The Full Blossom of the Evening: Some Thoughts on Twin Peaks

Please note that although this blog entry discusses a lot about Twin Peaks there are no actual plot spoilers if you haven't seen the series and wish to do so. Feel free to keep reading.


I noticed today that David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has made its way to Blu-Ray. That's great news in one respect for fans of the series and the film, but it's disappointing to note that this release still doesn't include the two hours of deleted scenes that David Lynch excised from the finished product. I know the history of why we've never seen them - legal wranglings between the European production company and New Line Cinema - but it's still a damn shame!

Nevertheless, seeing the Blu-Ray release reminded me that I had never spoken about "Laurathon", an event held in November at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) here in Melbourne. I love living in Melbourne, have I mentioned that before? Yeah, I do, because of events like this! 9 and a half hours of Twin Peaks goodness on the big screen in a room lined with red curtains and a seemingly endless supply of donuts at our disposal. It began with the pilot episode, which is - in my humble opinion - the greatest episode of television ever crafted. So, really, not that big of a deal. Alongside that episode they screened episode 7 ("Realization Time"), episode 14 ("Demons" where Laura's killer was reveals), episode 30 ("Beyond Life and Death", the series finale) as well as the movie prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

That pilot... will it ever be topped? Who knows what television has in store for us, but it's just a slice of perfection, that pilot, isn't it? So many memorable moments that are forever branded upon my brain. If I had to choose but just two - my two favourites - I would have to go with Ronette Pulaski's walk across the train tracks since the imagery is so frightening with those "twin peaks" in the background and the tattered dress that'll make you really question where the series is going. Secondly, I'd choose the school sequence towards the beginning, starting with Audrey's smoke in the locker, her flitter of fingers in home room, the screaming girl across the school yard and that eerie tracking shot down the corridor towards Laura's homecoming photo in the displace case. The entire scene really captures that feeling of other-worldliness... I can recognise it as the real world, but there's a quality there that just feels slightly alien. The characters act just slightly off, don't they? Twin Peaks was always the best with it straddled that line delicately. Both are viewable below.


Episode 14 is - here we go again - probably the second greatest episode of television that I can recall. In fact, just the other day I was at my mother's house and turned on the Foxtel and what should be on? Episode 14 of Twin Peaks! Needless to say I rewatched it even though I've seen it many times, including as recently as a month earlier. Such powerful stuff, and yet, in everything that happens in that episode, you know my absolute favourite moment? Favourite of moments above all?


"I want you /
Rockin' back inside my heart"
There's something about that moment that speaks to the innocence and the childhood that these characters (Donna and James) have lost, and that Laura had lost long ago. It's a moment is minute beauty surrounded by so much doom and gloom. Love.It. Plus, the song is pretty great, too!

The final episode? Yeah. I can't even go there.


Of course, the movie is something else entirely, isn't it? Yowza! I'd never seen it on the big screen with a proper sound system, and it's a glorious thing to behold. Admittedly, I am a huge fan of the film - I'd rank it somewhere behind Mulholland Drive as my favourite David Lynch movie - unlike some people, but to see it projected onto the big screen is an experience to treasure. Lynch knows how to work sound and he certainly turns the volume up to 11 here.

The final 30 minutes are, of course, some of the toughest cinema you'll ever see. Fire Walk with Me is rated R18+ for a reason (equivalent to America's NC17 if you'd like). The culmination of two series worth of mystery, intrigue and wonder combined with the film's near-apocalyptic sense of menace and dread, all rolled up into a terrifying package. The sort of horror you don't even find in more traditional horror movies. Scarier, too.

And that ending... wow. As much as I would be intrigued to see where Lynch would go by picking the story up again 25 years later (and it most certainly will remain a rumour, but an interesting one nonetheless with Laura's "you will see me again in 25 years" comment don't you think?), I think the final few minutes of Fire Walk with Me (below) are the perfect coda to the entire Twin Peaks saga. If you watched everything in a through line - pilot episode through to Fire Walk with Me, despite their flip-flop narrative - then I can't imagine a more apt ending. Laura and Dale, the two driving forces of the show, together in the black lodge as Angelo Badalementi's haunting synth score floats overhead, an angel appearing as if by pure virtue of David Lynch's oddity and then.... the laugh. It's just perfect. I know I'm typing similar things a lot in this entry, but it's one of my all time favourite endings.


Speaking of Twin Peaks - obviously - I recently did a piece for Trespass Mag that looked at the fates of the actors and their subsequent careers after the untimely demise - or was it perfectly timed? - of the series. Whilst I was at Laurathon I gave a little bit of a vox pop soundbite to the Boxcutters crew (Australia's best - only? - TV-themed podcast, run by exceptional people I'm glad I know in real life) and you can listen to it here.

Five Shots: Peek

Top 50 Posters of the Decade: #25-1

Read Part One of the countdown from yesterday, if you didn't see it, before we continue on today with the best posters of the decade.

25. Zoo

Something about such a clean line makes this quite cold-design stand out (notice how it sorta looks like a back-to-front Z?) The detail looks so real and that tagline is excellent.

24. Irreversible

If you have a film that is a hard sell and has a scene that is sure to infamous then my general rule would be to utilise said scene in the marketing and that's what they've done here. The image is disturbing and frightening and the font play is another way the audience can become discombobulated. Gives me the creeps.

23. Mulholland Drive

It just feels so grand and old-fashioned (although I'm not sure why). Perhaps I am just biased towards the film - although this is the only poster that I am really keen on, for what it's worth - but the image has a mysterious quality that I've never been able to shake.

22. Black Snake Moan

Samuel L Jackson tying Christina Ricci up in chains on a retro grindhouse style of poster? Sign me up! Perhaps that's why the film flopped, because the marketing was so spot on. You can't say they chickened out!

21. American Psycho

Hot Jesus on a Sunday afternoon I think we could all afford to see that poster hanging in cinema foyers and on Blockbuster shelves couldn't we? COULDN'T WE?!? Why should women be the only ones objectified on movie posters? WHY?!

20. Small Time Crooks

The first of two Woody Allen posters to show up in the countdown. Fun visual gag alongside that attention-grabbing silhouette and a silly, but delightful, tagline. Considering the efforts that have gone into some Woody Allen films this past decade (go have a look at the horrendous designs for Whatever Works, Scoop and Anything Else) I think we can safely call this one a winner.

19. Michael Clayton

OMG! He's disappearing before our very eyes!!! You get the idea.

18. Precious

This (literally) shattering design that floored me the most of the film's many various designs. And for a movie poster to so bluntly push the film's sexual abuse angle is quite shocking.

17. Synecdoche, New York

It's not the most clean and well-executed poster on the list, but I love the idea and the almost home-made look of this Asian poster for Andy Kaufman's workout for the mind. It's a collage and I do love a collage!

16. Miami Vice

As part of a three-piece series this one-sheet featuring Gong Li bathed in shadow and sex stood out. Delicious blue colour and mystery out of the wazoo makes this poster just ooze Miami fever.

15. The Girlfriend Experience

"SEE IT WITH SOMEONE YOU ****" + Polka Dots + Barcode + That Face = #15 on this countdown. What a concept!

14. Goliath

The ultra-indie mumblecore movement brought us some unique and wonderful designs this decade from outside of the system and I have no idea what the movie is and yet I feel like I must see it or else I will EXPLODE. A lot of the time posters for these low budget independent movies can be really bad, but sometimes they have the luck of hiring a great designer (not necessarily a great design studio) who can come up with something like this.

13. Dear Zachery: A Letter to a Son About His Father

Quite moving, isn't it?

12. Anything Else

When I said up above at #20 that Woody Allen's Anything Else had been saddled with a dreadful poster I did not mean this - yet again - Asian design. What a treat this one is! Overflowing with visual delighs, from the use of that old-style map of New York City to the funny drawing and the apple and it all just adds up to something wonderful and almost whimsical (but not in the annoying indie way).

11. Bug

This poster freaks me the fuck out!!

10. Hard Candy

A masterpiece of imagery. Oh to be in the room when this idea came up, huh? I think everyone's heads must've exploded.

9. House of Wax

Horror one sheets need extra care and attention, they really do. They need something to stand out. And on that, this design for House of Wax does it's job perfectly, selling the premise (they turn people into wax statues) and doing so in a creepy and effective manner.

8. American Gangster

The posters for American Gangster are the reason why I spend so much time discussing the bad posters. This film is incredibly mainstream with a couple of big stars and an easy-to-sell premise, just like many movies. Except unlike those other movies the makers of this one chose to actually do something altogether different instead of throwing a couple of giant floating heads hovering over a pile of guns and cocaine like you would normally expect.

7. Look at Me

Another Jeremy Saunders design. I love the imagination on display here and for a movie that plays very literal (it very much relies on its words as spoken by intelligent people) it's a very sly design.

6. The Centre of the World

Sex. Lollipop. Hooker Heels. Red. Red. Red.

5. Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid

I haven't seen this movie, but I can't imagine it being anything other than ridiculous C-grade shlocky horror. Thankfully for us poster work doesn't discriminate and shlock horror tends to produce some of the most interesting designs. That is very much the case with Anacondas. This poster makes me wish that it had been around during the times of VHS and it would have used that bubble design and I probably would have spend time at the video store just ogling it.

4. INLAND EMPIRE

There are but two things you need to sell when it comes to INLAND EMPIRE. Those are David Lynch and Laura Dern. That they used Laura Dern's FAAACCE moment is what makes this design work so wholly. It is truly one of the scariest posters I have ever seen and yet I still want to hang it on my wall.

3. Antichrist

More Jeremy Saunders. I told you he was a genius at this stuff. So much has already been said this past year about this poster - hell, I've already done a blog piece on it earlier today - so I won't go into it again, but just look at it and tell me it doesn't make you queasy, excited, frightened, intrigued and perhaps even a bit giggly.

2. Suburban Mayhem

It's brilliant and I love it and it's amazing and perfect and stunning and just seriously great. From the comic book style, to the colour, to that amazing Emily Barclay pose to just everything.
And so we come to the top of the list. When I decided to do this list I already had the #1 spot locked and loaded. I didn't need a second opinion or to think it over, nothing. I knew. And I'm pretty sure you knew too!

1. Funny Games US

A poster that, itself, plays games with the audience. Is it a movie still? Is it painted? Is it just photoshopped? Who knows. I don't and I don't care, because it just looks so incredible. It would have been so easy to make this one of those annoying stripey posters or one where Naomi's tear-stricken face adorns the bottom right hand corner surrounded by empty space, but it's not. They chose to use an image that not only strikes possible pain, anguish and terror into anyone looking at it, but does so in a manner than screams "WE'RE HERE!" There's no hiding from Naomi's face on this one.

The contrast, that image, that tagline, the simple helvetica font, it all just works. It's become iconic in poster-watching circles and for good reason. It's topped most similar lists to this and, for a change, group think is actually right! Viva la Haneke, I guess. Nothing can get me to actually watch the movie (so perhaps that's an immediate fail right there?) but this poster should be plastered all over my wall like wallpaper and like the Mona Lisa it would follow me everywhere.
And that's that folks. Hope you enjoyed and hope you got plenty of eye candy out of it. Feel free to discuss in the comments. Agree? Disagree? Do you think I missed anything (I didn't)? Dive in if you wish. It's been a blast.

Review: Lake Mungo

Lake Mungo
Dir. Joel Anderson
Year: 2009
Rating: M
Running Time: 87mins

David Lynch is, perhaps, not the chief person you would think of to inspire an Aussie ghost story, but there it is clear as day right there on the screen. Joel Anderson's debut film, the suspense-filled fright fest called Lake Mungo (for those unaware of Australian geography, it is a real place and holds the key to the film's central mystery). In retrospect I feel like those haunting synethesisers of Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks theme should play over the - very eerie - opening credits. It's actually a shame that the overriding sense of Anderson snatching bits and pieces of Lynch's resume is so obvious because it occasionally distracts from what is a really great movie.

Filmed in the style of a documentary, Lake Mungo traces the story of Australian teenager Alice Palmer who accidentally drowned in a weir while on holiday with her family. Her family believes her ghost is haunting their suburban home and in trying to solve the mystery, they uncover the dark secrets that Alice withheld. The same secrets that, ultimately, cost her her life. The similarities to Twin Peaks are already immense. Throw in paedophiles, hidden video tapes, sexual escapades, supernatural twists, kooky doctors and even a scene in which a man is seen hiding behind a piece of furniture in Alice's bedroom and you've got yourself a sort of mix tape of Lynchian Twin Peaks shenanigans. And I'm not even mentioning the fact that the film's biggest scare is seemingly taking a big ol' page out of the INLAND EMPIRE book. Oh wait, there I go talking about it. I told myself I wouldn't!


Thankfully though, the film emerges out of these shadows that it creates and succeeds at being a scary little movie that you should try and seek out with its scares that are far more creative than the latest piece of Hollywood pap. It is not jump-out-your-seats-gasping sort of scary (although that did happen to me once, I literally JUMPED OUT OF MY SEAT!) but works with the sort of frights that creep up on you. The emergence of a shadowy figure in the background or the sudden appearance of a figure in the frame. The hairs on the back of neck stood on end and at several moments I found myself cowering in my seat.

While the film owns an obvious debt to David Lynch, there is also a strong element of The Blair Witch Project. From the opening title card and onwards, the film actually makes the faux-documentary structure work for it. Ghosts are always going to be less scary and harder to make work than being alone in the forest with things that go bump in the night, so presenting the film as a documentary, as if it is true and real and not just a story being told by a group of filmmakers, really helps overcome that. Suspension of belief becomes true believing.


It also helps that the film is so well cast. While Talia Zucker doesn't get much of a chance to shine as the deceased Alice, Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Chloe Armstrong and Martin Sharpe all work wonderfully, as assorted family and friends of Alice, in letting the viewer believe the situation that is unfolding before their eyes. At one point when I thought the film was beginning to wear out its welcome - a scene at the titular Lake Mungo filmed entirely on a mobile phone camera - it does a complete 180 that results in one of the scariest moments I've seen on screen in a while.

And make sure you stay during the closing credits. Just as with the opening credits, the closers are creepy and have stayed with me. They also made me want to watch the movie again right that second to see if Anderson had been as smart all along as he is implying (you'll see what I mean). And then, again, wait until the very end where the film ends with a flash of eerie imagery, which reminds me to also mention the fantastic cinematography of John Brawley. A documentary-styled movie might not seem like the natural place for fantastic lensing, but some of the images on show here are frightening and deceptive in their simplicity. Lake Mungo is one of the finest and most original scary tales in a long time. B+

Review: Beautiful

Beautiful
Dir. Dean O'Flaherty
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 97mins

Sometimes I watch a movie and can immediately tell what the pitch would have been. Disturbia was "Rear Window, but with teenagers!" or Australia was "Gone with the Wind, but with Aussie accents!" Such it was with Dean O'Flaherty's debut film as writer and director, Beautiful. I can picture the meeting now. "So guy, it's Blue Velvet, but with teenagers... and Aussie accents!" Which just makes the movie even more of a disappointment.

There is a good movie tucked away inside Beautiful and it occasionally rears it's head from time to time to perk the viewer's interest whenever it begins to slide due to unnecessary subplots and ridiculous flights of fancy. It is just that it never sticks around long enough to build towards a successful film. In fact, watching the film is a very bizarre experience, indeed. A bizarro-world mish-mash of ideas and images. Not once does O'Flaherty feel the need to explain why every household in the idyllic neighbourhood that the film is set in seem to have 1950s television sets and antique furniture or why characters watch INXS videos of VHS. Nor does he feel the need to rein himself in when in one odd scene his characters appear to enter a silent black and white movie with mock Grindhouse aesthetics.


In the upper-class suburb of Sunshine Hills two beautiful teenage girls have been gruesomely murdered and another is missing. Such is the launching pad for the movie and it's a good one, especially with the incredibly lush cinematography by Kent Smith, in his first feature outing, filling the screen with bright colours with immaculate close-ups and angles. The loner kid of the street is Danny (Sebastian Gregory) who always carries a camera gets tangled up with his not-so-girl-next-door sexual fantasy, Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi), and begins to investigate the goings on at creepy number 46. And all this while dealing with an is-he-isn't-he abusive father (Aaron Jeffreys) and stepmother (Peta Wilson).

If it sounds straight forward enough then you're wrong. Subplots come and go - one involving Wilson's character is particularly awkward - and the lines between myth and reality blur to almost inconceivable levels. The big climax of a twist ending especially feels forced and like a dead weight compared to the quite delicious coda that follows it. That Deborra-Lee Furness has the most interesting character and is really the entire force behind the movie is seemingly not of any worth to O'Flaherty.


Like a lot of Australian genre films the acting is hit and miss. Furness is impressive in her small role while newcomer Gregory has definitely improved since his role in Acolytes last year. Tozzi gives the film's strangest performance, seemingly a mix of five different characters none of which are in the same universe as Beautiful. There's also no denying that there's something frighteningly about her. The hair, the tan, the everything. "Sex bomb" for the Ralph set, I suppose.

The film's biggest strength is it's aforementioned aesthetics. It's so nice to see an Australian film filled with such vibrant images. They are images that deserve better than the screenplay they are servicing. A screenplay that deliberately presents a sort of hyper-stylised version of Australian suburbia, yet one that never connects the dots it laid out in fascinating and beautiful fashion. It's the most disappointing of misfires; One that really coulda been something. As it is, however, Beautiful is a big pretty mess. D+

Black + White Friday: The Wizard of Oz

I'm still buzzing from seeing Wicked last weekend. I know the opening passage of the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz, is in black and white, but I wondered if the film would be half as magical if the entire film were filmed in the colour palate. Consider it a mad experiment by the Wizard, of sorts.


It's in the second half of the eighteenth minute that the transition to colour finally occurs (I coulda swore it wasn't that long!) and, as you can surely imagine, it doesn't quite have the same impact in black and white.


Munchkinland just doesn't look as fun, does it? Technicolor, bless!


Watching this scene reminds me of that old black and white filmmaking technique where the costumes would be in crazy colours that merely worked well in black and white, which is why "colorization" is so bizarre. If black and white movies were changed to colour they'd be horrific and crazy-coloured. Case in point - the Wicked Witch of the West. She's a bright green, yet you wouldn't know it by looking at this black and white version. She just looks like she has a strong tan.


David Lynch. He loves The Wizard of Oz. Just watch Wild at Heart for proof (witches! face makeup! bubbles! etc!) However, one thing I only just thought about was how similar the Scarecrow in Oz looks like that undescribable horrible clown-face being from INLAND EMPIRE. The Scarecrow's face is scary if you think about it. He has a bag for a head, yet he has facial muscles, lips and eyes that move. Imagine if the baghead character from The Strangers suddenly started talking!


Without all those crazy technicolours, it all looks a bit like camouflage.


On one hand, I wish the lion didn't look so silly with his obvious costume-wearing, but then I also think that's part of the charm. It is almost like watching an incredibly high budget school production, at times.


This is one moment that still looks gorgeous compared to the original.


It just struck me now, but I think Santa Claus Conquers the Martians look a bit of influence from this movie.


This looks like something out of an underground fringe performance art show involving dungeons, kimonos and S&M, which is a frightening prospect, I think we can all agree. Perhaps the cast can smoke the Wicked Witch's ashes as opposed to Kurt Cobain's.


I feel like she should be about to go into the dance routine from The Red Shoes! Wouldn't that be surreal?!

Black + White Friday: Mulholland Drive

David Lynch has worked with black and white before on two of his earliest films, Eraserhead and The Elephant Man so I thought for this weeks instalment we'd test drive his magnum opus Mulholland Drive and see how it holds when given the black and white treatment.


Yup, still scary in black and white.


I must point out that the little... what you call it? Is it an apartment complex? Not really. I don't know. Anyway, whatever it is, this little enclave of sorts is absolutely stunning in colour. In black and white it reminds me so much of Sunset Boulevard, which I am quite certain was Lynch and production designer Jack Fisk's intention all along. Do these sort of places even exist anymore? I want to live there if they do.


Aaah, Gilda. One of my favourite black and white films. One of yours, too?


I chose this screenshot because it's my absolute favourite shot in the entire movie. Not exactly sure why, but it is. Doesn't Naomi Watts' skin kind of glow like it does in silent movies?


Like a Hitchcock heroine.


Jeepers creepers! Something about this amuses me so much. It's like Doris Day or Dusty Springfield. Now that's a Lynch collaboration that would've bear bizarre fruit.


Oddly, one of the film's most obvious '50s moments is this musical sequence to Connie Francis' "Sixteen Reasons", doesn't look that classic. Hmmm.


One of the best things Lynch does throughout the entirety of Mulholland Drive is mix with the identities of Betty and Rita. Constantly framing them so that their bodies and their faces have the lines blurred. Who is who and so forth. This shot was my favourite example of it. It's also quite ABBA, teehee.


The Lady in the Radiator returns! And she's singing Roy Orbison in SPANISH!!!!


Interestingly, the film's final act where everybody switches up proves less forthcoming with interesting stills, even though it is just as beautiful as the rest of the film. I chose this moment, however, because it reminded me of an old horror movie. Like The House of Usher or something, ya know? Dusty old mansions and the like.