A Site Both Wonderful & Strange
I'm not special because I loved Twin Peaks: The Return in its entirety (including its finale). In fact, I'll be the first person to admit that I'm not special at all for any reason. I'm just a quiet, middle-aged guy up the street who likes baseball (not football), craves Mexican food, enjoys good movies and …
Continue reading "Lessons of Lynch: Embrace Ambiguity and Relish Your Writerly Role"
Watching Part 16 of Twin Peaks: The Return, I couldn't help but feel moved by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper's "100-percent" awakening and, perhaps even more so, by his expressions of love and appreciation for the people who cared for him in his "DougieCoop" incarnation during the preceding few days. As he knelt with Janey-E …
Continue reading "“You’ve Filled My Heart with Such Joy”: Cooper’s Unconscious Cataloging of Love"
Why is Billy Wilder's self-reflexive noir triumph, Sunset Boulevard (1950), the film chosen to serve as what may very well be the catalyst for Cooper's re-awakening in Twin Peaks: The Return? Aside from the obvious facts (e.g., that in Sunset Boulevard, film director Cecil B. DeMille utters a name shared by a major Twin Peaks …
Continue reading "The Surprising (Other) Reason for the Sunset Boulevard Allusion in Twin Peaks"
Times have always been troubled in America--but they seem particularly so as of late. Hate and violence seem to stalk us, largely because of our (perhaps willful) refusal to confront the demons of our own national past. Now would seem to be a good time for a fully empowered FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle …
Continue reading "Evil Times Complicate Cooper’s Lovably Ridiculous Perfection"
By Douglas Cunningham Twin Peaks is known for its strange amalgamation of absurdity, melodrama, and surrealism. David Lynch and Mark Frost walk the delicate tightrope of this combination with a joyful and brazen recklessness, never shying from the sheer audacity of their vision. Lynch and Frost don’t bend sticks until they almost break; rather, they …
Continue reading "How Are We Meant to Handle Dramatic Social Commentary in Twin Peaks?"
Part 10 of Twin Peaks: The Return features more than its share of disturbing moments. To my mind, however, the strangest and most visually jarring of these moments occurs late in the hour. Gordon Cole (David Lynch) sits in a hotel room where he is drawing with a felt-tip marker. Gordon hears a knock at …
Continue reading "The “Laura Vision”: An Analysis of 20 Seconds in Twin Peaks"
We’ve got gold-spewing giants. We’ve got evil-birthing atomic explosions. We’ve got lighter-seeking, skull-crushing woodsmen. We’ve got interdimensional portals in large glass boxes. And the hyper-intuitive hero who can understand it all is trapped in a childlike stupor. Still. Feels a bit overwhelming, no? Good thing we’ve also got Janey-E, the laser-focused Mama Grizzly at …
Continue reading "Janey-E Is the Best New Character in Twin Peaks"
