Not because I'd expect it to provide any answers, but because I trust that Lynch and Frost would only do it if they had something that they were genuinely excited about.
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Cappy
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Cappy »

last year: wow, what a cliffhanger, how are Coop and Laura ever gonna get out of this one?

one year later: The conclusion of ep. 18 functions as a thematic and emotional coda to the Twin Peaks experience, forever cementing the series foundation in Laura's domestic agony, which she (and the audience) seemingly experience in perpetuity. It's not something to be overcome, as much it is a secret that is forced to be acknowledged.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: One year later - how are we feeling?

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

pinballmars wrote:1) I think "We live inside a dream" is the mission statement of the series.

2) I think "Who is the dreamer?" is the show's biggest question.

3) I think "the dreamer" is the audience.
Interesting. The other day, I was reading an essay a guy named Kenneth George Godwin wrote on Eraserhead in the early ‘80s. Lynch has said over the years that, while he doesn’t agree with everything in the piece, this essay is his favorite thing that has been written on Eraserhead. In the piece, Godwin at one point postulates: “It seems that Lynch has managed to capture the processes of dream consciousness with remarkable precision. Eraserhead is not simply a fantasy related to us and labelled dream: it is the dream experience itself. But whose dream? The film itself presents us with no one who stands outside the events of the dream. Henry, at the centre, is not the dreamer but rather the dreamer’s dream identity (it is very much a male dream). Perhaps it is this absence of the dreamer which makes the film so immediate and so disturbing: the viewer becomes the dreamer.”
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