LOOKS:
Twin Peaks - jumping from The Horror Channel to the lovely 10-disc "Definitive Golden Box Edition" DVD (with a healthy dose of extra features), I finished my first tour through the fascinating and memorable oddball drama that was Twin Peaks. If only there had been a third season, because that cliffhanger just leaves you wanting to know what would have happened next. Additionally I dug into the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me, which I talked about in an earlier post.
The Blue Planet - I got this for my birthday months ago, but I hadn't seen it yet, so I figured it was about time I dug into it. Fascinating stuff, but it was the deep sea episode that was my favourite. It's astonishing what's way down there in the inky darkness of the deep sea, isn't it?
Lost: Season One & Two DVD Extras - the show came to an end earlier this year, so I've gone back to the beginning - well, the extra features anyway.
Italian Horror - it's been a lot of Argento-flavoured movies this month, what with Demons 1 & 2 (which he co-wrote & presented), as well as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, and The Cat O'Nine Tails.
Avatar (Blu-Ray) - a third viewing of James Cameron's mega budget blockbuster. I still dig it.
The Expendables (Blu-Ray) - a ruddy good flick in its own right, but what impressed me most was the feature length making of documentary "Inferno" featured in the UK 3-disc package, which was just superb.
SOUNDS:
Twin Peaks - Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruse have been providing the background to my web surfing this month with their hypnotic sound.
Goblin "Profondo Rosso" and "Tenebrae" - from the Argento films of the same names.
Shutter Island soundtrack ("Symphony No.3 Passacaglia", and "On The Nature of Daylight") - both are equally as haunting from Scorsese's superior genre flick.
VIBES & FLAVOURS:
STALKER: Call of Pripyat - I was months late getting into this, but nevertheless I enjoyed the hell out of it. It took a bit of getting into initially, but once I was in, I was all about exploring every nook and cranny. The first game had the better story and climax, but this third entry in the series was the best all-round package.
Seasonal Snow - in January we got a shedload of snow, and this month, not even a whole year later, we got another big old dose of the white stuff accompanied by sub-zero temperatures all month. It's been as cold as -13c in my neck of the woods during the night, so it's been pretty damn cold out there. However it did mean we had a lovely covering of snow on Christmas Day itself, and I can't remember experiencing that before - so that was quite special indeed.
Call of Duty: Black Ops - one of my Xmas presents for this year; it's not perfect by any means (too many scripted moments where you have no player control, muddled battles that leave you a bit confused, endlessly respawning enemies at certain points, and generally not feeling all that different from previous entries in the franchise) ... but on the plus side I did still rather enjoy it (the plot was more interesting and better structured than that of Modern Warfare 2, which was sadly lacking on that front, being inserted into certain historical moments and alternate historical moments was cool, and some of the levels were really damn cool). Hopefully the next CoD game will shake things up considerably - and provide a longer single player experience - but despite some problems that Black Ops sports, I still quite enjoyed it.
The Big Book of Top Gear 2011 - one of the many books I got for Xmas. I've certainly got plenty to read over the coming weeks and months ... this, plus Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1&2, The Walking Dead Vol. 5, "It's Only A Movie" by Mark Kermode, "Driving Us Insane" by Jeremy Klaxon (a spoof), "The Man In The White Suit" by Ben Collins, "The World According To Clarkson: How Hard Can It Be?" by Jeremy Clarkson, and "Ice Cream & Sadness: Cyanide & Happiness Vol. 2" by the Cyanide & Happiness web comic guys.
...
And being that this is New Year's Eve - to one and all, have a groovy night and a spiffing New Year 2011!
Showing posts with label twin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twin. Show all posts
Friday, 31 December 2010
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Double Bill Mini Musings: Fire Walk (or Run) With Me...
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me:
I've been on a big old Twin Peaks kick this November/December - thanks to the much-improved Horror Channel, and then the spiffing 10-disc box set - so naturally I would be checking out this prequel.
I wouldn't call it "revelatory", as the box art proclaims, but as a newly created big fan of the show, what it actually is, is fascinating, horrific, delerious, weird, disturbing, entrancing and transfixing. I'm not a huge fan of Daivd Lynch's movies, but I have seen a number of them over the years, and considering I had 25 hours and 35 minutes worth of Twin Peaks to go on before venturing into this dark telling of Laura Palmer's last seven days, it has been the most up-to-speed I have ever been for a David Lynch movie.
Indeed I feel after this concentrated Twin Peaks fascination I've just experienced, that I better understand Lynch's work (even though he co-created the show itself with Mark Frost). Perhaps people read too much into his work - in fact, I'm sure of it - film theorists are notorious for reading things into movies and making the simple utterly, utterly complicated, and then film viewers go in expecting it to be a head-screw when in fact things are actually a little more as they seem. It's just that oftentimes, the things as they seem just so happen to be bizarre, dreamlike things.
That's how Twin Peaks plays out - like a dream - and like in dreams, weird things happen inexplicably in the background, and the narrative of your dreams take weird and wonderful divergent turns whenever they feel like it ... and sometimes, weird things just happen. You see something weird that pops inexplicably into your life, or something weird happens to you when you least expect it, and suddenly a whole world of possibilities opens up.
So perhaps with Lynch's work things are actually a little bit more as-they-seem, despite what your assumptions (developed by years of reading-in by theorists) suggest.
The world of Twin Peaks is, simply put, a tale of good and evil, of internal battles, of incest, rape, murder, drugs, infidelity, and everything in-between and - as co-creator Mark Frost said - you'd expect such themes to present themselves in a big city, but in fact it's all here in Twin Peaks - and that's the selling point.
As for the tie-in prequel movie, which unfortunately didn't set the world on fire (thus nixing any possibility of follow-ups that we Peaks Freaks (new and old alike) would have loved to have had considering the cliffhanger end to season two), it dives full-on into territory that is merely alluded to in the TV show - no wonder it's rated 18. It recontextualises what you see in the TV show, and casts a significantly dark shadow over some key characters.
It's a beautiful, hypnotic, slightly confusing, ever-so-unnerving film, and despite being not quite so satisfying in certain areas (i.e. there's not an awful lot of Agent Dale Cooper, even considering the timeline of the movie's plot), it does really satisfy in others. Laura Palmer was the catalyst for the entire series, and was essentially the focus for the majority of the episodes, but all after (and because of) her death. Here she's alive and right at the heart of the storytelling in all it's entrancing, disturbing, and horrific ways.
Marathon Man:
Not an awful lot to say about this one, but I do love a good 'New Hollywood era' movie from the 1970s. The moral ambiguity, the gritty realism of the filmmaking and the New York setting, the non-traditional leads, and the plots - so full of paranoia - a mirror to the confused, bruised and battered psyche of America after the the Vietnam war and various political upheavals in the period when the innocence of the post-war years was lost forever. Marathon Man is one of the films that expertly illustrated this complex state of the nation.
One scene particularly gripped me - when the central antagonist ends up in precisely the sort of area of town they wouldn't want to be recognised - oh and, of course, the famous "is it safe?" sequence.
I've been on a big old Twin Peaks kick this November/December - thanks to the much-improved Horror Channel, and then the spiffing 10-disc box set - so naturally I would be checking out this prequel.
I wouldn't call it "revelatory", as the box art proclaims, but as a newly created big fan of the show, what it actually is, is fascinating, horrific, delerious, weird, disturbing, entrancing and transfixing. I'm not a huge fan of Daivd Lynch's movies, but I have seen a number of them over the years, and considering I had 25 hours and 35 minutes worth of Twin Peaks to go on before venturing into this dark telling of Laura Palmer's last seven days, it has been the most up-to-speed I have ever been for a David Lynch movie.
Indeed I feel after this concentrated Twin Peaks fascination I've just experienced, that I better understand Lynch's work (even though he co-created the show itself with Mark Frost). Perhaps people read too much into his work - in fact, I'm sure of it - film theorists are notorious for reading things into movies and making the simple utterly, utterly complicated, and then film viewers go in expecting it to be a head-screw when in fact things are actually a little more as they seem. It's just that oftentimes, the things as they seem just so happen to be bizarre, dreamlike things.
That's how Twin Peaks plays out - like a dream - and like in dreams, weird things happen inexplicably in the background, and the narrative of your dreams take weird and wonderful divergent turns whenever they feel like it ... and sometimes, weird things just happen. You see something weird that pops inexplicably into your life, or something weird happens to you when you least expect it, and suddenly a whole world of possibilities opens up.
So perhaps with Lynch's work things are actually a little bit more as-they-seem, despite what your assumptions (developed by years of reading-in by theorists) suggest.
The world of Twin Peaks is, simply put, a tale of good and evil, of internal battles, of incest, rape, murder, drugs, infidelity, and everything in-between and - as co-creator Mark Frost said - you'd expect such themes to present themselves in a big city, but in fact it's all here in Twin Peaks - and that's the selling point.
As for the tie-in prequel movie, which unfortunately didn't set the world on fire (thus nixing any possibility of follow-ups that we Peaks Freaks (new and old alike) would have loved to have had considering the cliffhanger end to season two), it dives full-on into territory that is merely alluded to in the TV show - no wonder it's rated 18. It recontextualises what you see in the TV show, and casts a significantly dark shadow over some key characters.
It's a beautiful, hypnotic, slightly confusing, ever-so-unnerving film, and despite being not quite so satisfying in certain areas (i.e. there's not an awful lot of Agent Dale Cooper, even considering the timeline of the movie's plot), it does really satisfy in others. Laura Palmer was the catalyst for the entire series, and was essentially the focus for the majority of the episodes, but all after (and because of) her death. Here she's alive and right at the heart of the storytelling in all it's entrancing, disturbing, and horrific ways.
Marathon Man:
Not an awful lot to say about this one, but I do love a good 'New Hollywood era' movie from the 1970s. The moral ambiguity, the gritty realism of the filmmaking and the New York setting, the non-traditional leads, and the plots - so full of paranoia - a mirror to the confused, bruised and battered psyche of America after the the Vietnam war and various political upheavals in the period when the innocence of the post-war years was lost forever. Marathon Man is one of the films that expertly illustrated this complex state of the nation.
One scene particularly gripped me - when the central antagonist ends up in precisely the sort of area of town they wouldn't want to be recognised - oh and, of course, the famous "is it safe?" sequence.
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Flavours of the Month: November 2010...
LOOKS:
The Walking Dead - as you will have noticed I have been putting up my thouhts about each episode every week, so you can read what I've thought of this spiffing new undead TV series from AMC.
Twin Peaks - the Horror Channel has been having a David Lynch season this month, and the tentpole of it has been the showing, from start-to-finish (at the time of writing it's still part-way into season two), of Twin Peaks. I had never seen it before, but knew of it, and being a fan of the videogame Alan Wake, it's interesting to see where various elements of that game came from (indeed the creators are big fans of Lynch's dream-like drama).
Avatar 3-disc (Blu-Ray) - if only every studio/distributor would tell you in advance that a kick arse version of a movie on disc was coming later on. Fortunately Fox and James Cameron put it out on front street that Avatar would be getting a super-duper home video release in due course (when they were launching the vanilla disc). Naturally, being a whore for making-of documentaries and special features in general, I bided my time and finally I got my mits on Cameron's eco-actioner. It may not be in 3D this time, but now I get to view it without the 30% loss in brightness/contrast (such as you get with 3D glasses) and with 16 extra minutes (which, handily, you can view on it's own if you want to).
As far as the new footage goes, some is mere extensions, but quite a bit of it provides worthwhile new content and background. We get to see what Earth has become (providing good grounding and context, as well as visible reason, for mankind's actions on Pandora - it's a nice Blade Runner-esque counterpoint too), and learn more about Augustine's school and her relationship with the Na'vi. You can still see plotpoints coming from miles away, but Cameron's work has often (if not always) worked in popular broadstrokes. In short, it was great to get back to Pandora.
Toy Story 3 2-disc (Blu-Ray) - I never got to see it in the cinema, and I'll blog about the film separately, but it was great to finally get to see Pixar's latest, and well, that moment (if you've seen it, you'll know what I mean) was jaw dropping. That entire sequence was jaw dropping in fact. Bravo Pixar. Bravo.
The American Nightmare - I've seen Adam Simon's documentary on the American/Canadian horror flicks of the 1960s and 1970s several times over the last several years, and it's still a joy to watch. Informative, incisive and creepily stylish in its construction. A must-watch for any fan of the horror genre.
SOUNDS:
Airbourne "Runnin' Wild" - I already had the vice-rock group's second album, so it was about time I caught up with their debut. Fast, loud, wild and all about women, drink and everything in between. Inspired by the sound of AC/DC, it's a thrashingly good time.
Angelo Badalamenti "Twin Peaks Theme"/"Laura Palmer's Theme" - unsurprisingly, having gotten into Twin Peaks at long last, Badalamenti's dreamy score has become one of the constant sounds of November for me.
Godspeed You Black Emperor "Moya" - I'd always wondered what that mournful-then-energised music was in The American Nightmare, but I finally found it, and it's mesmerising.
VIBES & FLAVOURS:
Solitaire - sometimes when I'm listening to shows from the SModcast Podcast Network I'm not doing all that much, but then I remembered about Solitaire (which I used to play quite a bit in the 1990s), and I've become oddly fascinated by it again. It took me ages to get a win on it initially however as I kept running into dead ends - frustratingly so - fortunately the vagaries of a computer software's random card dealing didn't last long and I've been enjoying this little trip down memory lane.
Dead Rising 2 - I've got it for the 360, but I'm not good enough at it to do the story (or the rest of it anyway), so I got it for the PC so I could use cheats to just run around having all sorts of fun - and, importantly, actually get to play the story mode. You might think that slaying thousands upon thousands of zombies with a Light Machine Gun (or a Humvee) would get boring, but you'd be wrong.
STALKER: Call of Pripyat - I was a big fan of the original STALKER game (Shadow of Chernobyl), which provided the best atmospheric dose of gaming that year (2007, if memory serves), and while the follow-up (Clear Sky) was a bit disappointing towards the end it again provided that jolt of The Zone that we "STALKERs" crave ... in 2007 I got into the whole thing in a big bad way with the game, and the movie and book upon which it was based (not to mention absorbing documentaries about the real "Zone" itself). Anyway, it's been on the to-do list for a while, but I finally got around to it.
Unfortunately the DirectX 9 graphics are nowhere near as good as they were in Clear Sky (no doubt to push the DX10/11 technology), and while the pace is a bit slow so far, I'm getting into the world of STALKER all over again. It might be feeling a bit dated and too-samey to the previous two games, but you can't deny the lure of lurking around the rotting ruins of "The Zone".
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday 13th by Peter M. Bracke - I got this for my birthday and I've only just gotten around to it, and boy will it be a long old read. Nevertheless I've covered the first two movies in the long-running franchise. It's a must-have for any fan of the franchise as it's crammed with behind the scenes photos and mountains upon mountains of information from those involved.
The Walking Dead - as you will have noticed I have been putting up my thouhts about each episode every week, so you can read what I've thought of this spiffing new undead TV series from AMC.
Twin Peaks - the Horror Channel has been having a David Lynch season this month, and the tentpole of it has been the showing, from start-to-finish (at the time of writing it's still part-way into season two), of Twin Peaks. I had never seen it before, but knew of it, and being a fan of the videogame Alan Wake, it's interesting to see where various elements of that game came from (indeed the creators are big fans of Lynch's dream-like drama).
Avatar 3-disc (Blu-Ray) - if only every studio/distributor would tell you in advance that a kick arse version of a movie on disc was coming later on. Fortunately Fox and James Cameron put it out on front street that Avatar would be getting a super-duper home video release in due course (when they were launching the vanilla disc). Naturally, being a whore for making-of documentaries and special features in general, I bided my time and finally I got my mits on Cameron's eco-actioner. It may not be in 3D this time, but now I get to view it without the 30% loss in brightness/contrast (such as you get with 3D glasses) and with 16 extra minutes (which, handily, you can view on it's own if you want to).
As far as the new footage goes, some is mere extensions, but quite a bit of it provides worthwhile new content and background. We get to see what Earth has become (providing good grounding and context, as well as visible reason, for mankind's actions on Pandora - it's a nice Blade Runner-esque counterpoint too), and learn more about Augustine's school and her relationship with the Na'vi. You can still see plotpoints coming from miles away, but Cameron's work has often (if not always) worked in popular broadstrokes. In short, it was great to get back to Pandora.
Toy Story 3 2-disc (Blu-Ray) - I never got to see it in the cinema, and I'll blog about the film separately, but it was great to finally get to see Pixar's latest, and well, that moment (if you've seen it, you'll know what I mean) was jaw dropping. That entire sequence was jaw dropping in fact. Bravo Pixar. Bravo.
The American Nightmare - I've seen Adam Simon's documentary on the American/Canadian horror flicks of the 1960s and 1970s several times over the last several years, and it's still a joy to watch. Informative, incisive and creepily stylish in its construction. A must-watch for any fan of the horror genre.
SOUNDS:
Airbourne "Runnin' Wild" - I already had the vice-rock group's second album, so it was about time I caught up with their debut. Fast, loud, wild and all about women, drink and everything in between. Inspired by the sound of AC/DC, it's a thrashingly good time.
Angelo Badalamenti "Twin Peaks Theme"/"Laura Palmer's Theme" - unsurprisingly, having gotten into Twin Peaks at long last, Badalamenti's dreamy score has become one of the constant sounds of November for me.
Godspeed You Black Emperor "Moya" - I'd always wondered what that mournful-then-energised music was in The American Nightmare, but I finally found it, and it's mesmerising.
VIBES & FLAVOURS:
Solitaire - sometimes when I'm listening to shows from the SModcast Podcast Network I'm not doing all that much, but then I remembered about Solitaire (which I used to play quite a bit in the 1990s), and I've become oddly fascinated by it again. It took me ages to get a win on it initially however as I kept running into dead ends - frustratingly so - fortunately the vagaries of a computer software's random card dealing didn't last long and I've been enjoying this little trip down memory lane.
Dead Rising 2 - I've got it for the 360, but I'm not good enough at it to do the story (or the rest of it anyway), so I got it for the PC so I could use cheats to just run around having all sorts of fun - and, importantly, actually get to play the story mode. You might think that slaying thousands upon thousands of zombies with a Light Machine Gun (or a Humvee) would get boring, but you'd be wrong.
STALKER: Call of Pripyat - I was a big fan of the original STALKER game (Shadow of Chernobyl), which provided the best atmospheric dose of gaming that year (2007, if memory serves), and while the follow-up (Clear Sky) was a bit disappointing towards the end it again provided that jolt of The Zone that we "STALKERs" crave ... in 2007 I got into the whole thing in a big bad way with the game, and the movie and book upon which it was based (not to mention absorbing documentaries about the real "Zone" itself). Anyway, it's been on the to-do list for a while, but I finally got around to it.
Unfortunately the DirectX 9 graphics are nowhere near as good as they were in Clear Sky (no doubt to push the DX10/11 technology), and while the pace is a bit slow so far, I'm getting into the world of STALKER all over again. It might be feeling a bit dated and too-samey to the previous two games, but you can't deny the lure of lurking around the rotting ruins of "The Zone".
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday 13th by Peter M. Bracke - I got this for my birthday and I've only just gotten around to it, and boy will it be a long old read. Nevertheless I've covered the first two movies in the long-running franchise. It's a must-have for any fan of the franchise as it's crammed with behind the scenes photos and mountains upon mountains of information from those involved.
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