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Twin Peaks Season 3 |OT2| It's Just A Change, Not An End
- Thread starter Joqu
- Start date
The Mauve Zone stuff is pretty interesting because The Black Lodge and The White Lodge names may have been taken from the book, The Moonchild, which is another book by a "magician" and warring factions of magicians who are trying to get control of a child that is said to be able to influence the world right before WWI.
Poimandres
Member
Yes, Inland Empire is pretty disturbing. You definitely feel like you've been through some shit by the end of that film!
VistraNorrez
Member
It think that it's just a simple vortex and Lynch had no unique idea of how to present it.
D
Deleted member 80556
Unconfirmed Member
Twin Peaks made me remember Inland Empire precisely because I didn't know what to expect.
I can't remember any other Lynch film evoking that on me, maybe Eraserhead. Maybe it's been a long time ago and I already forgot my viewing experience apart from the plot points.
I can't remember any other Lynch film evoking that on me, maybe Eraserhead. Maybe it's been a long time ago and I already forgot my viewing experience apart from the plot points.
I haven't seen much comparison of the new season to Inland Empire. I think this is either because not so many people have seen it, or that many of those who have downright hate it so haven't thought a lot about what it's doing or trying to do.
I think there's a lot in common with Inland Empire. The first two episodes feel like IE in how they keep introducing fragments of new material and asking us to make connections, while they're unified by this tone of everything being 'wrong'. Later in the season we start to feel more grounded, but similar concepts and ideas are being spoken about by different characters in different fragments that are otherwise unconnected with each other (i.e. 'the little girl who lives down the lane', Billy, etc), creating this feeling that maybe it will all come together, but the unifying meaning is always just out of our grasp, just like in IE. Lastly, in the final two episodes it revisits the idea Lynch first used in Inland Empire of moving from one dream into another. There are common elements between separate dreams, and the 'collective unconscious' (the red room?) allows the narrative focus to shift from one dream into another, until at the end we may be viewing events through a totally different perspective than we started in.
I think it fuses the narrative of tragic repression and reality denial from Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway with this dream shifting concept.
Gore is also real, certainly more than any bug that's also a frog and a bird, yet all the gore shots looked absolutely awful on this show. There were many magical things that got the proper visual effects treatment, so I don't believe for a second that Lynch wouldn't make this show look good if he could.
The detonation of an atomic bomb in New Mexico was a verifiable historical event, one which the show takes deadly seriously. Douglas Jones' head bursting into black smoke or 2 NYC millennials getting their heads chopped off by a video effect are not verifiable historical events. Like, David Lynch has always been preoccupied by artifice. His work, haunted as it is by Vertigo, is consistently about artifice in all of its permutations. One of his cinematographers has told stories about Lynch getting excited about just how un-real his props and effects actually look: http://www.studiodaily.com/2011/11/the-story-behind-blue-velvets-fake-robin/. This seems pretty basic to any understanding of what Lynch's work is actually up to.
Good god that's a mess. As if we needed another reason to say it but, Fuck Konami! Thanks for the extensive guide though. When possible I always like to play the best version which you'd assume is always PC but with some older games PC can be as much of a hassle as console, sometimes more.
I'll look into the PC ones then I guess, for the most part anyway. I don't have a PS1 or PS2 anymore or a PS3 that'll play those game discs. Is there a consensus on the best SH or two? I thought I remember SH2 being the favorite overall although maybe I'm thinking of "the worst one" instead.
In his book Catching the Big Fish he's talking about how he likes images/footage that is not sharp, how it often tells more then a clear and sharp image.
giancarlo123x
Banned
I saw that Heather Graham was on Conan recently, she looks even more like Norma now and great, breaks my heart that she doesn't show up at all this season.
Discotheque
Banned
nah. its creepy, as is most of Lynch's work though really. but its more a noir film if anything.
Don Draper's Hat
Member
Too busy doing Foxy Bingo ads.
Dynamite Shikoku
Congratulations, you really deserve it!
How was this weeks episode?
Discotheque
Banned
what week is this?
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
It's one reason why so many have been upset with the HD versions of Silent Hill 2 & 3, like even if they were just bare bone ports they'd at least have some appeal as a place to play the games on new consoles, but they're ridiculously broken to an absurd level (apparently they had only a partial version of the source code that was unfinished and tried to program it again themselves to some horrendous results and some baffling changes).
For Silent Hill 2, there's about an even split of people who prefer the PS2 Director's Cut Version and PC version. There's some minor graphical effects missing in the PC version and a bit sparser fog from the PS2 version, but people have made fixes. If you plan to go PC, this is a great topic for it: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=488899
Though keep in mind PC can very easily emulate PS2 games, all you need to do is put the PS2 disk into the CD Drive and just adjust a few emulator settings and you can easily play the Silent Hill PS2 games on PC.
Silent Hill 3 the best version is the PC version. Silent Hill 2 & 4 PC ports were done by third party studios (though they are good), while Silent Hill 3's PC port was actually done by Team Silent themselves. Outside of being very well optimized, they add a variety of graphical effects that are consistent with the artistic vision for the PC version they couldn't do on the PS2.
-single tear-
Camper Van Beethoven
Banned
She was absolutely awful in season 2. I dont want her anywhere near my peaks.
Rien
Jelly Belly
Not at all. Its a mystery/psychologial thriller imo. Inland Empire and Eraserhead are his horror films and Lost Highway to a certain extend by atmosphere.
You should check MD man. Its my favourite movie of all time and it contains the best scene Lynch has ever created in my opinion and as far as i have seen from him.
This 100%. The whole Annie plot was stupid just like nearly all the rest of Season 2. Happy Donna got dropped too. She was even more annoying then James for me.
Silencio?
Fluffernutter Pancake
Member
Don Draper's Hat
Member
You say that like the rest of the cast are top tier actors.
Most of them are awful.
giancarlo123x
Banned
Correct, and I'll take her over this forced Diane shenanigans.
How's Annie?
Death Metalist
Member
HashtagLapsed
Member
The Black and White lodges extend beyond The Moonchild too. These things get complicated and can be fairly abstract and nebulous, but The Black Lodge/Black Brothers would be "evil" (in a spiritual sense, not necessarily moral ) magicians who value ego/aloneness (left hand path) over the White Lodge magicians who give up their blood (Self) to the Graal of BABALON to become one with everything, so to speak (and using Thelemic terminology). These things are kind of symbolic representations of psycho-spiritual concepts (by my interpretation anyway). Oneness with everything at the cost of the personal Self compared to a kind of extreme egotism.
I spent a huge amount of time studying this stuff and I am happy to talk about it if people are interested, but it is extremely complicated so it is kind of hard to know what to say and what will be comprehensible.
Corpsepyre
Banned
Was completely unaware I missed an episode: 17...oops.
Going straight to 18 without even realising it was the finale lead to misinterpretations like it being a flashback to Evil Cooper and Doppleganger Diane.
But whoof, yikes, if Lynch and Frost hadn't maybe spent so many previous episodes having one 'scenic' shot sit for five minutes, 17 could of avoided that big hyped confrontation from ending in a few minutes like a rushed comic book arc. There wasn't even any real point to Cole being there other than "There you are, Cooper! Okay, bye now!", and Frost/Lynch couldn't figure out how to write in Annie but had to include Freddy the Lad whose destiny is to punch a ball a few times.
But whoof, yikes, if Lynch and Frost hadn't maybe spent so many previous episodes having one 'scenic' shot sit for five minutes, 17 could of avoided that big hyped confrontation from ending in a few minutes like a rushed comic book arc. There wasn't even any real point to Cole being there other than "There you are, Cooper! Okay, bye now!", and Frost/Lynch couldn't figure out how to write in Annie but had to include Freddy the Lad whose destiny is to punch a ball a few times.
It's satire. Freddie the lad is stupid, the big confrontation being such a let down is stupid. That's the point. Even if they had all the time in the world they still would have rushed the final battle. It's a parody of TV conventions.
HashtagLapsed
Member
To some extent, as I mentioned before, I feel like the finale itself was sort of going after modern TV conventions. "Next season when?!?!?" and all that type of reaction shows aim for at the end of each episode/season. Realistically, it is probably all over for Twin Peaks and in that kind of void it created at the end, it is still a conclusive ending.
Similar to how the first two seasons were kind of a reaction or movement to TV at that time.
Similar to how the first two seasons were kind of a reaction or movement to TV at that time.
Krev said:
Eh, I don't think I really buy that as an intent behind that scene/episode. I mean for one thing, Lynch doesn't even watch other stuff! The last tv shows he's seen were Breaking Bad and Mad Men, neither of which feature climaxes that are remotely similar to Freddie vs. BOB :lol
Lynch just doesn't seem like a "this scene reflects on our industry in this way" kind of meta-commentary artist to me, and from what I've seen he has shot down similar interpretations. For instance, everyone pretty quickly jumped on the glass box in part 1 as a metaphor for watching TV, which Lynch knocked down almost instantly.
While possibly maybe probably true, that line of thought comes up so often in Lynch's work that I don't think there can be as definitive an answer as 'it's satire'. How many people responded with sincerity to the kid car crash or Bobby breaking down scenes and how many laughed at them? Lynch crisscrosses between sincerity and irony so frequently and so deftly that the distinction at times becomes meaningless. And I shouldn't arrive at conclusions based on external (to the work) sources but from reading/listening to Lynch, he seems the type who is completely earnest in what he presents.
kopitarrulez_11
Member
I'm onto episode 5 and dear lord Cooper in the casino I don't think I've laughed that hard in a long time hahaha
The Elite
BOSS
He's stopped watching TV and movies now, but he used to watch them, and the conventions I think it's satirising are very traditional. Good beats evil through force of will in a big confrontation, the cast reunite to share in the happy moment, the deal is sealed with a romantic kiss and a fond farewell. Cooper's farewell speech ("I hope I see you all again. Every one of you") is reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, one of Lynch's favourites.
I've heard this argument before, that Lynch is a pure formalist and meta elements are counter to his aims. I don't buy it, especially when it comes to Twin Peaks.
The movie, which sought to break apart the conventions of the show and operate outside of network tv restrictions, opened with a camera pulling back from the image within a television screen, before the tv gets destroyed. This new goes even further in the fourth wall breaking. David Lynch as Gordon Cole looks back at his younger self, after Monica Bellucci, a real actor who exists in our universe and knows the real life David Lynch, informs him that he lives inside a dream. Is a TV show a dream of its creators and its viewers? I don't want to narrow down the dream concept to mere fourth wall breaking, as I think it's expressing a pretty profound philosophy about life, but I do see a tie between characters being aware of the dream and some kind of awareness of their existing within a tv show. When Jeffries first told us in FWWM, the screen was taken over by television interference (also an indication of lodge electricity, granted). Audrey is in a loveless marriage and prefers Billy (Zane?), pursuing this takes her to the Roadhouse, where she hears 'Audrey's Dance', a track on the original Twin Peaks soundtrack. Then she wakes up. Cooper realises he lives inside a dream after a sequence that's disarmingly conventional compared to everything that has come before, and the overlay of his face on the screen as he does so looks like the reflection of a face watching a television set.
I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss the link between the New York box and television either, despite Lynch's comments. The scene of Sarah Palmer watching the lions ripping apart their prey on the TV seems like a version of that scene seen from the 'other side' of the screen, and later Lynch furthers the link between Sarah and the experiment in the box during the bar sequence (she has an empty face, replaced by buzzing greyness, and kills people savagely in a mysterious way). I think Lynch himself may not be aware of a lot of what he's putting in his work, as he entrusts so much of the idea gathering process to the deeper areas of his subconscious.
Corpsepyre
Banned
PLEASE come back when you have watched the whole season. Don't ruin it for yourself.
Yeah. Also please don't read any of what I'm about to post.
Lynch's work definitely exists very often in the strange space between satire and total sincerity. I laughed at the car running over the kid and was also very moved - my sister commented that she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I agree that he is earnest, but I also don't think we can rule out the existence of irony in what he does. In his messier works like Wild at Heart it's basically undeniable. Perhaps he sees beauty in a lot of the cheesier aspects of his work, at the same time that a more cynical side of himself wants to distance himself from them. The way that he can push tone towards the deathly serious and sustain it effortlessly leads me to believe he's at least subconsciously aware of the ridiculousness of some of his other material.
With regard to the meta satire element I'm arguing for in reading the ending of season 3, I feel like we've seen Lynch do it before in Mulholland Drive, where the
pre revelation of the dream material reflects the broadest cliches of old Hollywood and soap operas, right down to the uncanny folksiness of the acting, before he moves to a darker space beyond the dream that bucks all of these conventions.
In my post above I mentioned how the resolution in episode 17 evokes The Wizard of Oz. Lynch loves the Wizard of Oz. Its' beauty is inextricable from its fakeness. I think he wants us to enjoy the fun of a dumb TV ending, but also wants to make us aware of a deeper truth.
The show takes it deadly seriously because of the chance to spend half the episode diving inside the magical reality inside the mushroom cloud - which, incidentally, also looks stunning despite not being a verifiable magical event.
There's a world of difference between things looking artificial and straight-up bad execution. People keep using this excuse, but it doesn't apply to any of his previous films.
It doesn't even fit this show because even the cheapest homemade CGI sequences are mixed with beautiful props which clearly took a lot of effort and skill (like the disgusting mass that floats in when Dougie becomes a pachinko ball, which could be an Eraserhead-quality shot if Lynch didn't have to handle the CG part himself). What is there to be gained by sabotaging the otherwise carefully staged shot of Ruth Davenport's body by letting us see the outline of her head in the sloppily clone-stamped grass?
Even the Blue Velvet anecdote has Lynch freaking out because they couldn't get a real robin in time Yes, he was satisfied with the way it turned out because he likes his dead stuff and happy accidents (not so happy for the robin), but that was never the intended effect.
Latvian Hitman
Member
Is it future, or is it past?
I agree that it's distracting and detracts from the work. I think at least to an extent it's intentional. Lynch clearly could have outsourced that CG, as he did with some of the more complex effects shots, like the bug, the atomic explosion, and Laura lifting off her face. But for whatever reason he's fallen in love with homemade After Effects stuff, bless his heart. I think his falling in love with jarringly artificial effects is a fairly recent development, since he started experimenting with DV.
I'd pretty much made my peace with it and stopped being annoyed by it by the end of the show, so seeing those effects make their presence felt one more time in episodes 16 and 17 wasn't so bad.
HashtagLapsed
Member
I feel like the effects have a similar quality to his paintings and earlier short films to be honest.
I mean, people can either like it or hate it or not care or whatever else, but that is the feeling I get from them for better or worse.
I mean, people can either like it or hate it or not care or whatever else, but that is the feeling I get from them for better or worse.
Kind of glad we dodged another cousin bullet tho.
For the most part I feel the same way, I'm just not convinced that he could have outsourced the CG. Despite getting a bigger budget and a more patient network than anyone could have expected, this production was clearly strapped for cash and time.
The tulpa scenes are absolutely his personal animation style (and for the most part I've made peace with those), but there were so many more badly done effects which can't be explained that way.
I just don't like the thought that the man responsible for some of my favorite visuals in film would choose to make something so tastelessly half-assed if there was a chance to get it done well.
VistraNorrez
Member
The robin at the end and of Blue Velvet was always jarringly artificial. You could argue It goes back to his art school days too. But it's not like those had budgets.
plagiarize
Banned
It's an easy read on that robin, that it's meant to make you realize that the restoration of seemingly perfect life is all a lie. Things will never be the same. Which is a much more fitting end to Blue Velvet than if that robin had been a real one, or more convincing.
The ending credit scene is my jam though. Remember I was out of my seat clapping and dancing to that shit hahah. That godlike Nina Simone track/performance straight up lifted my soul within that moment.
I think yeah, budget probably had a lot to do with it. If the choice was between cheap CG or saving up the CG budget for the scenes that really needed to look amazing and doing the effects that it wasn't so necessary to look convincing himself, I think he chose the latter, treated the situation as serendipitous and decided to embrace the artificiality, since artificiality has always appealed to him. There's just something jarring about cheap digital effects. Cheap analogue effects still have the positive association of the charm of early cinema, kids earnestly putting together school plays and home made movies, etc. But Lynch has been pushing against the digital bias for a while, embracing the crappier side of its visual potential to see where it leads. I guess this is just another side of that.
It is what it is.
Lynch is so good with music. That sequence is honest - after coming through something so terrifying and raw, you've got to celebrate being alive.
Yup, that's what it felt like. Great sound design and music choice(s) truly makes a world of difference.