Twin Peaks returns in 2016 on Showtime (3 Viewers)

[TravisR]

Here's Showtime's synopsises for the first four episodes. I'm using spoiler text but I assure you, nothing is revealed.

Spoiler

May 21: Part 1 and Part 2- The stars turn and a time presents itself.
May 28: Part 3 and Part 4- …brings back some memories.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Haha, those descriptions are hilariously vague.

 

[TravisR]

Haha, those descriptions are hilariously vague.

Yeah, they basically say nothing but for some reason, the first one sounds incredible to me.

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

The stars turn to us and... OMG, they've aged

 

[joshEH]

A new book and audiobook entitled 'Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier' written by Mark Frost is coming out on October 31. I'd guess it's a sequel or at least similar to The Secret History book but there hasn't been an official announcement yet.

Cover is now up:

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just watched 2x13:

Spoiler

If I have nightmares tonight, Leo Johnson (grinning down at the camera, wearing the party hat and face painted with a clown's mask of smeared food, as the lights flicker from the brownout) will surely feature prominently. The body Windom Earle left tied to the chair in Sheriff Truman's office might also make a cameo.

I'm wondering if this episode came in really long, because it was edited awkwardly.

I'm more tolerant of James Hurley than most, with his subplot with the rich lady being battered by her rich husband is severely trying my patience. On the other hand, I continue to find Benjamin Horne's Civil War-centric mental breakdown to be enjoyably amusing.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Re: James Hurley and Ben Horne's subplots at that point, I agree completely on both.

 

[TravisR]

Out of the reviled subplots to follow the Laura Palmer story, Little Nicky is the one that I like the most- it's silly but there's enough comedy with Andy & Dick that I enjoy it. Civil War Ben has some humor to it and James & Evelyn is awful.

The good news is that once the Windom Earle story gets moving, it's pretty good.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Out of the reviled subplots to follow the Laura Palmer story, Little Nicky is the one that I like the most- it's silly but there's enough comedy with Andy & Dick that I enjoy it.

That storyline has grown on me. Dick started as the kind of yuppie metrosexual schmuck that seemed to be a particularly common stock character in the late eighties. But Ian Buchanan's performance is so odd, and the strange buddy act that develops between Dick and Andy is so goofy and strange, that I was won over. I particularly appreciate that Andy gives as good as he gets in that rivalry. Yes, Andy's a bit of a dim bulb, but he knows what Lucy wants better than Dick does, and he genuinely cares in a way that Dick doesn't.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Just watched episode 2x15. It really speaks to the status the show must have had within pop culture to get Annie Hall herself to direct an episode.

It's an interesting experience, more ambitious than most of the non-Lynch episodes, and at times the most like Season One that the show's been so far. Particularly with the staging and composition of shots, there's a lot more going on than in most episodes. And Keaton is the director who gets to

Spoiler

properly establish Windom Earle in the flesh and blood. Those scenes have a cackling sort of energy to them. Welsh is giving a pretty broad "TV" performance in the role, but the contrast between Earle's unhinged demeanor and his ruthlessly efficient actions is startlingly effective. I especially like that he was able to somehow summon Leo's police record from his remote cabin.

At the same time the fact that it draws comparisons to Lynch's episodes has an unfortunate way of highlighting that there is indeed only one David Lynch. Some of the more far out things, like the abstract sequence with the chess pieces at the beginning, and the manipulation of frame rates at various points in the episode, feels dated and stale now in a way that Lynch's weird shit never does.

The biggest problems have nothing to do with the execution, though, and everything to do with the teleplay. There's just way too much James Hurley and Evelyn for this to be a winner of an episode. It also feels like, after all of the build up for his character, David Warner is being wasted here.

On the plus side,

Spoiler

this may be my favorite Albert appearance yet, reconciling the starkly different demeanor and attitude between his hostile early appearances and his warmer later appearances. And it's nice to see Bobby Brigg being, yet again, a belligerent asshole to the police at a moment when he's implicated in a serious crime.

I also loved the moment when Norma hires Shelly back at the diner. Shelly has a way of surrounding herself with terrible men, but Norma actually cares about her.

And the Civil War at the Great Northern has finally ended. I can't decide if I dug the increasingly elaborate set decorations or if the too-muchness of it went too far.

 

[joshEH]

Modern looks at our old haunts! And HOLY SHIT YES at 0:16...

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don't know why, but seeing the diner parking lot with modern cars parked in it really made me happy.

 

[joshEH]

Latest Criterion newsletter-clue seems to point to them releasing Fire Walk With Me:

 

[joshEH]

And apparently Janus Films now have the rights to the movie.

Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery was the most amazing and definitive presentation virtually any series or film has ever gotten on Blu-Ray, so I can't see where the Criterion will improve on that, as Fire Walk With Me in that set was (I believe) already sourced from a 4K scan.

But the more I think about it, the more it does make sense for them to do FWWM, even if it's silly. Basically: the new season just coming out + The Entire Mystery being a bit cost-prohibitive and OOP + there not being a standalone FWWM release on Blu + perhaps, Criterion wanting to make use of that "The Art Life" Lynch-doc as an extra + this thing will make a shitload of money, as all Lynch releases do for Criterion = makes enough sense.

I will always support this film, especially if good sales for Criterion could get us something like Lost Highway in the future.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

When you think about it, it's kind of amazing that so many of the buildings used as exteriors for the original show are still there a quarter of a century later, especially when the state of Washington has grown in population by nearly 2.5 million people over that time.

 

[TravisR]

I will always support this film, especially if good sales for Criterion could get us something like Lost Highway in the future.

It's mind boggling to me that Lost Highway isn't on Blu-ray. All the Universal titles that Shout/Scream Factory and Criterion have licensed in the last few years and they haven't gotten that one yet. It seems like a no-brainer to ride the coat tails of the new Twin Peaks.

 

[joshEH]

What makes me hold out hope for a release is that Lost Highway is, like Mulholland Drive, a Universal/Canal+ film, and both studios currently have an excellent working relationship with both Lynch and Criterion, plus of course the attention brought by the Twin Peaks revival (as well as the fact that Lost Highway is set in the greater Peaks/Lynch-verse, along with Mulholland).

 

[questrider]

It's mind boggling to me that Lost Highway isn't on Blu-ray. All the Universal titles that Shout/Scream Factory and Criterion have licensed in the last few years and they haven't gotten that one yet. It seems like a no-brainer to ride the coat tails of the new Twin Peaks.

Lost Highway is on blu-ray, you just have to get the German version. I recently ordered the 3-disc David Lynch boxset that contains Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire for about $15 through Amazon.de (I also got Wild at Heart at the same time for about $9). The only drawback to these discs is while the feature is region-free, the extras are SD PAL so you have to have a region-free player to view them which I don't have but really bought the discs for the films themselves because I wanted to complete my David Lynch collection on blu-ray. They also do not have English subtitles (obviously) so that is another slight drawback as well. I agree that it seems like a no-brainer to get more Lynch films out on blu-ray in North America—only five of his ten features are—as I would snap them up in a heartbeat, especially if they were released through Criterion.

As a sidenote question for another thread (not to derail this one): Why are films like this deemed releasable in the European and Japanese markets but not North America? Especially from an important filmmaker such as Lynch?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

As a sidenote question for another thread (not to derail this one): Why are films like this deemed releasable in the European and Japanese markets but not North America? Especially from an important filmmaker such as Lynch?

Lynch's films are often financed by multiple entities, so the people who hold the North American rights are often different from those who hold international rights. For a studio like Universal, which has a huge number of titles under their control beyond Mulholland Drive, it's just one small title for them. For a smaller label in Europe, because they might have fewer titles, something like Mulholland Drive might stand out more to them (sort of the difference between being a big fish in a little pond vs a little fish in a big pond). On top of that, studio support for physical media has been declining in the U.S. since the recession and domestic sales numbers on catalog titles have been way down. U.S. labels on the whole are cutting back on their output (which is why we've seen a rise in third party distributors like Twilight Time), and I think that's probably the biggest single factor here. Universal probably thinks that Lost Highway won't sell enough copies/make enough money to justify the effort for them to do a disc here, but because it's a relatively high profile title, they probably want more than another label would be willing to pay for the license.

 

[questrider]

Lynch's films are often financed by multiple entities, so the people who hold the North American rights are often different from those who hold international rights. For a studio like Universal, which has a huge number of titles under their control beyond Mulholland Drive, it's just one small title for them. For a smaller label in Europe, because they might have fewer titles, something like Mulholland Drive might stand out more to them (sort of the difference between being a big fish in a little pond vs a little fish in a big pond). On top of that, studio support for physical media has been declining in the U.S. since the recession and domestic sales numbers on catalog titles have been way down. U.S. labels on the whole are cutting back on their output (which is why we've seen a rise in third party distributors like Twilight Time), and I think that's probably the biggest single factor here. Universal probably thinks that Lost Highway won't sell enough copies/make enough money to justify the effort for them to do a disc here, but because it's a relatively high profile title, they probably want more than another label would be willing to pay for the license.

Good points, thanks! Thus, buy the UK version of The Elephant Man, the German versions of Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and Inland Empire, and the Japanese version of The Straight Story, and you can have the complete David Lynch oeuvre on blu-ray.

Still hope Criterion does more because Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive are great releases.


All apologies for the diversion—I got lost...