The Oncoming Hope

When Laura Palmer dies, David Lynch would have us believe that even the Gods have nothing more important to do than mourn her presence. Every living body in this town, faced with the evacuation of life from Laura's strangely serene face, falls to pieces. So far, so Killing.

Agent Dale Cooper breezes in, a cherry-pie scented breath of fresh air, just when the weeping becomes too much to bear. Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne has the good sense to laugh in the face of the rapturous weeping in the high school classroom. The audience breathes a massive sigh of relief, as we realize that Lynch/Frost intends more for our digestive-hour than the maudlin.

As we settle into the (admittedly strange) rhythms of the show, I genuinely can’t figure out whether David Lynch loves or hates teenage romance. All the characters are whimsically and lovingly drawn apart from Donna and James, who drip water bodies of sentiment wherever they go.

Even Bobby Briggs, douche-jock extraordinaire, seems to have more depth to him than our drippy lovebirds. He moves easily from scene to scene, and we're never quite sure if he's operating from the high-emotional state of an adolescent teenager or from something more clinical, more mercenary. Lynch knows this; even at Bobby's most tender moments, you can always hear the frictional creaks of his faux-leather jacket.

His relationship with Shelley remains compelling even when their existential threats become more and more ridiculous, as Leo can never quite sell the idea that he's some kind of unrepentant misogynistic abuser. The more Eric DaRe tries, the more I want to laugh at his pug-nosed face and its terrible attempts at acting.

But with Twin Peaks, Lynch/Frost have achieved the impossible -- a show where bad acting actually heightens its sense of atmosphere. The gurning, the posing, even the sheer emoting, never quite seem out of place. Sure, there's a murder mystery, but who the hell cares? We want to see Dale Cooper, eccentricating himself up all over the place. We want to see Audrey Horne, Veronica Mars-ing her way through leches and peons alike.

In a show full of one-armed men and dreamed up gophers, one mystery really drives the story forward. Is Audrey Horne quite real? She's everywhere and nowhere, all at once. She's all-seeing, all-knowing, impossibly beautiful, and yet she seems connected to nothing and no one apart from Agent Cooper.

I could never call him Dale. Could you?

Reader, think back to one gloriously gruesome incident in S3 of Mad Men, when a rapacious Brit was sent crying (screaming) back to Blighty, feet in hand. Well, many of the tent-pole events in Mad Men are inspired by real life incidents, and I wondered, when in real life did a young man find himself so memorably dismembered in a New York office building? To the interwebs, I say!

Once more, with feeling: "Lost life by stab in falling on ink eraser, evading six young women trying to give him birthday kisses in office Metropolitan Life Building." Poor George S. Millet lost his life in a manner most embarrassing.

Serendipity works in wonderful ways. Thank a filmmaker named Pes for discovering this tombstone in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In his post on Cartoon Brew, he linked a New York Times story that gets to the heart of this mysterious indoor impalement. I recommend reading the entire article (the greatest tragedies are marked with the greatest silliness), but here's the pertinent bit:

Yesterday he came down and remarked that it was the anniversary of the wreck of the Maine. He explained that he knew it because the ship had been blown up on his birthday and that he was 15 yesterday.

At once the girls began to tease him. They told him that on such an occasion he deserved a kiss, and every one of them vowed that as soon as office hours were over she would kiss him once for every year that he had lived. He laughingly declared that not a girl should get near him, and was teased about it all day.

As 4:30 o'clock came, and the boy's work was over, the girls made a rush for him. They tried to hem him in, and he tried to break their line. Suddenly he reeled and fell, crying as he did so.

"I'm stabbed!"

One might say that poor George S. Millet met the real Kiss of Death.

While I cannot be certain that this inspired the great lawnmower incident, it perfectly matches the double bill of hilarity and gore.

In A Nutshell: The most perfect novel I've read this year, if not the last few years. Gillian Flynn, a unique literary voice, produces the most twisted psychological tale in recent memory, and does it with black wit and beautiful writing. All the while, she manages to make subtle and effective commentary on the nature of marriage, aging, and gender.

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A few pages into Gone Girl, lulled into the subtle lyricism of Gillian Flynn's impeccable voice, you'll probably wonder, "How did things get so bad?" How did Nick and Amy Dunne's perfect marriage end up so mundanely terrible after such a promising start?

By the time the novel's finished, you'll wonder, "how on Earth did things get so much worse than when we started?"

Gone Girl, a masterclass in tension, plotting and character, takes you on a bumpy ride through the minds of some of the most twisted characters in recent fiction. Just when we settle into the novel's Rashomon-like storytelling (we seesaw between Nick and Amy's diary entries, his at the end of their marriage, hers at the beginning of their relationship), the cracks start to spill out of the diary entries and into reality. Little details infect the air in ways you wouldn't expect.

But Flynn's not content to leave this as a post-modern mystery for the reader to solve. At the halfway mark, she introduces a third character, one we vaguely glimpse in the first half of the novel, and one who shocks us most thoroughly. That's when things really get going. She takes all the suspense (oh, so much suspense) she built in the first half, and then lights it on fire, and the bonfire continues through the end of the novel.

I can't say anything more about the plot without spoiling the read. But I can't recommend this one enough. I freely admit that I love many books that I wouldn't recommend to all. Not Gone Girl. What Gillian Flynn achieves with form and narrative is truly worth your time.

***Spoilers***

What really impresses me about the novel is the meta-narrative sleight of hand Flynn ultimately inflicts upon us. For the first half of the book, "Nick" is merely a construction of Psychopathic Amy. By the end, Nick actually becomes "Nick," a mere character in Amy's narrative, not a real human being in his own right.

Inanity to one is art to another. One may complain about the torrential downpour of silliness on social media platforms. Yelp directs conversation to a particular topic - food - but that's possibly the most complicated topic in human history. End result: a veritable orgy of human idiosyncrasy.

And what else does one do with orgiastic human illogicity than read it aloud, slowly and dramatically?

Here's the original review of the Stratford Diner in New Jersey, so that you may read along (dramatically):

I ordered the broiled crab cakes and they were really good and i called and asked if i could speak to the supervisor and the girl that asnswerd the phone wanted to know what it was in reference to and I told her it was regarding the food i ordered and and she said what was wrong with it and i said nothing i just wanted to let him or her know that it was good and then she was like ok hold on. When the manager got on the phone and i thanked him and let him know it was good he said thank you and you welcome but seemed like he was in a rush. I don't think i will be eating their anymore because if the manager is not nice then what does that say about the business they are running and the people in it.

Enjoy:

I'm not gonna beat around the bush. Japan's Olympic authorities booked their male football (soccer) team on business class on Japan Airlines, and sent Nadeshiko, the female team, to London on economy.

I could lead you around this story with pretty words and carefully disguised anger, but the facts speak pretty loudly for themselves:

Nadeshiko Japan won the World Cup last year, and are expected to win medals in the Olympic Games.

Nadeshiko's won lucrative advertising deals with top sports brands, which the male team has not.

Nadeshiko won the people's honour award from the Japanese government for giving hope and inspiration to the Japanese populous after widespread destruction caused by last year's natural disasters.

The male team fits none of those criteria: they've never won the World Cup, nor are they expected to come anywhere near the awards podium in London. There are no significant differences in size or height between the male and female players.

The only justification for this segregation is sexism, pure and simple. I've signed a petition created by Sohko Fujimoto and Reina Komiya, addressed to the Japanese Football Association and Japan Airlines. We can't change what's already happened, but we can sure as hell let them know that this is completely unacceptable. The petition takes about ten seconds to fill out.

I want to sign the petition.

Christopher Nolan movies mean many things: angsty heroes with dead lovers, action scenes that whiz by so fast they leave you upside down, and plotlines that require devoted attention lest they become incomprehensible.

Enter Insomnia. There's a dynamic, interesting female lead (notably still alive!), a plot that owes more to careful characterization and mood-building than twists and turns, and most notably, a single action scene that isn't even part of the film's climax.

Nolan places us in the infinite sunshine of an Alaskan summer. I mention the setting because it means as much to the movie as the characters actions, weaving itself into every scene in surprising ways. Al Pacino's Will Dormer goes for days without sleep; is it because of the endless sunlight, or something else? Watch the way the sunshine breaks into particular scenes, even as he goes mad trying to block it out.

Hilary Swank's character, who starts out idealizing Dormer, quickly realizes something's amiss. She's patient in playing her hand, but you can see she's ready to at any given moment. Robin Williams plays the third in this triangle; he couches his murderous character with such a "man-next-door" sensibility that we're constantly forced to question whether he might actually be one of the good guys. Saying more would spoil the film.

Insomnia's a thriller that follows none of the traditional thriller beats; we know exactly who all the guilty parties are from the beginning of the film. What's more unusual is that they know as well. Circumstances force them all to dance around each other in perfect balance, electrons and protons, held apart by forces none could have foreseen. This dance provides more than enough tension to keep our interest. And so it happens that Nolan's most engaging movie is the one with the least action.

Have you guys seen it? What are your thoughts?

2012, it seems, has a vendetta out for the actresses who played the most beloved Doctor Who companions of yesteryear. In the space of one year, fans have waved goodbye to Elizabeth Sladen, Caroline John, and now, heartbreakingly, Mary Tamm.

Oh, Romana. The only time the Doctor took one of his own kind on board, and she not only equalled him, but eventually defeated him in the saving-the-universe stakes. Mary Tamm brought us the first regeneration of Romana, fully regal and bitingly sarcastic, a Timelady arriving on the TARDIS by way of Downton Abbey.

Her first scene on the show remains one of the most perfect in the show's history, displaying the wit, the vibrance and excitement of finally having a companion who doesn't worship the Doctor, but actually kind of thinks he's a loser at first. At the end of the day, has anyone else called him on the fact that he's basically a dropout vagabond thief?

Mary Tamm left the show because the character changed; she became more of a typical "excellent question, doctor" companion by the time she left. But strangely enough, Lalla Ward chose to reference Tamm's performance in Romana II, and the writers returned Romana to what she was always meant to be; better than the Doctor. We owe Mary Tamm for providing a template that no companion has matched since. And it's worth noting that the Romana years (both Romanas) garnered the highest ratings in the show's history.

(skip to 5:18 for Romana's first appearance, where even K9 can't resist a lengthy ogle. Is there such a thing as the tyranny of the robot gaze?)

Guys, I am filled with FEELINGS. Yann Martel's Life of Pi moved me like in ways that few novels have before or since. And by the looks of it, the movie will have the same effect. Despite my general distaste for films of the third dimension, I trust Ang Lee to find beauty, even in the uncanny valley. We might even end up with a movie about Indians that doesn't completely fetishize India! Shock horror!

Watch the trailer and tell me your thoughts:

Two episodes of Political Animals have left me with less of an opinion on the show itself, which is a sort of feel-good trashy romp with a facade of political relevance, but with more appreciation for the narrative construction of The Good Wife.

Superficial comparisons abound. While Political Animals explicitly bases its lead on Hillary Clinton, The Good Wife uses the story of the jilted political wife to deliver a deep dive into how politics, relationships, professionalism tie in with the consistently difficult task of being a woman.

So while the story has to go through some of the same beats (the iconic image of the wife standing by the husband on the podium as he admits his faults, the horror of discovery, the complexity behind the decision to stay or leave), it's telling which beats each story omits.

The Good Wife doesn't spend a lot of time on the tears; when we meet Alicia Florrick, she's competent, she's independent, and she's completely certain of what she needs in her professional life. The Good Wife focuses on how she moves forward, not what brought her to this point. We're shown exactly why Alicia doesn't leave Peter as yet, and we realize that in the end, dealing with Peter's the lowest priority in Alicia's life, given that her whole world has come down around her. In fact, it isn't until season three that we get the scene where Alicia first learns about Peter's indiscretions.

Political Animals, on the other hand, seems totally mired in the relationship between Bud and Elaine. One major problem with the show so far is how Bud seems to have such a hold on Elaine's life, even though there's no evident reason why she would ever have loved him, why she would have stayed with him, and why she relies on him now. We're shown, again and again, that she doesn't really need him in her personal life, so allowing him back in doesn't seem true to the character.

I'll allow that few shows get off to such a strong start as The Good Wife. It almost seems churlish to compare the two: TGW is a novelistic tale that teases out very serious themes, while Political Animals aims to be trashy entertainment (and succeeds admirably). Nor should they be more similar; Alicia and Elaine, despite the surface similarities, are very different women. If anything, Elaine's more of an example of when the world crashes down on a Diane Lockhart.

All that said, Political Animals does manage to mimic my personal favorite aspect of TGW: the Alicia/Kalinda. As with that favored pair, PA features a wonderfully prickly but respectful relationship between Elaine and Carla Gugino's fabulous reporter. It seems that in this show, too, the tensions between their deeper solidarity will drive the show forward. And I can't wait to see where it goes.

Finder: Talisman is the best graphic novel you've never heard of. My ignorance is my own fault; I assumed the wonderful world of non-superhero graphic novels to be rather recent, apart from genre breakthroughs like Maus and Sandman.

In 1996, Carla Speed McNeil wrote and illustrated a magical tale that's about a book, any book really, but the book that changed your life when you were a chlid, and no matter how hard you work to find it again, you never can. About how the book mutates in your mind to help you deal with the circumstances of your life. How it grows bigger and bigger until it can no longer be anything as mundane as a bound stack of paper.

I won't spoil the magic of the story by telling you any more, but young Marcie's lifelong quest to rediscover her Talisman leads her on a remarkably entertaining journey through her imagination, through her reality, and her imagined reality.

McNeil's artwork also bears special mention. Seriously, look:

Finder: Talisman starts off a long-running series, but this one stands perfectly well on its own. I don't know a whole lot about what follows, but rumor has it that we meet some aboriginal legends and Hindu mystics, all tied to the magic of books.

Stay tuned. The beautiful hardcover edition arrives in stores October 3rd.