Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me (with an extra surprise!)

Streaming video on the internet has really become one of the best things out there for those of us who love movies and television. I watched pretty much the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer through Netflix the old way, one disc at a time. Sometimes that can work okay, but for other series that love to use cliffhangers and suspense, it can be really hard only watching three episodes before you have to wait for that next disc to arrive. It's for these shows that streaming becomes almost necessary. The moment Twin Peaks was added to Netflix Streaming was the moment I started watching it.

Twin Peaks is a murder mystery set in a small town. Since this is the brainchild of David Lynch, you probably expect that things are not exactly as they seem. Having already seen Blue Velvet, I definitely noticed lots of similarities in theme beyond the fact that they both star Kyle McLachlan as the main character trying to get to the bottom of it. To his credit, Jeffrey Beaumont and Special Agent Dale Cooper are not one and the same by a long shot. Jeffrey is frequently out of his element in the strange situations that happen to him, while Cooper is almost always ready and willing to roll with the punches. Cooper is a fascinating, funny, and charming character who carries the series even when it eventually starts to take a turn for the worse.

While I think most people are familiar with the fact that Twin Peaks has a lot of strange elements, what you might not also know is that it's essentially a soap opera. Nearly everyone is sleeping around on their significant others and many of the characters are trying to double cross each other. It's intended as parody, but in the beginning that wasn't too clear to me. However, because the murder mystery is in full swing, it did not detract from me enjoying the series at all.

When you watch a show, do you ever pay attention to the music score? I know that I generally do not. Somewhere after a few episodes in this series I couldn't help but notice it. The reason for that is that there are basically three themes that were played over and over again. These were done by Angelo Badalalmenti. They're not bad songs, but the repetition of them made them a little hard to swallow after awhile.

What is bad is that apparently David Lynch desperately wants to be a song writer, because there are songs he wrote all throughout the series. Sometimes it makes sense, like seeing performances at the local bar or within the dream world, but in one instance, three characters just randomly decide to record a song together in their living room. The fact that the song is terrible only increases the awkwardness of the moment.

The show lasted two seasons, and for reasons only to be described as bad judgement, ABC insisted that the killer be revealed halfway through the second season. Given the difference in length of the two seasons, this also happens to be almost the perfect halfway point in the length of the show. Given the nature of the killing (and I'm not about to spoil that for you), there is still a reason for the story to move forward at that point. However, it is extremely clear that this forced direction left Lynch and the rest of the writers feeling a little confused on where to go initially. Add to it that they continued the stories under the impression that there would be a third season (and possibly beyond) and the latter half of the series rests somewhere between a jumbled confusing mess and just flat out boring. With the mystery gone we have nothing left but soap opera, and while it is a little more clear as parody here, it's just not enough to keep your interest. The last couple episodes are slightly better, but to be honest, I barely cared about those either.

There's a very important freaky/weird scene in the final episode. My internet connection was acting up and it kept getting interrupted with that "Retrieving" load screen. (For those of you who don't have Netflix, just imagine the infamous "Buffering" messages you see when trying to watch streaming video.) It would literally play somewhere between five to thirty seconds of video before jumping back to that Retrieving screen. You know what? I didn't care. Or at least, my annoyance came more along the lines of "Would you please start working so I can get this over with?" rather than "I want to see what happens!"

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Despite this, I still insisted on watching the film that came afterward, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The movie is a prequel. However, you couldn't watch it before seeing the series because it gives too much away, and you certainly couldn't watch it alone because it doesn't make any sense as a stand alone film. It's intended purpose is to show you the events leading up to Laura Palmer's death. The problem is that most of these details were already revealed to us over the course of watching the show. As much as I live by "Show, don't tell" in storytelling, if we've already been told, you don't really need to show it to me. I suppose for someone who really, really loved the show, it might be neat to see all these things as they happen, but for me it just felt redundant. It also has one scene that I felt contradicted events shown in the series. The only new piece of information anyone will actually get from this film is answering the question of why Laura Palmer and Dale Cooper once had the same dream.

It probably sounds like I'm attacking this series pretty hard by now, and I'm not. If you like shows like True Blood or Lost, you deserve to give this one a shot. It will most likely keep you spellbound until at least episode sixteen. There are a lot of "WTF?!" moments that will get you all excited, and Cooper's Sherlock Holmes level detective skills are fascinating to watch. There are lots of really great characters and the show has a really great sense of humor.

David Lynch himself even has a recurring role that cracked me up pretty much every time he appeared. I also now have a huge crush on Kyle McLachlan after watching him as Dale Cooper. Beyond Cooper I also really liked Deputy Andy, Albert, Lucy, Pete, and the Log Lady. I hate to go into too many specifics of why I like the show because I think the way the show slowly unravels all the little details is a large part of its appeal.

My suggestion is to start watching and see how far you get. If the murder has been solved and you are getting more annoyed then entertained, just turn it off, because you're not going to get any more answers anyway. It's really a shame that they weren't given a chance like Lost was. Perhaps if they had known when the series was going to end, they might have been able to wrap up at least some of the loose ends, or at least show us some more than what we got to see.

Black Lodge 2600

For those of you who have already seen the show, you know what the Black Lodge is. Would you like to put yourself in Cooper's shoes and take a walk inside? I present to you Black Lodge 2600 - an Atari-style video game that lets you do just that. Created by Jak Locke it is a chase and puzzle solving game that's both simple to play and yet challenging at the same time. Previous experience with the show is not required because Jak's made an instruction manual that tells you most of what you need to know. As of right now, it is only playable on PC, but he is working on a Mac version.

The graphics and music are mostly done in the Atari style, though slightly better quality in places. You use your number keys and space bar on the keyboard to play - no controllers necessary. In the game you play as Special Agent Dale Cooper and try to make your way through the Black Lodge to outrun your doppelganger and defeat BOB.

I'm not going to lie to you - this game is hard. While it starts off simple enough, after the first few rooms, the rooms will be randomly loaded for you to run through. This is a pretty fun idea to help recreate the fact that you are in a dream world. However, it also means that the difficulty can jump back up and down without warning, as some of the rooms are a lot harder than others. You'll probably have to die a few times to get the hang of some of them. There's lots of stuff to knock you down, therefore making you easier for "DoppelCooper" to catch. There are statues that can knock you back if you walk directly in front of them, and their hit detection is incredibly sensitive. Most annoying of all, Laura Palmer's screams make your controls reverse. So when you've been hit by a scream and are trying to solve a puzzle backwards while simultaneously outrunning the bad guy, you're probably going to start screaming yourself.

I think most of this is par for the course if you've ever played an Atari game before. They're not really built to be easy. While I couldn't play a marathon session of this, I was left with the feeling to come back again after a break and try again. Even if you can't get too far with these puzzles, if you're a fan of the show you'll enjoy seeing the Black Lodge being recreated in such a fitting manner. There are of course some things here that do not actually happen on the show, but that should be expected of any video game adaptation.

Also, I can tell you this: you don't have to conquer all these puzzles to beat the game. The boss is actually reached through a secret door.. but you'll have to find the giant first in order to find out where. How you get to the giant... well, that's another secret.

Even more?

I thought my journey into Twin Peaks was finished but it turns out there are in fact two books that were written - one from Laura Palmer's perspective and another from Dale Cooper's. I will be reading these eventually, and if they're worth discussing, I'll report back.

There will probably be spoilers in the comments, so here's your advance warning.

Blue Velvet

This post is rated R for language. Given the nature of the film I didn't see a point in censoring myself.

I go through periods where my tastes in movies change. Sometimes I can't sit through slow moving artsy type films to save my life, and others I'm happy to sit back and watch them happen and try to decide just what the filmmaker was trying to represent. I've noticed that lately I've been feeling the latter, so I decided it was time to dig into some David Lynch. I had really wanted to start with Twin Peaks, but it's only available via disc on Netflix and the first disc has a "long wait," whereas Blue Velvet is available for streaming and was just sitting there waiting for me to watch it.

I'm going to get all spoilery now. I went into this movie about 90% blind, and I think that blindness helped me enjoy it a lot. So if you haven't seen the film before, I wouldn't suggest reading this unless you're 100% sure you're never going to watch it. It's definitely odd and not for everyone, so I can't demand that you do, but I will highly recommend it.

We start off with images of a picturesque suburban town until we cut to an old man struggling with his hose while watering the lawn. He suffers from a stroke and falls to the ground. A dog jumps on him, obliviously drinking the water coming from the hose while a toddler waddles up in the background. We zoom from the old man to the grass where we see beetles writhing around. This opening scene is a warning for exactly what you're in for. Things start off the way you expect them to and at first slowly then quickly take a turn toward the odd, strange, and downright disturbing.

Young guy Jeffrey comes back home because the old man we just saw was his dad. On his way back from the hospital he finds an ear in a field. Would you just pick up an ear you saw laying around? Seems to me like you shouldn't disturb a crime scene. The detective he brings it to doesn't seem to mind though, nor is he really upset that someone in his town got his or her ear chopped off at all. I guess a lot of strange stuff goes on in this town regularly.

The movie is set up like an old film noir, where the ladies either walk in mysteriously from the night or sing on a lounge club's stage. Jeffrey gets caught up with two very different women and slowly starts to unravel a deeper and deeper mystery as the story goes on. I was reminded of Rear Window in the beginning. He's so determined to find out what happened and who that ear belongs to that he breaks in to a woman's apartment to try to find out. It seems like just your run of the mill mystery, but then Dorothy (Isabella Rosselini -who I swear I could listen to for hours talk about anything she wanted) starts acting strange, and then Frank (Dennis Hopper) shows up and the oddness gets cranked up to 11.

Jeffrey is hiding in the closet and can't make a sound because Frank will probably kill him. He (and we) are forced to watch as Frank huffs a gas (Netflix lied to me and said it was helium. Some people say it's nitrous oxide, Dennis Hopper claims it was amyl nitrite. Whatever it is, it's bad), becoming more insane with each huff. He rapes her, smacks her around a lot, and brings what looks to be a pair of scissors way too close between her legs for my comfort. It's fucked up. Jeffrey remembers this scene later and cries, and I don't blame him one damn bit.

On the sort of up side, I now know where the "Cassie Eats Cockroaches" middle quotes came from. The scene did a great job of disturbing the hell out of me. I wasn't expecting it at all. It's horrible and yet you can't look away.

Dennis Hopper really knows how to bring some scary bastards to life, doesn't he? Later, when he takes Jeffrey for a ride, I had actually seen a piece of this scene already, specifically the part where Dean Stockwell lip syncs to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams." It seemed so odd when I first watched it and I thought it surely couldn't have fit in place with any movie ever made. For whatever reason, seeing it now in it's context I found it fit the mood almost perfectly and doesn't seem out of place at all. Dean Stockwell is just great by the way. So wonderfully low key and just fabulous. It's a brief part but the movie is better for it.

From there we get to see Frank get high again and threaten Jeffrey, while putting on lipstick and kissing him. He compares love letters to bullets and generally just had me fearing that he was going to rape him. It's really, really intense. Luckily he goes the more traditional route and just beats the crap out of him instead. I'm starting to understand why Dennis Hopper has the reputation he does. It's also disappointing knowing how mild most of his roles are these days by comparison.

The weakest points of the movie are between Jeffrey and Sandy (Laura Dern), who is a high school senior and daughter of the detective Jeffrey brought the ear to. I've seen Laura Dern do better jobs elsewhere, but here her delivery is kind of stiff and the dialogue between her and Jeffrey just comes off awkward. It's at its worse when we're forced to listen to her try to sell the most pretentious part of the movie, this description of a dream she had where the world was gray and sad until the robins came and brought happiness. They also do the thing I hate the most, where people who have only known each other for a week are suddenly in love. Even when she finds out he slept with Dorothy, she forgives him almost immediately. It's possible I may be too harsh, maybe most teenage girls are stupid enough to do that.

I was worried that the strangeness of the film meant we weren't going to get any answers, but mercifully we do. Things get wrapped up almost a little too nice and neatly for my tastes, but I think that was the point. See, we see a robin eating a beetle in the end scene, so the happiness has come and the dark underbelly of the suburban life is now going away. I took from the film the idea that sometimes horrible stuff happens and we don't know why but we can take comfort in the fact that we can also get the white picket fence and the cheery girlfriend sometimes too.

I could tell Lynch wanted colors to represent things, as there are lots of vivid ones, both in dress and set pieces. What they meant I have no idea, but it was pretty to look at. It reminded me of a much milder version of Tim Burton's style. I also noticed a lot of times he would use quick cuts and close up shots of items, usually street or building signs, that would quickly move us from place to place or represent the passage of time without feeling the need to spell it all out for us. There's a lot going on in this movie and I appreciate the way he kept it moving forward.

So.. that wasn't so bad really. Don't get me wrong, there's some really crazy ass shit that happens in the film. It's odd, but it seems to exist in a universe where odd is common place. It's possible that had I seen this movie when I wasn't in one of my more open minded moods, I might have hated it but I don't really think so. I think the way Lynch tells the story makes all the difference. I liked it a lot and it definitely left me with a desire to see more of his work.

I'm still kind of afraid to watch Eraserhead though.