Twin Peaks is Freaky FUN!!!!

One day in the sleepy northern town of Twin Peaks a girl is found dead. Her body has been stripped and wrapped in plastic, and all manner of unsightly insects crawl over her permanently open eyes as she washes up to shore. The small community is not very well equipped to handle such an atrocious crime, so an F.B.I. agent is sent in to aid the local bumbling law enforcement in apprehending the killer, and getting to the bottom of the mysteries. What follows for 29 episodes is easily the most strange, shocking and hilarious television shows I’ve ever seen in my life
Dale Cooper comes to the small town thinking it'll be a walk in the park. Two days in he has a dream, a dream that would be forever imprinted in the memory of anyone who watches the show. A sequence that would be parodied on Saturday night live, AND sesame street. It's also the most bizarre mind trip ever. However, most importantly, it lays the seeds of clues that point to all the answers. After having seen the entire show all the way to the end, the revelations are mostly all spelled out in this one early dream sequence. The thing is it's hard to tell what’s important and what’s a clue when there's a midget dancing to jazz music and Laura Palmer, the high school prom queen victim talking backwards and trying to (still in reverse) seduce agent Cooper (who is NOT in reverse) oh, and there's a strobe light also.

But that’s the tip of the ice burg in this wayward town. A one eyed house wife toils all day in hopes of creating a silent drape runner, the first of its kind. You think this sub plot is just comic relief until it points to a clue. Or a quiet old woman who spends her days drinking coffee and eating pie at the local diner, with a log. That’s right, a log. Once again, it's funny, funnier still when she approaches the authorities and tells them that her log was there the night Laura died, and that it saw everything. Unfortunately they don't ask the log nicely so it refuses to spill the beans. However, she gets the last laugh as it turns out the history and explanation behind the log, and the fact that it REALLY WAS there, are much more complicated and emotional than you'd think.
The show is filled to the brim with odd characters whose quirks all seem to lead to more clues. And more strangeness. In fact, one complaint I might have for the beginning of the show is that there are TOO many sub plots going on, most seemingly not connected to the core mysteries, who killed Laura palmer and why? But that’s the magic of this show, because patience is a virtue, and all the threads do indeed connect. Some not until the final episode. But when they do, your jaw will drop at the ingenuity of it all. Think of CLUE mixed with Law and Order and Reno 911 and you might start to get an idea. OH, and did I mention Laura’s mom starts having visions of a screaming Native American killing Laura? Just a dream right? Not so once Cooper starts seeing the very same man. But what of a dream when you discover the man in them has been dead for years?
There is a moodiness and sense of dread that permeates the whole show, and it's done with the muted colors, the constant bad weather, the creepy music (reminiscent of the shining) the sudden outbursts of violence, and in some choice sequences, gore. It’s this aspect that really sets Twin Peaks apart from other shows. Its structure has been often imitated since. J.J.Abrams has gone on the record and said that this show has directly inspired him on both ALIAS and especially LOST. But none of his shows, nor anything else since has captured the off kilter eeriness of this classic.
And then there's the ending. Can you imagine who the killer is? I narrowed it down to 4 people and was right with one of them, but was wrong with the motive. Go figure. It's a doozy, and even the revelation is done with a twisted bizarre glee not seen since that crazy dinner scene with "the family" at the end of the Texas chainsaw massacre. Yea, that’s right, ya hurd me. It's satisfying and creepy, and hilarious, and the perfect cap off to one of the most original things I’ve ever seen. It IS 29 episodes long, so it is an investment in time, but a can tell you here and now that once it starts, you can't look away. and once it's over, you'll find yourself unable to stop thinking about the mysteries of TWIN PEAKS

p.s. as an added bonus, it's fun to play "spot the celebrity" with Laura Flynn Boyle, Heather Graham and even David Duchovney turning up!!!

The Midnight Meat Train Review

Horror movies now days seem to take on the same thing over and over again. You have either the devil child, the sad killer who stalks and slashes teens, or a creepy Asian with long dark hair doing things with technology. All the above mentioned films also always take place in a gothic southern mansion and surrounding countryside, or some other secluded alienating location. Enter Clive Barkers Midnight Meat Train, a film based on one of Clive’s short stories, that is both original and effective, and a welcome refreshing thriller in the now stale “horror/thriller” genre.
Bradley Cooper (Alias, The Wedding Crashers) plays a struggling photographer in some unnamed, generic big city (Chicago, New York, they could all fit) and lives with his supportive girlfriend (Iron Mans Leslie Bibb). Their best friend, that creepy guy who had that unfortunate ending in Hostel 2 knows someone who knows someone who knows Brook Shields (Lipstick Jungle) who owns an art gallery. Through a series of events, Cooper’s character is led into the city underground to find its “heart” and take pictures of it for some fancy art gallery showing. This could be his big break. What he stumbles onto is a series of brutal murders, and disappearances, in one of the more telling and creepy scenes, revealing that such occurrences have been going on since the early 1900!!!! He soon has a one on one run in with Mahogany, the well dressed killer with a doctor’s bag of killing implements, his favorite being a heavy metal mallet. Vinnie Jones (bad ass in pretty much any movie he’s ever been in) plays the part without a single word uttered. Which is rare for him, but the silence goes a long way in amping up the creep factor. It’s all in his eyes.

This movie is just an awesome example of style over substance. It’s scary, it’s effective, it’s quick, and just under an hour and a half, the movie knows what it is and gets there fast. Is it deep and logical and thought provoking? No, but it does tap into a real fear that many people have, and that’s the subway. It’s a fact that thousands go missing every year, and it’s a fact that late at night this specific mode of transportation is not the cleanest, or most inviting. Here is a movie that takes that untapped idea and gives it a mythical, epic horror story behind all the mayhem. This IS where the movie falters just a bit. There is a rather supernatural denouncement, which although there are clues to throughout the film, is never really stressed. So it does come as somewhat of a surprise shift in tone that you will either buy and be freaked out by, or be confused and underwhelmed by. However this IS Clive Barker, and if you’re familiar with his work (Hell raiser) then you won’t be surprised at all.

What does work, and work in spades is the direction. The opening death scene has our victim sitting alone, listening to music and everything she does is in fast motion, and herky jerky style like time laps photography, and out of focus, in the background, the killer gets up, mallet in hand, in slow motion. No edits, no cuts, Mahogany just slowly walks up until his slow motion and her time laps come crashing together and BAM! Still no edits or flashy “SAW” style cuts when her face gets bashed in. Its small stylistic flourishes like this that makes every scene in the movie a wonder to watch. Take for example another death scene, shown as a point of view of our victim. After being attacked, and bloody, she slips and slides around the metal train car unable to get a grip on anything until she gets hit in the neck, her view spinning in circles until it rests on her own body, several feet away, still twitching, and headless. We then zoom out of her eyeball, her body still visible in the reflecting of her eye, as she involuntarily blinks. Or another where Leslie Bibb and Co. are snooping through someone’s house, that someone now on their way home. The camera swoops up, looking down on everyone as if from a birds eye view, sliding from room to room, through the walls, down the halls, so you have a PERFECT sense of where everyone is in relation to each other, something that most horror movies now a days don’t bother with.
The Midnight Meat Train is an awesome movie. It’s not an all time classic, but it is does have the makings of a cult classic. Like The Descent or The Skeleton Key or The Orphanage, it’s one of those movies no one hears about, but once you seek it out your pleasantly surprised at just how kick ass it turns out to be. High on style, Medium on substance, it’s always a visual treat; just to look at, even when sometimes the convoluted plot gets in its own way. HIGHLY recommended if you enjoy a good quick scare that will linger in your mind the next time you get in that subway, or walk down that deserted alleyway at night alone……