Twin Peaks Rewatch 36: The Return, Part 2

[Woodfella]

10 minutes ago, Ozzie said:

Some of the digital effects looked cheap, not well crafted

I agree it looked a bit rough or not quite right but I kinda liked that stuff. Like Laura screening and shaking and then flying off like a balloon letting out air and Cooper falling through dimensions or whatever the heck was happening. 

[KLind]

5 minutes ago, Woodfella said:

I agree it looked a bit rough or not quite right but I kinda liked that stuff. Like Laura screening and shaking and then flying off like a balloon letting out air and Cooper falling through dimensions or whatever the heck was happening. 

I'd agree. The effects ended up really working for me, and felt fitting rather than low budget or bad. I dunno if that's just me coming off of the original series where they cross fade an entire owl onto the head of BOB, but the imagery here is staggering. The floor in the Red Room splitting into individual pieces, and undulating up and down specifically really worked well.

 

Some of the visual style of this reminds me of the more recent work of filmmaker Guy Maddin, specifically The Forbidden Room.

[Ozzie]

Quote

Like Laura screening and shaking and then flying off like a balloon letting out air

 

I liked that one! Except for the capper to that moment, which I thought lessened its effectiveness. So much WTF watching this, both in the good and bad way.

And Cooper falling was also alright with me. There's a effect in the third episode though

Spoiler

Coop coming out of a socket

that was one of the bad ones to me.

 

Watching the first three episodes made me mostly giggle in delight and exclaim OMGs. So much to dream and ponder about...

 

Quote

The floor in the Red Room splitting into individual pieces, and undulating up and down specifically really worked well.

Yeah, that's an excellent one!

[melmer]

God damn that was so good.

 

i'll be listening to the chromatics all day tomorrow.

 

Disappearing black man in the jail cell 👍🏻 We're in for a ride.

 

i was so desperately hoping to see bob in the red room towards the end. Who or what bob is now. Awesome seeing Laura, getting shot through the roof. Leland wasn't much of a surprise for me as the actor turned up in Fargo last week.

 

James is cool 😎 

 

Lillard was really great. Him as his wife confessing there affairs in the jail cell 😘 Fun seeing him opposite the slightly fat male detective as he's from a british soap Eastenders. 

 

only scene that was a bit of a let down for me was evil coop killing daria. Didn't feel menacing at all, needed more music or something. Didn't work for me. Whereas ghost in the box is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen 👍🏻🤡 I guess that's bob....

[dartmonkey]

So, if Phillip Jefferies is mentioned, might we catch up with Judy? Or Chet Desmond!?! 👌

[James]

I recently re-listened to the podcast episode where they discuss Lynch's comfort with bad special effects and shitty image quality, so I was kind of OK with most of the wonky effects stuff, in a kind of "fine, whatever" sense. I did find Cooper's descent into oblivion a bit of a struggle, though, because they hang on it for so long,

and then it's back again at the start of episode three,

and it just looks 100% like Kyle MacLachlan waving his arms around on an outer space bedspread while somebody shakes a bad VHS camera around above him. I don't mind it being a bit shitty, but it just looks so flat and bad and we're given so long to contemplate it.

 

But whatever, it's fine.

[melmer]

I forgot. Jennifer Jason Lee! Fucking a

[ihavefivehat]

I think Lynch just doesn't mind exposing the artificiality of visual effects. When he uses effects I think he's more concerned about the image itself and what it's meant to convey rather than making it blend seamlessly with the filmed parts of the frame. I appreciate it. It feels connected with the tendency in 20th century art of letting the process by which a piece of art is made become a part of the piece (and Lynch does have a fine art background).

[Alex P]

And let's check in on what Sarah Palmer's been up to this whole time!

 

Oh, okay, she's just been chain-smoking while watching horrifically graphic nature documentaries on a preposterously large TV in the middle of the night in the same living room where her husband murdered her niece a few decades back. I guess everyone processes things in their own way, so that's cool.

[Bolegium]

Adding to what's already been said about the artificial looking visual effects, I don't think Lynch is concerned with realism or seamless blending at all, the imagery is usually supposed to be disturbing or shocking, and the jarring quality of the 'cheap' looking methods adds to that for me. It's another layer of discomfort and weirdness.

 

When Sarah Palmer is watching the lions hunting water buffalo on TV, and the camera drifts in front of her with the mirror behind her, I swear there's a few frames where the camera is visible in the mirror. For some reason little weird things like that make me appreciate Lynch and Twin Peaks all the more. I haven't gone back to check whether it's really there and don't know if it's a mistake or deliberate and why. Lynch in a nutshell.

 

Also I finally watched Inland Empire the night before the premiere of the new season and that prepared me for how slow and sparsely scored modern Lynch would be, and also scared the shit out of me.

[James]

A detail I never would have noticed were it not for the warm-up podcast is that the bedcover and curtains in doppelgänger Cooper's motel room are blue. Granted, the whole show's colour pallette has changed, but that seemed like a very deliberate choice, particularly given what happens in there. 

[dartmonkey]

I thought the mirrors behind Sarah Palmer looked like an owl but I didn't notice any camera.

 

Before the series I wasn't sure they'd bother following up the 'How's Annie?!' question, but as/when Good Dale does escape the Lodge, I now think it will probably come up.

 

Re. the colour blue, I originally thought it was significant that BadCoop was wearing blue pyjamas when he woke up, but GoodCoop always wore them throughout the series.

[MabaseSlums]

2 hours ago, Bolegium said:

Also I finally watched Inland Empire the night before the premiere of the new season and that prepared me for how slow and sparsely scored modern Lynch would be, and also scared the shit out of me.

 

IE is also the last non-Peaks thing of his that I watched, and was really taken aback at how this stuff is measuring up to that. The more things change, I guess. Slightly related, I wanna know Laura Dern's involvement in this series already!

 

(Also, yeah, that movie is super horrifying)

[BigJKO]

Something about this effect is just mesmerizing. Love the practical effects in this so far. Also it's so jumpy it almost looks like it loops seamlessly?

 

[James]

The only time I've watched Inland Empire was after midnight one New Year's. I was struggling to stay awake while the end of that film descended into a screaming nightmare. It was a singular experience. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it, but it was quite something. 

 

I should watch it again when better-rested. Not that I expect there to be some clear plot that I missed. 

[lethalenforcer]

15 hours ago, Mington said:

Disappearing black man in the jail cell 

 

I continually forget that this happened - certainly creepy, and has me intrigued.

 

The white figure entity that attacks the kids initially reminded me of the Black Lodge statues. Interesting how we get a white (female?) entity and purely black (male?) one in the same episode...

[CottonWolf]

On 22/05/2017 at 10:40 AM, utilityfrog said:

• Number stuff. Both from The Giant and the new Arm (and note the contradiction between the number the Arm said and it's subtitle). I'm not sure how I feel about this. Hopefully the numbers end up meaning something.

I thought that too, but then nobody seemed to have commented on it and I thought I was going crazy. He definitely said 7, but the subtitle said 3, right?

[KLind]

15 hours ago, ihavefivehat said:

I think Lynch just doesn't mind exposing the artificiality of visual effects. When he uses effects I think he's more concerned about the image itself and what it's meant to convey rather than making it blend seamlessly with the filmed parts of the frame. I appreciate it. It feels connected with the tendency in 20th century art of letting the process by which a piece of art is made become a part of the piece (and Lynch does have a fine art background).

I think it's intentional design for the most part, rather than limitations in technology or being okay with low budget effects. 

 

I recently had a chance to see the new David Lynch documentary "David Lynch: The Art Life", and there's a total direct connection between a lot of these effects and his paintings. They're rough around the edges, and textured in a way that really portray different feelings. Effects like Cooper falling through space feel totally in line with his painting work, and overall style. Eraserhead had a similar texture to it, but that style has kind of taken a back seat as he's moved away from doing every role on set. Inland Empire felt like a low-key return to this form, because of it's improvisational production, but the Twin Peaks effects feel like a cool marriage of it all.

 

1 hour ago, CottonWolf said:

I thought that too, but then nobody seemed to have commented on it and I thought I was going crazy. He definitely said 7, but the subtitle said 3, right?

Episode 3 spoiler

 

2:53 comes up in the next episode as the time on the woman's watch in the purple room, as well as the time on the dashboard clock when Bad Cooper is driving down the road, that Cooper sees from the Red Room in episode two. As for the discrepancy, I think I heard it too, but the reappearance of 253 makes me wonder.

[Bjorn]

8 hours ago, James said:

A detail I never would have noticed were it not for the warm-up podcast is that the bedcover and curtains in doppelgänger Cooper's motel room are blue. Granted, the whole show's colour pallette has changed, but that seemed like a very deliberate choice, particularly given what happens in there. 

 

I've been paying attention to blue as well because of the warm up 'cast.  I went looking around after that for any articles about blue and Twin Peaks, and ran across one that pointed out that blue is commonly paired with red when it does show up in the original series. 

 

In the scene where Original Coop is in the metal box place in space, when he comes back down the latter, the couch the woman is sitting on is blue, while she's in a bright red dress.   So that pattern seems to be continuing. 

[dartmonkey]

4 hours ago, BigJKO said:

Something about this effect is just mesmerizing. Love the practical effects in this so far. Also it's so jumpy it almost looks like it loops seamlessly?

 

I loved that. I'm assuming someone has already put Chopsticks over it.

[Dewar]

Hmmm, I wasn't really into the show after episode one. It felt too random, with no connecting tissue between scenes. I know I should have expected it because it's Showtime, but I could have done with less gore and nudity. I felt that the original Twin Peaks was at its best when it was implying horrible things, but not having to show them, or a long build-up to one disturbing scene to get real impact out of it. 

 

The second episode has me feeling a little better. Various random scenes are starting to converge into several (strange) storylines. Gore was turned down a little bit, even if the Coop and Darya murder scene still felt a bit too heavy for me without having really earned it. The callbacks to old Twin Peaks characters hit about the right level for me, connecting to the past a little more without feeling heavy handed or random. I have hope for the series now, but if every episode is going to have a high-intensity murder scene, I don't know if I'll make it to the end.

[melmer]

Where can I get me an evil cooper face massage?

 

also can I get that as a looping screen saver, thanks

[Nappi]

Looking forward to extensive discussion on analog glitches on Windows surface laptop in the next podcast episode.

 

Still feel like I should watch a couple more episodes before trying articulate my feelings towards the show. Scattered thoughts:

- Very atmospheric, most of the time.

- I'm wondering if this series will actually introduce someone to relate to or root for or whatever. So far everyone feels very distant which is the polar opposite of the original run.

- I like that they let Amanita Design design the Arm.

- I hope there will be a bit less Red Room bullshit in the following episodes.

- I wish the song at the end had felt either more or much less fitting for the scene. I think I would enjoy the song on its own quite a bit, but in the context it felt like a slightly overproduced tribute to Twin Peaks bar music (which I guess it kinda is). This wasn't helped by the fact that the song is very synth heavy, but no one was playing one. Unfortunately, this didn't create that jarring sensation Lynch is so good at conjuring up. To me it felt like a fan video made by combining a song and a sort of fitting scene in a TV series.

[ihavefivehat]

I love that you mention Amanita Design, Nappi. There's a part in Episode 3 (you'll know it when you see it) that distinctly reminded me of Samorost.

[Gattman]

On ‎5‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 1:15 PM, Alex P said:

And let's check in on what Sarah Palmer's been up to this whole time!

 

Oh, okay, she's just been chain-smoking while watching horrifically graphic nature documentaries on a preposterously large TV in the middle of the night in the same living room where her husband murdered her niece a few decades back. I guess everyone processes things in their own way, so that's cool.

I was reminded of the Harry Dean Stanton watching Hyena's on the TV in Mulholland Dr. scene actually I get a sense of deja vu with a few of the things happening in this series