[The Daily] Twin Peaks Returns

Tonight, Sunday, May 21, 2017, Twin Peaks returns, just as Laura Palmer (may have) predicted it would 25 years ago, give or take. Eighteen one-hour episodes, all directed by David Lynch and co-written with the show’s original co-creator, Mark Frost. In a cover story for Variety, Maureen Ryan tells us how this has come to pass, but more to the point here: New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz is worried that many of us may not be prepared for what we’re in for:

I fear that a good number of viewers are going to watch the new Twin Peaks eagerly anticipating the charming, consumable, GIF-able, and meme-able elements: the comedy, the flirtations, the quizzical reaction shots, and dry banter; the ritual consumption of coffee, donuts, and pie; Agent Dale Cooper with his big grin and Audrey with her saddle shoes and skirts; the dancing dwarf, Angelo Badalamenti’s funky lounge music cues, and so on.

That’s Twin Peaks, of course. But it’s not all that Twin Peaks was. And it’s not all that the new Twin Peaks will likely be.

I should emphasize that Seitz proceeds to argue that that’s a good thing, that this is precisely why so many of us are keenly anticipating what starts happening (again) tonight: “If you look at David Lynch’s post–Twin Peaks work you see a decisive progression toward abstraction, meta-narratives, and challenges to the audience’s preconceptions.”

This entry will not track blow-by-blow, episode-by-episode reaction to the new season; although, if I do see some fine recapping going on, I’ll make note of it. Instead, the idea here is to gather reading (and other work) that’ll stand up before, during, and after this chapter airs. And it could well be that the entry goes dormant for quite a while until some serious processing of the return of Twin Peaks begins in earnest.

Let’s start with a package in the Village Voice. Bilge Ebiri takes a quote from Lynch—“The Fifties are still here”—as a catalyst for a piece on nostalgia in and for Lynch’s work. Melissa Anderson predicts that the new season will return to a theme that’s a constant throughout Lynch’s work: “a woman in trouble.” And Danny King talks with Dennis Lim, director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and author of David Lynch: The Man from Another Place.

“Whatever else its sociopathic-soap vision of smalltown meta-America may or may not be, Twin Peaks could once again serve as the gateway drug to the less civilized regions of Lynchistan,” suggests Michael Atkinson, writing for Rolling Stone. For those already so inclined, and who want to delve deeper, see:

• The Critics Round Up entries on Eraserhead (1977) and The Elephant Man (1980).
• Daniel D. Snyder for the Atlantic on the “Messy, Misunderstood Glory” of Dune (1984).
• Catherine Grant’s excellent roundup on Blue Velvet (1986) at Film Studies for Free and, via FSFF, video and audio recordings of a 2009 symposium at the Tate Modern, “Mapping the Lost Highway: New Perspectives on David Lynch.”
• Randolph Jordan for Offscreen on Wild at Heart (1990).
• Jordan Cronk for Cinema Scope on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992).
• In 2009, Scott Tobias inducted Lost Highway (1997) into his “New Cult Canon.”
• Tim Kreider’s essay for Film Quarterly on The Straight Story (1999).
• When Mulholland Dr. opened in 2001, Bill Wyman, Max Garrone, and Andy Klein began an epic journey into the universe of the film at Salon. See, too, Lili Anolik’s piece for Vanity Fair on the film’s making.
• In 2009, Offscreen hosted a roundtable on Inland Empire (2006).

And in the Notebook:

“David Lynch is an artist who happens to make film as part of his expression,” writes Robert Cozzolino in an excerpt from David Lynch: The Unified Field now up at the TIFF Review.

Writing for the Daily Beast, Nick Schager argues that “the airwaves are now awash in shows that are spiritually, if not literally, indebted to Lynch’s TV masterpiece.” More in the same vein from James Parker in the Atlantic: “Without Twin Peaks, and its big-bang expansion of the possibilities of television, half your favorite shows wouldn’t exist.”

At desistfilm, Karla Loncar traces “Twin Peaks’ origins in surrealism.”

For the New York Times, Gilbert Cruz, Jeremy Egner, Margaret Lyons and Rumsey Taylor have put together a Twin Peaks glossary with illustrations by Jason Logan. And Finn Cohen talks with just about everyone involved with the new season.

“Do you find it frustrating to be asked questions about Twin Peaks?” asks David Marchese at Vulture. David Lynch: “Nothing bothers me about it. People want to know. I just can’t tell them.”

For news and items of interest throughout the day, every day, follow @CriterionDaily.

from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2rESuha