With coverage beginning on Thursday, here are 13 films we can’t wait to see at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Based on a True Story (Roman Polanski)

Four years since his last feature, the excellent, yet financially underwhelming Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski reunites with Emmanuelle Seigner (also his wife) for Based on a True Story. The erotic thriller stars Seigner as a writer who enters into a dangerous relationship with an obsessive fan, played by Eva Green. This will be Green’s first French-speaking role since 2004. While he is widely despised due to his statutory rape conviction, Polanski shows no signs of slowing down. If he can maintain the tension presented in Venus in Fur and his 2010 film The Ghost Writer, Based on a True Story is sure to be one wild ride.

Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-Soo)

One of the most consistent Korean directors, Hong Sang-Soo, has shocking stamina. Claire’s Camera is one of three films Hong is releasing in 2017, and his second at this year’s festival. For Claire’s Camera, Hong reunites with Oscar-nominee Isabelle Huppert, who gave one of her greatest performances in his 2012 film In Another Country. The reunion of two artists at the top of their respective games is sure to result in something special. The film is set in Cannes and was shot during last year’s festival, which makes its appearance tremendously appropriate.

Happy End (Michael Haneke)

This one is a given. Michael’s Haneke’s Happy End is already a favorite to win the Palme d’Or, and it doesn’t even have an official poster. Haneke won back-to-back Palmes for his last two films, Amour and The White Ribbon, and he can do it again. Happy End sees Haneke reuniting with Amour stars Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant in a film that tackles the European refugee crisis through the lens of a bourgeoisie family. Sign me up.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (John Cameron Mitchell)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch creator John Cameron Mitchell returns to the director’s chair after a seven years absence for How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Based on a short story by Neil Gaiman, the film is set in 1970s London and follows two teenaged boys as they search for love. The impressive cast features Elle Fanning, Alex Sharp, and Nicole Kidman, who will appear in four (four!) films at this year’s festival.

Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont)

The life (and death) of Joan of Arc has graced the screen since the birth of narrative cinema. The story has most famously been filmed by Carl Theodore Dreyer in 1928 and portrayed by Ingrid Bergman in 1948. Leave it to Bruno Dumont to tackle the subject in an entirely unique fashion. Dumont’s film forgoes Joan’s death to instead focus on her childhood. Also, it’s a musical.

Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)

Since her 1988 debut Chocolat (not the Chocolat with Johnny Depp), director Claire Denis has explored difficult subjects from post-colonialism to cannibalism. Soon to debut as the opening night film for Director’s Fortnight, Let the Sunshine In seems like a new direction for Denis. The love story stars Juliette Binoche (the Chocolat with Johnny Depp), Gerard Depardieu, and frequent Denis collaborator Alex Descas.

Okja (Bong Joon-Ho)

Producer Harvey Weinstein plagued Bong’s last film, Snowpiercer. It sat on the shelf for over a year while Weinstein insisted that Bong makes cuts. Bong refused, so Weinstein eventually gave it a quiet, poorly timed release. Now, Bong has joined forces with Netflix, who, as always, gave full creative control to the filmmaker. This will be Bong’s first English-language film where he is allowed to go in his direction. We can’t wait.

Redoubtable (Michel Hazanavicius)

The latest film from the Oscar-winning director of The Artist is sure to be one of the festival’s most interesting. It has the potential to be a massive dud, but with the right direction Redoubtable could be among the best of the fest. Louis Garrell stars as French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard as he directs his famed 1967 film La Chinoise. Nymphomaniac star Stacy Martin appears as Anne Wiazemsky, the young actress whom Godard fell in love with during production. Godard himself called the film a “Stupid, stupid idea.” Though I do like Godard, unlike the auteur, I’m definitely on board.

The Square (Ruben Östlund)

Swedish Director Ruben Östlund shocked Cannes audiences in 2014 with his film Force Majeure. The dark comedy saw a husband and wife pushed to madness following an unexpected encounter with an avalanche. With The Square, Östlund enlists Mad Men’s Elizabeth Moss and The Wire star Dominic West to play out his latest experiment. The film uses an interactive performance art piece to explore the human condition once again. Madness will most definitely ensue.

Top of the Lake: China Girl (Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman)

The long anticipated second season of Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake will debut its entire six hours at this year’s festival. Intermission not included. China Girl reunites audiences with Robin Griffin (Elizabeth Moss, again) four years after solving the case of a missing girl in New Zealand. It doesn’t seem like any of the other actors from the first season will be back for round two, but the new season does recruit Nicole Kidman in an excellent wig.

Twin Peaks (David Lynch)

Did I say the new season of Top of the Lake was long anticipated? Scratch that. It’s been twenty-five years since audiences last saw Agent Dale Cooper in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. In what it surely the longest gap between seasons in television history, Lynch reunites the cast of his original series with plenty of newcomers; including Laura Dern and Naomi Watts. Due to a carefully planned marketing strategy little is known about the new season. What we do know is that is most definitely the most anticipated event at this year’s festival.

Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)

For me, Todd Haynes can do no wrong. I’ve loved his six features and early shorts. It will be nearly impossible to top his previous film Carol, but I’m holding high hopes for Wonderstruck. Julianne Moore stars in her third collaboration with Haynes, dons old-age makeup in a role that is likely to garner attention come awards season. The film screens for press on the first day of the festival, which has some pundits predicting a flop, but we’re holding out nonetheless.

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)

Scottish director Lynn Ramsay likes to take her time between features. Her last, We Need to Talk About Kevin came in 2011. The feature gave Tilda Swinton the platform for one of her strongest performances to date and is among the most disturbing films in recent memory. Her latest film stars Joaquin Phoenix as a war vet who tries to save a young woman from a sex trafficking ring. For many, the plot may bring the plot of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver to mind. Considering Ramsay’s last film, You Were Never Really Here may be one of the most shocking of the festival.

Other films to keep an eye on: Sophia Coppola’s The Beguiled, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Francois Ozon’s L’amant double, John and Ben Safdie’s Good Time, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless, Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara, Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, Agnes Varda’s Visages Villages, Abbas Kiarostami’s 24 Frames, Kristen Stewart’s Come Swim, and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project.

Everything, the answer is “everything.”

I’ve spoken in these virtual pages before – maybe even too often – about how David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks isn’t just an outstanding series, it’s a watershed moment for the medium, a tipping point at which televisual drama and crime procedurals took a decidedly cinematic turn, both thematically and aesthetically. If you enjoy The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Lost, or the dozens of others shows of their ilk, then you owe a debt of gratitude to Twin Peaks, because without it, none of those shows would have made it to air. Someone has to break the ground, someone has to be the first to shuck convention, upend expectations, and expand the medium’s parameters to new and unthought of lengths. Twin Peaks did all that, and likely it’s about to do it all over again.

But perhaps you need a little more convincing than just my earnest word. Lucky for you, then, we’ve got this video from our friends at Screen Prism that explains in 15 succinct minutes exactly why Twin Peaks had the effect it did.

You might think all the hype around Twin Peaks is overblown, but that’s the thing, it isn’t hype. This is real. And “it is happening again.” Are you ready?

On a scale from Jon Snow to Varys, how in the know are you?

As a human being with internet access, you are certainly aware  the penultimate season of Game of Thrones is coming up in July. You probably have some feelings about this, either mixed excitement and dread because you are one of the many who would list Game of Thrones as one of the best things about television and perhaps life in general, or (still) mixed excitement and dread because you are part of the minority that fails to understand its beauty and are looking forward to it finally being over so people might stop talking about it all the damn time.

Now, for those of you who do love Game of Thrones and are struggling to come to terms with having to say goodbye to Westeros and all your favorite characters, HBO’s announcement earlier this month that no less than four possible Game of Thrones spinoffs are currently in development was probably a happy one. Since then, information regarding these new projects has continued to trickle out, so let’s take a look at what we know thus far.

The writers in charge of the four originally announced projects are Max Borenstein (Godzilla, Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Stardust, X-Men: First Class, Kingsman: The Secret Service), Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River), and Carly Wray (Mad Men, The Leftovers).

Last Sunday, Game of Thrones author/overlord George R. R. Martin confirmed via blog post that he has indeed been involved in the production of these spinoffs—though he much prefers the term “successor shows”—and revealed there is a fifth successor in the works as well, from a super secret mystery author who is, according to Martin, “a great guy and a fine writer.” “Aside from me and maybe Elio and Linda,” he continues, “I don’t know anyone who knows and loves Westeros as well as he does.” That “he” is probably Bryan Cogman, because if Martin is claiming the guy ranks just below himself and the co-authors of “The World of Ice & Fire” in his knowledge of Westeros, then it’s a pretty safe bet that the man in question would be the author of “Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones,” who has also written nine episodes of the series thus far, spread across all six seasons — this would make Cogman the only one of the five who has written for the original show.

“Say ‘Game of Thrones’ is overrated one more time. I dare you.”

Assuming you do like Game of Thrones, everything thus far has probably been seriously good news. For my part, I also prefer the idea of the term “successor show.” Before HBO announced a more long-term commitment to Westeros, the first season of Westworld, Game of Thrones’ would-be successor on HBO in terms of production scale, narrative complexity, and cast size, demonstrated that for all its strengths it could never fill the gaping Westeros-sized hole that would be left behind by a post-Game of Thrones existence.

However, from this point on, your mileage may vary with several other details revealed by Martin regarding the five shows that may or may not be appearing on a screen at some point in the near or distant future.

First of all, about the whole having-to-come-to-terms-with-saying-goodbye-to-Westeros-and-all-your-favorite-characters thing: you’ll still have to do one of those things, perhaps even both. Martin makes it very clear that none of these potential successors will features any familiar faces from Game of Thrones. Then again, dealing with saying goodbye to favorite characters is less a series finale thing and more of a constant, ever-since-Season-1-Episode-5 thing, so it’s not like that’s an unfamiliar hardship (yes, we all still miss Ned, but four episodes before “Baelor” poor Jory Cassel, Game of Throne’s most lovable captain of the guard until Grey Worm, got stabbed through the eye by Jamie Lannister, and I think that loss deserves more recognition). Martin also adds that “some may not even be set on Westeros”—i.e. we might be going back to Essos, visiting the mysterious third continent of Sothoryos, or even venturing beyond the edge of the Known World.

Unfortunately off the table: The Continued Adventures of Bronn, the Snark Knight

In one aspect, “successor show” is a bit of a misnomer. According to Martin, all five shows are dealing with a pre-Game of Thrones timeline: that’s right, prequels, not sequels. But, as mentioned before, no familiar faces, so no Robert’s Rebellion. Martin further adds that everything important about the Rebellion would be revealed by the end of Game of Thrones, rendering such a spinoff redundant.

No Ser Duncan the Tall and Aegon the Unlikely, either. Of those stars of three novellas, Martin has said he isn’t done with the pair yet, and has “at least seven or eight or 10 more I want to write” (he doesn’t want to have a potential show get ahead of him again, as Game of Thrones has). One would hope, though, that he doesn’t see fit to write those before publishing “Winds of Winter,” or his fans might literally begin to spontaneously combust.

So, what we’ve got right now is five pilot scripts for Game of Thrones successors in the works. It doesn’t mean we’ll get five shows out of it, but it seems pretty safe to say that we’ll eventually get at least one. And Martin also notes (in a very large font size, all caps, bolded and italicized) that he is still working on “Winds of Winter,” which is his Game of Thrones universe equivalent to the “The Silmarillion” (the “GRRMarillion,” to use Martin’s term), plus four new “Wild Cards” books, and “some things I can’t tell you about yet” — you’ve got to hand it to him, the man knows how to bait an audience.

Game of Thrones may be nearing an end, but it is now looking less and less like the end of Game of Thrones‘ dominion over television. Long may it reign.

Two stories, two timelines, two filters.

When you’re telling a story that takes equal place in two different time periods, cluing the viewer in to which time is which without blatantly spelling it out becomes a game of visual narration. Take 13 Reasons Why, Netflix’s latest hot-button original series that unfolds its narrative from two distinct temporal perspectives: the first from before its heroine Hannah commits suicide, the second after. These two threads interweave throughout every episode with no spoken shift, rather a series of image-based tells: signage in school hallways, Clay’s head wound, other characters’ clothing and appearance, and something far more subtle, almost insidious – the very color of the frame.

See, in the timeline that takes place before Hannah’s death, the series uses a yellow camera filter to make the colors particularly bright and vibrant, while in the timeline after Hannah’s death, a blue filter is used to mute all vibrancy and instill a shadowy sense of gloom over the narrative. These filters act as emotional cues for us in the audience and inform how we feel about a scene before the first line of dialogue is spoken or action taken.

In the following comparative supercut from Celia Gomez, similar scenes from both timelines have been set side-by-side to reveal the discrepancy in their depiction.

Remember the name Kassim Norris.

The best short films unfurl like a flower at dawn, quick but steady when kissed by the light, each second revealing the beauty and life tucked away inside. If that sounds a bit poetic, blame It Eats You Up, the graceful, stark, and stirring short film we’re showcasing today from director-cinematographer Kassim Norris.

A minimalist mystery, It Eats You Up deals with a pair of protagonists, one a convict serving time (Michael Officer) and the other a woman (Ja-Tuan Tiara) who has some connection to him. Norris is intentionally vague with the details, which creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and tension relieved by a prison visit in which the truth is finally freed.

Bolstered by riveting performances and a simple, almost documentary-like visual style, It Eats You Up arrests your attention from the first instant and keeps it cuffed all the way to the final moments, when the gut-punch of its totality leaves you dazzled, dazed, and under the indisputable impression you’ve just witnessed something powerful.

Oh, and by the way? It Eats You Up is Norris’ first film. Yeah. Expect greatness.

Source: NoBudge 

The actor is to depart from his starring roles in comedies such as ‘Neighbors’ and ‘Dirty Grandpa’ with Joe Berlinger’s ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’.

The most successful actor to come out of the High School Musical franchise, pre-teen-hearththrob- turned- comedy “bro” Zac Efron is to break from his self-created all-American athletic stereotype with his newest role.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile will look into the world surrounding the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. With the psychological drama told from the perspective of Bundy’s longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, Efron’s role as the notorious murderer presents an interesting departure from how viewers are used to seeing him.

With the story told through the eyes of Kloepfer, the film’s director Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory) solidifies Efron’s chilling nature. Rather than delving into the mind of Bundy, viewers will instead experience the serial killer’s manipulative personality. As The Guardian notes, Kloepfer “initially refused to believe the allegations” surrounding Bundy, mostly due to his “charm.”

Michael Costigan, of COTA Films, has even said Efron’s role is “in the vein of Nightcrawler or even The Jinx,” noting Efron’s ability to “play both the depth and the charm that this guy [Bundy] had in equal measures.”

This is clearly a sharp turn for Efron, with the past five years of his acting career having largely been spent playing the same person over and over again. Following Efron’s promising role in The Paperboy (2012), 2014 saw the beginning of the actor’s downfall. Nicholas Staller’s mediocre Neighbors was quickly followed by a blur of movies that, after seeing, the brain turns into one big Summer comedy. Zac Efron followed-up Neighbors with We Are Your Friends, Dirty Grandpa, the inevitable Neighbours 2, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates and this summer’s Baywatch.

Efron has most likely made a lot of money off of these films, giving him security to do indie features in the future. Yet, Efron’s talent is still arguably being undermined in these blockbuster comedy features. Efron’s heyday saw him star in films directed by Richard Linklater and Lee Daniels. His role as Richard Samuels in Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2008) was at once perfectly naive and confident. Hairspray brought the actor into commercialized John Waters territory, while reminded audiences of Efron’s roots in the fun (and arguably precursor to the late 2000’s early onslaught of live-action movie musicals) High School Musical. Where The Paperboy showed the actor’s ability to play darker characters, 17 Again is a reminder of Efron’s movie-star charm. As Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile‘s producer Nicolas Chartier says, Efron “continues to impress audiences and critics alike with his extraordinary versatility and range.”

While the actor’s roles in generic comedy features show his ability to hold a film, it’s been almost four years since Efron has contrasted his commerciality with his talent through lesser-known films. With Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile to begin shooting this October, and both The Disaster Artist and the Hugh Jackman-starring The Greatest Showman to be released late this year, Efron fans can only hope the actor continues to choose more complex roles.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is written by the Nicholl Fellowship prize-winning Michael Werwie. Principal photography for the film is to begin in October this year.

Jordan Peele resists the ‘Akira’ temptation, plus a bunch of other important pop culture things to start your day.

There’s a long-running debate that rages in the halls of geekdom. In fact, one could argue that said debate often rages inside the minds of the pop culture obsessed on an almost daily basis. It’s not a debate that requires another person at all. It’s the topic of what we’d rather see talented filmmakers do with their time. Should they focus on original stories or would we like to see their unique takes on existing material? Would you rather have Christopher Nolan’s next Memento or something like The Dark Knight? To invent or to re-invent? That is the question.

With Get Out, Jordan Peele became the latest filmmaker thrust into this spotlight of our own projections. We’re now — as a community of fans — deciding what we’d like to see him do next. Should it be the Akira remake? How about taking over The Flash? Once we get a whiff of that sweet, fresh filmmaking talent, we almost immediately begin fan-casting Peele into the director’s chair on a number of projects. In our defense, studios have been doing it, too. And Peele has been taking those meetings. What young filmmaker in their right mind wouldn’t take those meetings?

In the end, it’s Peele who will make the decision on what to do next. And according to the filmmaker himself, it’s going to be original content for the foreseeable future. Speaking at a Get Out event this week, Peele had this to say about that Akira remake:

“I think [I could do it] if the story justifies it. Akira is one of my favorite movies, and I think obviously the story justifies as big a budget as you can possibly dream of. But the real question for me is: Do I want to do pre-existing material, or do I want to do original content? At the end of the day, I want to do original stuff.”

That’s the kind of heroic talk we need right now. Whether or not we deserve it is another thing, entirely. But I’m done with these Dark Knight metaphors. We should applaud Peele’s commitment to working on original stories. As much as I’d love to see him bring levity and wit to the drab-fest of the DC Expanded Universe, he’s in a great spot right now to dictate his own terms and make his own stories. If any of his next few original stories work half as well as Get Out, there will always be another opportunity to do a superhero movie. In fact, what you hope for in the case of Peele is a career trajectory similar to that of Rian Johnson, who made Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and Looper before signing on to do a Star Wars movie.

Also, if history is any indication, that Akira movie isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Take your time, Mr. Peele. We’re with you.

Today in Pop Culture History

Trent Reznor turns 52 today. To celebrate, you can watch him appear in the first episode of the new Twin Peaks series later this week.

On this day in 1996, a then 18-year old Alicia Machado was crowned as the 45th Miss Universe.

Literally today, David Hudson has found his way back to collecting links for film snobs over at Criterion’s website.

What You Need to Know Today

Speaking of The Flash, it’s now being reported that Warner Bros. is looking at Oscar-winner and mo-cap nightmare creator Robert Zemeckis to take over their scarlet speedster project. At the very least, he does have a history with time travel movies.

Amidst cancellations everywhere, Fox has announced that New Girl — quite possibly my favorite 30-minutes of television every week — will be brought back for one more, shortened season. It will also involve a 3-year time jump. Hopefully, Schmidt will get fat again.

The Safdie Brothers, whose new film Good Time got a trailer this week, will be teaming up with Martin Scorsese and Jonah Hill for a new project about the New York City Diamond District at A24. They’ve come a long way since Daddy Longlegs.

ICYMI

H. Perry Horton continues to prepare you for the Twin Peaks revival by explaining what makes David Lynch’s original show so great.

Ciara Wardlow is currently filling in for me on my usual Game of Thrones beat, and she’s doing so wonderfully. Here she talks about those five (FIVE!) spinoff shows.

Here’s a video essay about Emmanuel Lubezki. Chivo forever, y’all.

Shot of the Day

Shout out to impeccable timing.

My Twitter feed now, featuring @OnePerfectShot and @EmergencyPuppy pic.twitter.com/avuQM3zv7L

— Jorge Villalobos (@jorgevillalobos) May 16, 2017

“In many ways, the African American experience is this country’s Frankenstein monster.”

Jordan Peele‘s feature directorial debut is both one of the year’s most critically acclaimed films and one of the most profitable. It’s been the subject of numerous think pieces regarding its text, subtext, and possible interpretations, but at its core, the film is an entertaining thriller with comedic elements.

Keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary track for…

Get Out (2016)

Commentator: Jordan Peele (writer/director)

1. The moment that comes on roughly one-third of all commentaries hits here a mere twenty-two seconds in as Peele suggests your first watch of the movie not be with his commentary playing.

2. His goal with the commentary is to give viewers as much a breakdown of his thoughts as possible. “I won’t be able to catch all of it. I won’t be able to get all of it in one sitting.”

3. “I kind of started with this idea of Halloween,” he says in regard to the look of the opening scene with Andre (Lakeith Stanfield), as a subversion of “the perfect white neighborhood.”

4. He points out a “Shining shout out with the hedge maze line there” at the 1:54 mark.

5. The ominous white Porsche was meant as a nod to Jaws, Christine, and Duel.

6. The helmet worn by Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) while attacking Andre is a Templar helmet referencing the secret society he and his family belong to. “I’ve got a whole mythology and lore about how they are descended from the original Knights Templar” and related to the Holy Grail and its rumored powers of immortality.

7. The light blue of the opening credits are another nod to The Shining. “I totally ganked that.”

8. This is composer Michael Abels’ very first film score. “I chose him because I wanted this score to have a new, different sound.” He asked Abels for “black voices with a sinister sound that’s not voodoo, maybe something that almost sounds like a disembodied or satanic Negro spiritual.”

9. He does not explain why Rose (Allison Williams), with both hands full, chooses to knock on the door with her head instead of her foot. I demand answers.

10. The apartment scenes were filmed in Mobile, Alabama. “It’s meant to feel like Brooklyn.”

11. Hiding “the Rose reveal” was the most difficult part of the film for him. “It’s almost a feat I doubted I could ever really pull off,” he says but gives immense credit to Williams’ performance. They referred to “bad Rose” as “RoRo,” and he thinks Williams is in completely different states of mind depending on which version she’s playing.

12. Rod’s (LilRel Howery) airport scenes were among the first filmed and were shot at a Los Angeles cruise ship terminal. His character is meant as both a release valve for audiences and a grounding for the film itself.

13. It was originally scripted that Chris calls the cops after having hit the deer. Her actions with the cop asking for Chris’ license seem protective and heroic at first, but on second watch you realize she’s actually trying to keep the cop from seeing Chris’ name knowing that he’ll soon be among the missing. “It’s just one of her little, perfect, brilliant, sociopathic moves here.”

14. Part of the reason he wanted Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener (“two of the greats”) for the roles of Rose’s parents, Dean and Missy, was because they’re “sort of liberal elite god and goddess.”

15. A third nod to The Shining is found in Dean’s tour of the house that he gives to Chris. “It just helps with tension, it helps with the terror, and you’re sort of imagining… what context are we gonna see this house in later.”

16. The first appearance of Georgina (Betty Gabriel) is “basically seeing The Shining twins down the hallway, or when we first meet Hannibal Lecter. Just the whole vibe of coming up on somebody waiting for you patiently is creepy.”

17. The Jesse Owens story – Owens beat Dean’s father to race in the Olympics – is meant as the origin of this family’s ghoulish efforts over the decades. “[He] was physically beat by a black man on the world stage, and he never got over it. He became obsessed with this idea that black people have more God-given advantages, and that combined with the white man’s determination you could make the perfect being.”

18. He says on second viewing it becomes clear that the visible annoyance between Missy and Georgina is that of a wife and her mother-in-law. “I’m sure they hate each other.”

19. Williams told him at one point that she wanted to practice the love scene because she was uncomfortable with some of the details, “so I went out, very nervously, to the house she was staying in to literally rehearse this love scene with her and Daniel. I was so uncomfortable, and of course I got there and it was a surprise party for me. At which point I realized of course Allison Williams is not fucking nervous to do a fucking love scene after what she’s done on Girls.”

20. Walter’s (Marcus Henderson) appearance running at the Chris – and at the camera – is a nod towards the power of depth in films. He references North by Northwest as an example saying “somebody running at you or towards you just creates a visceral and physical reaction for the audience.”

21. One of Peele’s favorite scenes in the film is the sit-down between Missy and Chris where she hypnotizes him. Both actors do great work with Kaluuya’s performance standing out in particular, but the hypnosis angle is one of the film’s few negatives for me as a viewer. Interestingly, Peele actually addresses some of my concerns here. He references the Clarice/Hannibal face-offs in The Silence of the Lambs where he gets inside her head as an inspiration for the scene saying “I wanted Chris and the audience to know that this was a trap, that this was a setup, that there’s no way you can allow yourself to be hypnotized, and no self-respecting black man would in this situation, but even with that for Missy to be one step ahead of Chris and the audience.” I’m fully on-board with the intention, but for me – and only for me judging by the universal praise the film continues to receive – hypnosis just feels too damn easy.

22. He hopes “Now you’re in the sunken place” becomes a classic line. “It’s so weird and twisted.” An inspiration for the place is that moment sometimes just as you’re falling asleep where it feels like you’re falling but you jerk back awake. “Well what if you never caught yourself? Where would you fall?”

23. Some viewers don’t realize that Logan is actually Andre from the film’s opening. “I think that’s testament to Keith’s range and his acting, um and also, that, you know, we’re not necessarily trained to uh differentiate uh black people as a culture, but us that’s just me trying to be woke up in here.”

24. He was worried the blind art dealer (Stephen Root) was “maybe a little over the top but ultimately realized was just over the top enough.”

25. The specifics of the auction are kept to a minimum regarding how and what people are paying to be a part of the Red Alchemist Society, but he reveals that per the lore he created for the film “the Knights Templar were collectors of antiquities and treasures, so I have it in my mind that they trade amongst each other these relics and artifacts.”

26. RoRo is “probably” his favorite character in the movie. “This is some crazy sick bitch villain shit, I don’t even know.”

27. A fifth Shining nod comes after Chris is captured and, “much like [Dick] Halloran in The Shining” the film cuts to Rod’s situation before bring the two together.

28. He describes the room Chris wakes up in bound to a chair as “some kind of evil feng shui,” and it’s one they found in Mobile.

29. The scene where Chris is tied down and made to watch the sales pitch video was originally written to just have Chris listening to James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” on repeat, but he changed it when he realized he couldn’t afford the song.

30. He didn’t realize until they were both on set that the little boy playing young Jeremy was so much shorter than the girl playing young Rose. It doesn’t make much sense, but “first movie, you can’t really fire a little kid for not being tall enough.”

31. The Coagula intro video was “ripped” from the Dharma Initiative videos on Lost “where you just get this sense that oh my god, there’s this produced thing, it goes so deep, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg!”

32. He recalls asking Williams if she was up for a challenge he wasn’t sure could even be accomplished regarding the scene where Rod speaks to her on the phone. “Can you give me RoRo’s face and expression but Rose’s voice with all the inflection and character?” he asked, and he was thrilled to see her deliver beyond what he even hoped for.

33. Williams would prepare for up to forty five minutes before playing a scene as evil Rose, and “if you got near her when she was in RoRo mode you would be creeped out.”

34. His goal with the scene where Jim Hudson (Root) speaks to Chris over the TV was meant “to play like… The Matrix when Morpheus just simply tells you what the Matrix is.”

35. Yes, the irony of picking cotton being what saves Chris from slavery was intentional.

36. The special case holding the special surgical tools was simply a poker chip box that they converted. “Sorry, you can’t unhear that.”

37. He says he’s worked out all of the elaborate details of the cult all the way back to their origin, but we only get a tease here. “On another DVD I’ll take you through the history of the Red Alchemist Society,” he promises, but I think he’s lying to us.

38. He debated going the Kubrick route with the commentary “so that years to come people are trying to piece together the mysteries of fucking Get Out,” but he decided to “nerd out” instead and share as many details as he possibly could. Well, minus the details about the Red Alchemist Society…

39. He says “woke” seven times throughout the commentary.

40. Peele points out the following images/moments as foreshadowing or motifs:

• Andre says “suburb” in a stereotypical white voice foreshadowing his later reappearance with a white man inside him.
• Mirrors and glass are big motifs throughout the film.
• The opening credit font foreshadows the font in the Coagula video later on.
• Chris’ first appearance sees him putting white shaving cream on his face.
• Chris cuts his face while shaving which foreshadows the danger he’s in.
• The “black mold” in the basement foreshadows what happens to black people in the basement.
• The stuffed lion references both the idea of the predator and of Christ, but it’s also part of a motif involving white and black people being lions and tigers. (“Two species in the same animal kingdom or something, but whatever that’s a little bit of a stretch.”)
• The buck on the wall references both the term used to describe strong black men and the opposite of the doe they hit on the road.
• “White milk, colored cereal, chocolate straw.”

Best in Context-Free Commentary

“The lead character is woke. He’s not an idiot. He’s gonna be making the right decisions, to an extent.”

“There’s no need to fuck with anything in the forest.”

“So much is going on, I’m just trying to keep up here.”

“I often describe the movie as The Stepford Wives meets The Help.”

“Even the way he’s moving here is so freaky to me. It’s like he’s imagining riding this guy.”

“I found it very difficult to find a Japanese actor in Alabama.”

“The sunken place is a metaphor for the marginalization of the black horror movie audience. We are a loyal horror movie fan base, and we’re relegated to the theater, not on the screen.”

“A lot of this movie was created to get favors from the TSA moving through the airport.”

Related Product:

Get Out (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD)

Blu-ray | Universal Studios Home Entertainment

$19.96 on Amazon

Final Thoughts

Get Out remains a highly entertaining thriller, and Peele marks himself as a filmmaker to watch. That carries over to his commentary too as he delivers a track filled equally with enthusiasm and information. He’s a fun listen, and in addition to anecdotes and revelations he offers up explanations for the choices he made, accolades for his cast and crew, and a clear affection for the horror genre. I look forward to not only watching more films from him but to listening to their commentary tracks too.

Read more Commentary Commentary from the archives.

The greatest success story of our time?

Let’s face a harsh truth: professional wrestlers are, by and large, really shitty actors. I know that’s a blanket and probably dangerous thing to say, but it’s true. This isn’t to say that inherently all wrestlers are shitty actors, but rather to acknowledge that their brand of entertainment is one step more dramatic than even melodrama, so a little bad acting is par for the course; when you’re performing live for an arena full of people, you have to go over the top to ensure folks up in the cheap seats get the same kind of excitement as those in the front row. It’s the same reason musical theatre kids never really make good pop stars: what’s required for one form comes across as inauthentic in another realm.

Of course, there are exceptions, and no, Hulk Hogan isn’t one of them, but Rowdy Roddy Piper (They Live) was, as is John Cena, who’s recently started to showcase his comedic chops in films like Trainwreck and a stint hosting SNL, but as everyone should know, the real conversation about wrestlers who can legitimately act begins and ends with one name: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

From very, very inauspicious beginnings – remember The Scorpion King? – Johnson has become literally and figuratively the biggest movie star in the world. I remember the first time I knew he was legit: the Get Shorty sequel Be Cool in which he played a gay bodyguard with country music aspirations. I said it then and I’ll say it again now a dozen years after the fact: dude deserved an Oscar nom for his work here, or at least a Golden Globe. Either way, though, that’s when I for one knew we weren’t dealing with the typical acting wrestler.

Johnson’s momentum hasn’t waned in years. In 2017 alone he’s already dominated the box office as a part of The Fate of the Furious and is set to tickle your funny bone this summer in Baywatch, not to mention the Jumanji reboot/sequel coming later this year, and recent word that he and Jason Statham will be getting their own Furious spinoff. In addition to his film work he’s got the series Ballers over on HBO, a couple other television properties in various stages of production, and a lucrative endorsement deal with Ford. Bottom line? Not only is The Rock the most successful guy in the game, he’s also the hardest-working, and this is no coincidence.

In the following supercut from Burger Fiction, the improbable rise of The Rock from wrestling royalty to Hollywood elite is tracked, and the result is one of the most meteoric ascents to stardom we’ve ever known, and truth be told, it’s apex is still ahead.

And look at that, I got through the whole post without making a “do you smell what the Rock’s cooking” joke. Even I’m surprised.

As shot by cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli.

This week on Shot by Shot, the official cinematography podcast of One Perfect Shot and Film School Rejects, myself and OPS creator Geoff Todd are discussing the perfect shots of one of the most revered westerns of all-time, Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, shot by cinematographer and Leone’s fellow Italian Tonino Delli Colli.

A balance of the intimate and the epic, Delli Colli instilled a little more artistry than the genre was known for, in the process creating some truly immortal scenes and sequences that play off the film’s themes of revenge, redemption, and the tenuous threads of morality in an amoral environment.

If this is your first listen to our show, the format’s simple: each week Geoff and I each pick a few shots from a certain film and discuss their effect and significance. Already we’ve done episodes on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Mad Max: Fury Road, Silence, Drive, Shaun of the Dead,  Vertigo, and Fargo,  and next week we’re talking about David Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive.

Be sure to give us a follow so you can be kept up to date on new episodes and shows. We’re on Twitter @OnePerfectPod and Facebook at facebook.com/oneperfectshot, and you can find your two hosts on Twitter as well: @TheGeoffTodd and @HPerryHorton.

And if you like what you hear — spoiler alert: you’re going to — be sure to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss a single episode of us or any of the other shows in our family of OnePerfectPodcasts.

Dig the ‘cast:

And a gallery of the shots featured in this week’s discussion:

You definitely want to check out advice from the Oscar-winning director of Rain Man. Definitely.

There are few back stories in Hollywood more interesting than Barry Levinson‘s. The man who would go on to win an Oscar for directing Rain Man as well as earn five other nominations, mostly for writing, got to his career as a filmmaker through unconventional means. He reluctantly took acting classes, then he studied improv, and it was through that education that he became interested in composing dialogue. He wrote for comedy shows and movies for Tim Conway, Carol Burnett, and Mel Brooks. Then he was a notable screenwriter. Then he became one of the most prolific, most versatile, and most acclaimed directors of the ’80s and ’90s. He continues to try new things, but his most successful works of late have been made for TV, including his newest HBO offering, the Bernie Madoff biopic The Wizard of Lies.

While his path might not be the best to follow if you want to be a filmmaker anytime soon, there is still a lot to learn from Levinson and his experience. Below is some advice for screenwriting, directing, and movie production in general curated from interviews going back 20 years.

1. Writing and Directing is Easier Than Ever

In a recent interview for the Baltimore Jewish paper Jmore promoting The Wizard of Lies, Levinson is asked for advice for “budding filmmakers.” Here is his answer:

My advice is that it’s easier to write than direct. If you have an interest in writing, write. You might as well start with yourself or some event you know well, and you need a point of view.
You used to need a big camera to direct but now, anyone with an iPhone can tell a story visually.  You can film something. You can start off with a five-minute story, then a 10-minute story.

Barry Levinson with Robert De Niro and Art Linson on the set of ‘What Just Happened’ (Magnolia Pictures)

2. Prepare for Rejection

While it may be easier than ever to direct something and still even easier to write something, it’s not any easier to break into the business now than in the past. It might be even harder now. In the below video from the 2010 Writer’s Guild Awards, where Levinson received a lifetime achievement honor, he reminds us that it’s important to be thick-skinned when trying to make it in Hollywood or “you’ll be destroyed.”

3. Writing With Someone Else is Tricky

Early in Levinson’s career, he worked as a writer on other people’s movies, such as Mel Brooks’s Silent Movie and High Anxiety, and he co-wrote screenplays with his then-wife Valerie Curtin, including the Oscar-nominated …And Justice for All. And in his solo years, he’s still worked off scripts begun by other people. In an interview featured in the book “Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s,” he addresses the pros and cons of writing as part of a team or duo:

Writing with a partner is in some ways an easy but odd process. Two people come into a room and look to each other for motivation. One might not be in the right mood at any given moment. And somehow you begin, somehow, out of your exchange of thoughts, something engages both of you, and the process of collaboration begins. But sometimes it’s a struggle to focus two minds in a single direction. That’s not to say a writing partnership can’t be exciting and unpredictable in good ways, but you’re both filtering ideas through one another, and sometimes the energies are different, and there are a lot of bumpy moments.

In the same interview he has this to say about being part of a writing collaboration where maybe you’re not working directly with the other credited authors:

I try not to impose my personality over someone else’s to the extent that I inhibit them. You need to be open and explore, while heading where you want to go. You can never be too in love with your own ideas. If you can remember every idea that is yours in a script, as opposed to someone else’s, then something is wrong. Like when I was working with Mel [Brooks], I honestly can’t remember who thought up this idea or that idea in particular scenes, it was usually a group effort. It was really a collaboration.

Barry Levinson with David Mamet on the set of ‘Wag the Dog’ (New Line Cinema)

4. Be Elastic

Levinson credits his background in acting classes and improv study with his ability to write and direct with a necessary level of flexibility.  In part of a lengthy interview by Bob Balaban for the Director’s Guild of America (watch it all on the DGA site), he explains his balance of control and openness through all aspects of filmmaking:

I studied theatre for a few years and did a couple years of improvisational stuff, and I did improvisational stuff in stand-up, etc. So what happens is you have to have control and then you have to allow, give up the control because you can’t say, “No. It’s gotta be just that way.” You have to find this elasticity in it, in a sense, so that things can keep impacting on the piece all the time. You know where you want to go, you know what you want to do, and you gotta be open enough to allow for mistakes and great mistakes.

Watch Levinson discuss the process of planning well only to be freer while actually filming in the below video of a Q&A from a 2012 Florida Film Festival appearance.

And here, in a 2012 Masterclass Q&A for the Independent Film Project, Levinson discusses the need to be open in terms of adjusting to different kinds of actors, using a story of working with Dustin Hoffman on Rain Man as a good example:

5. You Need the Eye and the Instinct

A lot of the talent needed for directing actors is about casting the right ones. In one of many ’90s appearances on Charlie Rose (specifically 1998), Levinson admits that he has no idea what it is that some actors have and others don’t — he says it’s unteachable — but that he happens to have the eye for them and a certain instinct as a director that he can’t seem to define exactly.

6. Don’t Wear Yourself Out

Finally, the most important piece of advice that Levinson can impart is something he was given by some other, unidentified person. From an interview by Alex Simon from 2001 reprinted recently at the Huffington Post:

Somebody once told me the best advice was “Don’t stand up too much.” (laughs) I think what you need to do is be prepared for how exhausting an experience it is, so you never get to a point that you’re too tired to not want to do something that you need to do. Because what can happen is, you can get so tired that you’ll go “Oh fuck it, let’s not do that.” The second you do that, you begin to compromise your movie. That’s all I know. (laughs)

Barry Levinson and Tom Cruise on the set of ‘Rain Man’ (MGM)

What We’ve Learned

Levinson has a precise origin but a lot of common experience and lessons he can relay to aspiring filmmakers. Because he was initially a writer and has been more honored as such, it makes sense that half of his advice is about writing, whether alone or in collaboration and regarding the difficulty of selling scripts. His addresses of active flexibility and not overworking yourself during production is also quite helpful, as far as balancing those tips. But as frustrating as it is, his acknowledgment that some of directing, like acting, is just instinctual and not something that can be explained, taught, or advised about is a big deal. It doesn’t necessarily sound like an intrinsic talent, however, so you can just go for it, get practice, and work towards having that eye that has made Levinson one of the great writer-directors and actor’s directors.

From 1979’s ‘Alien’ to this week’s new release of ‘Covenant’ and everything in between — yes, even you, ‘AVP’ — we look at the 50 Most Beautiful Shots of a franchise that’s been terrifying us for almost 40 years.

When we think about what awaits humanity out among the stars, we often gravitate toward the celestial beauty of undiscovered planets, new star patterns, and the strange and wonderful natural occurrences our universe has to offer. But every once in a while, these thoughts turn toward the darker, more frightening possibilities that exist beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Way out into the void where vessels have claustrophobic corridors and in the shadows lurk nature’s freakish killing machines. That’s where the Alien franchise began in 1979, in those tight spaces and with those freaky killing machines.

Over the years, the Alien franchise has evolved, died, been reborn, died again, and been reborn again. Just like its original heroine Ripley, if you think about it. And just like Ripley’s many adventures, some are better than others. We choose, as a One Perfect Shot team, to believe that even when the whole isn’t great — ehem, AvP — there can still be beauty in the parts. So whether it’s Ridley Scott’s original horror or Paul W.S. Anderson’s horror show, there are Shots in every Alien movie that are worthy of celebration. And well, maybe one from AvP: Requiem (if you crank up the brightness).

We’ve scoured the entire franchise, all 8 films, and have constructed this list of the 50 Most Beautiful Shots from nearly 40 decades of horror. Including a few shots from Covenant (only one that’s not in the movie, but we still love it). We hope you enjoy the list and if you’d like to tell us about your own favorite Shots from the franchise, feel free to do so in the comments below.

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Alien (1979) DP: Derek Vanlint | Director: Ridley Scott

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

Aliens (1986) DP: Adrian Biddle | Director: James Cameron

In a space of wannabe pretenders, ‘Xtro’ penetrates the final frontier of H.R. Giger’s grotesque imagination.

In space no one can hear you scream…but on Earth, you can scream all you want especially after your dad is abducted by aliens, returns from space after three years, eats your pet snake’s eggs, your mom’s new boyfriend, and gifts you terrifying psychic powers that you squander on transforming your toy box into a demonic army sprung forth from Pixar’s nightmares. In the wake of 1979’s Alien, a series of films desperately tried to recreate Ridley Scott’s gothic slasher, but the results were often bargain basement pretenders unable to capture a tenth of the grotesque imagination put forth from H.R. Giger’s creature design. Films like Galaxy of Terror, Leviathan, and Deep Star Six attempt to recreate the Alien stalk-and-slash monster movie, and succeed, for the most part, in conjuring a memorable KY Jelly beast. However, these wannabes never fully secure the unknowable terror of Alien.

Released in Britain during the winter of 1982, Harry Bromley Davenport’s Xtro appears to be the twisted sister of Steven Spielberg’s E.T., but it’s central creature certainly extends from the same hellscape that torments H.R. Giger. Working on a micro-sized budget, in partnership with New Line Cinema’s Bob Shaye still waiting for A Nightmare on Elm Street to catapult him into the big leagues, Davenport would never be able to replicate the gothic cathedrals of the Nostromo.  So why bother? Instead, Xtro makes use with what they had, a quaint English suburb, a willing cast ready to subjugated themselves for their art, and an unparalleled latex-caked invader.

The title card is the first indication that this film is playing in the same field as Alien, or at least it’s the first tool that the producers have to evoke the masterpiece they have no chance in duplicating. Starry night, a twinkle in the far distance flickers splits the universe into a gargantuan X, and the title XTRO is birthed from its supernova. A screaming synthesizer announces the arrival of terror, and the title card flashes blood red. Dun…dun…dunnnn.

The plot itself is totally mental. Young Tony and his dad Sam are playing catch in the backyard with their dog, Katie. Sam tosses the stick high into the air; a crack in the sky blinks and explodes. Day crashes into night, a wind machine ruins all their yardwork, and Sam is sucked up into the fire in the sky. Smash cut to Tony waking from a nightmare, mom rushing to his side, and Tony begging for his dad to return. It’s been three years; mom has moved on, and hooked up with a hip, young American lad.

Naturally, Dad returns from his close encounter, but Xtro does not simply open the pod bay doors, and let Sam walk back into their lives. That night a glowing triangle crash-lands in a nearby forest. While the woods burn, a creature burrows out of the wreckage, wanders out onto the road, and is nearly squashed into road kill. After making a quick snack of the two passerbys, the extraterrestrial commits a B&E on the nearest house. Possibly thinking that Giger’s facehugger was not phallic enough in its insemination, the showering homeowner is orally assaulted by its space dick. The resulting pregnancy is not a graphic shock of chest-bursting horror, but a seemingly never-ending birthing sequence in which a full-grown Sam crawls out of her vagina. Once witnessed, it cannot be unwitnessed.This new Sam follows Tony to his school and reunites with his family through the act of kidnapping. Rather than calling the police, Mom allows Sam to take up residence with her understandably distraught boyfriend, and their free-loving nanny, played by soon-to-be Bond Girl Maryam D’Abo, in her first feature role. Is it weird that this is the only actor I mention in this entire diatribe?  Nope, only she could pull herself free from this monstrous oddity.  The new and old family try to work out the logistics of their relationship, all the while, the reborn Sam is secretly infecting Tony with psychic powers.

A total loner at school, the newly gifted Tony’s first act of business is to transform the only friends he has, his toys, into life-size abominations that radically alter Xtro from simply being an alien invasion story. There is a psychotic clown with a penchant for face smashing and a life-size G.I. Joe that he sics on his downstairs neighbor after she relishes in squishing his pet snake. That poor damn snake.  Tony develops a thirst for blood, and Xtro takes another detour into a zombie film. There is just no keeping pace with its genre channel surfing, and with every new corner comes another mind-bendingly bizarre delight.

Xtro has an endless stream of surprises for its audience. Not simply satisfied with being one kind of creature feature, Harry Bromley Davenport dumps every outlandish idea he has into the production. When the film was released in the United States in 1983, it was critically reviled by every person who dared put their eyes upon it. On Siskel & Ebert, Roger Ebert lambasted the film as “ugly,” “mean-spirited,” and “nihilistic.” In his one-star review, Ebert chastised the filmmakers for creating “an exercise in sadness.” He is not wrong. Xtro is an emotionally abysmal film. However, you cannot simply drop it into the pile of castoff pretenders.

Xtro is an epic in weird cinema. It’s a true head-scratcher that leaves every one of its audience members in awe of its very existence. A film destined to be abandoned on video, but worthy of rediscovery as we build to this week’s new chapter in the Alien franchise. For all, it’s cheap theatrics, and questionable morality, Xtro will be a stamp on your psyche.

A video essay explores connections on the surface and below.

While it can be extremely difficult to classify Twin Peaks — is it drama? Horror? A supernatural thriller? A crime procedural? Sci-fi? Dark comedy? — it’s not so hard to determine that the one cinematic storytelling tradition from which the series borrows most heavily is Film Noir.

In the following video essay by yours truly, I’ve taken a look at the connections between Twin Peaks and Film Noir, including narrative and aesthetic techniques, character names, story origin points and more. It’s the perfect thing to get you back in that Lynchian atmosphere before season three premieres this weekend on Showtime.

The Naked Forest: Film Noir and ‘Twin Peaks’ from One Perfect Shot on Vimeo.

An animated thinker of a short.

Art is subjective; we’re all film fans, we know this. It comes down to one’s personal perspective – who you are, where you’re from (physically and intellectually), and how you see the world – which then informs the interpretation of art, which in turn leads to the final impression it makes upon us. Though there are commonalities in interpretation, none of us experience art in the exact same way, it resonates differently for different people, it is as individually tailored as the person in whose brain it first arose. That’s what makes art, real art, so enduring, it is for all of us and each of us at the same time, it is a universal particular.

This concept of personal perspective is the theme being played with in the following animated short The Last Exhibition from Jonathan Djob Nkondo, in which one man’s art is another being’s intergalactic getaway ride. It’s a succinct short, only two minutes long, that plays like a Tintin adventure as scripted by Salvador Dali dealing with the concepts of art, interpretation, and actuality.

When you’re finished here, be sure to hit up Nkondo’s Vimeo page for his other work, including the companion short The First Exhibition, and while you’re there go ahead and follow him so you’re sure not to miss any of the upcoming shorts he’s got in development.

Source: Short of the Week 

The natural wonder has been captured on film in many different ways since the invention of the medium.

“It is also plain water, thus plunging, will foam, and roar, and send up a mist, continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rainbows. The mere physical of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world’s wonder. Its power to excite reflection and emotion, is its great charm” — Abraham Lincoln

Niagara Falls is one of the most famous natural wonders in the world. It only makes sense that it has appeared onscreen many times throughout the years. Niagara Falls has been featured in many different types of films, including traditional narrative films, travelogues, and of course documentaries. Each of these different forms of filmmaking offers a unique perspective on Niagara, in terms of the landscape, its mythical qualities, the culture surrounding it, and how humans interact with such a huge force of nature.

It is interesting to consider the connection between cinema and nature — is cinema able to accurately depict large-scale natural wonders such as Niagara Falls? Filmmakers can attempt to capture the mystical beauty of nature, but there will always be the human-made barrier of the camera and the screen between people and the natural wonders they wish to represent. In Jean Epstein’s essay “The Cinema Seen From Etna,” he describes the intense affect that the volcano Mount Etna (in Sicily, Italy) has on him, and notes that cinema is the perfect medium for capturing the sublime. Epstein argues that cinema is the medium best able to accurately portray nature because it captures movement and changes in real-time. Nature is always moving, and film cameras are able to perfectly capture these movements as well as the big scale of natural wonders.

In her book Niagara Falls: Icon of the American Sublime Elizabeth McKinsey argues that Niagara Falls represents a perfect example of “the sublime,” a term typically used during the Romantic Movement to describe intense human reactions to large and powerful forces, typically forces of nature. Much like Epstein describes Etna, Niagara Falls is a “great actor” with “grand extravagances.” McKinsey writes that the sublime is that which invokes both awe and terror in humans, natural wonders which both draw us closer and stop us dead in our tracks with fear. The term usually refers to forces of nature such as waterfalls, storms, rock formations like volcanoes and glaciers, and crashing ocean waves.

Niagara (1953)/20th Century Fox

McKinsey writes that early European explorers initially reacted to the Falls with shock, awe, and disorientation. The heightened emotional reactions the Falls inspired also lead to many artistic representations over the years: paintings, engravings, novels, poems, songs, sculptures, and then eventually photographs and films. McKinsey quotes explorer Joseph Hadfield’s 1785 travel diary in which he writes that “no language can convey an idea of the grandeur and sublimity in the scenes before me” in reference to Niagara Falls. Following Epstein’s argument, cinema is the best medium for capturing the sublimity of Niagara Falls. Where language fails, cinematic images speak. No previous artistic representations could portray Niagara’s movements in real-time, while also representing its huge scale and powerful roaring sound. Artistic representations are just that — representations, and while cinematic depictions are filtered through cameras, sound equipment, and the editing process, the film comes closest to capturing real life as it is happening. This is especially powerful when applied to a huge, beautiful waterfall like Niagara.

Dominique Bregent-Heald writes that the earliest films to portray Niagara Falls capture its “transcendent qualities.” Depictions of Niagara in cinema can be traced all the way back to September 1896, shortly after the introduction of large-screen motion picture projection in Niagara Falls and France. Niagara was immediately considered a prime location to shoot films, due to its captivating beauty and popular appeal. Chances are, if a place is attractive to tourists, it will be attractive to film audiences. Bregent-Heald argues that the popularity of the Falls as a tourist attraction in the 19th century was inspired by the Romantic Movement. Painters, writers, and photographers were drawn to the Falls to produce romanticized versions of its beauty.

Bregent-Heald writes that early films showed the “sublime landscape” of Niagara in the 19th century when it was largely untouched by big businesses. Early films portraying the Falls fall into the category of the “cinema of attractions,” a term coined by film scholar Tom Gunning to describe the narrative style adopted by early filmmakers. The cinema of attractions refers to films which do not have narratives, nd focus on showing rather than telling. Usually, these films break the fourth wall and directly address the camera or the audience, and the camera remains static for the entire running time. In the late 1890s, there were not many human-made buildings or constructions around the Falls. Consequently, cameras would only capture the movement of the water and any tourists gazing into the gorge. Bregent-Heald notes that the speed of cinema as a modern technology was matched by the speed of the rapids, whirlpools, and waterfalls of Niagara.

Auguste and Louis Lumière’s 1897 film Les chutes is a 45-second long short featuring a static long-shot of a section of Niagara Falls. Water cascades over the gorge, and it appears that there is water directly underneath where the camera is placed. Another section of the waterfall is visible towards the left of the frame and to the center of the frame. Further away from the camera, there is a patch of land — perhaps Goat Island — with tourists and travelers viewing the natural wonder from behind a fence. The tourists lean over the fence and point into the distance towards the water. It appears that strong winds blow the trees on the island. The appeal of films such as Les chutes is that they seemed like magic at the time — audiences could see the powerful movements of Niagara Falls without having to travel anywhere except to the local cinema.

The static camera captures the powerful movement of the Falls as water rushes over the edge, and the camera distance makes the tourists look tiny. The tourists point to the Falls and lean over the fence, while still keeping their distance in fear of falling over the edge of the cliff. They stand in awe at this natural wonder, yet are fearful of its power — this film captures reactions to the sublime, in motion. Cinema can capture the sublimity of nature, as well as the intense emotional reactions that these landscapes can evoke in humans.

When Henry Hathaway directed Niagara in 1953, the landscape had significantly changed since 1896 — both the physical landscape of Niagara and that of the film industry. Where Les chutes represents the early cinema of attractions, Niagara represents the classical Hollywood filmmaking style. The standardized practice at this time featured longer running times, narratives with beginnings, middles, and ends, characters, and constantly changing camera angles and movements. Regardless of the new mode of filmmaking, this film still portrays the Falls as sublime. McKinsey describes the sublimity of the Falls thusly: they are “vast, powerful, magnificent, obscured by mist, with an infinite succession of water and a loud roar”, inciting terror and awe in anyone who comes close.

Marilyn Monroe in Niagara/20th Century Fox

Epstein writes that cinema “inscribes a bit of the divine in everything”, and that it is a place where “life itself is revealed.” Epstein’s claim applies to Niagara, despite the fact that it is a fictional narrative. Its narrative and fictional characters do not negate the way it portrays the sublimity of nature in motion. This film is set apart from Les chutes because the characters explicitly talk about their feelings about the Falls and constantly interact, and even find themselves in danger because of, the Falls’ power. The film portrays Niagara Falls in massive-scale, with colorful shots inscribing the “divine” into this natural wonder which is already considered divine.

 The film deals with human reactions to the Falls but uses Technicolor CinemaScope cinematography to do so. The CinemaScope technology represents the Falls’ sublimity on a big scale, giving viewers a more true-to-life view of what it is like to be in the presence of the Falls. The Technicolor process gives viewers a dazzlingly colorful view of the landscape. Bregent-Heald quotes a 1953 New York Times review in her essay, in which the critic claims that not even Marilyn Monroe’s star power can compete with the grand shots of the Falls. He writes that “however admirably constructed Miss Monroe may be, she is hardly up to competing visually with one of the wonders of this continent, and the cataract keeps stealing scenes from her.” The film certainly does play out as though it is a battle between Monroe’s beauty and talent and the intensity of the waterfalls.

Jean Peters and Max Showalter in Niagara/20th Century Fox

The opening shot portrays George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) in an extreme long-shot standing at the base of the Falls, and he looks tiny compared to the giant waterfall. Although he stands a few feet away from the bottom of the Falls, he is completely drenched by the mist. He comments on the voiceover narration that he feels incredibly small, and remarks that the Falls have gotten by just fine without human intervention for thousands of years. George holds the view that humans are powerless before nature, and that the Falls are too big and powerful to be altered or influenced by humans. Epstein writes that Etna’s lava flow cannot be stopped by anyone — not lawyers, scholars, geologists, or engineers, and describes the lava flow as “glorious,” as it destroys everything in its path, setting trees on fire. This is similar to the way George describes Niagara to Polly (Jean Peters) later in the film, as he notes that once something is caught in the rapids, nothing except maybe “the hand of God” can stop it from going over the waterfall. He warns Polly not to let her love for Raymond (Max Showalter) get out of hand “like those Falls;” he has a pessimistic view of the world and uses the Falls as a metaphor for how powerless he feels.

Bregent-Heald notes that the Falls “present a unique blend of romance, danger, and passion,” and serve as the perfect backdrop for dramatic stories such as Niagara. She writes that historically, tourism guidebooks have described Niagara Falls as a place of romance and love, but also a place of suicides, and dangerous barrel and tightrope stunts. Therefore it represents both romance and terror, making it the perfect setting for a film noir such as Niagara. The Falls serve as a large-scale backdrop for the dramatic events that take place during the film — for example, Rose Loomis (Marilyn Monroe) is caught kissing another man (Richard Allen) while standing in the mist at the base of the Falls. Rose plans to murder George so she can be with her secret love, and make it look like he committed suicide by jumping over the Falls. The Falls serve as a backdrop for adultery and murder, and even take on a big role in the drama as the suspected cause of George’s death. Towards the end of the film, Polly and George end up on a boat sailing down the Niagara River, and only a helicopter — the deux ex machina/hand of God — can save Polly from going over the edge. Polly and Raymond go to Niagara for the honeymoon, but end up seeing the violent and terrifying aspects of the Falls.

Niagara Falls (2006)/PBS

The 2006 television documentary film Niagara Falls, directed by Diane Garey and Lawrence Holt, portrays an “objective” history of the Falls. It is comprised of interviews with “experts” who share their perspectives on the landscape, including scholars, artists, and local residents. The documentary form allows Niagara Falls and its panel of experts to make “objective” claims about the landscape and the interaction between humans and the Falls. All of the interviews are conducted with the subjects standing in front of the Falls, therefore grounding the film in its location. Elizabeth McKinsey herself appears in the film, and while she describes early explorers’ terrified and awe-stricken reactions to seeing the Falls for the first time, the engravings she describes in her book are shown onscreen, showing an almost unrecognizable Niagara landscape.

The film also recounts the history of “daredevils,” those who attempted to prove their strength and bravery by tightrope walking over the Falls, or else traveling over the waterfall in a barrel. While humans have historically felt terror in the face of the Falls, some have also been so drawn to its power that they will put their lives in danger just to see if they stand a chance. The narrator of the film notes that of course, many people did not survive their stunts, or else ended up severely mentally or physically damaged. While Les chutes portrays the cautious attraction tourists have towards the Falls, Niagara Falls provides a look at those who throw caution to the wind and literally put themselves in the water — a risky endeavor if there ever was one. The sublime evokes intense reactions in humans, including extremely dramatic ones like being drawn to the danger.

The invention of cinema allowed people from all over the world to see the Falls in motion, up close. Epstein enthusiastically declared that cinema is the perfect medium for portraying nature, due to its “animism,” and its ability to show movement and changes in real-time. Niagara has appeared in many films over the years, and all of the different filmmaking forms provide a different insight into how humans interact with the Falls. Over the years, Niagara Falls has changed immensely, with more and more buildings such as hotels and casinos being constructed, and cinematic depictions have shown these changes over time. Artistic representations provide a linear timeline of how the Niagara landscape looks, but cinema is the only medium that captures people interacting with the Falls in motion. The romance, danger, beauty, and terror of the Falls provide a perfect backdrop for all kinds of films, whether they be independent films, experimental nature films, educational documentaries, classical narrative films, or short travelogues.

Roger Stone’s narcissistic villainy can’t be addressed with this gawking doc.

I’m not sure of documentary Get Me Roger Stone‘s intended audience besides Roger Stone himself. He’s been the ghoulishly self-promoting thug accompanying the most powerful Republicans in the country for the past few decades, but the filmmakers can’t seem to find anything to do besides give him the kind of surface-level damnation that works just as well as free advertising. The doc is a biographical career timeline of the professional liar, blackmailer, bullshit artist, and self-described Machiavellian political agent that doesn’t seem to serve many purposes beyond its Wikipedia-level scope.

It’s painful to watch, and not just for those who absorbed the election (and this administration) alongside a growing stable of ulcers. Those audience members will be well aware of the tactics coming from Stone, if not his political start. But the film also certainly isn’t for those who voted for Donald Trump. It’s too brutal for that. It’s rubbing their foolishness in their faces, saying “look how badly you were tricked, you morons.” It’s indicative of the paralytic power of outrage that this film knows its villain immediately, yet can’t do anything but stare.

And he is truly a villain if a minor one. Though filmmakers Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme amass amazingly intimate footage with Stone, you quickly realize he wouldn’t turn down a dozen cameras during his life’s most degrading moments. Then the footage is no longer impressive, it’s pathetic. In fact, the film substantiates that with footage of him denying a later-confessed series of ads looking for group sex. The same sentiment becomes clear when he disrobes to show off his Richard Nixon tattoo, which I can’t believe any self-respecting tattoo artist put on someone’s back without messing with them in some way. That’s one of the many free passes Stone’s gotten over his sociopathic career.

Stone looks like one of those Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials where they do an actor up like Colonel Sanders, only if they starred a giant mosquito. Underneath his gaudy wardrobe and expensive hair restoration lies a long, searching proboscis, beady eyes, and a knack for spreading viral disease. He’s more fluent in slander than English and he’ll be the first to admit it. If his political idol denied his crookedness, he’d be the first to admit it. He’s a human heist movie that’s painful plot only works because the casino keeps inviting him back to steal from them. Do you think people see the difference between entertainment and politics? As long as he’s allowed a free run of the political process (including media), Stone will be able to determine the answer to his own question.

The film tracks this villainous muppet, with suit and glasses oddly (yet specifically) selected so that he looks like a cartoon kingpin, in an unchallenging, somewhat informative chronology. The details may be old news but the talking heads are entertaining – something we become more and more cognizant of as the movie progresses. It’s hard not to question the idea that Stone would be significant if people didn’t do things like, for instance, make movies about him. There’s a question here that the film doesn’t engage with, which is “is it better to shine a spotlight on the vermin, or leave them in the dark?” Get Me Roger Stone chooses one option but doesn’t do much more than announcing the same bankruptcy of humanity that Stone has included in his own set of personal rules (helpfully intercut in tongue-in-cheek title cards) for years.

Stone’s role in various political campaigns won’t leave you thinking he’s a genius, but someone whose hyper-capitalistic, ultra-nihilistic views on politics have recently become fashionable. His move from hardcore lobbying efforts in D.C.’s most inner circles to an embrace of libertarianism is clearly, as per Stone, self-serving. The only difference between him and rigorous street masturbators is that he’d have you believe he invented street masturbation. He invented smear campaigns, he invented negative political ads. He was the first to lie and tell people he was a liar. He called America’s moral bluff and America folded.

Yet, it’s never a question of whether or not he’s as important as he thinks he is. For all his bluster, it’s quite clear – through some delightfully wry editing between clips of journalists, politicians, and former associates – that he’s simply a moneymaker, adopting loyalties and parties as they seem productive, lucrative, or particularly unscrupulous. His effect on these parties is up for debate – one that the documentary toys with only briefly in favor of emphasizing his cruelty. Whether he’s made a career out of “lying to make himself look worse than he actually was,” as one of the many experts pulled from America’s political sphere opines, or he’s truly been influential is hard to diagnose when so many of those interviewed, those creating history, have such close ties to him.

The only drama in the film comes when we reach its recent footage, where we see the treachery and backstabbing present in the Trump campaign even before its surprising success and world-threatening failures. Here is when we begin to understand where the film’s strengths lie.

After defining the way politics used to be and the way politics operate now, the film’s side-eyed glance at the firings, trash talk, and gossip among Trump’s advisers comes close to clarity. We see a blackmail circus that’s too juicy and profane for journalists to ignore because they think “a-ha, these are the things that will finally show people the dirty truth they need to change their beliefs,” but the exact opposite is true.

Some people see the juicy, profane, and unethical and embrace it because it’s unexpected and entertaining – something exploited by Stone’s lowest common denominator philosophy of society. When people are unhappy, any change will do. That goes for both sides of the political spectrum, neither of which will find solace here. The film is a change, but it’s neither hate or love, only a stomachache either way. You can be obsessed with what gave you food poisoning all you want, but eventually, you just have to realize that the only thing memorable about the offending meal was its putridity.

We look at what Tom is up to, what’s next for Chelsea Manning, and say goodbye to Chris Cornell in today’s Opening Credits.

What happened to Tom Anderson, everyone’s first friend on MySpace? According to a recent post on his blog, it sounds as if Tom has been exploring the world, climbing mountains, and taking photos of his adventures. He doesn’t use MySpace anymore either, as it turns out.

There’s something else. Tom Anderson has also found himself to be an advocate for up-and-coming filmmakers like Serge Ramelli, a former YouTube instructive video creator who moved to America from France to try his hand at filmmaking. According to Tom, Serge is “the next Gerard Depardieu.” Serge is in the midst of releasing a film in which he stars called The Hollywouldn’ts. Good for Serge.

What I find more interesting is a passage from Tom near the end of his exhaustive blog post about his buddy Serge: “For my own part, I want to say that through meeting Serge (he doesn’t even know this yet), I’ve made some key steps to start producing a movie myself. It’s an idea I’ve had for many years, and its starting to become a reality. How nuts is that?! Haha. It’s something I literally never thought I would actually do, but now I’m actually working on it. Thank you Serge for the inspiration! That’s the second time Serge has helped my creative life – first with photos, now with movie-making.”

There you have it. Tom from MySpace is out there producing independent films. We’ll be curious to see what he creates, as we’ve long wanted to get to know Tom a little better. We’re still friends, after all.

Today in Pop Culture History

Shrek premiered on this day in 2001.

On this day in 1995 at the Seattle Film Festival, Mel Gibson’s Braveheart made its debut. No freedoms were taken.

Both Tina Fey and Chow Yun Fat were born on this day, albeit in different years. Should there be a buddy cop comedy in which these two share the screen? Yes.

What You Need to Know Today

In addition to the original material I mentioned yesterday, Jordan Peele has also signed on to make an HBO series with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot. It’s called Lovecraft Country.

Paola Sorrentino, who gave us The Young Pope this year, has signed on to come back for a second season — er, new series — called The New Pope. It’s being called a “follow-up series” because we need new ways to describe sequels, apparently.

On the same day that Chelsea Manning was released from prison (yesterday), it was announced that Citizenfour‘s Laura Poitras will executive produce a new documentary, XY Chelsea. The film, from director Tim Travers Hawkins, will be an exclusive, unfiltered look at the whistleblower’s life as she adjusts to her freedom after serving seven years in prison.

ICYMI

Yesterday we laid bare The 50 Most Beautiful Shots of the Alien Franchise. We even found one from Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.

Our H. Perry Horton delivered another wonderful video essay yesterday. This time, it’s about Twin Peaks and Film Noir.

Brad Gullickson took us on a trip back to Xtro, the gross-out Alien ripoff from 1982 that takes designs like those of H.R. Giger to the extreme (xtrome?).

If you’d like to hear more of my thoughts on Alien Covenant, including all the spoilers, check out this week’s episode of A Storm of Spoilers.

Shot of the Day

RIP, Chris Cornell.

SINGLES (1992) DP: Tak Fujimoto, Ueli Steiger | Dir: Cameron Crowe | RIP, Chris Cornell pic.twitter.com/ag7TrYhjEH

— One Perfect Shot (@OnePerfectShot) May 18, 2017

A history of the future.

Since its inception in 1979, Ridley Scott’s Alien­ franchise has constantly pushed the boundaries of science-fiction, often blurring the lines between that genre and horror, suspense, adventure, and drama. It’s a familial epic of odd proportions, like the Jaws franchise, one that traces the evolution of a nonhuman, predatory bloodline from grubs to queen and back again to a point of origin. The overarching story of Alien is fraught with narrative peril: there are massive time jumps, clones, significant off-screen deaths, a rotating host of artificial companions, a rotating swarm of xenomorphs, and a bunch of future-business jargon. There’s a lot going on in this franchise; blink and you might miss a huge yet subtle plot point that has far-reaching implications.

So on this, the verge of the release of Alien: Covenant, the eighth film in the franchise – like them or lump them, you have to count the pair of AVP films – it’s important that we take a moment to remember the history behind the mayhem, especially since there’s so much of it spread across the last four decades, and especially-especially since there are at least three more Alien films headed our way over the next decade, the first of which, according to Scott, starts shooting late next year.

Fortunately, you don’t have to sit through the 12+ hours of existing films to refresh your memory, you need only dedicate seven minutes and six seconds to the following video from Blake Faucette and Matthew Williams for their Distractotron Channel on YouTube that traces the entire history from Alien to Prometheus with a look at what we know about Alien: Covenant, including information gleaned from the prologue short film, already released.

Once you’re all caught up, check out our Covenant review from Jacob Oller.  The film releases tonight, May 18^th.

A 25-bulletpoint guide to everything you need to know.

You might have heard that this weekend David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks is returning to television after a 27-year absence. To call this a big deal is belittling to “big,” “deal,” and Twin Peaks; this is massive, mammoth, monumental. Some, myself included, consider it the resumption of the most significant narrative endeavor ever undertaken by an American filmmaker, while some are a little confused as to what the rest of us are frothing at the mouth about.

See, for all the hype and significance surrounding Twin Peaks, the fact remains that very few of you have seen the series in its entirety. First, it originally aired more than a quarter-century ago, which in a disposable culture such as ours might as well be a millennium. Second, though the show caught the attention of pretty much everyone in the beginning, by a third of the way through the second season most folks had tuned out to the extent the finale – which is widely considered the biggest cliffhanger in TV history – aired on a Saturday night in the middle of June, six weeks removed from the rest of the series after it had already been cancelled. Third, there wasn’t a DVD release of the series until the mid-2000s, meaning an entire generation of viewers didn’t have real access to it. And fourth, even if you were able to get your hands on all of it, the (unwarranted) hatred around the movie that came after it, Fire Walk With Me, which is a prequel and not the resolution everyone was hoping for, has likely convinced you that Twin Peaks is an exercise in frustration which, admittedly, until the announcement of season three, it kinda was.

But Twin Peaks is also much, much more: it is the birth of prestige television, it is the birth of “cinematic” television, it is the blueprint for every significant supernaturally-tinged series that came after it, and every televisual murder mystery, it is the best ensemble the medium’s ever known, it is the most daring network television has ever been, and last but not least it is – by his own admission – the last film David Lynch will ever make. Big deal? No, this is the biggest deal in television, ever.

So you want to watch it, you need to watch it, but maybe you’re a little intimidated (understandably so) because you haven’t seen a lick of seasons one and two, or Fire Walk With Me, and you won’t have time to before Sunday’s premiere. No worries. I’ve outlined everything you need to know in handy bulletpoint format. This isn’t everything everything, that would take much more time and space, but this is primer enough that you can watch the new season without being totally blind to what’s going on. Ready?

• Twin Peaks is a town in Washington State, just south of the Canadian Border. There are a little over 50,000 residents, but the series only focuses on a couple dozen.
• The show first hinged around the brutal murder of Laura Palmer, a pretty, popular high school student.
• Another girl, Ronette Pulaski, was with Laura when she was murdered but escaped. In her post-traumatic wandering, Ronette crossed the state line into Idaho, thus making the investigation federal.
• The man sent to investigate Laura Palmer’s murder is FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. He has no partner, but communicates with his assistant Diane via messages he records on microcassette. Cooper is a highly spiritual and intuitive man, and as such relies on dreams, visions, and interpretation as much as he does the letter of the law.
• Owing to a letter found embedded under Laura’s fingernail, it’s determined her murder is the work of a serial offender who killed a prostitute named Teresa Banks in a nearby town the year before.

• Turns out Laura wasn’t as sweet as everyone supposed. During the course of the investigation it’s revealed she was two-timing her boyfriend Bobby with another boy, James, as well as a few of what the kids nowadays call “friends with benefits,” she was a cocaine addict, and she had dabbled in high-end prostitution at a brothel north of the border owned by a schoolmate’s father.
• There’s no shortage of suspects: both Bobby and James, as well as Leo and Jacques her older f-buddies, Ben Horne the brothel owner who’s also a paramour, Dr. Jacoby her obsessed psychiatrist, Harold Smith a self-enforced shut-in, Josie Packard the mill owner who might have had her husband killed, some long-haired guy named BOB who’s only seen in visions, a one-armed man named Mike, and of course the Great Unknown.
• But as revealed in the seventh episode of the second season, Laura was killed by her own father, Leland, who had been sexually abusing her for years. But it’s not that cut and dry.
• See, Leland wasn’t Leland in his murderous moments, he was BOB, who is a possessing spirit that feeds off fear and violence. BOB inhabited Leland most of his life, rendering the man powerless to prevent the attacks on his daughter. The long-haired guy is BOB’s true form, and what his victims see. Leland also kills Madeline, Laura’s identical but brunette cousin.
• When Leland is arrested and outed as BOB, the spirit vacates him, killing him, and returns to a metaphysical realm known as The Black Lodge, the portal to which is in the woods surrounding Twin Peaks. The interior of The Black Lodge is more commonly referred to (by we in the real world) as “the red room.”

• In the wake of Laura’s murder, Cooper is stuck in town under suspension for an unauthorized raid of the brothel, which, again, is out of jurisdiction in Canada. He is cleared of all charges, but in the interim the series’ second major plot is set in motion: the vengeful mission of Windom Earle.
• Windom Earle was Cooper’s partner and the man who taught Cooper everything he knows about being an agent. Some years before the two were assigned to care for a material witness, a woman named Caroline with whom Cooper began a love affair. Owing to this affair, he wasn’t ready when the attempt on her life was made, and as a result she was killed, he was shot, and Earle lost his mind. Why? Because Caroline was Earle’s wife. What’s worse, Cooper suspects (rightfully so) that not only did Earle kill Caroline and shoot him, he was also responsible for the original crime she witnessed.
• Earle wants revenge on Cooper for all the above, but he also wants access to the power of The Black Lodge, which he knows about because he used to be a part of Project Blue Book, the real-life Air Force Commission that monitored the skies for alien life.
• Through a few visions, a couple petroglyphs in local geologic site Owl Cave, a primitive map of town, and working knowledge of astronomy, astrology, numerology, the occult and other such intellectual ephemera, it’s determined that the portal to The Black Lodge is in a circle of 12 sycamore trees in a clearing called Glastonbury Grove, and the only way to enter it is to be in the right place at the right celestial time with one of two emotional keys to unlock it: either overwhelming fear or overwhelming love.
• Earle enacts a plan to kidnap one of several local young women, using the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant to make the final decision. The winner of the pageant is Annie, a local waitress recently fled from a convent, and Cooper’s love interest. Earle abducts her and uses her fear to enter The Black Lodge. Cooper follows and uses his love for Annie to enter. This is when shit gets CRAZY.

• In The Black Lodge – deep breath – Coop engages Earle, BOB, and The Lodge itself. Earle is killed by BOB, and a momentary bout of fear causes Cooper’s soul to split in two, the good half (or Coop as we know him) and the bad half. Both halves then make a run for it, knowing only one of them can be out in the real world. It’s a neck-and-neck race, and we don’t see who emerges. Instead we see a Coop and Annie, both unconscious, materialize in the forest.
• In the second season’s – the series’ until a year or so ago – final scene, Cooper wakes up in bed with the town Sheriff and town Doctor standing over him. He seems fine. He asks about Annie. He’s told she’s fine. He goes to the restroom, and when he looks in the mirror, it isn’t himself staring back, it’s BOB. The bad half is the one who has escaped, and furthermore he is possessed by the same spirit Cooper came to town to thwart. It is the worst-case scenario. And it’s also the last thing we see, Cooper laughing maniacally with his reflection, mirror shattered and his head bleeding. Seriously. That’s what we were left with. For 27 years.

• Other characters: Sarah Palmer, Leland’s wife and Laura’s mother, prone to visions; Audrey, Ben Horne’s daughter and a general troublemaker; Shelly the waitress, who’s married to Leo but sleeping with Bobby; Norma, diner owner, Shelly’s boss, Annie’s sister, married to Hank and mistress to Big Ed, her high-school sweetheart; Big Ed, gas station owner, James’ uncle and married to one-eyed Nadine, a crazy woman with super strength who spends most of the second season believing she’s a high school senior and not a 35 year old woman; Mike Nelson, Donna’s ex and Nadine’s younger beau; Major Briggs, Bobby’s father and a former member of Project Blue Book, currently assigned to a classified detail studying the woods of Twin Peaks; Deputy Andy, dim-witted but lovable, and Lucy, the Sheriff’s receptionist with whom he’s having a relationship and possibly a baby; Deputy Hawk, the Native American tracker; Donna, Laura’s demure best friend who takes up with James after the murder; Doc Hayward Donna’s dad; Pete Martell, mill boss, and Catherine Martell, his wife, Josie’s sister-in-law, and Ben Horne’s mistress; Margaret the Log Lady, local sage; and Sheriff Harry S. Truman, the law in Twin Peaks who comes to be like a brother to Cooper.
• Other beings: Mike the one-armed man, another inhabiting spirit and a former killing-comrade of BOB’s who now hunts him; The Giant/elderly bellman who provides Cooper with clues in dreams and visions; The Man From Another Place, a diminutive figure in a red suit with a penchant for dancing and speaking backwards.
• Fire Walk With Me is a prequel that takes place during the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life. It begins with what’s known as “The Deer Meadow Prologue,” or the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks, the prostitute who was Leland/BOB’s first victim. Cooper is only in this section of the film, and only briefly. The major element to come out of this section is the Owl Cave Ring, a green-gemed piece of jewelry worn by Teresa and found on a mound of dirt after her murder on which one of the petroglyphs from Owl Cave is carved. When Agent Chet Desmond, the original investigating agent, touches the ring he vanishes.
• The other major facet of The Deer Meadow Prologue is the “Phillip Jeffries Scene,” Jeffries being played by David Bowie. He’s another agent who’s been missing on assignment for two years and who has ties to the beings of The Black Lodge, the ring, and the town of Twin Peaks. It’s a cryptic scene but it blows the mythology of The Lodge wide open, insinuating it isn’t a local but global phenomena. This may be important for the third season, which is said to take place in multiple locations throughout the US.
• Laura discovers halfway through the film that BOB is her father, and knowing she is powerless to stop him, she begins a quick, reckless, and heartbreaking descent into madness.
• In the moment of her death, Laura discovers and puts on the Owl Cave ring, which means two things: one, she has accepted her death, and two, by this acceptance her soul is spared by The White Lodge – which as it sounds is the complete opposite of The Black Lodge, a place of goodness – from consumption by BOB, and an angel comes to deliver her.

So that’s it, Twin Peaks in the tiniest of nutshells. Did I leave out a lot? Oh yeah, tons, but these broad strokes should afford you the time to chase down any leads you still need to, depending on what season three has in store. If you need any additional help, I know a guy. 

The first two episodes air on Showtime this Sunday night, followed immediately by the release of episodes three and four on the network’s digital platforms. Episodes then run once a week for 14 weeks until the two-hour finale in September. 18 hours in all. It’s going to be wonderful and strange, and the very definition of peak TV.