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missionsprawl's Replies
Software can always be improved. The amount of subforums is probably the biggest problem since it's way ahead of demand and posters are thinly spread across all those interest boards.
"The Saragossa Manuscript" (1965) and "The Hourglass Sanatorium" (1973), both by W.J. Has
"The Phantom of Liberty" (Luis Bunuel, 1974)
"Monty Python's the Meaning of Life" (Terry Jones, 1983)
"Johnny got his Gun" (Dalton Trumbo, 1971)
"Shura" (Toshio Matsumoto, 1971)
What? These chicks are a 6-month gym membership away from stealing their daughters' SOs and you know it.
I did have a Twin Peaks dream following the finale. There was a limited edition boxset on sale for twenty bucks, including a making-of documentary, but it sold out the moment I clicked. I woke up feeling trolled.
I rewatched the finale - the pole is outside "Carrie's" house. Apologies are in order in case any of my previous statements might have affronted said electricity post, or its people, in any way. I still think making a '666' out of it was on the nose.
On another hand, that this vision appeared to Andy, but was understood by Cooper / "Richard" makes me think "the dream" is self-reflecting. The story will propel itself, and that is all there is to it. The dream shows to itself the things that it shows to its actors. It only matters if it's shown at all or not, since we see the same things it does.
Finally someone talking sense about this provincial crap. Lynch and Frost are not so old to escape this plate of crow, they'll get it nice and warm in their lifetime and it'll be one weighted in grams.
It was a direct copy of the final boss fight in Super Smash Bros 4. Look it up on youtube. It's so stupid to type out but I don't see how it could be a coincidence.
I say bring it. If that pole tries to cross me, it'll have made a powerful enemy that day.
I think most of the plot events in Twin Peaks this season was just setting up the chess pieces. They are definitely gunning for a renewal.
We'll never get the answers to most of this stuff, though.
I'm not sure it's incoherent, it seems like we just don't have the key to it yet. They went full speed ahead with themes of doubling, rewriting, stand-ins and false representations that go back to the original series.
I'm not sure what it means on a story level. It's all fuzzy. I know Frost has been interested in quantum theory which some have speculated could explain the time anomalies in this season, but that's out of my depth.
On a pure production level, it gives a way to bring back anyone from the cast, whether as old characters or new, or new stand-ins for the old. We've seen some impressive digital de-aging tonight, too. It's hard to pass a story device this convenient when you're selling a returning series to a network, so this whole thing seems more likely than not to me.
"First of all for the irony of it: Norman had GOTTEN AWAY with those earlier murders. Probably for years. But THIS time, he(Mother) killed an embezzler who would bring a sharp private eye on her trail, plus a concerned LOCAL loved one(Sam) and a near-crazy sister, too(crazy with grief and determination to find Marion.)"
This is an interesting take. Personally, I thought that it was more of a cop-out, though perhaps due to how it was presented: as if there's more to the story that absolutely must be told, but wasn't because we're with Marion. If it's so important, why choose Marion's POV? It's odd of Hitch to draw attention to something like this because it splits the movie into two dimensions: we have the hands-on-deck view of Norman's downfall that we see, but what we really think about is not the story as presented to us but what's essentially the construction of the movie itself.
Your observations about the use of irony in Psycho are perfectly on point, I think. Hitchcock was a master of dramatic irony, and it's so powerful here in good part because so many of the moving parts simply fall into place without foreshadowing or even so much as an announcement. It just all makes sense effortlessly. This is the side of Psycho that made me love the movie.
"Somewhat. Again using 1960 as our compass, the descent into madness and horror that constitutes the story of Psycho UNTIL the shrink scene seems to have demanded the shrink scene to "calm the audience down and restore societal norms." Which would happen in real life, too. The cops and the DA and the public sector shrink move in to "make the horror understandable.""
The movie purposely set up an environment of disorientation, irrationality, mystery, together with a sense of the abrupt - the audience did not need it to be made understandable, because it could already be felt to an acute degree... Although the people at Paramount might have thought otherwise!
Personally I don't think the audiences in 1960 were any less likely to figure things out than today's, or 1860's for that matter. People are people and shouldn't be underestimated.
"Well, with that one, the shrink scene is more than one scene, and they come earlier: The San Juan Bautista coroner(Henry Jones) and his brutal indictment of Scottie for Madeleine's death; the shrink explaining Scottie's catatonia to Midge(of course, this is LITERALLY the shrink scene in Vertigo, and it has a matching scene in The Wrong Man before it); and Judy writing her letter to Scottie that she tears up. A whole bunch of explanations and surmises..two of them by "judgmental officials"(the coroner, the shrink.)"
I have to disagree here. The scenes in Vertigo serve to to show that Scotty can't depend on the law (and thus must depend on his own skills as a detective), as well as leading to Midge leaving Scotty's story. These scenes serve a narrative purpose by closing Scotty's "escape routes" from the central plot. The scene in Psycho does not have any role other than to explain the plot to the audience.
"The gravedigging, perhaps, but not the gutting and stuffing of the corpse."
We're already led to put two and two from the combination of Norman's fascination with taxidermy (which he explained to Marion in a suspiciously uneasy scene) and the increasing highlight that the film places on his abnormality. Like you said, Hitchcock would not leave scenes in without good reason, and I'm sure his audience in 1960 expected that as well. There's a lot of connections that can be fished out from the sum total of Norman's scenes. I don't think it was needed of Hitch to rob his film of room for exploration by putting these connections out front.
"A key issue about the shrink scene is this: can a movie be considered to be among the greatest and most influential of all time...and STILL have an awful, horrible, terrible scene in it? Did Hitchcock's "genius" suddenly abandon him for this one crucial scene in the picture?"
Yes, I think so. In the end, these masterminds are human and thus error-prone. Lang's "Metropolis", for example, has a simplistic ending that hardly anyone liked (including the director), but the movie is widely acclaimed as one of the greats. Tarkovsky's "Solaris" had lengthy, nonsensical scenes shot simply to excuse a trip to Japan - it's acclaimed too, even though the director admitted he made the first hour boring in order to annoy his critics. Still, you'll hardly find anyone saying these movies are not the top-notch work of master directors.
I absolutely think Hitch had an error of judgement. I don't think the scene is "awful, horrible, terrible" though. It's a banal scene in a brilliant movie, which will always make people bring it up, but I don't think it's a dealbreaker or a blemish on Hitch's record.
Agreed on the third point, but everything here is incidental to the story; background information that does not impact what Hitchcock chose to dramatize onscreen. The problem with the shrink scene is that it lays out too many things that are more potent when left to the imagination (for example, Norman's gravedigging is already suggested in the dialogues with the sheriff and his wife).
The tell-all approach does not contrast, but rather undermine the moods set up in the film. It's the opposite of Vertigo, where Hitchcock's twists are an integral part of the story and enrich it on repeat viewings. For example, it doesn't matter if Marion is Norman's first or fifth victim because it's Marion's story that we follow and are invested in as an audience. Her death is horrifying in itself. Saying Norman killed others doesn't change its impact.
Also, I just had the idea that there's another problem with this scene - it shouldn't have been used as a lead-in to Norman's internal monologue, which is more effective and thematically consistent. I think that scene could have been fleshed out at the doc's expense.
I'm sure that's the first thing she'll tell them. It looks like a no-brainer for everyone involved.
Sabrina Sutherland posted a while ago that they have renewal talks scheduled immediately after the series finale... Unless something changed in the last few days, I'd say things are looking optimistic since the higher-ups at Showtime are outright bragging about the subscriptions TP brought in.
It's dated but easy to forgive, I'd say. In a couple years people might even start saying it's charmingly old-fashioned... Which would be stupid, but I can see it happening.
Lodge scenes are a perfect backdoor for cameos. Anyone can be brought back there for a one-off. I mean, were you expecting to see Leland again?