Tag Archives: twin peaks

The Silence of the Lambs [1991)

Wouldn’t it be neat if the FBI actually did things?

Good things.

When’s the last time the FBI actually caught a criminal?

A real criminal.

They had a lovely chance to save America.

By investigating 9/11.

And so we have been investigating the investigators.

Special Agent.

So special…

I was wrong about Twin Peaks.

Because you have to add to the propagandistic litany The X-Files.

And finally this hulking slab of mind control.

Lies can be so beautiful.

Perhaps…once upon a time…the FBI did something.

After Hoover…and before OKC.

A small window.

But let me pause for a minute and admit.

That I love this film.

It is one of the few true masterpieces of American cinema.

It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Rosemary’s Baby.

The only real heirs to the legacy of Hitchcock.

1991.  1991.  Nineteen-ninety-one.

Does America have any honor left?

Do American troops read books?

Do military officers ever avoid the most grave corruption?

Where is the genius to save our country?

What can we learn from serial killers?

Which animals are the most clever?

At the bottom and into the middle are good men and women.

Like Clarice Starling.

Mozart’s pet bird.

A requiem.

Apocryphal.

Lachrymal vases.

My intellect is miniscule.

Our computers would have picked it up.

Desperately random.

How far can you push an old body.

How much fear can you handle?

How much panic can be breathed!

Such genius to personify.

The pathetic fallacy.  They all fawn.

But it is rather reverse reification.

Humanizing.

It.

The way of no way.

Swing hovering to deal with ambush predators.

That’s a quote.

When life mattered.

Isolation savors detail.

Real, not fake.

Hans Selye will never know.

Everything you need to know is here.

The dossier.

Two acting masterpieces.

Jodie Foster.

And Anthony Hopkins.

Once in a lifetime.

The auteurist glue?  Jonathan Demme.

What kind of game is this?

It is the biggest test.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “On the Wings of Love” [1991)

From the depths of great exhaustion.

Driven by integrity of purpose.

Not to take for granted.

Opportunities.

Researching in the basement of the Pentagon.

Or at least a basement.

Somewhere.

A very tough time with being strange.

And behind.

Building compassion.

But now in the land of no chances.

It felt more like another concatenation.

But this was perfect.

An episode of redemption.

Simulated.

In real life.

We are curious to know the truth of the numbers.

Interpretation.

Failure and success and failure.

And success?

Good God…

Such stewardship as to be rewarded for all eternity.

I lost my place.

When the ground yields nothing but weeds.

Rocky soil.

Luck would have it.

Futility.

Her beauty graces the shore.

The mountains.

Ignorance.

I am on and then off.

Switched on.  And powered down.

I don’t have the answers anymore.

Is the answers.

Hard and beaten by the city.

What can possibly happen.

Study hard.

Take pains.  Be perfect.

Yale.

Intelligence cycle.

Gathering.

An old alley.  Blind.  Not deaf.

Jeff mute.  Jute.

I don’t know the mystery of this progression.

Scriabin.

I am the branches.  You are the vine.

Powdered mustache.

Nothing makes sense at a certain point.

At which you are cork light buoyant.

I have given the full measure.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Wounds and Scars” [1991)

Things were improving.

Windom, the master of disguise.

Information supremacy.

Deep intelligence.

Billy Zane charming enough to make you sick.

But likable.

Because he’s an actor.

Accomplished.

More intriguing is Heather Graham.

Hotter than a nun’s habit.

Pete with many chessboards.

Infinitely likable.

We like the underdog here at paulydeathwish.com

And codes.

Radioactive.  Two peaks.

Piqued thrice.

The Cyclops of Redon.

Stalemate.

Historically.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “The Condemned Woman” [1991)

I really didn’t think it was possible.

For this series to turn around.

But it was the golden mean.

Barzun’s decay reversed.

Every story gets better.

Magically.

Like being woken from a bad dream.

Where weasels rip Annie Leonard’s flesh.

The story of Zappa.

And love flies in like sherbet.

She, acted best dead, almost.

YSL lift operator.

Overacting attenuated.

Remiss to omit José Raúl Capablanca (and Graupera).

Last time.

In heaven.

Lasker.

God with us.

Ethan Frome released from bondage.

Quite a gift.

James Marshall as Sean Mackowiak.

Lipton.

Steep decline.

Bullshit walking.

Lessons of nature, arrow:  curare.  Volare.  Fly fishing.

Purple stereoscopic from right/left Roland Kirk?

Blue light = baby.

Red light = mind.

David Warner much better.

But biggest improvement Kenneth Welsh.

Windom lose some last move.

Coalescing polyphony.

Fruity tutti.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Slaves and Masters” [1991)

Twin Peaks was becoming really laborious by this point.

[I’m sure you know the feeling]

But it can’t really be blamed on Diane Keaton.

The director here.

Of this episode.

It’s true.

It’s as if the series knew it was not going to be extended.

But Keaton’s directing is alright.

Sure, there’s plenty of bathos.

But the story really became ludicrous.

In fact, very little was working by this point.

All of the storylines sucked.

Josie (bleh).

Windom Earle (really unnecessary).

David Warner (Eckhardt) [Rupert Murdoch].

Nadine.

For fuck’s sake.

At least Robert E. Lee was entertaining.

And so the greatest TV series in history was spinning itself out.

Somehow, some greedy bastards had disrupted the flow.

That much is obvious.

ABC gaveth, and ABC taketh away.

Mr. Tojamura was a short-lived recovery.

Can Twin Peaks turn it around in its final weeks?

We shall see.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Double Play” [1991)

It was meant to be.

Written long ago.

Zugzwang.

Zwischenzug.

Philidor.

After the concert spirituel.

Staunton.

FMA.

Bobby Fischer.

Boris Spassky.

And Gary Kasparov.  From Baku.  Azerbaijan.

A very pithy story.

Scary Gacy crazy clown time.

Windom doesn’t seem to look the part.

In all, this is an excellent episode which resurrects the series.

Every day for three years.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Checkmate” [1991)

Project Blue Book.

Of course he was familiar with it.

Just like Sean Connery knew a bit about gold.

And an overdose of bombois.

Superfluous papilla.

Suddenly…everything has changed.

But we’re stuck back in a nightmare with another St. Annie.

If you see her…please tell her thanks a lot.

If you see her…say hello.

For…Virginia!

Kindly tell me why there’s no fire on those hills.

Gettysburg.

You’re standing on J.E.B. Stuart.

A sweet love story.

It’s David Duchovny month here at paulydeathwish.com.

10cc.

Tambourine with heaps of shimmering reverb.

Fort Meade.

Maybe all he needs is a shot in the arm.

Cooper still does the right thing.

Michael Parks as Jean Renault.

Impeccable broken English with a French accent.

Like a diabolical Clouseau.

Spookiest is the woozy Kevin Shields treatment.

Periodically cutting the power as at Incirlik.

This is the genius of Giacinto Scelsi.

On one note.

Or Roland Kirk with a water hose.

Too quiet in America.

Mate on the move.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “The Black Widow” [1991)

Some of these Twin Peaks episodes are like John Berryman poems.

Godawful until the last line.

But I owe so much to Berryman.

His play with language.

The Dream Songs.

Fumbling attempts to contact God.

Here, aliens.

Ostensibly.

And so a seamless interweaving with The X-Files.

It’s true.

I searched and searched for a film.

But I write mini-dissertations every day.

And by night my eyes are too tired for subtitles.

I can’t really understand unless I get every word.

A completist like that.

It’s quite clear to me now that there is a shitstorm of conspiracy theories.

Many of which are pure manure.

But you must filter through the shit like in Kanał.

Phosgene gas.

Polonium-210.

Have no fear.

Every second we are beset by terror.

Our nervous systems.

Unduly nervous.

That we run to Yeats.

And I prefer Rimbaud.

But above all just searching for hope in every broken locket.

Not a cheap charm.

So long forgotten.

But a genuine heart which opens.

Maybe it no longer closes.

Fastens.

It is a farewell to those we begged.

No doubt that they too will become beggars.

 

-PD

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Twin Peaks “Masked Ball” [1990)

Air Force.

Twenty-Fifth Air Force.

25 AF.

Hello.

Important to note two Scriabin piano sonatas.

No. 7.  White Mass.

And No. 9.  Black Mass.

Extending the board.

Very much chess.

Rockabilly vortex.

Alfa ROmeo.

Bravo, Charlie!

Foxtrot Tango Macarena.

Romeo Juliett.

Kilo Charlie (Duchovny in drag).

Mike.

Hotel Tango Quebec.

[Oh dear, Miss Morse!]

Godard had maybe only finished 1a and 1b by this point.

The cigar.  And the loving gaze.

Two lodges.  And soul obliteration.

The theater of cruelty and its double.

 

-PD

 

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Twin Peaks “Dispute Between Brothers” [1990)

Waldorf salad makes the scene seem real.

And candied yams with the little marshmallows.

Green butt skunk?

Watching the watchers.

All the way back to James Jesus Angleton.

Journalist?!?

Boise, Idaho.

Was wondering how they would ever get away with it.

In such a precise, legalistic atmosphere.

Once upon a time.

Acting independently was brave.

Because there is no structure.

Blind from all sides.

Such past hurt.

Bravery is a little effort.

Each their own measure.

Awful sport coats.  Like weathermen.  Meteorologists.

Not much.

A bad game of chess.

We had such a respect for Major Briggs.

Don Davis.  PhD.

In theater.  And really military.

Such that we should address semantic infiltration.

But we shall leave that for another day.

Extreme energy usurped by occupying presence.

Global thermonuclear war.

I’ve done the best I can.

Reason and logic (?) cannot operate in an environment of

constant trickery.

 

-PD

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