If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mom smoked, I'd be dead

[sovay]

Today has been very social, though not at all unpleasant. My brother's godparents are visiting from the Southwest, so we spent the afternoon with my family and then a sort of pre-Memorial Day dinner, which turned out surf-and-turf. There was way too much zucchini. There was not too much key lime pie. My three-year-old niece has discovered a pair of small stuffed animal rabbits which originally belonged to me and my brother—Bunnicula and Butterscotch—and is carrying them everywhere, even to dinner. She has decided that she wants a goat as a pet. (Suggestions that she ask for a pony instead were met with blank disdain.) I am no help to her parents in this argument. I think a goat in the family would be a great idea.

In the evening I met rushthatspeaks for a sold-out showing of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) at the Brattle Theatre: I thought it was great. It's more overtly supernatural than the series overall—it's focused on the most overtly supernatural strand—but it's also decisively grounded by Sheryl Lee's performance, with Laura Palmer's very realistic anger, damage, and agency (it was not clear in the show that her final status was a choice rather than an inevitable consequence or a weird side effect of the manner of her death; the film offers her no good options, but she absolutely opts for the best of them, which makes it strangely difficult for me to classify the film as horror, even though content-wise I don't know what else it should be) interlocking across registers with the characters who live in the soapier layers of the plot. I was glad to see Harry Dean Stanton turn up in the supporting cast, because he feels existentially like someone who should inhabit a David Lynch universe. Now we just need to finish watching the remaining half of Season Two and figure out what to do about the third-season revival.

A later interlude of placidly watching candymaking videos by Public Displays of Confection with spatch was interrupted by Autolycus violently throwing up all over a box of hardcover Le Guin and Tanith Lee, but fortunately the box had a lid on it, the books have been transplanted to a high shelf, and a very shaken small cat was comforted after we emergency-mopped the floor. (There was much anxious purring. We reassured him that we know he does not throw up maliciously. He never looks like he enjoys it.)

Unless it gets a National Theatre-style broadcast, I don't have a hope of seeing the Crucible's Julius Caesar on account of it being in Sheffield and me being on the other side of an ocean, but it's being done with a diverse, gender-equal cast and I wish I could see it, because Zoë Waites has a hell of a lean and hungry look:



We are talking about seeing Jacques Tati's Playtime (1967) tomorrow. I haven't seen the movie since 2010, when it was also on film at the Brattle and I loved it. I should get to bed.

Comments

[alexxkay]

Reply hazy?

The first season had an almost Aristotelian unity to it: every scene in some way revolved around the question "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Season two eventually resolved (in some senses) that question, then flailed about poorly for ~6 episodes, then regained focus around the conflict between Dale Cooper and Windom Earle (but too late to regain the viewership lost during the 'flail' period).

Season three may turn out to have a center, but it's not really apparent yet. Lynch is far more interested in symbols and moments than he is in exposition or clarity of plot. That said, many of the moments are great stuff. And there's enough cross-connection going on that I believe Lynch is going somewhere. Where is difficult to say, at this point.

I will say that Lynch is in no way interested in recaps; I would strongly disrecommend watching season three before finishing season two. (And FWwM, of course, but you've just seen that.)

[sovay]

then flailed about poorly for ~6 episodes, then regained focus around the conflict between Dale Cooper and Windom Earle (but too late to regain the viewership lost during the 'flail' period).

I have to say that I am quite enjoying the episodes betweeen arcs, since they contain among other things Denise Bryson, but I understand that other viewers may have tapped out in the absence of a continuing series mystery.

Season three may turn out to have a center, but it's not really apparent yet.

Interesting. Let me know how it progresses.

[alexxkay]

Denise did rock as a character. But I found that the "Cooper is accused of drug smuggling" plotline to actually have negative narrative tension. It so obviously would come to nothing that it felt (to me at least) like a complete waste of time.

(Also, I thought the "James goes to film noir land" plot was very poorly executed. In principle, it might have worked, but...)