We’re getting to the point where a reluctance on the writers’ part to solve Laura’s murder is definitely creeping in...
S02E02 AKA Coma
In Which:- Meals On Wheels becomes important and foreshadowing for later in the season kicks off...
- We get a couple of mentions of Coop’s former partner Windom Earle who has escaped the psychiatric hospital he was in. A bit of set up for later on…
- The opening scene in which Coop lectures an unimpressed Albert about the history of Tibet while a barbershop quartet sings in the background is just par for the course now.
- Ronnette comes out of her coma and freaks out at the sketch of BOB while Leland claims to remember him from his childhood.
- Prior to Ronnette asking up, there’s a nice bit of comedy business with Coop and Truman as they try to adjust the stools next to the bed to the right height.
- Cringe time - James, Maddy and Donna singing a dreary song. Eurgh, pass. In other music news, there’s another one of those odd moments with the characters listening to the incidental music.
First Appearance:- Mrs Tremond and her creepy grandson with their creamed corn which will come back again for the prequel film and Season 3….
The Owls:- Major Briggs, at the Log Lady’s insistence, delivers a message received apparently from deep space for Cooper about the owls not being what they seem.
Cliffhanger:- Audrey phones Cooper from One Eyed Jack’s only for Blacky to disconnect the phone and reveals she knows Audrey’s true identity...
S02E03 AKA The Man Behind The Glass
In Which:- Audrey’s situation worsens, Nadine wakes up from her coma and Dr Jacoby’s hypnosis interview leads to an arrest…
- It feels like progress is being made with BOB even though it isn’t - Leland tells Truman and Coop about remembering him (BOB used to flick matches - “do you want to play with fire, little boy?”) while Mr Gerard, the one-armed man, has an extreme reaction to BOB’s sketch.
- Laura’s true diary comes into play here in the care of shut-in Harold Smith (who has some very creepy interactions with Donna). This is also a tie-in moment as David Lynch’s daughter, Jennifer Lynch, wrote The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer, published in the gap between season one and two. I’ll cover off the various tie-in books in a separate post.
- Dr Jacoby’s very young, very pretty and silently smiling Hawaiian wife makes him seem super creepy in 2020.
Iconic Peaks Moments:- Albert’s speech about choosing the path of non-violence and being driven by love.
Lynchian Weirdoes:- Nadine is now convinced she’s a teenager and possessed of adrenaline-boosetd super strength. As you are when you come out of a coma….
First Appearance:- Harold Smith, holder of Laura’s real diary; Dick Tremayne, the old school comedy fop from Horne’s Department Store; Jean Renault, the third of the Renault brothers
Cliffhanger:- Cooper and Truman arrest Leland for Jacques Renault's murder. At Harold Smith’s apartment, Donna spots Laura’s secret diary...
That whole “save money after the Second World War by making anthology films” approach is still going on (we’ve got a couple more to go after this) so it’s quite an odd stretch in terms of Disney films. There aren’t any other like it after we get out of this run (with the possible exception of Fantasia 2000)
Make Mine Music (1946)
Directors:- Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, Joshua Meador, Robert Cormack
Based Upon:- Lots of different things, really
The One Where
- Ten separate short pieces of animation are linked together by no real theme other than “music” - most notably “Peter And The Wolf” and “The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At The Met”.
General Viewing Notes
- This is a definite step up on the weirdness of the mish mash that was The Three Caballeros. They’ve wisely decided against a specific theme and also gone for some more experimental animation pieces, some of which are quite fun.
- There’s still a feeling of Disney wanting to get the Fantasia formula to work here. There are some good shorts in the mix but still a few that feel a little worthy and dull.
- “Peter And The Wolf” is utterly delightful and worth the price of admission as is “The Whale Who Wanted To Sing At The Met” (although be warned, that one’s pretty dark).
- I’d never seen this film in its entirety before but, thanks to the UK Bank Holiday programme Disney Time which compiled together clips and shorts alongside a C-list presenter, I had already seen “Peter And The Wolf” and “The Whale Who…”.
Disney Tropes
Just the one really - we get a Fake-Out Death in Peter And The Wolf (and a surprising number of actual deaths in other parts of the film).
It’s That Voice Again
Sterling Holloway is back again for some narration duties on Peter And The Wolf - we’ll be hearing a lot more from him in some really iconic roles.
Things You Notice As An Adult
The “The Martins And The Coys” segment is quite surprising for a Disney film in that it has both alcohol and a lot of comedy gunfire. Not what you’re used to seeing from the House Of Mouse. It’s also weirdly depressing - everyone dies except one couple who then have a miserable life - as is the ending of “The Whale Who…” (which I must have blanked out)
Classic Songs - Are They?
Well, more “classical” in some cases than “classic” (ah ha ha). Other than Prokofiev and a number of opera snippets, not really.
Any Good Then?
It’s got some great moments and some that you just sit through. It’s an upswing on the previous film and doesn’t plumb some of the depths of Fantasia but we’re still not quite hitting classic territory here. Worth watching “Peter” and “The Whale Who…” and maybe skip the rest.
Next One Of These
Come on, stick with it, we’ve still got anthologies to watch…
Finding stuff to binge watch at the moment is not really a problem. There’s a plethora of series to sink your teeth into on a wide variety of streaming platforms. The only problem is that often there are several series worth of stuff to get through before you’re up to date / at the end on a particular show. For the most part, that’s great at the moment while we’re not going anywhere but sometimes you just want something longer than a film but with a beginning, middle and end that doesn't run on forever. Devs fits quite handily into this mold.
Devs
Season One, Eps 1-8
In A Nutshell:- A programmer uncovers something sinister going on at tech company Amaya…
The Good:- It’s television that unfolds at it’s own pace and isn’t afraid to let viewers dangle a bit as they work out what’s going on - in pacing terms, it’s more reminiscent of something that would have produced in the 1970s by the Beeb or ITV rather than a modern American drama (given that I’ve been spending my time watching quite a bit of classic cult TV from the 60s and 70s, I clearly don’t think that’s a bad thing). Nick Offerman channels the quieter side of Ron Swanson into something effectively menacing and Alison Pill is suitably creepy, giving a performance that manages to be suitably creepy. There’s a distinctive sense of style and effective use of looping and overlapping characters during some scenes, combined with a score that amps the unsettling feeling of the whole thing.
The Bad:- The flipside to it being paced like a 70s BBC sci fi show is that, if you have a low tolerance for that sort and want your drama to be -pelted at your eyeballs at high speed, this might not be for you. Sonoya Mizuno as Lily doesn’t really vary her expressions much between stunned and stunned-but-with-a-scowl which I was beginning to find a little tiresome by the end.
Side Note:- I didn't actually binge this one as such (i.e. I didn't watch a chunk of episodes back to back). I watched an episode a day and that seemed to work quite well for this - stretching out over a week fitted the languid pace of the show.
The Verdict:- If you want something that takes its time to tell the story it has to tell, has its sci fi elements rooted in modern concerns and has a defined ending (if there’s a Dev 2, I’ve got no idea what else they could do with it) then this is worth the eight episodes of your time.
I love reading. I always have, ever since I was able to, way, way back in the dim and distant past (things weren’t in black and white as such but they definitely had that sort of muted sepia tinge to them). In the equally dim and distant days of early 2020 when I used to leave the house and spend time on trains or waiting around in pubs and stuff, I was averaging two novels per week. This isn’t meant to sound braggy, by the way (“oooh, look at him with all his reading”); I love books and I’ve got a massive backlog I want to get through (it basically consists of “all the books”) so I spend a lot of time reading.
That all ground to a halt six weeks ago when I stopped leaving the house. It was really weird. I genuinely thought the complete opposite would happen. I’d always assumed that, if I was told I couldn’t leave the house, I’d be nose-buried within books from Minute One until I was let outside again. “At last,” thought pre-Covid I, “that pile of books to be read will be demolished.”
I tried. I started three different books and got about 10-20 pages in before my attention would wander. I just couldn’t focus on them. Television and films have become the main distraction (as has become blatantly clear if you've even glanced in the direction of this blog in the last six weeks) and, even then, I can sometimes only focus on them by having defined lists of stuff I’m working through and taking notes for blog posts to force me to concentrate on something. I’ve also been fine with comics. Having the words accompanied by pictures seems to work fine (especially if they're ones that I’ve read before - even if that was nearly thirty years ago).
Something shifted yesterday though. Having realised I’d not actually been outside for about five days and thinking that probably some vitamin D would be a good idea before bone loss sets in, I eschewed the usual pile of graphic novels and set off outside with a pile of very slim books. I picked one up, I sat, I read and, by the end of the day, had read three (very short) books and started on a fourth (regular length) one.
It’s funny for that to feel like an accomplishment. If you said to Me From Three Months Ago that I would very shortly be feeling pleased to have completed an extremely short book, I’d have definitely looked at you funny. Just shows how quickly we adapt and change to situations, how soon something can become the new normal.
Will it last? I hope so but, equally, I won't be surprised if it doesn't (maybe even by the time this is published). If anything, these things seem to come and go in waves. For now, though, I’ll take it as a small lockdown victory - if that’s what helps you get through, take the victories where you can.
There’s a knack to a film that is terrible but also weirdly enjoyable that is almost impossible to define. There are plenty of films out there that are just plain bad but there are those films that are so bad that they take on a level of enjoyment that wasn’t anticipated by the filmmaker when they set out to make it. What makes a bad movie enjoyable? There are a few elements that all the best worst films have…
1. Low Budget
If you have a huge amount of cash to throw at a film, the likelihood is that you’re just going to get a bad film. There are one of two exceptions to this but, for the most part, the enduring good bad films often have a ramshackle, making-it-up-as-they-went along feel that you’re unlikely to get with a big studio budget.
2. Enthusiasm Over Talent
You can tell that people are giving their all even if their all really isn’t very good.
3. Belief In Greatness
All the truly great awful films were made by people who genuinely believed that they were making something genuinely worthwhile despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
So where to start?
The Best of The Worst
One man’s name is often bandied around when it comes to bad filmmaking and with good reason. He was so bad that he was immortalised in a biopic by Tim Burton and portrayed by Johnny Depp. Yes, I’m talking about Edward D Wood Jr, creator of such classics as Glen or Glenda, Bride Of The Atom and the film often cited as being the worst film of all time Plan 9 From Outer Space. Plan 9 is probably the archetype for the good bad film - the continuity is appalling, the sets wobble when the actors bump into them and the plot is constructed around the footage they had rather than the other way round. Somehow though, this all combines to be funny and male a film that is entertaining, just not in the way the filmmaker intended.
They’re Eating Her...And Then They’re Gonna Eat Me!
If we’re talking best of the worst , you can't ignore the glory that is Troll 2. A film completely unrelated to the original film Troll which it was then marketed as a sequel to (and indeed a film that doesn’t actually feature any trolls - they’re goblins), it’s become famous for its combination of atrocious and bizarre dialogue, dreadful hammy acting and laughable special effects. It’s the sort of film that shows up on the midnight screening circuit and even inspired a documentary, Best Worst Movie.
Oh Hai
Of course, if we’re talking midnight screenings and cult appeal, you can't not mention Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. Wiseau wrote, directed and starred in this train wreck which he now claims is a comedy but is clearly meant as a serious (and erotic) drama. The dialogue is strange and stilted, odd little subplots crop up and are dismissed (one character casually mentions she’s been diagnosed with breast cancer which is then never mentioned again) and the whole thing is anchored by Wiseau’s bizarre accent and even more bizarre performance.
There are plenty more you could leap into - the first Sharknado is indicative of the modern low-budget bad movie (but not the too-knowing sequels), Showgirls is now a high camp masterpiece and supposedly the films of Neil Breen drift into similar territory to Tommy Wiseau (although I haven’t seen those yet) - but that will get you started down the rabbit hole of enjoyably dreadful films. Be warned - it could lead you to some pretty strange places…
The first season comes to a suitably cliffhanger-y end and the second season kicks off in full on Lynch style.
S01E07 AKA The Last Evening
In Which:- Most of the main characters find themselves in some sort of mortal jeopardy
- There’s so much going on in just these 45 minutes that it seems almost nuts when you try to recap it:- Jacques Renault is set up, shoot while being arrested and then smothered in hospital by Leland; the wounded Leo ties up Shelley in the burning mill who is rescued by Catherine but then both become trapped while Pete goes in to rescue them; Leo attempts to kill Bobby and is shot by Hank; Nadine seemingly commits suicide with pills; Bobby, frames James with cocaine planted in his bike; Dr Jacoby is attacked and suffers a heart attack; Audrey is trapped in One-Eyed Jack’s as her unsuspecting father attempts to have sex with her and finally, returning from last week’s undercover operation, Cooper is shot three times in his hotel room. Blimey!
Show Within A Show:- This marks the last appearance of Invitation To Love as apparently Lynch wasn’t a fan of it.
Cliffhanger:- Most of the episode frankly but Cooper being shot is where we leave it.
S02E01 AKA May The Giant Be With You
In Which:- The town recovers from the fallout of the night of mayhem.
- It’s a double episode to kick off the second series and David Lynch is back in the director’s seat
- Given the urgent nature of the ending of the last episode, it’s almost wilfully slow-paced at the start here. The title sequence lasts for almost three minutes(!) and then you spend almost another ten minutes on Cooper lying on the floor bleeding while an old waiter bumbles slowly around followed by a visitation by the Giant. It is, however, very much pure Lynch - odd performances, weird humour, deliberate pacing and dream logic.
- The Giant’s clues are setting up the remainder of the investigation into Laura’s death - first of the clues is revealed (“there’s a man in a smiling bag”) revealed when Cooper spots Jacques Renault’s body bag hanging up in the hospital.
- Even with the bullets mostly stopped by his bulletproof vest, Cooper's powers of recovery are pretty much superhuman.
- Lucy’s recap for Cooper of what happened in the last episode manages to be informative, handy for new viewers and funny (Coop -”How long was I out?”; Hayward - “It’s 7:45 in the morning”).
- Broad but weird comedy moments are back again - Andy smacks his face on a wooden board and staggers around grinning with a bloody mouth for a long time; the weirdly gloopy, multi-coloured and stinky hospital food; everyone greeting Ben & Jerry with “Mr Horne, Mr Horne” as they walk through the Great Northern Hotel.
- Donna’s new sexy and mature look is pretty cheesy - unsure if it’s meant to be naff or sexy (it’s not the latter).
- Maddy breaks her glasses in half as she hates them - does she not need them to see?
- We get another mention of fire - James mentions a poem of Laura’s that has the lines:- “Would you like to play with fire, would you like to play with BOB?”
Iconic Peaks Moments:- Cooper’s interaction with the Giant and the Waiter are images that are also strongly associated with Twin Peaks; Leland’s hair turning white overnight is another one.
First Appearance:- The Giant / The Waiter
Returning Faces:- Albert’s back in town; Mr Gerard, the one-armed man, is also back to sell Truman some shoes; Ronette Pulaski, beginning to stir from coma
Cliffhanger:- Ronette wakes up to a vision of BOB killing Laura (pretty strong stuff for network television with full-on Lynch directing style).
Oh yeah. I was doing this ages and ages ago, wasn’t I? If you don’t remember, you can find the previous installments here, here, here, here, here and here. Well, seeing as having list-based stuff to focus on as well as something where I’m making notes as I go along is helping me get through These Strange Times®, it’s time to dust this one off and get it going again. The reason it stalled? We’ve hit an odd patch in the run of Disney “classics”. You’ll note the inverted commas there - that’s largely because this film (along with the previous one and the next three) aren’t exactly ones that are fondly remembered classics of anyone’s childhood particularly. Let’s just power through these ones before we start getting back into the ones that everyone's heard of again.
The Three Caballeros (1940)
Dir. Supervising Director: Norm Ferguson / Sequence Directors: Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, Bill Roberts & Harold Young
Based Upon:- Nothing specific
The One Where
Donald Duck and his friends Jose Carioca and Panchito Pistoles go on a tour of South America.
General Viewing Notes
- It’s a thematic sequel to Saludos Amigos in that it’s another anthology film once again focussed on Latin America. This largely just makes it a disjointed collection of shorts strung together with a paper thin framing device.
- The shorts are variable in quality. At this point, Disney is still trying to push the envelope with animation a bit so you have a few sequences of animation set to music in much the same vein as Fantasia. They’re pretty to look at but ultimately a little dull.
- This one is also unusual in that it incorporates a fair bit of live action in with the animation too - not always that successfully.
Disney Tropes
- Absolutely none, really. It’s an anthology rather than a feature length story so doesn't really have any of the usual Dead Parents, etc...
Things You Notice As An Adult
- Donald Duck is basically a sex pest in this. He lusts after every single live action woman that turns up in the film. I think it’s supposed to be funny and charming but ultimately starts to come across as desperate and a bit creepy. Also, it raises a lot of questions - why is a duck lusting after humans? What does this mean for his relationship with Daisy?
Classic Songs - Are They?
- Nope, none in this one. There are some catchy Latin-themed songs throughout but none that have entered the popular consciousness like those you would find in their feature length films.
Any Good Then?
Being honest, a bit of chore to get through, this one. One or two appealing sequences but the odd mix of animation and live-action with the pseudo-travelogue feel doesn’t really gel together and this just ends up feeling like a half-assed compilation. Not one that I would classify as a classic.
Next One Of These
We’re still in anthology territory for a little while yet so buckle up...
It was over thirty years ago when I first started reading Terry Pratchett books so I honestly don’t really remember a time when the Discworld wasn't a part of my reading life. Even though Sir Terry is with us no more, they are still more than enough books to enjoy and re-enjoy (there are after all 41 Discworld novels as well as four Science Of Discworld sort-of-novels for you to get through). It’s a daunting number of books though so where do you start?
Start At The Start
Look, I’m always going to put this one as an option. In this case, I think it is a good way to experience the Discworld as, although the books are for the most part standalone (with recurring strands of characters which I’ll get to below), the world itself is changed by events in each book and it develops from somewhere relatively medieval into somewhere more industrial. The first book, The Colour Of Magic, also sees Pratchett working out what the concept of Discworld actually is and arguably it isn’t until the third and fourth books that it begins to settle into a form that will continue throughout the rest of the run. So while The Colour Of Magic is the best place to start if you want to get in from the ground up and experience the world unfolding, it’s not necessarily the best of the books.
Mort
Perceive wisdom has it that this is the best of the early works and that’s probably about right. It’s self contained, the world is relatively well-formed by now and it features Death who, after a couple of appearances in the first three books, is now very much the recognisable character he will be for the rest of the run. It’s a great example of why the Discworld books are so appealing and a good entry point.
By Character
There are several groups of characters who feature throughout the run of the series (as well as as a couple of standalone novels without recurring protagonists). The main ones are:-
- Rincewind, the cowardly and terrible wizard who appears in The Colour Of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Sourcery, Eric, Interesting Times, The Last Continent and The Last Hero (all books mentioned in this section will exclude ones where the characters just cameo.
- Granny Weatherwax and her coven of witches who appear in Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords And Ladies, Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum
- Death who appears in, well, every novel but the main ones are Mort, Reaper Man, Soul Music, Hogfather and The Thief Of Time
- The City Watch who appear in Guards! Guards!, Men At Arms, Feet Of Clay, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant, Thud! And Snuff
- The wizards of the Unseen University who appear in most books but star in Unseen Academicals and The Last Continent
- Con man turned reluctant City servant Moist von Lipwig who appears in Going Postal, Making Money and Raising Steam
- Junior witch Tiffany Aching who appears in (along with Granny Weatherwax) The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full Of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight and The Shepherd’s Crown (the final novel)
It’s a good way to get to grips with the series without having to go through the whole thing. The only drawback is that you may miss some developments from other books which impact the ones in the character run you’re reading.
There’s a couple of hints to get you going. If you’re completely new to it and just want a flavour, I’d probably recommend Mort but I’m an obsessive completist type so would start with the first one myself.
Unsurprisingly given that this list is from the man who brought us Shaun Of The Dead, there are a number of horror films on the list. (That’s not all there is - at 1000 films, it’s a pretty broad list.) I’ve seen quite a few horror films over the years but not as many as Edgar Wright, clearly. Let’s stick around the early section as those are the ones I’ve been working my way through to start with.
The Old Dark House (1932)
Dir. James Whale / Dur. 72 mins
This is the sort of film that I was hoping to find through this list - the sort of overlooked little gem that appeals to my sense of the odd. This time round, we have a selection of travellers seeking shelter in an old dark house (well, duh) populated by an oddball brother and sister and ther hulking mute servant (played by Boris Karloff). The opening bickering between the married couple feels refreshingly caustic for this era and Ernest Thesiger and Eva Moore as weird brother and sister Horace and Rebecca Femm are clearly relishing the chance to play these twisted characters. There’s also a weird moment where their ageing father is clearly played by a woman in old age makeup - something that I expected to pay off later on but never does. Overall, though, definitely worth a watch.
Island Of Lost Souls (1932)
Dir. Erle C. Kenton / Dur. 71 mins
This is the first non-silent adaptation of HG Wells’ The Island Of Doctor Moreau and features Charles Laughton (who also played a buffoonish aristocrat in The Old Dark House) as Doctor Moreau. This is very much his film - he was enjoyable in The Old Dark House but he’s particularly good here. There’s a sly and knowing sense of humour to his performance that elevates it above the usual ranting megalomaniac. Oddly, at times, he reminded slightly of Matt Lucas in the way he performed. The film also features a post-Dracula Bela Lugosi in a role (Speaker Of the Law) that's barely a cameo - seems an odd choice after such a success with the iconic vampire. Overall, though, an enjoyable adaptation of the classic.
Cat People (1942)
Dir. Jacques Tourneur / Dur. 72 mins
A more cerebral and suggestive horror without reliance on make-up and effects. I can see the roots of some of the modern jump scare type horror in some of the sequences here - particularly in the scene where Jane Randolph is walking home and in a swimming pool, being stalked by something unseen. It uses suggestion effectively to get the sense of suspense across. I have to say, though, that I found this one a little boring aside from those couple of scenes. It’s heavier on the melodrama than the horror and didn't really keep my attention.
A couple of classic horror efforts there. I’ll leap forward a bit to the 70s next time for some slices of weirdness…
You may have noticed a decline in posts with the title “Life In Lockdown”. As I’ve gone through weeks four and five of house confinement, I’ve had a few days here and there where it’s been tougher than I expected to get through and I’ve retreated to a standard coping technique - avoidance and distraction. Not one of my more appealing traits, I realise, but these are the mechanisms which are helping me get through. I’ve dropped off in the amount of news coverage I’m looking at (after all, at the moment it’s largely a Groundhog Day-style greatest hits of “still stay inside, not easing off yet and our government is either massively incompetent or wilfully murderous”) and cutting down on that has helped a little.
In the social media linked world we live in, as much as it can be an important lifeline and connection to other people, it can still be that source of unnecessary pressure that it was before all this started. The key thing that I'm taking away from all this right now is that whatever you’re doing to get through this safely and out the other side, that’s the right thing to do. Whether you’re a one-woman powerhouse juggling work while sewing scrubs for NHS workers (yes, Tam, that’s you!) or curling up into a ball with TV, films and comics until it all goes away (three guesses who that one is…), it’s all good. Here’s a list (because I’m a listy person) of what’s OK:-
- It’s OK to get involved and help out
- It’s OK to do nothing and keep your head down
- It’s OK to get upset and struggle with your emotions
- It’s OK to enjoy yourself
- It’s OK to reach out to others
- It’s OK to need time by yourself
- It’s OK to exercise like you’ve never exercised before (within reason and safely away from others, naturally)
- It’s OK to sit on the sofa in your pants eating crisps and trying to complete Netflix
- It’s OK to use the time to be creative in ways you haven’t had the chance to before
- It’s OK to feel so foggy that you can't do anything you normally would
- It’s OK to do your best to engage your kids while in lockdown
- It’s OK to not worry about their schooling while you try to balance everything else as well
- It’s OK to do any or all or none of things all at once
- Whatever you need to do, it's OK
It’s not OK to put yourself or others at risk and it’s not OK to avoid doing what YOU need to do to get you through this.
The goal at the end of this? We shall be catching up in person again, we shall raise a drink (alcoholic or non-alcoholic, your choice - mine will be 100% extremely alcoholic), we shall “cheers” and we shall enjoy ourselves. If you’re not doing what it takes to achieve that end goal then I will be very disappointed with you. And none of us wants that.
Much love and stay safe,
Your Baldy Fella
The first season only has seven episodes so, with this batch, we’re barrelling through towards the big end of season cliffhanger.
S01E04 AKA The One-Armed Man
In Which:- Dreams and visions start to connect and links between Bobby, Leo and Jacques begin to become apparent.
- Opens with Sarah describing her vision which was the cliffhanger at the end of the pilot
- There’s some weirdly chauvinistic feeling advice from Coop about women being drawn from different blueprints
- Thinking about Maddy, I’m not sure that it’s ever spelt out whether she’s from Sarah’s or Leland’s side of the family. The visions she has would indicate Sarah but I don’t think it’s explicit.
- Swirling together of elements - Jacques Renault, Leo and Bobby all seeming connected and Ben Horne is involved with both Catherine and Leo
Lynchian Weirdoes:- Doc Jacoby does a magic trick involving eating golf balls for no readily apparent reason.
First Appearances:- Cooper’s boss Gordon Cole as played by David Lynch (voice only); Norma’s estranged and villainous husband Hank Jennings; owls - hooting at James and Donna
Show Within A Show:- Invitation To Love is playing in the background again
Cliffhanger:- Hank rings Josie from prison, indicating some secret between them
S01E05 AKA Cooper’s Dreams
In Which:- A lead on the possible location where Laura spent her last night leads to a talk with the Log Lady.
- Opens with Icelandic singing in the night at the Great Northern Hotel - pure Peaks
- Audrey and Cooper’s flirting is still creepy - he asks her how old she is at one point (she’s 18)
- Very stylish episode - two shots of protagonists lining up in staggered profiles and a whip pan back and forth between Major and Mrs Briggs while taking are all very pleasing
- It’s an episode where things are starting to move forward - Hank beats up Leo who then gets shot by Shelley; Audrey discovers her father and Catherine together
Lynchian Weirdoes:- A full scene with the Log Lady at last and lots of Twin peaks mythology being brought to the fore - mentions of owls and fire; Leland weird compulsive happy-sad dancing is back again.
Show Within A Show:- Chester gets punched in Invitation To Love
Cliffhanger:- Cooper discovers a naked Audrey in his bed (they’re really pushing the Cooper/ Audrey creepfest)
S01E06 AKA Realization Time
In Which:- Two undercover trips to One-Eyed Jack’s take place and “Laura” seemingly makes a return from the grave.
- Cooper insists that he and Audrey should just be friends - good call on this one (apparently insisted on by Lara Flynn Boyle [Donna] who was dating MacLachlan at the time)
- Some 90s elements here - Cooper uses a voice-activated dictaphone to record a minah bird (Waldo) who may have things about Laura’s murder
- There’s a feeling of a lot of elements starting to come to a head - Audrey starts working at the perfume counter to get to One-Eyed Jack’s; Cooper and Ed go undercover at One-Eyed Jack’s (Ed’s moustache and wig are utterly ludicrous); Maddy, Donna and James disguise Maddy as Laura to steal a tape from Dr Jacoby; a wounded Leo shoots the minah bird as it starts to speak; Ben calls Josie and Josie’s with Hank
Iconic Peaks Moments:- Auditioning to become an escort at One-Eyed Jack’s, Audrey ties a bow in a cherry stalk with her tongue
Show Within A Show:- Invitation To Love - Chet shoots Montana
Cliffhanger:- Someone is in the woods watching Maddy dressed as Laura
Only one episode of season one left to go and it’s a doozy…
Because, let’s face it, at the moment we all need something cheerful and escapist to distract us from the absolute horrorshow that is everything right now. And what better way to forget your troubles than to lose yourself in some filmic entertainment during which people inexplicably begin singing and dancing? There isn’t a better way so don’t try and come up with one. Nope, not that. Uh uh, you’re wrong.
As always, this is a personal tour through the stuff what I have seen and liked so if it’s missing something you consider a classic, well, I’m gonna be inside for a while so I’ll probably get around to it. Also, disclaimer number two, I am not a fan of The Sound Of Music so you’re not going to see that mentioned any further. No, I don’t care if it is your favourite, I do not care for it. Look, if it’s that important to you, go write your own post about musicals. Yeesh. Also, Annie makes me want to vomit up my own skeleton.
The Stone Cold Classic
If you’ve never really been a musical fan, here is one that is almost certainly guaranteed* to at least make to you think it about it. The one that is probably the most accessible of the major musicals is Singin’ In The Rain. It’s an absolute smash of a film - Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor are all on top form and Jean Hagen doesn’t get enough credit as the dreadful Lina. If you don’t come out of that wanting to dance like Gene Kelly, you might want to check that your heart hasn’t been replaced by a lump of flint. After that, I’d suggest a quick hit of The Wizard Of Oz or, if you’re in the mood for more Gene Kelly, An American In Paris. You also can't go far wrong with Grease in terms of sheer volume of catchy songs - pretty much every track is a winner on that one.
The Sherman Brothers
Song-writing brothers Robert B and Richard M Sherman have probably had a much bigger impact on your childhood than you realised. They wrote the songs for (deep breath) Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book, Bedknobs And Broomsticks, The Sword In The Stone, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh and The Aristocats (plus irritating theme park earworm It’s A Small World After All - we can ignore that one). I’d be happy with any one of those as my legacy to have penned all of those is an amazing feat, especially the enduring popularity of some of them.
Let’s Get Culty
I love all of the above musicals but there are plenty of cult musicals that are amongst my most watched films. Rocky Horror Picture Show and Little Shop Of Horrors are must watches for me (and Little Shop over Rocky, I have to say) but I’m also a big fan of Shock Treatment, the little known sequel to Rocky Horror which features amongst others Barry Humphries, Ruby Wax and Rik Mayall and is a satire of reality TV about twenty years too early. Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s early student musical from their pre-South Park days Alferd Packer: The Musical (or Cannibal: The Musical as it is now known) is a firm classic amongst a small group of my friends but you also can't beat South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut or Team america: World Police for OTT musical fun. Also, while it may be an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, the 70s film version of Jesus Christ Superstar is so 70s that I think it qualifies under the "cult film" label (plus it's the only one of his musicals that I really enjoy).
Modern Musicals
The musical was a little dormant for a long while but has started making a comeback again in recent years. Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd and the Disney adaptation of Into The Woods brought some Stephen Sondheim back to the big screen. La La Land got a lot of attention but I didn't care for it. Of the recent musical revival though, it is The Greatest Showman that's the biggest smash for me. I’ve talked about it before. Let’s just say that I heartily recommend it and you can head off and watch it now if you haven't before (or even if you have - go on, you know you want to).
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Everything about this film is great but especially Paul Williams’ songs. My standard go-to mood enhancer.
Look, there are plenty more great musicals out there that I haven’t even mentioned - My Fair Lady, The King And I, Bugsy Malone, the Disney run of Little Shop’s Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin**) - the list goes on. Just get out and start watching.
*Not a guarantee.
**Traditional animated, not CGI version - haven’t seen the CGI versions and can't say that I’m bothered to.
Having something structured to focus me on watching is helping to stop me from getting ten minutes into things and then switching them off because I’m not in the mood only to repeat that process three times over. Making notes about that stuff is then also giving me something to focus on. All of which means you’re going to get a lot of toot coming your way on this here bloggy thing over the coming weeks. As always, your obligation to read is non-existent so feel free to pick and choose.
A while back, filmmaker Edgar Wright (director of classic sitcom Spaced as well as equally classic films like Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World’s End which he also co-wrote) published a list in chronological order of his top 1000 films. I like this idea as, whenever anyone asks me what my favourite film is, my only response is that given enough time I could give them a number of lists by genre in no particular order (order dependent on mood and other nebulous factors). Also recommending 1000 films gives plenty of scope to discover a lot of new films and maybe ones you wouldn’t have considered before. It’s a good prompt too - there a ton of films on this list that have elicited the response “Oh yeah, I really should watch that” from me. Well, here’s a good excuse to direct me to those ones.
Going through the list, I’ve already watched about 430 of them so that gives me about 570 to get through. Last year was a heavy film watching year and I got through 135 films so this might take me some time...
So how am I going to approach this? I’d considered going through and watching the list in order but I figure that, even though there are probably a lot of good films back in the early days of cinema on the list, I might need to flip and forth to keep my interest up. Variety and all that.
For starters, though, I am going to kick off with some of the earliest ones on the list that I’ve watched so far.
The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari (1920)
Dir. Robert Wiene / Dur. 74 mins
The first film on the list (being the earliest one on there) and the first one I haven’t seen either so a good starting point. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this, given that the film is 100 years old. It’s often held by serious film fans as a classic but that doesn't always equate to something enjoyable (I understand the importance of 2001: A Space Odyssey and appreciate its technicality but find it utterly boring).
Here, the weird, twisted, oddly-angled sets, the hyper-stylised performances, the strangely disjointed storytelling (all of which become linked together by the ending) means that this still stands up to a modern viewing. I can see the impact this has had on later filmmakers, especially people like David Lynch. A good start to the list viewing.
The General (1926)
Dir. Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman / Dur. 71 mins
I’m a big fan of old black and white film comedy. Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers and Harold Lloyd have always been form favourites but I was never a fan of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton so this list is a chance to re-evaluate and see if I feel differently about them. The thing that struck me the most about the film is how technically accomplished it is. As a director, Keaton has a great eye for composition. As a performer, the technicality of some of the in-camera stunts he archives are impressive (such as sitting on the front of a moving train and throwing a log precisely onto another log blocking the track in order to clear it before the train hits). Is it funny though? From my point of view, not really. I chuckled once or twice but it didn't make me laugh. That said, for technical impressiveness alone, I would watch another Buster Keaton film.
Off to a start with this one then. I’ve watched quite a few more off the list already so more to come…
High level recap for those who missed Part One:- I’m rewatching Twin Peaks for its 30th anniversary; I’ve watched the pilot and first episode and things are now about to get properly Peak-y…
S01E02 AKA The Art To Catch A Killer
In Which:- Cooper throws rocks and has a dream set twenty five years in the future
- This is the episode that contains a lot of the elements that people would identify as peak Twin Peaks. Cooper citing his love of Tibetan philosophy and dream logic as reason for his methodology of chucking rocks at a bottle for clues and, of course, the dream sequence in which an ageing Cooper meets Laura Palmer and The Man From Another Place in a red room while they talk in backwards sounding riddles and the man does a little dance. This is the Twin Peaks that everyone remembers and it’s still one of the oddest things to ever grace mainstream television (until season three, that is…).
- There are also hints of the occasional moments of broad comedy that the show would do, mainly with Andy. Today, he gets hit on the head with a rock.
_ Something that always struck me as odd - some of the incidental music is also actual music that characters in the show listen to as well. Audrey appears to be listening and dancing to her own theme in the diner. Odd.
Iconic Peaks Moments No. 1:- Cooper trying to get clues to the killer’s identity by throwing rocks at a bottle.
Iconic Peaks Moments No. 2:- The whole dream sequence.
Lynchian Weirdoes:- One-eyed Nadine and her silent curtain runner
First Appearances:- Brother of Ben, Jerry Horne*; Blacky and One-Eyed Jacks; Albert Rosenfeld (the mist sarcastic man in the world); The Man From Another Place (often referred to as the dancing dwarf)
Show Within A Show:- This episode marks the first appearance of a cheesy soap opera that everyone seems to watch, Invitation To Love.
Cliffhanger:- A tufty haired Cooper phones Harry to tell him he knows who killed Laura Palmer.
S01E03 AKA Rest In Pain
In Which:- The dream is discussed and Laura’s funeral is held.
- This is one of the most irritating dismissals of a cliffhanger ever as Cooper reveals that Laura told him in the dream who killed her but he can't remember. Weak.
- The extended description of the dream includes brief shots from footage shot to extend out the original pilot into a complete feature. The one-armed man, hospital showdown with BOB and twenty five years later sequence are how the film version of the pilot ends.
- This episode marks a bit of a step up in the Cooper / Audrey flirtation which is a little creepy as she is at school and he is 35. It’s supposed to feel cute and they would almost get away with it if they didn't carry on flirting at a funeral for a murdered girl.
- Cooper’s pie obsession continues (huckleberry today) and he gives a trademark Cooper-style thumbs up for the first time
- I have to admit that the whole Catherine and Josie plot around the mill land is not that fascinating.
Iconic Peaks Moments:- Straddling comedy and tragedy with the image of a sobbing Leland going up and down on the coffin.
Lynchian Weirdoes:- Leland begins his dance-crying obsession.
First Appearance:- Sheryl Lee as Laura’s identical cousin Maddy (Lynch created the character as he felt bad that she only got to play a dead girl and wanted to give her more to do)
Show Within A Show:- Invitation To Love is playing as Maddy appears in an acknowledgment of the slightly ludicrous soap opera nature of this.
Cliffhanger:- There isn’t really one - Cooper and Truman escort a distraught Leland from the Great Northern ballroom after his cry-dancing fit.
I was planning to do three eps per post but that’s quite a bit there. These may run for longer than I thought...
* I don't remember us having Ben & Jerry ice cream in the UK at the time so this joke was lost on me.
Alright then, here’s the last of the “stories prompted by suggestions from my mates on Facebook” run of posts which is either cause for sadness or celebration depending on your point of view. It’s been a good mental exercise to keep me going during these times of global weirdness so I might ask for some more suggestions at some point. Today’s effort was suggested by Jodie and goes something like this….
Complete Control
Chloe stared at the blank screen. It stared back. She stared some more. It was still blank. Clearly sheer willpower alone wasn’t going to cut it. At some point, actual typing of words was going to have to take place. Preferably in order and preferably in a way that was really good.
She’d got as far as typing out the title. “A Sundering Of The Ways: Book Five of The Chronicles Of The Darkening by Jerry De Luca”. She remembered when she’d fist come up with Jerry De Luca as her nom de plume. Chloe has never been overly fond of Chloe Higginbottom in the first place and, let’s face it, when she’d started out, the fantasy genre had still been dominated by male authors (and, despite some progress, largely still was). So Jerry De Luca had been born.
She’d come up with a whole backstory for him. He’d started out with a number of different jobs, most of which he’d been fired from, before finding some success as a journalist. He’d been married three times, each wife younger than the last, and he’d never met a drink he didn’t like (something which had contributed to the succession of wives). He was a rough and aggressive man, the sort of person who would introduce himself to the meanest looking guy in a bar with a hearty “Goddamn, you’re an ugly son of a bitch’ before reveling in the ensuing chaos.
Having the whole backstory fleshed out had weirdly helped Chloe with the first of the Chronicles Of The Darkening books. She’d spent years mapping out the history, political and economic climates, geography and culture of The Darkening. She had books and books and books filled with intricate notes. A whole raft of characters ready to interact with each other and play merry havoc across this vast landscape she had created for them.
Despite all of this, Chloe had struggled to get the first book off the ground. She started and started and started again and again and every time threw it all out. Something was missing. Then she’d hit upon Jerry. Something had clicked then. Having him, having this persona gave her that spark. Jerry’s writing style was reflective of his personality and, once Chloe had that, she was up and running.
The first book had been a runaway success and the second even more so. The only problem was that, as time wore on, Chloe began to resent the Jerry voice more and more. It had been great at first to shelter behind this other fictional person but Chloe found that, silly as it may sound, she was beginning to really resent his success. It shouldn't matter - she’d created him, she was Jerry de Luca, but he was beginning to niggle at her. So much so that she couldn’t bring herself to let out that inner Jerry anymore. The result being that Book Five was resolutely refusing to get written.
Chloe sighed and stretched back in her office chair. Above the creak of the chair, Chloe heard the sound of someone clearing their throat. She froze. This was possibly one of the most alarming sounds she could hear, given that she lived alone. She stayed stock still for a moment while her brain furiously tried to work out her options.
“So you gonna turn around and look at me or what?” said a gruff voice. A voice that she’d never actually heard before but instantly knew.
Heart hammering, Chloe slowly spun her chair around to face the doorway.
There stood a man in his early fifties, greying hair pulled back into a ponytail that went out of fashion in the 90s but which he clearly gave zero shits about. He was clean-shaven but still managed to look somehow dishevelled. There was a cigar clamped between his teeth which he removed with a hand that was wearing a black leather glove. It was clear that he felt it made him look cool when the opposite was in fact true. It was a face that Chloe knew very well even though it technically shouldn't exist.
“Got nothing to say?” asked Jerry De Luca.
“What...how...what...wait...no, what... ” managed Chloe, which she felt was about the best she was going to come up with under the circumstances.
“Damned if I know,” said De Luca, replacing the cigar in his mouth.
“I mean, this isn’t….this is impossible. You don’t exist.”
“And yet here I am.” De Luca moved into the room, stopping next to Chloe’s chair and looking at her expectantly. She looked back at him, confused. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“Well?” he said.
“Well what?”
De Luca sighed. “You gonna let me get to work or what? We got deadlines, right?”
“Oh,’ said Chloe, “oh, yes, of course,” standing up and offering him the chair. She was pretty sure as he brushed past that she heard him mutter something about “chicks” under his breath (and an odd detached part of her brain said that she was the one who’d made him a sexist pig in the first place) but she stepped aside and let him sit down. He cracked his knuckles and, more revoltingly, his neck before letting his fingers fly over the keyboard.
So, thought Chloe as she watched an apparent physical manifestation of her fictional alter ego start work on her next novel, either I’m having a psychotic break or there really is an imaginary man wiring my next book for me. Either way, at least some writing;s getting done…
-----------
OK, so that one’s more of a fragment and I feel like maybe there’s a bit more to the story of Chloe and Jerry De Luca. Maybe that will be revisited at some point….
The Prompt
Here’s what I had to work with courtesy of Jodie
Title - Complete Control
Character - Jerry De Luca
Object - A pair of gloves
Line Of Dialogue - “Goddamn, you’re an ugly son of a bitch.”
Not that I’m advertising for them but BritBox have now made available every existing episode (and some reconstructed ones) of the original Doctor Who so the whole thing is now readily accessible without a vast stack of physical media. That’s 26 seasons (with some missing episodes at the start) of old school low budget British sci fi goodness to gorge yourself senseless on. But, given that it did run for twenty six years the first time round, where do you start? If only there was some sort quick and hastily written blog post by someone with a bald head that could give you some options…
The Very Start
It seems obvious to say but you could start at the very start. The first three storylines exist in their entirety so you get to know the original TARDIS crew a bit before any gaps start to creep in. Gaps? What are these gaps I keep mentioning? Well, BBC policy back in the 60s and early 70s was to reuse videotape as it was expensive and the concept of extensive repeats or home viewing for the archive just wasn't a thing back then. Fortunately the practice was stopped and a number of wiped episodes have been recovered over the years but that still leaves more than 90 episodes missing from the first two Doctors. Another thing to note on the early years - we’re talking still the relatively early days of television back then so a lot of TV was shot as if live (as it was expensive to go back and refilm) and so the pacing can be a little different to what a modern audience expects and there are a number of minor fluffs in the Hartnell years that weren’t serious enough to reshoot so they just kept going…
The Colour Years
Given that there are gaps, you could start with the Third Doctor when the series shifts to colour and move forward from there. It’s a bit closer to the modern show - elements like UNIT and The Master make their debut pretty quickly and the Doctor is initially confined to Earth so there aren’t too many stories of quarries doubling for alien worlds (at least not at the start of his run). Every episode exists from here on in so you can safely watch all the way through to the end without any gaps.
The Best Ones
A fandom does like to disagree with itself so the concept of which story is “best” is something that very few fans can agree on. Also, you’re likely to have your own personal bests based on what age you were when you discovered certain stories - Tom Baker story Revenge Of The Cybermen is never going to top any best of lists but it's the first one I bought on VHS (yes, they were a thing once) so I have an inordinate amount of love for it. Anyway, these are ones that enough fans can agree consistently are favourite stories:- Genesis Of The Daleks (Tom Baker); The Caves Of Androzani (Davison); The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Hartnell); The Curse Of Fenric (McCoy); The City of Death (Tom Baker); Inferno (Pertwee); Remembrance Of The Daleks (McCoy); The War Games (Troughton); The Robots Of Death (Tom Baker). Those will no doubt be disputed by other fans but that's Doctor Who fans for you. It’s a good sampler from across the years to give you a flavour of the different stories that Who can tell.
That should be enough to get you started one way or another. If lockdown goes on long enough, you might be able to get through them all...
