Tuesday, May 23, 2017

TV Review: Twin Peaks: The Return – Is It Future or Is It Past?



The past is not dead; it’s not even past.
-William Faulkner

* There are some spoilers in this review.

As I watched and re-watched the first two episodes of series creators Mark Frost and David Lynch’s surreal, stunning, and sensational Showtime reboot of Twin Peaks, I kept thinking of Faulkner’s words and the feeling of being between two (or more worlds). In a telling moment in the Red Room the One-Armed Man (Al Strobel) asks “Is it future or is it past?” and we have no idea what the answer could be. There is a sense of familiarity that is jarred by the reality that time and space have taken us far but never away from this narrative and these wonderfully odd, strange, and grim characters that inhabit it.

Twin Peaks: The Return is more than a reboot and beyond a season three, so much so that it is hard to categorize it other than it seems to be an extension of a story that needed to still be told – Lynch himself has said as much. And for we fans of the original series who savored the two seasons we were given (yes, the end of season two took its toll and only we truly loyal fans hung in there), we knew there had to be more than that horrific ending when Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) smashed his head against the mirror and saw the image of the savage killer Bob (the late Frank Silva) in the shattered glass.

We have been waiting all these years, and now the story unwinds slowly, like jagged yet beautiful bloody shards of that mirror floating across the years and coming back together gradually to fit together like razor-sharp puzzle pieces that may finally give us the answers we have been long awaiting.

There is so much going on in these first two episodes (which really just run together as one whole) that much of what happens seems like spoiler territory; however, the events that happen are just seedlings that are being sown masterfully by Lynch (who directed these two and all 18 episodes of the series) in his chaotic, gradual, procedural, and surreal style that is so jarring and yet so welcome. Damn, I missed feeling this overwhelmed, intrigued, and frustrated watching TV for too long (26 years to be exact).

Hearing people talk about the series since the premier on Sunday, the watercooler buzz has been that Frost and Lynch borrowed from Lost, Stranger Things, Fargo, and True Detective, but I was quick to point out the truth is that those series borrowed from what Lynch had done so long ago in the original series, which was more than ground-breaking and as I recall a game changer for television shows. People were like “You can’t do that on television” and Frost and Lynch just said, “Oh, yes we can.”

I must note that I was hooked from the very first episode of Twin Peaks back in season one. I recall never being so intrigued, disturbed, confused, and delighted while watching a TV show. The dismal beauty that Lynch brought to life had the amazing ability to make me feel totally lost but to a point that I somehow felt powerfully found. Happily, I have all the same feelings again as I am watching this new incarnation, and the nostalgic factor is compelling but subsumed by the notion that Lynch is making something old new again.

Many interesting choices are made to get us back into the world of Agent Cooper, and we begin with one of the most essential characters – the one around whom the first two seasons revolved – Laura Palmer (the still stunningly beautiful Sheryl Lee). First, we see the young Laura with Cooper at the Black Lodge in the Red Room – this is an alternate reality – and she tells Cooper that she will see him in 25 years.

Amazingly that scene is from the original series, and now just around 25 years later we are here again. An older Laura enters the Red Room wearing a long black dress and walking stiffly to the sound of what seems like a record being pushed backwards. This odd effect is appropriately unsettling. Cooper stares at her in disbelief because he (and we) know she was murdered more than a quarter of a century ago. Laura tells him, “I am dead, yet I live.” After a brief kiss, Laura is sucked out of the room screaming all the way, lost to Cooper once more, and later an image of her father Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) appears and tells Cooper, “Find Laura.” And I’m thinking, “Is it all going to revolve around Laura again?”

We also get a black and white scene with the Giant (Carel Struycken) who seems even more ominous aged; he still is offering Cooper information that we need subtitles to understand, but we still cannot be sure about what it all actually means. Later in color we see Cooper in the Red Room again, and the One-Armed Man is there and shows him that the dancing dwarf (Michael J. Anderson) has somehow become a brain stuck on a bare-limbed tree. The Brain reminds Cooper of his doppelgänger (the Evil Cooper possessed by Bob) and that Good Cooper can only leave the Red Room if Evil Cooper comes back in.

Evil Cooper is not quite a sight for sore eyes. Complete with long hair, spray suntan, a menacing expression, and clad in leather, EC looks like he escaped from an ‘80s rock band video. Now EC is driving hot cars, sleeping with hot girls like Darya (Nicole LaLiberte) and Chantal (Jennifer Jason Leigh) while also killing people in cold blood. Evil Cooper has a plan and seems to be on an inevitable collision course with Good Cooper as he embarks upon a trip with sinister intentions.

We do get glimpses of old characters we are happy to see back, even if it seems that they appear so briefly. While it is good to see these Twin Peak residents – Dr. Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), Ben Horne (Richard Beymer), his brother Jerry (David Patrick Kelly), ditzy Lucy (Kimmy Robertson) and her Andy (Harry Goaz), waitress Shelly (Mädchen Amick), Laura’s mother Sarah (Grace Zabriske), James Hurley (James Marshall), and Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) – the most welcome face is the Log Lady (deceased Catherine E. Coulson) who is now depicted as quite frail and using an oxygen tank but still holding her trusty log.

Log Lady’s interaction (so far) is only with Hawk over the phone and it has to do with Agent Cooper. She tells Hawk “Something is missing” and then Hawk proceeds to go deep into the dark forest in an nerve-wracking scene that turns up something that may or may not be a way to get Cooper home.

Besides these familiar faces, there are other narratives interwoven into the episodes that are intriguing and haunting. One involves Scream star Matthew Lillard who plays respected high school principal Bill Hastings who lives in Buckhorn, South Dakota, and is being accused of murdering the school’s librarian Ruth (Emily Stofle) because his fingerprints are all over her apartment. He claims to be innocent and tells his wife Phyllis (Cornelia Guest) he “dreamed” it, just like Leland Palmer who didn’t know he was possessed by Bob and killed his daughter Laura; I have a feeling old Bill is in for a rude awakening.

Another of these new narratives involves a seemingly unoccupied luxury apartment in a New York City skyscraper where a glass cube is affixed to the wall with a portal that opens up to a view of the city. In this room on a comfortable sofa a young man (Ben Rosenfield) sits and watches the empty cube as he records it on cameras. A pretty young woman named Tracey (Madeline Zima) comes baring lattes but wants to get romantic on that sofa. When something dark and foreboding enters that cube, it looks like their erotic interlude is over and then some.

How all these seedlings will grow and intertwine cannot be determined yet, but that has always been the awesome draw of Twin Peaks – we don't know where we are going, we don’t know how we’re getting there, and we don’t know if we will even arrive, but we joyfully take the trip anyway.

Along with Frost and Lynch putting all their touches on the narrative and the visuals (now greatly enhanced with CGI especially in the Red Room scenes), we get Angelo Badalamenti’s music, including the haunting score that accompanies the opening credits – its deceptively simple but evocative strains still make me shiver as I feel myself entering a place I’m not supposed to be but have no choice but to enter.

The first two hours end with us back in The Bang Bang Bar where Shelly and her friends are partying just like it’s 1991. We go out with the slightly eerie and dreamlike song “Shadow” performed by The Chromatics, with lyrics like “I took your picture from the frame/And now you are nothing how you seemed” reminding me of that chilling photo of murdered homecoming queen Laura Palmer, whose death started this narrative 27 years ago.



Twin Peaks: The Return has me hooked just as the original did, so I am in all the way to the end. I may not know what is happening at times, but I am enjoying the hell out of this series, and ignorance has never felt more like bliss.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Movie Review: Alien: Covenant – Ripley’s Believe It Or Not




What Ridley Scott’s new film Alien: Covenant sorely needs more than anything is another Ripley, or better yet, the original (Sigourney Weaver), who gave those old movies a pulse and a protagonist that we not only cared about but also who could take care of business. No human character comes close to matching her in this outing, and interestingly enough the androids Walter/David (played by an amazing Michael Fassbender) are actually the protagonists Scott cares about most – believe it or not!

While watching the last two Alien films, Mr. Scott has hinted at some kind of connection to origins of the human race as well as a possible future for it, but there is a sense of grim and utterly hopeless inevitabilities. As David, the android from Prometheus who in that film liked to spike martinis with biological poison, views the human race as all weakness and eventual death; he has no respect for it and wants to undermine it. Despite his being created by human Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce), his disdain for the frailties of humans knows no bounds.

The ship Covenant is part cargo vessel and also Noah’s Ark for humans – 2000 colonists in cryo-sleep and drawers of frozen embryos. It is headed for a seemingly perfect planet Origae-6, where Daniels (a solid performance by Katherine Waterston) and husband and ship captain Branson (James Franco) plan to build a log cabin by a lake (wood and nails are part of the cargo). While the crew is also in cryo-sleep, Walter monitors the passengers in stasis and oversees the ship along with the main computer called Mother (an unseen voice that sounds like a Siri variant).

Covenant hits a space storm that damages it and causes the deaths of some colonists and Branson. A devastated Daniels hangs one building nail around her neck, which is sort of a nod to Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in Prometheus hanging a cross around her neck. In that film Shaw’s faith in spite of everything going wrong around her is a source of contention with android David, and this dynamic is echoed in this film as David eschews the notion of a higher power but worships “creation” and seeks answers that his own creator Weyland was unable to give him.

A distress signal from a previously uncharted planet catches the crew’s attention, and all readings seem to indicate it is a better candidate for colonization than Origae-6. Against Daniels protestations, new captain Oram (Billy Crudup) decides that the team will go investigate and try to help the person who has sent the distress call – incongruously John Denver’s song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” If that is not a clear sign that something’s wrong on that planet, I don’t know what is.

Needless to say, once the away team lands on the planet, the excrement quickly hits the fan. Without giving away too much (like the trailers do not do that already), the team encounters a variant of the “alien” Xenomorph that is fast and just as deadly as its cinematic cousin. When all seems lost along comes David, the android from Prometheus who along with Shaw survived the conflict of the first film and set out to find the Engineers – the humanoids that apparently used technology to create the human race and then didn’t like how it turned out.

The rest is spoiler territory, but Scott borrows much from the other films, especially the original Alien which still remains the best entry in the series – and fans will be happy to see the Xenomorph back in action. What is missing, as noted before, is the heart and soul that Ripley provided to those previous films. Waterston does her best here, and we do want to see her overcome in Ripley fashion, but Walter/David are really the story that Scott seems most interested in exploring at the expense the human characters.

We never really get to know the other crew members all that well, except for Danny McBride’s Tennessee (apparently Scott’s idea for comic relief which is sorely needed) and he does the best he can wearing a cowboy hat but has limited screen time, and as the other characters get picked off one by one, as is always the case in these films, we are really not very invested in any of them.

The interplay between the androids is the core of what Scott wants to highlight, and Fassbender has a delightful edge as David while his Walter has a subtle benevolence and obvious dedication to duty and cares for Daniels. Walter is intrigued by David’s “work” in the ten years spent on the planet, and he is not too shocked to discover that the Engineers designed the aliens to destroy their human creations or by how David, now taking their place as creator and caretaker, wants the aliens to flourish and eliminate the human race including this crew and their colonist and embryo cargo.

While Scott takes us down the road to get some answers, the film still leaves us with many more questions. One of the most glaring is how can this crew and Captain Oram be so careless when landing on a planet that has not been fully vetted as was the case of their original destination? Without being aware of indigenous organisms and the atmosphere, these people jump off the transport with no helmets or protection from anything airborne or on the ground. It seems too obvious but still is bothersome. Back here on earth we would wear more protection against mosquitoes and other pests, but they walk out of the ship onto an alien world with no precautions.

Many other decisions made by the characters can come under similar scrutiny – most notable is how anyone could look down into a big slimy egg that just opened and not expect something bad to happen. Oh, yes, of course, this is a prequel you will say, so they haven’t learned from Ripley and company’s experience yet. No matter – it stretches the credibility way too far in my point of view.

Overall, while I am not totally thrilled with Alien: Covenant, it is still an Alien film (Yes, I said that about the Star Wars prequels too), and so attention must be paid. I can say I enjoyed it enough but it didn’t blow me out of the theater the way Scott’s original did, but how could any sequel/prequel match that intensity?

One interesting thing is that the last preview before the film started was for Mr. Scott’s eagerly anticipated Blade Runner sequel – Blade Runner 2049. Happily, Harrison Ford is reprising his role as Rick Deckard, which bodes well for it because at least we can be confident about that film having its Ripley – the element that would have made Covenant a great film instead of just a good one.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

Free Time Is More Than Just Me Time

In a world where it feels as if we are expected to be on the go 24/7, it seems no one is stopping to smell the roses or enjoy a few quiet moments on a park bench. These people so fervently committed to their jobs or their careers – who eat two or more meals at their desks each day and come to work in darkness and leave the same way – seem to look disparagingly down on those of us who dare to hit the pause button and, if we are really daring, press stop.

The problem is that, despite all the protestations to the contrary, we do need down time. We cannot compete with robots or Artificial Intelligence that can indeed do 24/7 work; human units crave some unstructured sequences where we are not expected to punch a time clock, process information, turn a wheel, or do anything at all. The problem is it seems the world now denigrates free time as if it is the worst of guilty pleasures. If we are not doing something tangible – in other words work related – we are condemned as being unproductive or even worse: wasters of the most essential commodity of all – time!

Or course, these naysayers of leisurely pursuits and unstructured hours miss the whole point about free time. Free time is more than just me time – it is a way to connect with yourself in ways that are impossible during structured working time. Free time can mean many things to people but it is in essence moments when a person does what he or she wants to do rather than what someone else wants him or her to do.

Enjoying free time is a great gift that should be pursued whenever possible and cherished forever. Being able to sit down and read that book, listen to music, stare at the sky, or just close one’s eyes and breathe deeply are priceless opportunities. When I tell people I like to meditate, I get responses like “That’s great if you can find the time.”

Of course, my answer is always the same: “You have to find the time.”

This is when I get the incredulous expressions and loud breathing followed by, “How do you find time for anything these days?” The answer is that, if it means something to you, you will find the time.

Free time is good for your health because you can relax, breathe deeply, and think. In an office or work environment, I have often heard people say, “I don’t have the time” and they truly perceive this to be true, but even during a busy work day anyone can structure at least five minutes to close the eyes and practice deep breathing.

How did we get here? How did we go from Thoreau and Whitman to this overwhelming place called planet Earth in 2017? We have allowed the inconsequential to subsume the essential. Technology and social media have opened so many new doors that we are never truly done with knocking on them. Our pursuit of the semblance of society has been undone by social media, making a mockery of friendships and relationships that ought to be meaningful but have become virtual.

The most overwhelming of all elements is that pernicious perception that time is no longer ours. Bosses and colleagues expect what was once unthinkable – you to be instantly available at any moment of the day or night, and god help anyone who does not respond to that ping at 3 a.m. The saddest truth is this – we have allowed the rat race to not only happen 24/7 but set it up so that the rat is always winning.
Children especially need unstructured time which is why, despite all the push to take away their summer, kids need summer vacation (and adults do as well). They need time to run, jump, play, swim, watch a sunset, or just do nothing at all. Nothing is frightening for kids as well as adults because adults have done everything they can to fill up their children’s free time with sports teams, dance lessons, music lessons, extra tutoring, karate classes, and play dates. Kids assume that they have to be busy all the time because their parents are busy all the time. How truly sad is that?

Free time is bad in this world because it signifies something not getting done, but the reality is that we do not always have to be building or making or doing something. Doing nothing is not scary at all – it is the ultimate exercise of freedom. Nothing has no expectations, no strategies, and no end results. Nothing is liberating and not timed and in that way its nothingness and timelessness is priceless.

This weekend when someone says, “What should we do?” why not respond with “Let’s do nothing”? You might get some strange reactions, but you could also hear some sighs of relief too. Oh, the opportunity to do nothing – it just like doing something, but it sounds so much prettier.