A Lifetime of Rewatches (Thus Far)

 

Twin Peaks Shadow Box

 Tonight I filled a shadow box with a few of the Twin Peaks items I've collected over the years. 

That Miniaturized Director I Like Is Coming Back in Style

I used Hero Forge to design and print a 28mm-scale David Lynch, complete with coffee and cherry pie. 
 

Invitation to Consider Invitation to Love

During the first season of Twin Peaks, we see several characters watching Invitation to Love, a soap opera that seems as crazed and histrionic as Twin Peaks itself can be. This gave me a thought today: If the characters in Twin Peaks watch Invitation to Love, do the characters in Invitation to Love watch Twin Peaks? 

In real life, Mark Frost took the helm for the Invitation to Love sequences, all shot over the course of one day for later insertion into Twin Peaks. Reportedly, co-creator David Lynch didn't like Frost's overt parody of the soap opera genre, so the device was allowed to fade out. It's too bad; it's a nicely Shakespearean conceit, and I would have loved to see it return in, well, The Return. 

Back to the meta question: The answer, for me, is yes, Jade and Montana and the others are just as enthralled with the drama of Twin Peaks as the people of Twin Peaks (the town) are with the world of Invitation to Love. The symmetry is just too perfect to ignore. 

What brought this question to mind today? I stumbled across Nestflix, a website dedicated to shows-within-shows. According to Nestflix, Invitation to Love ran for 10 seasons! 

Cole Position

When we got together to work on some estate stuff this morning, Sean presented me with an early birthday present: a grab bag of carefully created knick-knacks designed to appeal to my taste. My favourite item was this little statue of David Lynch as the FBI's Gordon Cole from Twin Peaks. He now occupies a place of honour in our theatre room. 
 

In Dreams, He Walks: David Lynch, 1946-2025

When you exclude family and friends from the equation, my approach to life is upheld by three great pillars: Superman's altruism, Star Trek's optimism, and David Lynch's surrealism. And as much as I adore Superman and Star Trek, it is the works of David Lynch that bring me closest to understanding--or at least appreciating--the great mysteries of existence. 

My first exposure to Lynch was The Elephant Man, followed a few years later by Blue Velvet--both incredible films that pitted cruelty against compassion, a common theme in Lynch's work. 

But it was Twin Peaks that captured me, heart and soul, way back in 1990. I saw in Dale Cooper, Deputy Andy, Deputy Hawk, and Sheriff Truman the kind of men I aspired to be. I saw in Bob my terrible weaknesses and darkest thoughts. And in the world Lynch built, one of awe and mystery, compelling and unknowable, wondrous and terrifying, I saw the landscapes of my dreams. 

Much of Lynch's work is rife with violence and misery of the harshest kind in settings that seem rational on the surface, but hide corruption and malignancy. Thankfully, the evil in his worlds is matched by figures of great kindness, integrity, and valour, and forces of light that help in the limited ways they can.  

Lynch's heroes often fail, Dale Cooper chief among them; as revealed in The Return, his saviour complex ultimately dooms him, along with poor Laura Palmer, "saving" her from her true salvation to the forces of light in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. 

Or that's one interpretation. Lynch's work is full of delicious ambiguity; it demands our full attention and cries out to be re-watched for new meaning. Despite that ambiguity, though, I believe a couple of themes shine through his body of work. 

First, David Lynch loved people and felt deeply about the cost of human suffering. Second, David found amazing beauty in the universe, even if that beauty was contrasted with terror; perhaps he felt one was necessary for the other. And third, to paraphrase Stephen King, I think David Lynch suspected there are other worlds than these. I hope he's exploring them now and creating new art. 

For these reasons and so many others, I felt a deep connection with David Lynch--though I'd never met him, and never will, except in dreams. 

Thank you, David, for the gift of your art, in all its baffling and wondrous forms. Rest in mystery. 

Cooper's Tulpa

A couple of weeks ago I prompted Stable Diffusion with "FBI agent Dale Cooper faces his personal demons in the Black Lodge," and this was one of the results. While the composition isn't quite ideal, this image lines up with a key theme of Twin Peaks season three pretty nicely! 

The Words Behind the Pictures

I don't know exactly how Letterboxd defines a writing credit for the purposes of their database, but I suspect it's broader than just screenplays, judging by some of the names on my list of most-seen films written by these people. 

Having seen all the films that Charlie Chaplin has directed, I suppose it's no surprise that he's also my most-seen writer, too, given the amount of control and involvement Chaplin had in his films. 

The next three names in the list--Maltese, Foster, and Pierce--all wrote a bunch of Looney Tunes shorts. 

Ben Hecht, next on the list, has a fascinating filmography, writing superb films like Notorious, Spellbound, Scarface, Design for Living, Stagecoach, The Thing, and Strangers on a Train, but also z-grade stuff like Queen of Outer Space, the 1967 version of Casino Royale, and Switching Channels. 

Felix Adler wrote Three Stooges shorts. 

Ian Fleming makes the list thanks to James Bond and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. 

David Lynch, of course, writes or co-writes most of the material he directs.

Clyde Bruckman is another writer of Three Stooges shorts, but also features from comedy greats such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. 

Woody Allen, like Chaplin and Lynch, writes much of his own material. 

Stephen King makes the list, I suspect, because of "story by..." credits for the many adaptations of his novels and short stories. 

Laurent Bouzereau produces short documentary "making-of" subjects that appear as special features on many of my discs. 

Orson Welles, again, is another film polymath. 

George Lucas makes the list thanks to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, American Graffiti, etc. 

Sylvester Stallone, I suspect, is here thanks to the Rocky and Rambo franchises. 

Elwood Ullman is another Three Stooges writer. What a fun job that would have been...

Richard Matheson is a well-regarded prose fantasist, SF author, and contributor of teleplays to The Twilight Zone, among other shows. Here for adaptations, much like King, I suspect. 

Ethan Coen is of course one-half of the famous Coen Brothers writing-directing team.

And finally, David Cronenberg is another director who writes much of his own material. 

 

David Lynch: The Treachery of Language

From the What's So Great About That? YouTube channel comes this pretty interesting essay on David Lynch's relationship with language. 

I Do Declare

The Criterion Collection kindly sent me a new Eraserhead disc to replace their flawed first printing of David Lynch's bizarre film. I find it amusing that Criterion felt it necessary to label the package as "nonporno," though I'm sure more than a few censor-minded folk would love to burn Lynch's creepy ouvre. 

Lynch's Lights

At the 43:33 mark of episode 11 of season 2 of Jessica Jones, there's a beautifully shot scene in which Jessica has an internal conflict with a mental manifestation of her abuser from the show's first season. In a dimly lit hospital waiting room, Jessica, through dialogue with her hallucination, comes to terms with her actions of the second season. The background lighting is the same shade of purple associated with Jessica's tormentor, while in the foreground Jessica's face is partially obscured by the lights of New York. The scene is only about a minute long, but I was struck by the beautiful effect.

The episode was directed by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of one of my favourite directors, David Lynch. She's clearly carved out her own visual style, and I like it. 

Stuff I Wish David Lynch Would Direct

Whatever the heck he wants to. And if I were a billionaire, I'd fund it.

I wouldn't be able to resist asking him to look at the screenplay for Toilet Chase, though...

Season 4

Movies I Watched in 2017

Happy New Year!

Since 2012, I've kept track of the films I've screened each year. This year I watched more movies than ever, as my Letterboxd statistics confirm:

As you can see, I watched a little over 600 films, comprising almost 675 hours of viewing. (Many of the films I view each year are shorts, some just a few minutes in length. This screen capture also shows the 2017 films that impressed me most, though of course most of the films I watched in 2017 weren't actually released in 2017.

Here's a breakdown of how many films I watched each week, and my favourite days for viewing films (Sunday by a long shot, as it turns out).

Only about eight percent of the films I watched this year were released in 2017. I reviewed only ten of them. I knocked 32 films off my watchlist, but added over 400. And here you can also see my ratings spread; I don't give out too many 4.5 or 5 star ratings.

Here are my most-watched actors and actresses of 2017. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance are right up top thanks to my attempt to see all of Chaplin's films. I'm pretty close - just one or two left on the list. Sly Stallone is up there because I marathoned all the Rambo movies. Basil Rathbone ranks high on this list because I watched all of his Sherlock Holmes movies.

And here are the directors I followed in 2017. Alice Guy is one of the early pioneers of film, though she's not well-known to the general public today.

Three people liked my Logan review! Sweet validation. The most obscure film I watched, for those wondering, was The Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation (Unknown, 1950).

Letterboxd doesn't keep annual statistics on the release dates of the films I've watched, so here's the breakdown:

1890s: 61

1900s: 35

1910s: 35

1920s: 22

1930s: 42

1940s: 39

1950s: 63

1960s: 39

1970s: 42

1980s: 26

1990s: 20

2000s: 50

2010s: 148

I watched 46 Best Picture nominees this year (not counting any 2017 releases that earn nominations in 2018):  

Alfie

Pygmalion

7^th Heaven

In Which We Serve

Crossfire

Hacksaw Ridge

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

La La Land

Lion

Fences

Hidden Figures

All That Jazz

An Unmarried Woman

Anthony Adverse

Captains Courageous

The Big House

In Old Chicago

David Copperfield

The Piano

Lady for a Day

The Informer

Libeled Lady

San Francisco

Stage Door

The Good Earth

The Life of Emile Zola

Nicholas and Alexandra

Kitty Foyle

The Descendants

Sayonara

La Grande Illusion

Wall Street

Arrowsmith

Scent of a Woman

In the Name of the Father

Fanny

Bad Girl

Here Comes the Navy

The Gay Divorcee

The House of Rothschild

Viva Villa!

Kings Row

The Best Years of Our Lives

A Tale of Two Cities

The Crowd

Finally, for those interested, here's the full list of films I watched in 2017: 

January: 42

The Unholy Three (Tod Browning, 1925)

Outside the Law (Tod Browning, 1920)

The Beast with a Million Eyes (David Kramarsky and Roger Corman, 1955)

The Eiger Sanction (Clint Eastwood, 1975)

Convoy (Sam Peckinpah, 1978)

Saskatchewan (Raoul Walsh, 1954)

The House of Fear (Roy William Neill, 1945)

The Woman in Green (Roy William Neill, 1945)

Cliffhanger (Renny Harlin, 1993)

Character Studies (Unknown, 1927)

The Goat (Buster Keaton, 1921)

Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

The Getaway (Sam Peckinpah, 1972)

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Olympus Has Fallen (Antoine Fuqua, 2013) 

Seven Wonders of the World (Tay Garnett, Paul Mantz, Andrew Marton, Ted Tetzlaff and Walter Thompson, 1956)

Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)

Ghost Rider (Mark Steven Johnson, 2007)

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, 2012)

Ascension (Mairzee Almas, Nick Copus and Mark Lieberman, 2014)

Search for Paradise (Otto Lang, 1957)

In the Picture (Matt Strohmaier, 2012) 

Last Man on Earth (Sidney Salkow, 1964)

Dr. Cyclops (Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940)

Tarantula (Jack Arnold, 1955)

The Mole People (Virgil W. Vogel, 1956)

The Monolith Monsters (John Sherwood, 1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)

Monster on the Campus (Jack Arnold, 1958)

Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (Susan Lacy, 1995)

Cult of the Cobra (Francis D. Lyon, 1955)

The Land Unknown (Virgil W. Vogel, 1957)

The Deadly Mantis (Nathan H. Juran, 1957)

The Leech Woman (Edward Dein, 1960)

The Black Scorpion (Edward Ludwig, 1957)

The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)

Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966)

The Colossus of Rhodes (Sergio Leone, 1961)

The Prodigal (Richard Thorpe, 1955)

Land of the Pharaohs (Howard Hawks, 1955)

No Blade of Grass (Cornel Wilde, 1970)

Pursuit to Algiers (Roy William Neill, 1945)

February: 99

Hot Rods to Hell (John Brahm, 1967)

Skyjacked (John Guillermin, 1972)

Zero Hour! (Hall Bartlett, 1957)

The Big Cube (Tito Davison, 1969)

Bill Burr: Walk Your Way Out (Jay Karas, 2017)

Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)

Trog (Freddie Francis, 1970)

Conquest of Space (Byron Haskin, 1955)

The Illusionist (Neil Burger, 2006)

Cleopatra Jones (Jack Starrett, 1973)

Joe’s Violin (Kahane Cooperman, 2016)

4.1 Miles (Daphne Matziaraki, 2016)

Terror by Night (Roy William Neill, 1946)

Dressed to Kill (Roy William Neill, 1946)

Nosferatu the Vampyr (Werner Herzog, 1979)

Girl Crazy (Norman Taurog, 1943)

Prairie Thunder (B. Reeves Eason, 1937)

Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992)

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Edward Zwick, 2016)

Pygmalion (Leslie Howard and Anthony Asquith, 1938)

Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, 1974)

7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)

In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942)

Team Thor: Part 2 (Taika Waititi, 2017)

Dillinger (Max Nosseck, 1945)

Born to Kill (Robert Wise, 1947)

Danse Serpentine (Louis Lumiere, 1896)

The Cabbage Fairy (Alice Guy, 1896)

A Nightmare (Georges Méliès, 1896)

The Haunted Castle (Georges Méliès, 1897)

The Merry Skeleton (Louis Lumiere, 1898)

Parade of the Award Nominees (Walt Disney, 1932)

Flora (Jan Svankmajer, 1989)

42/83 No Film (Kurt Kren, 1983)

Shot/Countershot (Peter Tscherkassky, 1987)

The Scavengers (Unknown, 1987)

Blue Peanuts (Todd Graham, 1987)

Apocalypse Pooh (Todd Graham, 1987) 

Good Grief! Cancer Boy! (Todd Graham, 1990)

Memorial Procession in English Country Town (Unknown, 1915)

No Mischief Here Can Satan Find for Idle Hands to Do (Unknown, 1917)

Mattress Man Commercial (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2003)

Tetra Vaal (Neill Blomkamp, 2004)

Greed (Roman Polanski, 2009)

Fire & Rain (James Benning, 2009)

A Gathering of Cats (Makoto Shinkai, 2007)

Fireworks (Pes, 2004)

Fresh Guacamole (Pes, 2012)

Game Over (Pes, 2006)

Western Spaghetti (Pes, 2008)

Submarine Sandwich (Pes, 2014)

The Fireplace (Pes, 2008)

Une Femme Coquette (Jean-Luc Godard, 1955)

Roof Sex (Pes, 2002) 

KaBoom! (Pes, 2004) 

The Deep (Pes, 2010)

Black Gold (Pes, 2014)

Pee-Nut (Pes, 2002)

Moth (Pes, 2004) 

My Pepper Heart (Pes, 2008)

Cake Countdown (Pes, 2008)

Dogs of War (Pes, 1998)

Marriage is For… (Pes, 2009)

Baby Nut (Pes, 2009)

Coinstar (Pes, 2009)

Drowning Nut (Pes, 2009)

Prank Call (Pes, 2008)

Human Skateboard (Pes, 2008)

Honda Paper (Pes, 2015)

Mussel Beach (Pes, 2015)

Scrabble (Pes, 2008)

Orange Telecom (Pes, 2009)

Coinstar “Book” (Pes, 2009)

Coinstar “Gift” (Pes, 2009)

Tuck Me In (Ignacio F. Rodo, 2014) 

How the Dook Stole Christmas (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

Empire (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)

One Last Dive (Jason Eisener, 2013)

Dinner (Andrew Byman, 2012)

Ars colonia (Raya Martin, 2011)

Star Wars: The New Republic Anthology (Eric Demeusy, 2015)

Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947)

The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952)

Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952)

Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson, 2016)

Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

Piper (Alan Barillaro, 2016)

Lion (Garth Davis, 2016)

The White Helmets (Orlando von Einsiedel, 2016)

Extremis (Dan Krauss, 2016)

Blind Vaysha (Theodore Ushev, 2016)

Fences (Denzel Washington, 2016)

Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, 2016)

Passengers (Morten Tyldum, 2016)

The Red Turtle (Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)

The Champion (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

In the Park (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

March: 77

O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016)

Gunslingers (Wallace W. Fox, 1950)

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2015)

Gods of Egypt (Alex Proyas, 2016)

Act Your Age (Unknown, 1949)

Age 13 (Arthur Swerdloff, 1955)

The Ladykillers (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2004)

The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen, 1994) 

Barton Fink (Joel Coen, 1991)

Borrowed Time (Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj, 2016)

King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993)

High Anxiety (Mel Brooks, 1977)

Hot Dog (Jules White and Zion Myers, 1930)

The Terrible Truth (Unknown, 1951)

Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) 

Cimarron (Anthony Mann, 1960)

Silent Movie (Mel Brooks, 1976)

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)

Relentless (George Sherman, 1948)

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (Barney Elliot, 1940)

The Mermaid (Georges Méliès, 1904) 

Rescued by Rover (Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil M. Hepworth, 1905) 

New York Subway (Bill Bitzer, 1905) 

Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest (J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter, 1908)

The Unchanging Sea (D.W. Griffith, 1910) 

Banks of the Nile (Charles Urban, 1911)

The Cameraman’s Revenge (Vladislav Starevich, 1912)

Falling Leaves (Alice Guy, 1912)

Easy Street (Charlie Chaplin, 1917)

Prisoners (Denis Villeneuve, 2013)

The Accountant (Gavin O’Connor, 2016)

Deluge (Felix E. Feist, 1933)

The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood, 1941)

Canada Vignettes: The Fashion Designer (Unknown, 1977)

Fire Maidens of Outer Space (Cy Roth, 1956)

Indestructible Man (Jack Pollexfen, 1956)

The Man Who Turned to Stone (László Kardos, 1956)

Pearl (Patrick Osbourne, 2016)

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (Robert Valley, 2016)

Indice 50 (Sylvain Amblard and Alexandre Belmudes, 2016)

Once Upon a Line (Alicja Jasina, 2016)

The Head Vanishes (Franck Dion, 2016)

Happy End (Jan Saska, 2016)

Asteria (Alexandre Arpentinier, 2016)

Sing (Kristof Deak and Anna Udvardy, 2016)

Silent Nights (Aske Bang, 2016)

Timecode (Juanjo Gimenez Pena, 2016)

Enemies Within (Selim Azzazi, 2016)

La femme et le TGV (Timo von Gunten, 2016)

Legend of the Lost (Henry Hathaway, 1957)

Warning from Space (Koji Shima, 1956)

Barquero (Gordon Douglas, 1970)

X the Unknown (Leslie Norman, 1956)

U.S. Marshals (Stuart Baird, 1998)

Battleship (Peter Berg, 2012)

Why We Fight: Prelude to War (Frank Capra, 1942)

Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike (Frank Capra, 1943)

Why We Fight: Divide and Conquer (Frank Capra, 1943)

Why We Fight: The Battle of Britain (Frank Capra, 1943) 

Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia (Frank Capra, 1943)

Why We Fight: The Battle of China (Frank Capra, 1944) 

Why We Fight: War Comes to America (Frank Capra, 1945)

Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941)

Independence Day: Resurgence (Roland Emmerich, 2016)

Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

WHIH Newsfront Promo – July 2, 2015 (Unknown, 2015)

A Jitney Elopement (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

By the Sea (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

Work (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

A Woman (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

Dave Chappelle: The Age of Spin (Stan Lathan, 2017)

Shanghaied (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

Dune (David Lynch, 1984) 

Absurda (David Lynch, 2007)

Lady Blue Shanghai (David Lynch, 2010) 

April: 102

Netflix Live (Unknown, 2017)

The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927)

Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931)

Resident Evil (Paul W.S. Anderson, 2002)

Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, 2016)

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky, 1978)

Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

Kim (Victor Saville, 1950)

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (Irwin Allen, 1979)

Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971)

Atlantis, the Lost Continent (George Pal, 1961)

Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (Pietro Francisci, 1963)

Nothing but the Night (Peter Sasdy, 1973)

The Equalizer (Antoine Fuqua, 2014)

The Man with the Iron Fists (RZA, 2012)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939)

Anthony Adverse (Mervyn LeRoy, 1936)

Cavalcade (Frank Lloyd, 1933)

Captains Courageous (Victor Fleming, 1937)

The Big House (George Hill, 1930)

In Old Chicago (Henry King, 1937)

David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935)

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

Doodlebug (Christopher Nolan, 1997)

Eye Myth (Stan Brakhage, 1967)

Mickey Mouse in Vietnam (Lee Savage, 1968)

Look at Life (George Lucas, 1965)

Brain Dead (Jon Moritsugu, 1987)

Balloon Guy (Chris Wedge, 1987)

War Machine (Duvet Brothers, 1984)

Gus Visser and His Singing Duck (Theodore Case and Earl I. Sponable, 1925)

Two Pence Magic (Hans Richter, 1929)

The Secret of the Marquise (Lotte Reiniger, 1922)

Between Calais and Dover (Georges Méliès, 1897)

The Famous Box Trick (Georges Méliès, 1898)

Feeding the Doves (James H. White, 1896)

Divers at Work on the Wreck of the Maine (Georges Méliès, 1898)

La petite fille et son chat (Louis Lumiere, 1899)

The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (Enoch J. Rector, 1897)

A Railway Collision (Walter R. Booth, 1900)

The Lonely Villa (D.W. Griffith, 1909)

An Exciting Pillow Fight (Robert W. Paul, 1900)

Entry of the Scots Guard Into Bloemfontein (Robert W. Paul, 1900)

Cronje’s Surrender to Lord Roberts (Robert W. Paul, 1900)

Seeing New York by Yacht (Frederick S. Armitage and A.E. Weed, 1903)

Parade of Exempt Firemen (Unknown, 1903)

Train Taking Up Mail Bag, U.S. Post Office (Unknown, 1903) 

Pilot Boats in New York Harbor (James H. White, 1899)

Statue of Liberty (James H. White, 1898)

Panorama from the Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge (Unknown, 1899)

A Perilous Proceeding (Unknown, 1901)

N.Y. Fire Department Returning (Unknown, 1903)

A Morning Alarm (James H. White, 1896)

The Burning Stable (James H. White, 1896)

Waterfall in the Catskills (Unknown, 1897)

Giant Coal Dumper (James H. White, 1897)

Overland Express Arriving at Helena, Mont. (Unknown, 1900)

Scene in Chinatown (Unknown, 1900)

A Nymph of the Waves (Unknown, 1900)

Comedy Cake Walk (Unknown, 1897)

A Ballroom Tragedy (Unknown, 1905)

Ella Lola, a la Trilby (James H. White, 1898)

Bowery Waltz (William Heise, 1897)

Cupid and Psyche (James H. White, 1897)

Lurline Baths (James H. White, 1897)

What Demoralized the Barber Shop (William Heise, 1898)

Fisherman’s Luck (William Heise, 1897)

Hotel del Monte (James H. White, 1897)

Leander Sisters (James H. White, 1897)

Down the Old Potomac (James H. White, 1917)

Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (Lee Sholem, 1949)

Logan (James Mangold, 2017)

Lady for a Day (Frank Capra, 1933)

The Informer (John Ford, 1935)

Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, 1936)

Sense8: A Christmas Special (Lana Wachowski, 2016) 

Colossus: The Forbin Project (Joseph Sargent, 1970)

San Francisco (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936)

Stage Door (Gregory LaCava, 1937)

The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937)

The Rink (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

A Night in the Show (Charlie Chaplin, 1915)

A Burlesque on “Carmen” (Charlie Chaplin, 1915) 

Police (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Floorwalker (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Fireman (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Vagabond (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

One a.m. (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Professor (Charlie Chaplin, 1919)

Burlesque on ‘Carmen’ (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

Behind the Screen (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Count (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Pawnshop (Charlie Chaplin, 1916)

The Life of Emile Zola (William Dieterle, 1937)

Nicholas and Alexandra (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1971) 

Kitty Foyle (Sam Wood, 1940)

A Slice of Lynch: Uncut (Charles de Lauzirika, 2007) 

The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011)

Sayonara (Joshua Logan, 1957)

La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

Broadway Bill (Frank Capra, 1934)

May: 37

Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962)

Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

Reap the Wild Wind (Cecil B. DeMille, 1942)

The Discovery (Charlie McDowell, 2017)

Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

Panorama du Grand Canal vu d’un Bateau (Alexandre Promio, 1896)

New York: Broadway at Union Square (Alexandre Promio, 1896)

Lion, London Zoological Gardens (Alexandre Promio, 1896)

Chicago Police Parade (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

Children Digging for Clams (Alexandre Promio, 1896)

Colleurs d’affiches (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

The Pyramids (Overview) (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

Football (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

Whitehall Street (Alexandre Promio, 1897)

New York, descente des voyageurs du pont de Brooklyn (Alexandre Promio, 1896)

Mosquinha (Etienne-Jules Marey, 1890)

Preposterous (Florent Porta, 2016)

See You Soon (David F. Sandberg, 2014)

Raw Data (Jake Fried, 2013)

Los Gritones (Roberto Perez Toledo, 2010)

L’envol (Angelin Proljocaj, 2011)

Edgar Allan Poe (D.W. Griffith, 1909)

The Close Call (Robert Thornby, 1914)

Artoo in Love (Evan Atherton, 2015)

Creating Twin Peaks: Secrets From Another Place (Charles de Lauzirika, 2007)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017) 

Underworld: Blood Wars (Anna Foerster, 2016)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992)

Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (David Lynch, 2014)

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert Zemeckis, 1978)

Joe Kidd (John Sturges, 1972) 

Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968)

Those Redheads from Seattle (Lewis R. Foster, 1953)

A*P*E (Paul Leder, 1976) 

Death Race 2050 (G.J. Echternkamp, 2017) 

Vixen (James Tucker and Curt Geda, 2017) 

The Lost World (Harry Hoyt, 1925)

June: 40

Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017) 

That’s Entertainment! (Jack Haley, Jr., 1974)

Who’s Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin, 1963)

Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille, 1939) 

Red River Range (George Sherman, 1938)

The Face of Fu Manchu (Don Sharp, 1965)

Billy the Kid (David Miller, 1941) 

Broken Arrow (Delmer Daves, 1950)

I Can Get it For You Wholesale (Michael Gordon, 1951)

Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987)

Hotel Room (David Lynch and James Signorelli, 1993) 

Camelot (Joshua Logan, 1967) 

Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982) 

Rick and Morty—Alien: Covenant (Unknown, 2017) 

Highlights (Eric Cloutier, 2017) 

Entrance to the Grand Burial Chamber (Eric Cloutier, 2017) 

MailShrimp (Ed Kaye and Alex Mavor, 2017) 

KaleLimp (Ed Kaye and Alex Mavor, 2017) 

JailBlimp (Ed Kaye and Alex Mavor, 2017) 

Suez (Allan Dwan, 1938) 

Deadpool (Tim Miller, 2016) 

Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) 

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Oliver Stone, 2010) 

A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016) 

T2 Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 2017) 

Chino (John Sturges, 1973)

Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973) 

The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) 

Another Earth (Mike Cahill, 2011) 

Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016) 

Bus Stop (Joshua Logan, 1956) 

End of Days (Peter Hyams, 1999)

Arrowsmith (John Ford, 1931) 

Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992) 

London Has Fallen (Baback Najafi, 2016)

The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)

In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993) 

Zelig (Woody Allen, 1983)

Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984) 

Screwballs (Rafal Zielinski, 1983) 

July: 37

Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962) 

Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969) 

Ensign Pulver (Joshua Logan, 1964) 

Thunder Bay (Anthony Mann, 1953) 

How to Murder Your Wife (Richard Quine, 1965) 

How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco, 1953) 

Knock on Wood (Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, 1954) 

Wolf Hunting in Russia (Unknown, 1910) 

La Marseillaise (Georges Mendel, 1907) 

His Only Pair (Robert W. Paul, 1902) 

Electrocuting an Elephant (Thomas Edison, 1903) 

Sack Race (Louis Lumiere, 1896) 

The Race for the Sausage (Alice Guy, 1907)

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017) 

Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015) 

Monster Trucks (Chris Wedge, 2016) 

The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay, 2017) 

Dark Hoser (Unknown, 2017) 

Batman is Just not that Into You (Unknown, 2017) 

Cooking with Alfred (Unknown, 2017) 

Movie Sound Effects: How Do They Do That? (Unknown, 2017) 

The Master: A Lego Ninjago Short (Jon Saunders, 2016)

Outland (Peter Hyams, 1981) 

The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (Larry Blamire, 2010) 

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) 

Sunset in the West (William Witney, 1950) 

Fanny (Joshua Logan, 1961) 

The Sea Shall Not Have Them (Lewis Gilbert, 1954) 

Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)  

Escape from Tomorrow (Randy Moore, 2013) 

The Raid 2 (Gareth Evans, 2014) 

The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009) 

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012) 

Meet Walter (Luke Scott, 2017) 

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusader (Rick Morales, 2016) 

The Peter Weyland Files (Luke Scott, 2012) 

Gold (Karl Hartl, 1934) 

August: 47

The Fate of the Furious (F. Gary Gray, 2017) 

The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock, 1925) 

The Nebraskan (Fred F. Sears, 1953) 

Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) 

Red Nightmare (George Waggner, 1962) 

The Rookie (Clint Eastwood, 1990) 

War for the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2017) 

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) 

The Andersonville Trial (George C. Scott, 1970) 

Duck and Cover (Anthony Rizzo, 1952) 

Operation Doorstep (Unknown, 1953) 

Target You (Unknown, 1953)

The Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation (Unknown, 1950) 

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947) 

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) 

Dracula Untold (Gary Shore, 2015) 

Summer with Monika (Ingmar Bergman, 1953) 

High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963) 

Ikuru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952) 

La Cage aux Folles (Edouard Molinaro, 1978) 

Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986) 

Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004) 

Desk Set (Walter Lang, 1957)

Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967)

Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959)

I Never Forget a Face (Unknown, 1956) 

C’est l’aviron (Norman McLaren, 1944) 

A Phantasy (Norman McLaren, 1952) 

The Sword of Doom (Kihachi Okamoto, 1966) 

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) 

Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon, 2017) 

First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982) 

Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985) 

Rambo III (Peter MacDonald, 1988) 

Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, 2008) 

Microworld (Paul Cohen, 1976) 

Ballet Adagio (Norman McClaren, 1972) 

Back to God’s Country (David Hartford, 1919) 

The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, 1996) 

Bad Girl (Frank Borzage, 1931) 

Here Comes the Navy (Lloyd Bacon, 1934) 

The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich, 1934)

The House of Rothschild (Alfred Werker, 1934)

Viva Villa! (Jack Conway, 1934) 

2036: Nexus Dawn (Luke Scott, 2017) 

Last Supper (Luke Scott, 2017) 

Loom (Luke Scott, 2012) 

September: 43

The Brides of Fu Manchu (Don Sharp, 1966) 

The Vengeange of Fu Manchu (Jeremy Summers, 1967) 

The Mummy (Alex Kurtzman, 2017) 

Scream and Scream Again (Gordon Hessler, 1970) 

Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017) 

The Cat and the Canary (Elliot Nugent, 1939) 

Hillbillys in a Haunted House (Jean Yarbrough, 1967) 

The Golem: How He Came into the World (Paul Webener and Carl Boese, 1920) 

Just Imagine (David Butler, 1930) 

Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953) 

Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli and Busby Berkeley, 1943) 

The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) 

The Twentieth Century Tramp; or, Happy Hooligan and his Airship (Edwin S. Porter, 1902) 

Ripples (Jim Henson, 1967) 

The Paperwork Explosion (Jim Henson, 1967) 

Pierre and Sonny Jim (David Lynch, 2001) 

Dream #7 (David Lynch, 2010) 

Room to Dream: David Lynch and the Independent Filmmaker (David Lynch, 2005) 

Out Yonder (David Lynch, 2007) 

Ballerina (David Lynch, 2007) 

Sailing with Bushnell Keeler (David Lynch, 1967) 

Idem Paris (David Lynch, 2013) 

Bug Crawls (David Lynch, 2007) 

Blue Green (David Lynch, 2007) 

Boat (David Lynch, 2007) 

Darkened Room (David Lynch, 2002) 

Absurd Encounter with Fear (David Lynch, 1967) 

Tango Tangles (Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, 1914) 

Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942)

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) 

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, 2017)

if… (Lindsay Anderson, 1968) 

Robetta and Doretto, No. 1 (William K.L. Dickson, 1895)

New Blacksmith Shop (William K.L. Dickson, 1895) 

De boulevard van Scheveningen (William K.L. Dickson, 1898)

Bath Scene (William K.L. Dickson, 1897)

Panoramic View of Conway on the L. & N.W. Railway (William K.L. Dickson, 1898) 

2048: Nowhere to Run (Luke Scott, 2017) 

Wonder Woman: A Subversive Dream (Unknown, 2009) 

Cosmic Voyage (Bayley Silleck, 1996) 

The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934) 

Firecreek (Vincent McEveety, 1968) 

Blade Runner: Black Out 2022 (Shinichiro Watanabe, 2017) 

The Crossing (Ridley Scott, 2017) 

October: 55

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1964) 

Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, 1961) 

Winchester ’73 (Anthony Mann, 1950) 

The Big Sick (Michael Showalter, 2017) 

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Nunnally Johnson, 1956)

A Terrible Night (Georges Méliès, 1896) 

Bataille de boules de neige (Louis Lumiere, 1897) 

Playing Cards (Georges Méliès, 1896) 

Seminary Girls (James H. White, 1897) 

The Pillar of Fire (George Méliès, 1899) 

An Up-to-Date Conjurer (George Méliès, 1899) 

Serpentine Dance by Mme. Bob Walter (Alice Guy, 1899) 

Rough Sea at Dover (Birt Acres, 1896) 

The Temptation of St. Anthony (George Méliès, 1898) 

A Sticky Woman (Alice Guy, 1906) 

Madam’s Fancies (Alice Guy, 1907) 

Faust and Mephistopheles (Alice Guy, 1903) 

Pierrette’s Escapades (Alice Guy, 1900) 

At the Hypnotist’s (Alice Guy, 1898) 

Bathing in a Stream (Alice Guy, 1897) 

The Burglars (Alice Guy, 1897) 

The Glue (Alice Guy, 1907) 

Matrimony’s Speed Limit (Alice Guy, 1913) 

Serpentine Dance by Lina Esbard (Alice Guy, 1902) 

Wonderful Absinthe (Alice Guy, 1899) 

The Fisherman at the Stream (Alice Guy, 1897) 

At the Bal de Flore (Alice Guy, 1900) 

Little Tich and his Funny Feet (Alice Guy, 1901) 

Turn of the Century Surgery (Alice Guy, 1900) 

On the Barricade (Alice Guy, 1907)

The Turn of the Century Blind Man (Alice Guy, 1898)

Surprise Attack on a House at Daybreak (Alice Guy, 1898) 

Midwife to the Upper Classes (Alice Guy, 1902) 

A House Divided (Alice Guy, 1913) 

Black Widow (Nunnaly Johnson, 1954) 

Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962) 

The Three Faces of Eve (Nunnaly Johnson, 1957) 

The Zodiac Killer (Tom Hanson, 1971) 

Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) 

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971) 

The Secret Garden (Fred M. Wilcox, 1949) 

The Best Man (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1964) 

The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) 

Wedlock House: An Intercourse (Stan Brakhage, 1959) 

Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier, 1942) 

The Iron Mistress (Gordon Douglas, 1952) 

OSS 117 Is Not Dead (Jean Sacha, 1957) 

The Golden Arrow (Antonia Margheriti, 1962) 

Citizenfour (Laura Poitras, 2014) 

Dune (David Lynch, 1984) 

Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. DeMille, 1949) 

Beach Party (William Asher, 1963) 

Annie Get Your Gun (George Sidney, 1950) 

Five Weeks in a Balloon (Irwin Allen, 1962) 

A Tale of Two Cities (Jack Conway, 1935)

November: 16

Show Boat (George Sidney, 1951) 

The Dark Tower (Nikolaj Arcel, 2017) 

Corvette Summer (Matthew Robbins, 1978) 

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982) 

Thor: Ragnarok (Taika Waititi, 2017) 

Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, 2017) 

Inhumans: The First Chapter (Roel Reine, 2017) 

John Wick (Chad Stahlelski, 2014) 

John Wick Chapter 2 (Chad Stahlelski, 2017) 

Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981) 

Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983) 

The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928) 

Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014) 

Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) 

Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) 

The Hitman’s Bodyguard (Patrick Hughes, 2017) 

December: 33

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) 

Taken 2 (Oliver Megaton, 2012)

My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

Taken 3 (Oliver Megaton, 2014)  

The Belko Experiment (Greg McLean, 2016) 

Justice League (Zack Snyder, 2017) 

The Circle (James Ponsoldt, 2017) 

Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017) 

Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets (Luc Besson, 2017) 

The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978) 

The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912 (Adrian Wood, 2017) 

The Olympic Games as They Were Practiced in Ancient Greece (Jean de Rovera, 1924) 

The Olympic Games Held at Chamonix in 1924 (Jean de Rovera, 1924) 

The Olympic Games in Paris 1924 (Jean de Rovera, 1924) 

The White Stadium (Arnold Fanck and Othmar Gurtner, 1928) 

The IX Olympiad in Amsterdam (Unknown, 1928) 

The Olympic Games, Amsterdam 1928 (Wilhelm Prager, 1928) 

Youth of the World (Carl Junghans, 1936)

The Beast of Hollow Mountain (Edward Nassour and Ismael Rodriguez, 1956) 

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (Leni Riefenstahl, 1938) 

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)

XIVth Olympiad: The Glory of Sport (Castleton Knight, 1948) 

Fight Without Hate (Andre Michel, 1948) 

Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932) 

Rose Marie (Mervyn LeRoy, 1954) 

Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954) 

Mother! Darren Aronofsky, 2017) 

Intervalometer Experiment (David Lynch, 2004) 

Industrial Soundscape (David Lynch, 2008) 

Moby: Shot in the Back of the Head (David Lynch, 2009) 

The VI Olympic Winter Games, Oslo 1952 (Tancred Ibsen, 1952) 

Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh, 2017) 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh, 2017) 

Earl's Directors

According to Letterboxd, this is my list of most-watched directors. Having watched all but one of Charlie Chaplin's many films, it's no surprise that he's at the top. But who is William K.L. Dickson, you ask? He's one of the pioneers of film, and as I've been watching a bunch of films from the early days of the medium, folks like Dickson, Georges Melies, Louis Lumiere and William Heise wind up on my list. Of course, a bunch of their films are only a few minutes, or even just a few seconds, long.

Some More Thoughts on Twin Peaks: The Return

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR SEASON THREE OF 

TWIN PEAKS

In my last post about the return of Twin Peaks, I neglected to mention some of the factors that contributed to my admiration for the third season:

• Each episode completely captured my attention, holding me riveted to the screen. It's been ages since any television show achieved that feat. 
• Miraculously, the production team kept the show's secrets held very close; no episodes were spoiled. 
• I never knew what was coming next. Having watched countless hours of film and television, I've gotten very good at spotting formulas and predicting character and story arcs well before their conclusion. I utterly failed to predict anything about Twin Peaks. 
• I didn't dare hope for it, but Major Briggs' beautiful vision about Bobby's future from season two actually played out in season three. Bobby's redemption and growth were beautiful to see. 
• I absolutely love that several important characters from the show's first two seasons had pivotal roles to play in the unfolding of season three, particularly Deputy Andy, probably my second-favourite character, who has a great extended moment in one of the later episodes. 
• I loved the many touches of quirky, absurdist humour, most especially Sheriff Truman's pop-up wooden computer and Carl Rodd's superheroic action van. 
• Episode 8, in which Lynch and Frost take the audience inside a nuclear explosion to witness the birth of evil, is perhaps the most insane and spectacular thing I've ever seen on television.
• This season of Twin Peaks frankly captures the passage of time and refuses to gloss over its impact on the aging original cast. How could we ever have expected Dale Cooper to just pop out of limbo and join his law enforcement buddies as if only days had passed? He spent 25 years in there, while in the outside world people got old, died, or otherwise moved on. It's easy enough to wonder why Donna Hayward, for example, rated not a single mention on the show (save for one line of dialogue in archival footage), considering her importance in seasons one and two. But there's a simple explanation: she left Twin Peaks behind and built a new life. 
• Perhaps most importantly, I appreciated the show's unflinching refusal to compromise its own artistic integrity. There were no easy solutions or lazy storytelling choices to be found, even when making the hard choices upset the audience, including me. 

Twin Peaks can be utterly confounding, baffling, frustrating. But it is, without question, a singular work of art that people will be debating for a long time to come. I'm just grateful it exists, and that I lived to see it return. 

That Gum I Like Never Went Out of Style

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND FOR THE THIRD SEASON OF TWIN PEAKS

Last night, Sean and I watched, bewildered, as David Lynch and Mark Frost stayed true to their most genuine and frustrating form, refusing to provide Twin Peaks audiences with closure and instead ending the series - probably forever - on a shriek of confused, helpless horror.

Like Sean, I was disappointed by what felt like a meandering and almost cruel final hour, especially after the tease of the penultimate episode, which seemed to promise a reasonably happy, if strange, ending for characters I've loved for nearly 30 years. In that second-to-last hour, our heroes converge on Twin Peaks to rid the world of the malevolence of BOB. It's as funny, surreal, and thrilling as anything in Lynch's ouvre - but it's not enough. Dale Cooper, aided by the mysterious figures of the White Lodge, travels back in time in an effort to prevent poor, sad, lost Laura Cooper from being murdered on the fateful day of February 23, 1989. And at first, it seems to have worked. But just as Dale is leading Laura home to her mother, she slips from his grasp, vanishing with a scream, presumably whisked away by Judy, the Mother of Evil. And this is where the show failed for me last night on an emotional level - but with the benefit of a night's sleep and some difficult reflection, I have to admit that the last hour of Twin Peaks is thematically consistent and supports a dark, difficult vision that I didn't want to recognize on first viewing.

It's pointless to summarize the plot of the final hour, except to say that Dale never gives up trying to save Laura, and that is what dooms him. He finds himself, apparently, in a Texas of a different time, or a parallel world, or perhaps just a different dream state; in any event, gone is the confident, pure-hearted FBI agent we saw return so briefly in episodes 16 and 17. In the final act, Cooper is adrift, he's given a different name, and he's lost much of his joy. He uses excessive force on a trio of goons, holds an innocent at gunpoint, and shows not a flicker of delight when presented with a cup of coffee. He's not evil, but he's not the same man we knew and loved. (How could he be, after all he's experienced?) In this reality, in fact, he seems to be Richard, a callback to the very first moments of this season, in which the Giant and Dale converse in the White Lodge.

Cooper finds Laura, though she doesn't seem to think she really is Laura at all, but a woman named Carrie Page. She agrees to go with him to Twin Peaks anyway, as things seem to be bad for her here; there's a recently-murdered body in her house. Even after Dale has supposedly saved her, it appears Laura can never escape violence and darkness.

Much of the episode is spent on the long drive from Odessa, Texas, to Twin Peaks. There's barely any conversation; at one point, Carrie wonders if they're being followed, but the anonymous headlights of the vehicle behind them merely pass by.

Eventually, Dale and Carrie arrive in Twin Peaks, which is strangely devoid of traffic, though the episode doesn't call attention to this. They park in front of the Palmer home, and Dale, still intent on a quest that should have ended 25 years ago, insists on knocking on the front door and delivering Laura home.

But Sarah Palmer doesn't answer the door. It's a woman we've never seen before: Alice Tremond. Confused, Cooper wonders if they bought the house recently from someone else - the Palmers, he's certainly thinking. But the homeowner says she bought the house from Mrs. Chalfont...who, fans will remember, was the strange woman who lived with her grandson above the evil convenience store of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Cooper and Carrie walk back across the street. But after a moment of though, Cooper suddenly asks "What year is it?" And then someone - presumably Sarah Palmer - screams "LAURA!" from inside the house. Carrie screams, and I think this is where she realizes who she really is and the awful fate that's in store for her. She's awakened to the horror of her new reality, and her terrorized cries reverberate as the lights of the Palmer house flicker off, plunging all into darkness; roll credits.

Though presented obliquely, like much of Twin Peaks, the plot is really pretty simple after all; Judy, the Mother of Evil, won't let Laura go, perhaps, as revealed earlier, because Laura is the embodiment or avatar of good in the universe, as shown earlier this season. Dale Cooper is, perhaps, her White Lodge-appointed guardian, and has been all along.

Even before this finale, I realized that this third and final season of Twin Peaks was rich with layered commentary on the state of the world as it is today, as it was in some imagined Golden Age, and the nature of artistic creation itself. For example, throughout this season, Lynch and Frost teased their audience with meandering scenes of hyper-reality that seemed to have little purpose. To wit: several minutes spent watching a nameless custodian sweep the floor of the Roadhouse, the finale's endless scenes of night driving, side conversations from several characters about trivia that leads nowhere, the false foreshadowing of a young woman's underarm rash, Big Ed drinking coffee in his garage. These moments stand in stark contrast with the many episodes of horror, violence, hilarity and surreal quirkiness that define the show. I believe Lynch and Frost deliberately create this contrast to make their audiences squirm, to force us to feel the discomfort and loss of control that the characters in the show feel.

In the real world, nothing makes sense; only in constructed drama do stories pan out neatly, with satisfying conclusions and narrative closure. For all its madness, Twin Peaks is, in this way, perhaps the most realistic story ever told on television. We, the audience, feel like we deserve, if not happy endings, then at least some kind of ending we can understand and put in a comfortable box. I'll admit that I was, even if unconsciously, hoping for that, too, last night. I didn't get it, and I was disappointed.

But on reflection, even though I was hoping for better days for Dale Cooper and his friends, I realize that would have been somewhat cheap, and perhaps even monstrous in light of what I think Lynch and Frost are really trying to communicate: evil is forever with us, but we fight it anyway, with love, even if in the end it's hopeless.

Twin Peaks is full of warmth and love, even in the midst of unspeakable horror and tragedy. The show is full of people of genuine goodness, epitomized by Dale Cooper and his fellow agents in the FBI and by Sheriff Truman and his deputies in Twin Peaks. Even the show's villains, from BOB on down, are sympathetic in some way; troubled pasts are inferred, and even BOB himself didn't ask to be born; as revealed in this season's mind-blowing episode 8, human beings, through the atomic bomb, unleashed BOB and his cohorts into the world. BOB and Judy are forces of nature as much as they are villains.

But the suffering they cause is all too real. Laura Palmer's long arc of horrifying inevitability is all the more heartbreaking with the show's final revelation: Laura is doomed, was always doomed, is forever doomed, despite the valiant efforts of all the good people who try to help her.

And yet those good people keep trying, even after she's died.

It's possible that I'm rationalizing the finale somewhat, that I've overthought the ending to compensate or wish away my initial disappointment. I hope that's not true, because the disappointment is still there, but I've shifted the blame to my own perceptions rather than perceived deficiencies in the work. I think it's important to remember, too, that all along I've been utterly delighted by this third remarkable season; I admire its determination not to pander to a nostalgic audience, to create an entirely different sort of television show. Say what you will, but there is nothing else on TV like this, and maybe there never will be again.

When Twin Peaks went off the air back in 1990, I was rueful. In just a few months, that show became as important to me, if not more so, than Star Trek, not just as television entertainment, but as a lens through which to make sense of a troubled world. I never expected it to return, and I regard this season as a tremendous gift. It will haunt me for a long time.

Episode 5

A Nice Surprise in Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces

Today I finally finished the Twin Peaks Blu-Ray package I picked up in 2014 (!), so now I'm all caught up and ready for tomorrow's debut of season three. One of the reasons I bought the set (aside from having all the episodes and the movie together in once package, and in high definition, no less) was the inclusion of Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, a collection of deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the 1992 follow-up film. I'd known for decades that there was a substantial amount of footage that didn't make it into the film, but when I watched The Missing Pieces today, I was shocked to discover that David Lynch had edited the deleted scenes into a 90-minute feature that almost works as a stand-alone episode (or film) of its own. I was even more taken aback by the way the feature ended - with an epilogue that takes place immediately after the closing moments of the season two finale! I hadn't the slightest inkling that Lynch had bothered to follow up the series finale in any way during the filming of Fire Walk With Me, and I'm really glad that I watched this before tomorrow's big return. 

My Dinner With David

According to Major Briggs' definition, what I experienced last night wasn't a dream, but a vision.

On rails I descend into the shadowy evergreens, leaning forward in the roller coaster car, the wind whipping my hair back. In the distance, a dark mansion awaits, candlelight flickering through its many windows.

The rails take me deep inside the mansion, braking casually at what appears to be a way station. I climb out of the car and step onto Aztec-patterned green tile. To my right, exercise equipment under bright fluorescent lights; to my left, a narrow hallway laden with change room lockers.

I head down the hallway, only to nearly collide with David Lynch, his trademark hair standing straight up as if he's just had a scare.

"Earl," he says. "Can you tell me how to find the bathroom in this place?"

I point to the door to my left: MEN.

"Ah," he nods, pushing the door open, beckoning me to follow.

I examine myself in the mirror while David does his business at the urinal. When he comes to wash his hands, he asks me a question:

"So what do you do, Earl?"

"Uh, well...I'm just a copywriter, I guess. But...I can't even tell you how excited I am to be here. Even if it's just to move props around or whatever."

David shakes his head.

"You are so much more than what you think you are," he says. "We all are."

"Well, I guess I've done some speech writing, too..."

"That's not what I mean."

David leads me to an ornate dining room, a huge space crowded with crates and boxes of props; there are stuffed owls here, but they are not what they seem. We sit at a round oak table, and for some hours, we talk. We discuss the importance of dreams, the beauty of truth and love and how they are our best weapons against the darkness.

After the conversation, I take the roller coaster back to Sylvia. She listens, amused, as I regale her with the details of my visit. She tells me she's happy for me, but that it's time to wake up...and I do, at about 5:20 a.m., with a strangled sob of joy.