Returning Ghosts and Corpses

[setsuled]

I dreamt last night I was watching the first episode of the upcoming new Twin Peaks series. In my dream version, James Hurley was inhabited by the spirit of Leland Palmer. This was conveyed by a shot of James Marshall smiling and dissolving into a shot of Ray Wise smiling with the makeup from Fire Walk with Me. I remember shots of Sheryl Lee looking concerned but I can't remember much else specific except the very end of the episode. There was a sudden cut to a desert at night where a group of about twenty plainly dressed Mexican men and women were lit by a white fluorescent light and were huddled around a spot in the ground where some were digging for a treasure of some kind. One announced, "We found it!" but then a cgi Bob with glowing eyes came out of the ground and killed them, I'm not sure how, they suddenly became a pile of mutilated bodies. Bob crawled over them towards the camera like he did towards Maddy in the season two première, he said something but I can't remember what.

The only other thing I remember about the dream is that someone had a picture of Pete Martell on a desk. I think I can predict now that David Lynch will probably recast Bob rather than do some complicated cgi--he already recast Donna once, after all--but Pete Martell will be treated as deceased. You just can't replace Jack Nance, the actor who played him and who died a few years ago. I could be wrong, though, there's no telling with Lynch. I could sort of see him casting Harry Dean Stanton as Pete Martell . . . well, no, not really. I'd like to see Stanton return as the character he played in Fire Walk with Me anyway. There was a couple years where Stanton was turning up in everything, it seemed, even The Avengers. He was also in INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch's previous film, and was in five of Lynch's movies total. According to Wikipedia he's 89, it's nice to see he's still working, one of Hollywood's eternal figures. I mean, he was in Cool Hand Luke. I think I first saw him in Alien.

I bought Prometheus on Blu-Ray a couple weeks ago and finally watched it yesterday. I got it used for five dollars from the used book store next to one of the Japanese markets. Unfortunately whoever owned it last threw away the insert which included the code that would've allowed me to watch the "digital version", basically an HD version one can watch on one's computer. Which is a terrific idea for getting around Sony's bullshit prohibition on letting computers play Blu-Rays. Every movie should be released this way.

I was impressed again by Prometheus--I saw it twice in theatre, this was my first time seeing it from the comfort of my couch, which, as visually magnificent as the movie is, I think may be an even better way of seeing it. It makes it easier to drink the movie contemplatively like a cup of tea and I found myself thinking about how much the movie is about death anxiety. The body horror of Alien becoming a more metaphysical rumination on the thoroughly physical nature of humans and their relatives. "After all this, you still believe," David says when Elizabeth takes her cross back. I love the fact that she believes and the movie offers not one shred of evidence to back up her belief. It makes me all the more hopeful for the sequel to be made. I'd like to see the Engineers revealed as being organic vessels for a species that appear to be lumps of internal organs and muscles. All that Giger art is inside out human body so it might make sense for a culture that produced such architecture to be one that has always, from the very beginning, been confronted by the reality of the workings of the body.

I was also astounded again that people complain about the writing in Prometheus, that people claim to find it confusing. I kind of feel that the movie was simply too good for people to accept. Here's a nice video featuring a takedown of all the bullshit complaints people had about the film:

Click to view

Twitter Sonnet #783

Nirvana spaghetti was in the cab.
A bubble ride took place in diverse spots.
Trails of confetti formed paths to rehab.
Only bikinis can connect the dots.
Breaded crucifixes restrain cherries.
Surprised ghosts find the stars are edible.
Glowing prisons blink across for ferries.
Only lime stamped pages are credible.
Fluorescent handkerchiefs restrain the pond.
Hologram helicopters carry age.
Wires evaporate throughout the wand.
Humanity tallies chalk of the page.
Blue balloon black horizons cheat deserts.
Paper trolleys go to leather concerts.