Movie Musing: The (sur)real appeal of David Lynch

It is like he's trying to tell us something...

A friend of mine once called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me one of the most bloated and pretentious films he’d ever seen. Being a big fan of David Lynch’s work I had to disagree with him. But the thing is, I completely understand why he feels that way.

At the risk of sounding pretentious myself (I know, way too late for that), David Lynch’s films are not for everyone. I think the angry reaction that comes from many viewers toward his films is that they feel stupid for not understanding the film. I don’t think it is David Lynch’s intent to make anyone feel stupid. All the interviews I’ve ever read or seen show a man who is not full of himself, or thinking he is God’s gift to film. He seems like a genuine guy who has a very particular (and peculiar) outlook on life. The thing is, there are two key elements to David Lynch that explain his film making techniques. He distrusts words and he loves mysteries

What are words for?

I don't think Henry is quite sure what it all means either.

David Lynch was a painter before he was a filmmaker. It was out of a desire to make one of his paintings move that he picked up a camera. Lynch comes from a background of visual arts first, and often speaks of his inability to articulate concepts using words. He feels that words often diminish things, especially emotions. To Lynch only a gifted poet or lyricist can do them true justice.

This means that Lynch doesn’t put any particular weight into the actual words his characters are saying. The script is a framework and source for the ideas the film will become. It is not the end product. To paraphrase Lynch, if the script was the end product then you could release that and be done with it.

One of the strangest conversations in sci-fi cinema.

Things start with the script, but Lynch will often allow his actors to improvise, suggest other courses of action or reaction and even take accidents that occur on the set and turn them into key moments in his film. The character of Killer BOB in Twin Peaks only occurred because of a series of accidents during filming. Frank Silva happened to be reflected in a mirror during filming a crucial scene and Lynch used that as the kernel for creating this abstraction of a character.

So if Lynch isn’t concerned about keeping to the script, how is he approaching filmmaking? His background as a painter means that he focuses on visuals first. Lynch has a very particular way of lighting scenes, staging them and using framing and camera movement. He deals in visual contrasts, often with shadows and colors. Most scenes in a Lynch film are set up to have some kind of visual impact, or to hint at a mood.

One hell of a road trip, or a road trip into hell?

Mood is the key word for David Lynch. More important than the words being spoken is the mood the scene creates, the emotions that are running underneath. Lynch uses his actors, set and camera work to create the mood and atmospheres he is going for. He uses pacing and editing to continue to develop those feelings. Lynch’s films can move at a slow pace, but often this is done to create a feeling of unease or tension. There will be strange pauses in conversation, giving the viewer the feeling that something isn’t right.

Something is about to go very wrong.

Another key element of his films is the approach to sound. With Eraserhead (and his student films before) sound is used to create atmospheres and textures in the world of the film. Lynch wants the sounds to evoke feelings and tensions on their own and building on the performances and visuals. Lynch isn’t going for realism – ever. All of his films occur in their own worlds, dreamworlds maybe, that have their own feel. He is working with fiction and is using all the tools in his command to put you into that fiction.

The final key element is the music. Lynch loves music and uses it to great effect in his films. Perhaps his most successful use of score and songs is for the stories set in Twin Peaks. The score by Angelo Badalementi is so unique and specific to that place that you couldn’t mistake it for anything else. Add to that the songs performed by Julee Cruise and it adds to the idea that Twin Peaks is a fleshed out place.

Definitely one hell of a road trip.

One thing I rarely hear commented about when it comes to music in a David Lynch film is his ability to pick just the right song for just the right moment. He is up there with Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino in that regard. In Twin Peaks you have Julee Cruise’s ethereal voice. But Blue Velvet takes Roy Orbison’s In Dreams and turns it into nightmare fuel. I love David Bowie’s voice in the darkness singing how he is Deranged during the opening credits to Lost Highway. Even something as odd as taking Roy Orbison’s Crying translating it into Spanish and having Rebekah Del Rio belt it out a cappella fits that key scene in Mulholland Drive so perfectly, I can’t imagine it any other way. Lynch really understands how these songs can act beyond the surface needs of a scene and provide additional layers to the film.

A phone call you don't want to get.

All these things feel effortless when you watch a David Lynch film, and yet they are all carefully managed, as much as the performances from his cast. But because he puts so much care into each of these, and combines them with his focus on visuals he crafts something that we just don’t see too much of in big budget Hollywood films – mood and atmosphere.

Because Lynch doesn’t trust words to deliver what he wants in a scene, he relies heavily on creating and manipulating the mood of scenes. That is why a character can be saying one thing, but the deep rumble just barely audible to us, the way the shadows are oozing into the frame and the way the curtain is moving slightly behind her and those too ruby red lips all point to something else, something hidden and secret.

Mysteries of Love?

You want to see the man behind the mask?

David Lynch was once asked why he used so much black in his paintings. He said that he loves shadows and darkness because you can suggest something without really showing it. It creates a mystery and the person looking at the art will want to solve it.

Most of Lynch films work on the same principle. They all have some kind of mystery at the core and Lynch invites you to step up and dive into the mystery. He suggests many things using all the elements of filmmaking. But he trusts his viewers to absorb and feel the film, and to enjoy the dark mysteries within.

Is that really a mystery you want to uncover?

From Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me forward, Lynch’s films seem to be about simple personal issues. For example you could say that Lost Highway is the exploration of a man whose anger and jealousy drive him to terrible acts and that the film pushes deep into his mind as he tries to sort out how he could have allowed those feelings to destroy everything around him. It is the way Lynch tells that simple story that makes it more interesting, and I’d argue more impactful.

As a viewer you are actively participating in the film. You are taking in those moods created by visuals, sounds and music. You are untangling the mystery. You are participating in the film. Because of that, the film can then strike deeper than a more traditional narrative. Fire Walk with Me deals with such dark and disturbing things and it really hits me each time I watch it. I always wonder at how strong that reaction is, when you look at the surface elements of the film it can seem like a mess. But fused together all those things create a very haunting film.

I like to remember things in my own way…

Agent Cooper and Audrey with some coffee talk.

Of course, the mystery element doesn’t work for everyone. The clues that Lynch leaves in his movies come across like taunts. The performances seem too bizarre to be relatable. The artificial nature of the lighting, the pacing and the music annoy instead of attract. Some people just find the whole exercise as futile at best and frustrating at worst.

I think the logical mind starts demanding that symbolism and narrative have clear structures and goals. Logic is black and white. No room for suggestion.

If you understand that Lynch is going for that then you might be more open to his approach. I see many people say his work doesn’t make any sense. But I disagree. His films follow a path. It may not be recognizable at first, but it is one that you feel not think about. You follow the moods and emotions of the scenes, not the structure of the script. You start to see patterns in his images, in his music, in his scenes. You start to see that strange acting choices Naomi Watts makes in one part of Mulholland Drive make sense with what happens after she opens that blue box near the end of the film.

Trapped in an abstraction? The color blue may be a key.

You also have to understand that Lynch uses characters he calls “abstractions”. These characters are often unique in appearance and speech. The score and sounds cape will change when they are around. These are not actual human characters, but usually some kind of physical manifestation of an emotion or inner conflict. Lynch has been using them since Eraserhead and often they can add a layer of confusion to the narrative because they seem like they walked in from a dream.

Going deeper into the Inland Empire.

I love the surreal touch the “abstractions” add to his films. It is one of the big draws to me in regards to David Lynch’s style. Very few people can execute that uncanny dream style like Lynch does. His films feel like anything is possible, because there is an element of uncertainly to them. It was one of the reasons I was disappointed to the dream worlds created by Nolan in Inception, they were too structured, too clean. Dreams are messy filled with mystery and uncertainty.

So I get why some people don’t like his work. That’s fine. I just get annoyed when they write it off as pretentious and nonsensical. There is meaning in his films, they are trying to make us feel something and understand something, and they are using nontraditional methods to do that, because to Lynch the impact is greater if the message isn’t delivered by words, but by getting you to feel what the characters are feeling. If the approach doesn’t work for you, that’s fine. But don’t slam it because of that.

The Sleeper has Awoken

Dream or abstraction? Maybe both...

One more thing I love about David Lynch’s films is seeing the craft on display. When I see a filmmaker who not only understands all the tools at his disposal, but uses all of them and with such skill I can’t help but be impressed. I also love the mysteries he presents in his films. I want to go down those rabbit holes and dig into the moods and atmospheres as well as his eclectic characters. He captures the feeling of a dream world and dream logic that I have rarely experienced in film. That feeling of the uncanny, the familiar but alien, is something that seems easy to pull off when Lynch does it.

So, yeah, David Lynch is making art films. But I don’t think he’s trying to confuse or aggravate people. He is telling stories in a unique way and one that I find completely absorbing and intriguing. That is why I have a space for him on my shelf right next to other filmmakers I admire like Kurosawa, Spielberg, Kon, Fincher and Miyazaki.

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Movie Music Musings: The Goldsmith Award 2012

I'm noticing a disturbing trend with these Goldsmith awards. One composer's name pops up time and again. This makes sense since to win a Goldsmith award you need to create great music for an unsuccessful film. This composer is constantly writing great music. But it seems that his film selections don't always pan out. This is the third time he's shown up as a candidate or winner for this award.

I'm talking about Michael Giacchino. He is really living up to the Goldsmith mantle. Not only has he scored three Star Trek films and is catching up to Goldsmith on that front. But he manages to be tied to some big earners as well as these poor performers. Luckily I don't think this is hurting his career. The man keeps on working year after year and heading up some of the biggest hits of those years. But in 2012 he hit a dud. Man did Disney spend a massive amount of money on John Carter and wow, did no one really care about seeing it. I've seen all kinds of reasons why the movie didn't do well in theaters, most of them revolved around how similar the trailers made it look to the Star Wars prequels. But the few people that I've run into that actually saw the movie said it was a solid bit of fun space opera adventure, just like the books it was based off of.

Michael Giacchino tackled this score with his usual gusto, crafting a theme rich score that certainly reminds listeners of the adventure scores of the 1980s and 1990s. Big orchestral bombast, exciting action music and even a sweeping romantic love them. The score has it all, even a bit of that Lawrence of Arabia feel with all the red desert landscapes. There are plenty of great tracks from the score to John Carter, but I really like this exciting track Sab Pursues the Princess. It drives along with a great intensity and then the heroic John Carter theme kicks in as he leaps in to save the day.

Score Sample: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

I've mentioned before how much I admired the work of Angelo Badalamenti on the television series Twin Peaks. Well his excellent fusion of jazz and 50s guitar continued on the album for the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The score is a bit of an eclectic mix which is typical of most albums for a David Lynch film. You get material that fits right in there with the television series, but you also get some odd stuff like Badalamenti doing a kind of beat-poet rap thing that is difficult to describe, but the lyrics are pretty darn funny. There are also strange soundscape tracks with rumbling and someone whispering "The Black Dog Runs at Night" which is also the title of that track.

But you also get Julee Cruise, the voice of Twin Peaks in so many ways. Her ethereal singing is highlighted in many episodes and a couple of her songs grace the film as well. But I'm going to share a song that was written for the movie but not used in it. The opening titles of Fire Walk with Me are over this slow jazz piece. On Cruise's album The Voice of Love, we get a version of that same tune with lyrics by Lynch and arranged by Badalamenti. So here is She Would Die for Love performed by Julee Cruise, live from the red room. :)

Cry Wilderness (1987) – MST3K Review

Paul Cooper (Eric Foster) is away at boarding school when Bigfoot (Tom Folkes) arrives on campus in the middle of the night. The big lug tells Paul that his father Will (Maurice Grandmaison) is in danger and Paul should come to his aid. Why would Bigfoot come to see Paul in the first place? Well over the summer Paul spent time with his forest ranger father, ran into the big cryptid and befriended him over Cokes.

Paul runs away from school and arrives in the forest. His father seems ok. But Will and his Native American pal Jim (John Tallman) are hunting an escaped tiger. For some reason Jim thinks everything is funny and spends most of the film in full-throated laughter. Don’t ask. Then acclaimed hunter Morgan Hicks (Griffin Casey) arrives. At first everyone thinks he is there to hunt the tiger, but Paul discovers that Morgan may be after Bigfoot! Can Paul find and warn his huge hairy pal, or will it end in tears as we all Cry Wilderness.

Movie Review:

Yeah I was missing Link, but now that the new
Zelda game... oh sorry wrong Link.

At first I was baffled about the origin of this fine film. It was unleashed in 1987, well after the Bigfoot mania of the 70s and early 80s. You can see it was going for the “kid meets alien friend” genre inspired by E.T. The Extraterrestrial and further developed by movies like Mac and Me and Pod People. But then I saw that Harry and the Hendersons came out in 1987, so that pretty much confirmed it. Cry Wilderness was an attempt to cash in on that family friendly flick.

The result is a movie that rivals Pod People in sheer confusion and oddity. Cry Wilderness never seems to have a handle on what kind of movie it wants to be, who its audience is, and what kind of tone it is reaching for. I think most people who attempt to watch this film will spend their time trying to untangle the web of bizarre strangeness in front of them.

Either Paul is receiving a message from Bigfoot, or
the mother ship just landed in San Diego!

Let’s start with the basic story and how it is told. The key plot element is Paul attempting to save his father from some kind of danger. Bigfoot was really vague when he delivered the message, so Paul doesn’t know what to look for. So the bulk of the film follows Paul, Will and Jim wandering around the forest, with Paul trying to keep his dad from doing anything. For his part Will has a dangerous job, so he keeps trying to keep Paul from getting into trouble, but Paul won’t listen to anyone taller than him, but shorter than Bigfoot.

Not a lot of Bigfoot in this movie, but there are plenty
of raccoons. You like raccoons, right?

This “conflict” doesn’t drive the movie forward. Instead, Cry Wilderness just kind of meanders around, not really sure what to do with itself. Morgan is supposed to be an antagonist of sorts, but his conflict is with Bigfoot and Paul, and has nothing to do with Will. So it is really a side story that also meanders around. Mostly Morgan smiles evilly and shows Paul pictures of Bigfoot. It’s just an odd story element.

When the danger that threatens Will is revealed, it turns out to be rock fall in a mine. A rock fall caused by Will shouting for Paul, because the little idiot wandered away again. So in classic twist right out of Greek Tragedy, Paul is the cause of his own father’s momentary danger. Then Bigfoot shows up and pulls the Styrofoam boulders off Will and saves the day. Sorry, no spoiler warning, but the plot twist is so dumb, I don’t even count it.

Not a lot of Bigfoot in this movie, but there's plenty
of this tiger. You like tigers right?

The other issue here is the fact that you have a movie with Bigfoot plastered all over the marketing materials and trying to ride the wave of popularity of Harry and the Hendersons (was that movie even popular?) and yet Bigfoot is barely in the film. You would think that if you were trying to follow the whole E.T. bandwagon, you’d have the movie focus on the discovery and development of the friendship between Paul and Bigfoot. But we don’t even get a flashback scene to establish that. Paul just goes around telling his classmates and disbelieving teacher all about it for the first ten minutes of the film.

This leads some folks to think that Cry Wilderness is a sequel to something. But try as we might, there is no evidence of a first adventure featuring Paul and Bigfoot drinking Cokes in front of a waterfall.

In my opinion, the movie’s script didn’t focus on the key conflict of the story – Paul trying to save his father. Or it could have been Paul trying to save Bigfoot. By trying to do both and trying to weave them together the movie is just a mess from the start.

Be very very quiet. I'm hunting cryptids.

Heck I think we could have gone the full 1980s route with this. Ok, stick with me here. This is my pitch for a new and improved take on Cry Wilderness. So Paul doesn’t see his father much because Will is a forest ranger. Even when he goes to the woods to stay with his father, Will just isn’t around because of his work. So Paul finds Bigfoot and he becomes a surrogate friend/father figure. Morgan shows up hunting down the escaped tiger, and actually sees Bigfoot and changes his plans. Will might also see Bigfoot and decide to protect him. This puts all the characters into conflict with each other, and it drives the narrative. The hunt for the tiger turns into a hunt for Bigfoot, and maybe the tiger gets Morgan, or maybe Bigfoot saves Will from the tiger, or maybe Morgan tries to kill Will to get him out of the way and that is how Paul can save his father. I don’t know, but anything is better than what we ended up with.

This scenery is too good for this movie.

There are some good points. All the location shooting in Cry Wilderness is pretty impressive. Paul’s school was filmed in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It is a lovely locale and they do some fun stuff with it. But the real treat is all the outdoor work for the forest, an old mine and eerie Mono Lake, all filmed in central California. These impressive locations provide a great setting for the film and is probably the best part of it.

Well, there is the end title song, which is such a bizarre thing that it provides plenty of unintentional laughs. It is an inspirational folk ballad, except someone forgot to tell the singer to actually be inspirational. Instead he tells the listener to not try too hard, because you’ll probably just fail anyway. I would think it was a parody if it wasn’t so sincere. The rest of the music and sound are adequate. I don’t think the composer tried too hard, because he was afraid he’d fail anyway.

Keep trying Will, but Paul isn't going to listen.

But let me tell you about the acting in Cry Wilderness. First off Eric Foster as Paul isn’t bad. He’s playing the precocious kid well enough. I don’t like to pick on child actors, because it’s a tough job and they usually are doing the best they can. No, the character of Paul is obnoxious and annoying as written. I don’t think Foster is to blame for making us all want to lock the kid in a log cabin with his raccoon pals.

Now the adults are another matter. First off, nearly all of them are dubbed. I have no idea why. Will sounds especially hilarious, with a very deep voice that just doesn’t seem to match the actor. Maybe Maurice had an accent, and they thought dubbing would help. But then why dub Jim? His voice actually fits, so maybe it was all done in post, but it is still odd. Morgan seems dubbed half the time. Faith Clift who plays Dr. Helen Foster, the vet that appears halfway through the film for no reason, is fully dubbed. Her voice also doesn’t seem to fit.

Keep that raccoon away, or Morgan may have it
for dessert.

Oh and I should note that Morgon is another disturbing villain in the long pantheon of disturbing villains in Mystery Science Theater films. He’s a loud-mouthed jerk. You kind of expect that when you first see him chowing down on stolen food like a barbarian. But when he starts strangling a raccoon that just goes past the point of no return. And yes, it looks like the actor is actually roughing up the poor little creature, so any of you with soft hearts to animals may want to look away. The movie does end up giving Morgan his just desserts in the end, but he’s so loathsome and stupid it can’t come soon enough. He seems too overboard to be in a kids flick, more like the kind of villain you’d run into in a Golan Globus Ninja action movie.

But dubbed movies on Mystery Science Theater are not a new thing. And neither is bad acting. I guess all the adults figured that since they are in a kid’s film they need to play everything as big and broad as possible. So you get performances that are loud and abrasive to hilariously over the top. There are scenes where everyone is gesticulating so much you wait for someone to get wacked in the face by a flailing limb.

That's right Jim, laugh away the shame.

But the one thing you will never forget about Cry Wilderness is the laughing. Anytime Jim is on the screen, it won’t take long for him to burst out in full throated, head thrown back laughter. Nine times out of ten, someone else will join him in his mirth. And if you’re lucky everyone on screen is laughing at something. It doesn’t’ take much to set Jim off. It could be a slightly amusing story, wrestling with a bear (for no reason at all), or because everyone else is just standing around and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. Or maybe, he realizes what a horrible move he is in, and figures that more laughter is the only way to dull the pain. Poor guy.

Finally we get to the direction. With a script this messy, there wasn’t a lot of hope for the film in the first place. But the movie is edited together with less care. I compared this film to Pod People, and I think the editing is what does it. Much like that film, Cry Wilderness jumps from scene to scene, sometimes with no relation to what happened before or what happens next. There are few transitions and even fewer that make any sense. Part of the issue with the jumbled narrative is a direct result of the poor editing. The movie feels like a bunch of vignettes stitched together to form some kind of plot. Just throw in some whimsy here, throw in some animals there, throw in Native American mysticism and you’ve got movie gold.

Wait, did this really happen? 

Yeah I forgot to mention Red Hawk (Foster Hood). He is a shaman (I think) who lives in the forest, but he may be a ghost (it is all so unclear). He babbles something about knowing Bigfoot, and there is a magic amulet that kind of plays into the story, but not really. It just comes out of nowhere and you are left wondering if you’re having a fever dream.

As far as bad movies go, Cry Wilderness is a good one. Because of the broad acting, non-stop laughing, bizarre editing, Bigfoot in a fake looking cave/temple and all the bad dubbing, you have a movie that is begging to be riffed on. Lets see what Jonah and the bots make of it.

Episode Review:

Either Bigfoot is going to push him off a cliff, or he's
going to start singing.

Season 11 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 features a few films that seemed to be targeted at a younger audience. In some ways this feels like a bit of a cheap shot. Most people making a “kiddie flick” aren’t looking to make anything great, or even good. I’m not excusing this, but with all the crap I’ve seen shoved out for kids during my tenure at the video store, it was obvious to me that most creators of “kiddie flicks” are focused on profit over story or entertainment value.

Cry Wilderness never became the next E.T.; it was unable to do much of anything really. It is a bad movie, no question about it. That makes it fair game for Jonah and the bots, and I’m surprised they picked this one as their second film. It is such a bizarre barrage of a movie I would think they might want to have a few more films under their belt before tackling this mess.

"This movie is just like 'Ice Road Truckers' only
less staged."

But for the most part the riffing is solid. They do comment quite a bit about how odd the movie is and how they are having issues following it. But the movie is jam packed with odd sequences, over the top acting, stupid dialogue and endless laughing. It really is serving up all the right material to make this a classic.

When Paul is in the boarding school and talking to Bigfoot, Jonah comments that this must be Harry Potter and the Hendersons. Bigfoot is the butt of a lot of jokes actually, the funniest ones to me and my wife was when they kept making references to the giant Muppet from The Muppet Movie, Sweetums. I also got a kick out of Crow’s exclamation “Dr. Zaiss, you’re nude!”

Paul is the only one not packing heat in this pic... BANG!

Paul is also the source for a lot of the humor in riffing Cry Wilderness. He is such an obnoxious character and he never does anything his father or any adult tells him. In a scene where Paul is tied up Jonah declares, “Paul the people who love you had to tie you up. You’re NUTS!” But there is also a running gag that whenever characters with guns (nearly all of them) are on the screen and waving the guns around with reckless abandon (and usually when they are pointed at or near Paul) one of the boys yells “BANG!” Like the best running gags the timing on these is perfect, often popping up when you least expect it and providing plenty of laughs.

Speaking of laughs, the moments where Jim or any of the characters lapses into a hysterical fit of mirth is prime moment for riffing. Much like the joke in Starfighters about the mid-air refueling, Jonah and the bots go into a whole mess of different riffs to explain this odd phenomenon.

But a similar issue occurs here that happened in Reptilicus, some of the riffing ends up coming way too fast. One joke lands well and you are chuckling, but missing the next three rapid-fire riffs. In this way the pacing seems off to me, and makes the whole episode feel like it just misses hitting that sweet spot. But this does make Cry Wilderness a prime target for a rewatch to pick up on the bits you may have missed.

That's right Jonah, laugh away the shame.

The host segments are in the middle of the road here with one fun exception. Things start off with Gypsy attempting to do some repairs on the ship and keeps dropping tools on folks below. Crow tries to use his net to catch some and it goes wrong. For the invention exchange Jonah thinks Thanksgiving should have some carols attached to it, so he combines turkey carving with a Theremin to give Thanksgiving its own other-worldy soundtrack. It gets a bit Bernard Herrmann-esque. Kinga and Max present the Wheel of Fudgie the Whale, which allows you to create all kinds of neat ice cream cake characters from the same Fudgie the Whale mold. At the first break Jonah is laughing and laughing and the bots are cute raccoons, and there’s cereal boxes and mischief and Jonah can’t stop laughing and it all gets very surreal in a funny way. At the next break Jonah and the bots attempt to figure out how the movie got made. Using some models they come up with a workable theory.

These three are still up to no good!

But the next treat is the one longtime fans of the show will enjoy. Kinga gets a visit from her Grandma Pearl (Mary Jo Pehl), Professor Bobo (Kevin Murphy) and Brain Guy (Bill Corbett). Seeing these three villains from the Sci-fi channel years show up and banter with Kinga and Max was really fun, and everyone is in character like no time had passed. It is all very silly, as you expect, but it is great to see the new series pay homage to the previous versions with special appearances from old cast members. The episode ends with Crow appearing as Red Hawk and choosing Max as his hero to save them from Kinga’s experiment. It almost works too, until Kinga walks in and spoils it all.

Bigfoot is delighted or horrified... you decide.

Cry Wilderness is fun episode, but the movie is so strange it is actually a bit distracting. I’ve watched it twice now and both times I’m so busy trying to figure out what the hell is happening and how this got made that I miss the riffing. The pacing of the jokes is a bit problematic too, and that leaves me enjoying this one, but not loving it. What is strange is that I’ve seen a lot of fans thinking this is one of the best episodes of the series. Its good to see that that aspect of the show continues, some folks love the episodes you don’t care for. But we can all agree it’s a fun time at the movies.

I give the episode three laughing Jims out of five.

This episode is available on Netflix Streaming.

The movie is so confusing because it takes place on Solaris!

And Then This Happened... Cry Wilderness

Bigfoot is a legend we are all curious about. Is he real? Is he a tall tale (pun kinda sorta intended)? Is he just a hoax meant to drive up tourist visits to backwoods towns? Maybe Bigfoot is all this and more too. The movie Cry Wilderness would certainly like for us to believe that. But mostly Bigfoot in that movie is... well, let's just say he is less than impressive. But at least when he does show up in the film, he provides plenty of unintentional humor.

Such as this little moment from Cry Wilderness. I think it is just itching for a caption, don't you?

And then this happened...

Nostalgia Nugget: Star Wars CCG

The last major expansion I collected, the fearsome Death
Star II set, with the Rebel deck.

So for most folks thoughts of the original trilogy of Star Wars evoke memories of the 1970s or 1980s. And yeah I get all nostalgic and fuzzy about those decades and the Star Wars related joys they create. But for me the biggest peak of Star Wars joy was in the late 90s. It was suddenly cool to like Star Wars again, and with the build up to the Special Editions and finally the prequels it was a fun ride. I wrote a whole blog about it (probably need to revisit that one).

But one of the best combinations of 1990s and Star Wars that I remember from that era was the Star Wars Collectable Card Game. It was created by Decipher during the explosion of CCGs inspired by the success of Magic: The Gathering. Decipher already had success with their Star Trek CCG, and managed to score this space adventure franchise as well. They would continue well into the 2000's with a very fun Lord of the Rings CCG, but I'll save that for another blog.

The Star Wars Collectable Card Game (or just SWCCG to keep things short) had a fairly simple premise. Each player has 60 cards. One player plays the Rebels, the other players plays as the Galactic Empire. The goal is to drain your opponents deck of cards. First person who ends up without any cards in hand or in the reserve deck loses. This was ingenious, because you didn't need to keep score, your Lost Pile told you how well you were doing.

A selection of Galactic Empire cards featuring images
from all three films in the original trilogy.

The cards themselves were all based on images taken from the original trilogy. There were a few that were created digitally (mostly the planetary system cards), and a few that were visually enhanced (increase the contrast so you could see the shadowy alien in the cantina a little clearer). Later in the run they took some of the behind the scenes photos of props and sets and tinkered with those to make them part of the game. So there were plenty of cards from the SWCCG that offered images of the original trilogy that you had never seen before. All the cantina and Jabba the Hutt's palace cards were great. All the obscure aliens were a treat to see up close. So for a full fledged Star Wars nerd, these cards were just cool to have in general.

The cards also had flavor text, and much of it pulled from the films and the expanded universe of the time including Timothy's Zahn's novels, the video games and other supporting material. These days most of that stuff is considered non-canon, but who cares. A lot of it was creative and they way they worked it into the game structure was a blast.

I collected and played the game for a few years, as they went from the Premier set all the way to the final final one from the ending of Return of the Jedi called Death Star II. There were a few supplemental expansions after that that I picked up. But I never got around to collecting the cards for The Phantom Menace. Decipher released another CCG in between featuring images from Episode One. It wasn't a very good game and as I became more and more disenchanted with the latest film I ignored the official CCG releases. I guess I wasn't the only one because SWCCG eventually stopped after a few expansions based on The Phantom Menace.

A selection of Rebellion cards featuring images from all
three films and one all new image.

Two things appealed to me about the SWCCG. The first was the myriad of settings, characters, situations and styles of play turned each game into its own mini-Star Wars adventure. Sure you could recreate the Battle of Hoth if you wanted to. But as the expansions were released you could come up all kinds of stories that didn't even involve the main characters. Sometimes the game would go as you expected, but there were plenty of cards that would throw a wrench into situations.

One of the most memorable is when I had a whole group of Stormtroopers hunting down Princess Leia on Tatooine. My deck was based around superior firepower and overwhelming numbers of Stormtroopers. It was working pretty well too. One of my troopers had a nasty repeating rifle and I had plenty of ammo, so I figured Leia was toast. Well my wife was playing Rebels and had the card Weapon Levitation. Leia was Force sensitive, so she could use that ability. My wife gets a great number on her draw and my repeating blaster flies over to Leia, with the Power Droid attached! Leia turns around and guns down my entire squad with their own gun. She then high tails it to the Falcon and takes off into space with Lando. And believe me, in the SWCCG, once someone is aboard the Falcon, you never can get them. Besides I had to figure out how to rebuild my squadron, or risk losing Tatooine.

This is the Reserve deck showing how much life you have
left. The cards face up are the Lost Pile. Looks like
the Galactic Empire is losing this game!

That was the other element I loved about the game, the various strategies that you could play. For the Premier set it was a very basic battle game. And you could always play that way if you like. But each new expansion started to introduce new tactics. Since I played Imperials, I know most of their successful ones. For the Dagobah expansion you had the Bounty Hunter tactic, which allowed you to capture rebels and exchange them for lost cards. The bigger the target the more cards you got to retrieve. Of course captured cards could be freed by the rebels, so you had to protect your prisons, but even capturing lowly soldiers or aliens got you a card or two from the Lost pile. For the Cloud City expansion you got the Cloud drain tactic, which was a wicked one. You essentially gain control of Cloud City and hold it. Each turn your opponent loses cards steadily for each site you control, plus wicked bonus losses for each cloud sector you control. In the clouds, starships are weak, and capital ships can't enter. So Cloud Cars and Air Speeders are the best bet. Suddenly those common cards you never used became very powerful.

I could go on and on about tactics and the way you could start a deck to look like you are playing one style but have a sneaky twist part way through (the Rebel decks were really good at doing that). Suffice to say it was a very fun, but complicated game. I remember talking to the gent who owned the hobby store I used to frequent and he kept asking me and my co-worker to come in and play in store so other people could see how much fun it was. But I think he was trying to get us to mentor new players too. We never did that. We usually played after work with a couple beers and 90s alternative rock blasting in the background. Fun times, fun times.

My wife eventually got into playing it, and much of the later expansions I played were against her. She made a very deadly Ewok deck that pretty much handed my ass to me, just like in the film. And the Jabba's Palace deck gave her a ton of great aliens to use in her decks. So I have a lot of fun memories from those days. I still have all my cards (eight binders worth of them!) And I'll pull them out once in a while and look through the images and read some of the text.

Small sample of what the "game board"
of the SWCCG could look like.

Making a deck could take a couple hours with all the cards at your disposal. We would usually decide ahead of time what kind of game we wanted to play so it would narrow down the card selection.  Feeling like a grand space battle, then you can drop most of your ground based cards. Or maybe this time we want to base the whole thing around breaking into or defending the Death Star. But they even came up with sites that could be used with any planet and gave various bonuses to different cards. So it really expanded the playing field. But constructing a deck for the first time was really a task in itself. And usually your first iteration of a deck had issues, so you would want to refine it as you played more and more games.

And playing a SWCCG game could take a couple hours too. It could go longer if you used a larger deck (as we sometimes did, 80 cards opened up a lot of opportunities for tactics). But it was a good time, even if the game would force you into some situations where you might start cursing your luck or the luck of your opponent. Some days you keep drawing jawas and gaffi sticks, but Vader won't show up. Meanwhile Luke, Obi-Wan and Chewbacca are running around Tatooine taking control of each site and draining you for six cards a turn. Maybe the Jawa/Tuskan Raider deck wasn't a good idea after all.

The explosion of Star Wars popularity combined with the explosion of CCGs is certainly a time capsule to the 1990s, and one that always makes me smile.

Movie Music Musings: The Goldsmith Award 2013

Time for another Goldsmith award, where I take a look at a movie that may have bombed, but at least it gave us some good film music. 2013 had its share of poorly reviewed films, and a lot of them had some pretty uninteresting scores to boot. But the biggest money loser when compared to its original budget turned out to be Disney's attempt to reboot The Lone Ranger.

Just like the winner of the 2014 Goldsmith award, I'm not sure who was clamoring for a reboot of this franchise. Last time Hollywood tried this back in the early 1980s the film bombed then too. It is also a Western, a genre that just doesn't pull in the viewers like it used to. But Disney figured that their creative team that managed to rake in the Aztec gold from Pirates of the Caribbean would be able to do it again.

Besides none of us are sick of seeing Johnny Depp in white faced makeup acting oddly, right? Because I'm not sick of that... not. At. ALL!

Anyway, since we had the same creative team at work here, that mean Hans Zimmer and his crew were on hand to provide the music. The Lone Ranger gave Zimmer an opportunity to have some fun with a genre he's never really tackled before. Zimmer is also a huge fan of Ennio Morricone, who scored every other spaghetti western back in the 60s and 70s. So we were all kind of expecting a Zimmer take on that sound.

All told the score is entertaining, but really the best track is Finale (William Tell Overture) which is an modern film score take on the classical piece with all of Zimmer's trademark synth overlays and aggressiveness added to the music. Its really a great show stopping track and one of the best of 2013. So crank this one up and enjoy Zimmer and his team unleash some bullet ballet from The Lone Ranger.