Feast is the greatest movie of all time

Feast is some great comedy horror. The monster flick was featured on season three of Project Greenlight—I never watched so some of the details might be a bit fuzzy here—which was a documentary series on HBO and later Bravo where Ben Afflect and Matt Damon (with the help of, ahem, Harvey Weinstein) would pluck first-time directors out of obscurity and fund their idea for a feature film. So the movie had that going for it and apparently the making of the low-budget film made for low-budget film. I may have to check it out as this is the greatest movie of all time. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Director Gulager makes the most of what he's given; the resulting Feast offers up some surprisingly tasty -- if far from nourishing – morsels. 

D-Listers Rollins and Wade

Pros: Original, made me laugh out loud at least once, was super disgusting, and features a solid list of Hollywood D-Listers. The monsters look surprisingly dope in a 1990s cheesy sort of way. 

Cons: Little too much shaky cam. Drags on (towards the end especially).

Feast was made by one John Gulager (son of Clu who is one of my faves and plays the bartender in this movie) and is about a ragtag group of barflies in a country tavern who are forced to fight for their lives against a family of alien, demon things hell bent on eating them. The movie spawned two sequels, Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds and Feast III: The Happy Finish that came out in 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Wade... Ger

Lot to like about this flick. Doesn't fuck around early when it gives us everything you need to know about each of the characters in these three-second backstory cards with each of their nicknames, job/fun fact, and life expectancy. For example, the old pickled drunk lady who goes by “Grandma” has the following pop up on the screen when she shows up for the first time: “Fun Fact: Blew Mick Jagger ... recently. Life Expectancy: Maybe dead already.” Lot of info in no time. Love that shit.

As for the D-Listers, we get Krista Allen who was the enfamous Billie Reed on Days of Our Lives, rapper Anthony 'Treach' Criss from Naughty by Nature, Judah Friedlander who was Frank Rossitano / Streak in 30 Rock, Balthazar Getty who was the lead in Lost Highway and David Foster Wallace called out as a huge piece of shit in one of my favorite essays on David Lynch, Gulager's father Clu Gulager as Bartender who is a great character guy with some real horror chops having played amazing roles in two of the most ridiculous movies of all time having played the dad in A Nightmare on ElmStreet 2: Freddy’s Revenge and the iconic Burt in The Return of the Living Dead, Jason Mewes who is Jay in all the Jay and Silent Bob movies (he plays himself), one of my all-time favorite people Henry Rollins and I go crazy for whenever I see him in anything as Coach, Jenny Wade who plays Honey Pie and is the hot one (you might recognize her from American Horror Story, The Good Guys, Grimm, or Mad Men), and Duane Whitaker who was the fat rapist in Pulp Fiction as the Boss Man.

Like so

The first thing we get after the little intros, spoiler, is “Hero”, played by one Eric Dane, popping in saying stuff like “listen and do everything I say if you want to live,” and then immediately getting decapitated by a monster. It was a great little twist. For the next few minutes it is just pure chaos which is exactly how it would happen IRL when some shit hits the fan like that. During that time we get a bunch of carnage with several characters dying off early including Treach and Jason Mewes who gets his face ripped off. Also during that time Boss Man gets his foot blown off as he bones Tuffy upstairs when Hero’s head is getting bitten off. Tuffy, who has a young child, has her kid hide in the closet. We are then introduced to Heroine who yells that everyone needs to stay downstairs. Tuffy freaks out and runs to where her kid was. He ain’t there. But then they find him. Aw. Tuffy is all, “I want let anything happen to you, ever, I promise,” at the exact moment she finishes, one of the monsters busts in and eats the kid in like two gulps. It is in-fucking-sane and darkly hilarious.

Lots of other funny shit in there like using Rollins’s head as a battering ram, you sort of have to be there, monster-on-moster sex, and later cutting off its dick and balls via door slam, its pretty gross, and a great line at a slower part of the movie with “It has been a long time since someone has been horribly killed; seems like an opportune time for someone to get offed,” when they are trying to get people to do some shit that is dangerous. Check this shit out. It’s comedy/horror gold.

DFW on Getty in the essay "David Lynch Keeps His Head." What a guy. 

Twin Peaks: The Return is still the greatest show of all time

Was on pace to watch the new season after finishing the original run and Fire Walk With Me but the female companion expressed interest so by all means. Time to restart. Sure I can wait on the new stuff. We made it through part of the second season but not far enough where she knows Leland killed Laura (shhh, don't tell her). Then the show came out and there it was clawing at me. I made it a few days. Then I was just the tipping it, “just gonna watch the intro, just gonna see that theme,” and there I am, midway through the second episode when Rachel comes home. Busted. Caught in the act. You don't miss much by not watching the other stuff, I lied, you'll get the gist. Evil, I know. This might be the most selfish thing I have ever done. I can't fucking control it any longer. I binged the fuck out of that shit.

If you don't watch the show and haven't seen these episodes, then the rest of this probably isn't worth your time. This is basically a stream of consciousness rant about stuff I took notes on assembled in something of a readable form. That is my disclaimer.

To begin, I've loved every second of this. Other TV shows are now unwatchable. American Gods is such shit compared to something 26 years in the making made by a fucking master. This is someone's purest vision here. It is intensely beautiful and well done. For all this time we've had what we've had and the project was “dead as a doornail.” Now it is fucking back and we are getting new shit. It's fucking insane. Don't complain about this shit. Stuff like this doesn't come back a generation later. Kick back and savor that shit. Wheels up.

We get a lot of the esoteric stuff from the last season magnified ten fold. Coop is in the Black Lodge sort of frozen in time at the start. Same as we left, in the red room. Music intro is the same but much more Lynchian, somehow. Cooper has been there all these years with the tall man. So far so good. Then we also get a brain tree. What? And an evil brain tree. Wah? And eyeless mutant ladies out of nowhere. And three Coopers. It's Lynch we are talking about here. Plot is not really the issue here. More like rolling themes. It's also a much bleaker show in the age of Trump. There are no heroes, nothing matters, there is no moral compass. Get by however you can. That's we're all at. Fuck.

Get a little bit of some of the older characters. Basically, we get a lot of the same faces and same places, like the briefing room. All the people have been ravaged by time but the place is more or less the same, resistant to change (we get a dumb scene later on when Lucy freaks out over cellular phone technology). The new season starts with Dr. Jacoby living the isolated, hippy, trailer, probably growing weed lifestyle. Pleasant. My favorite one of these is the exchange between Ben and Jerry Horne at the Great Northern which is exactly the same. Ben introduces Jerry to his new secretary, Ashley Judd. Ben is the same, but we get this hippy Jerry that is noice. Ben is like “what is on your mind, Jer?” His reply is amazing: “ Swimming in my mind at this time, literally, is my new hydroponic indica-sativa hybrid, a touch of the mythic AK-47 by way of the Amsterdam express. It's baked into this banana bread and infused in this potent spreadable jam that's ideal for creative sojourns of a solitary nature. Wheels up.” Wheels up, indeed.

The most moving of these are the ones with Log Lady, when James and Shelley see each other at The Roadhouse, and Bobby seeing Laura's case file. The Log Lady scenes are fucking brutal. We see her on the literal verge of death, the actor went not long after, in the latest stages of cancer. She has basically no hair and is on oxygen. Feel fucking horrible for what she is obviously going through. This is basically someone's goodbye. That was clearly the heaviest. I was not prepared to be moved like that. The scene where we see Shelly and James is sort of painful, too. James looks gaunt and broken, yet he smiles, like someone with a few years sobriety under his belt who had previously been through some shit. He looks surprisingly cool. “James is still cool,” Shelly tells us while some fucking dope band plays dreamy, lo-fi electronica in the background (the Chromatics playing “Shadow”), “he's always been cool.” And he is fucking cool. He was not cool in the show. But here he is godly. I can't say enough about this scene. The last one on the list, when Bobby, hilariously a cop, sees the picture of Laura Palmer out in the briefing room after all this time, and loses it with grief and we get the LP theme. It couldn't be cheesier. It is stunning. It's so extreme out of nowhere. He like can't speak he so overcome and we hear him in real time babble like an idiot. I throw around terms like “insane” and “bananas” around a lot. This is genuinely both of those things. Meanwhile Robert Forster, the new Sherriff Truman, is there being like “what the hell is happening here.” It's hilarious.

James is now cool

Speaking of Forster, a lot of weird shit with the new characters. I'll get to him and Michael Cera last. First, there is a woman in this hotel that talks to police that I feel like I talk to every day. Painfully stupid and self-involved. I shan't waste time on her. But she leads us to Mathew Lillard's storyline. He is accused of murdering a librarian he is having an affair with. There is maybe a demon possessing him. There is so much going on here it is best not even to get into it. I think the place is the most important thing here, though. DoppleCooper, the evil one, also ends up in the area. Everything about him is disturbing. The gist of this I think is we are supposed to sort of see that shit is converging in this area of South Dakota. Like Twin Peaks was, maybe.

Back to Forster and Cera. First off, Cera's baby chin is always freaky. Also of note here is Cera's parents, Lucy and Andy from the sheriff's department. These two. Andy doubles down on idiocy. It rubs off on Lucy as she can't grasp the concept of cellular telephones. Seeing someone walking around she was just on the phone with almost kills her. As the receptionist that answers the phones, she only exists in a POTS line world. Anyway, what unfolds when Cera shows up is absurd. I couldn't stop laughing. Throughout his scene he impersonates Marlon Brando, his character's name is Wally Brando and is dressed like Marlon in The Wild Ones, in the way he is collectively seen. This is done for god knows what purpose but is nonetheless amazing. It just kept going on and Forster is so straight and sincerer, standing there like, “what the hell is happening?” When Cera refers to his folks, as “these fine people, my parents, who I love so dearly,” I totally lost my shit. After a long pause, he announces, in dramatic form that his parents can use his childhood bedroom as their study and drones on like “I think about Lewis and his friend Clark the first caucasians to set foot in this part of the world,” and I lost it again. Forster is like, “great to see you again, kid, okay, then,” and says something about letting the road guide him or some such nonsense cliche. “Such a lovely turn of phrase. My dharma is the road. Your dharma,” and then gestures that it is Twin Peaks or the universe or whatever. Forster has clearly had enough of that.

My favorite of the episodes so far is the fourth. Rachel called this episode a disaster, so keep that in mind. “It's all over the place,” she said. “So many things.”

Somewhere between rage and delirium 

Either way though we agreed that the scene with Cera was insane and that the stuff with Agent Cooper, who looks just like James Comes, is fucking hilarious. Basically he has returned and is inhabiting someone who looks just like him's life. He is more or less a baby that cannot take care of himself. In the previous episode we see the guy Cooper turns into with a prostitute (much has been made that this is the first black person in any Lynch program which I shan't get into). She ends up dropping him off with $5 at a casino where he goes on to win 30 jackpots on the slot machines, freaking everyone out in the process. He was gone for days apparently and when he returns home, wife Naomi Watts is insane with rage. That is until she finds out he has like 100s of thousands of dollars now that they can pay the mob back with or whatever. Keep in mind Cooper basically says nothing while Naomi Watts goes through every conceivable emotion in less than a minute like an insane person.

This keeps happening, people just talking at him and not noticing how weird he's being. I can relate. There is this pretty powerful scene though when in the morning, while Dave Brubeck builds in the background, that Coop sees coffee for the first time and it suddenly feels like he is going to snap back or something. He grabs the cup like a maniac, drinks it, burns himself, and spits it out. Naomi Watts is like, “Dougie?!? What the hell.” And Cooper say, “Hi.” Uhhhh.

These are my thoughts so far but they are far from complete or comprehensive. Also, I imagine we have no idea what is coming down the line. Cole and Albert say the Cooper situation is a “blue rose.” A sure sign something surreal is on the way. Until next time. 

Twin Peaks is the greatest show of all time

Been watching a lot of teevee shows on the electric internet machines lately so haven't been as good about the near nightly movies. But TV is a nice way to pass the time as well.

Prepping for the upcoming season of Twin Peaks on Showtime, I’ve been revisiting the show and prequel. Twin Peaks, universally considered god tier, for at least the first season, has been the female companion and I's recent haunt in preparation for the new season. I don't think she likes David Lynch though she does say Lynchian every once in a while. She is sort of into the first season but I fear she lacks the patience to survive the second season. We'll see how that goes before I introduce her to Fire Walk With Me or the upcoming season. 

Myself, I guess I am a Lynch fan, this show being my introduction into his world as a child. By this I mean I watched one or two episode when it originally ran with my grandmother. I was eightish and was in no way sheltered from any form of entertainment, I watched Deliverance with her around that time as well, and I dug what I saw. But as a little athlete with games that went way too late back then, I was usually way for the original airings. She would tape then for me but eventually she missed one and I didn't catch up for a decade and then only the first season. When I bought the DVDs to the first season in 2001, I thought for sure it wouldn't be long before they would release the second season. Right? Yeah, the second season didn't come out on DVD until 2007. How do you make the second season even more of letdown? Wait six years for it. Second season, while fine, wasn't the magical first season and I lost patience with at some point. But oh that first season. Much like Lost, that first season was the bees knees. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Twin Peaks plays with TV conventions to deliver a beguiling -- and unsettling -- blend of seemingly disparate genres, adding up to an offbeat drama with a distinctly unique appeal.

Random thoughts as they come to me on Season 1: Meet most of the 40 something characters that inhabit this world in the double-length pilot. They are all up in arms about the murder of world’s most popular high school senior, Laura Palmer. Starts out like a normal show. Dead girl. Cops show up. Procedural. Inform her parents. So far so good. Then like 40 minutes in the FBI gets called in and things get weird. Something I believe is true but am not sure on is the status of the “twin peaks” that the town is named for as they are never shown. 

Of all the characters, Bobby Briggs, Laura’s dude at the time of her death, is easily my favorite. This dude is a maniac. While in jail for a bar fight, his rival who was seeing Laura secretly, one James Hurley, gets brought in for some shit as well. Bobby and his buddy just sit there and bark at him like fucking wilderpeople. It is alpha as fuck and totally not something a sane person would do. It sort of feels like his thing too as his buddy joins in like they do this sort of thing all the time. 

Most of these people are terrible

Other characters I really enjoy include Dr. Jacoby, Laura’s shrink, Ben and Jerry Horne, Shelly Johnson, and Hank Jennings. Those are my top six. All except Shelly are outrageously eccentric. Jacoby is a total quack who wears prescription 3D glass, salmon ties (like a tie that has one long fish printed on it), and pulls golf balls out of his mouth when he is board; the Horne’s appear as normalish business men but have insatiable appetites that they in no way can control when they get together, and Hank is a recent parolee who sucks on a domino piece and beats the shit out of the most repulsive character on the show, Leo Johnson, Shelly’s husband, for not kicking drug money his way while he was in prison. They were partners you see. Shelly is just the most interesting chick on the show. 

Audrey, being weird

Wah

Now for those I hate. What strikes me is how many characters I can’t stand… And still like the show. I once ranted about Kate Austen in Lost and I still liked that show, but it is rare I dislike main characters like this and still find a way to be into the show.  Characters I loathe: Audrey Horne who Ms. Slutty McSlutterson, Donna Heyward (Laura’s BFF played by Lara Flynn Boyle), Big Ed and Nadine Hurley who are just fucking terrible, and James. Audrey, Ben’s daughter, has this whole thing with FBI Agent Dale Cooper who is sort of the main character played by Lynch regular Kyle MacLachlan. The first time we see her she sort of gets stoked when she hears about Laura’s death in homeroom, she works her way up to hooker from perfume girl in her old man’s business organization, and fucks up a deal pops had going by telling the investors about Laura’s murder. She does this just to be a bitch. Donna is just irritating. Big Ed is a fucking dipshit. Nadine, who wears an eyepatch and is completely unhinged in a noninteresting way, is hard to fucking watch. And James is the fucking worst. He is supposed to be a heart throb or something but just comes off as milk toast. He is like Ross on Friends in high school with a leather jacket. He is also a piece of shit. Example, towards the end of the season Donna, James, and Laura’s identical cousin mind fuck the shit out of Dr. Jacoby. They dress the cousin up as the dead girl and call the eccentric doctor, show him a video of her as Laura, so forth, all to make him think she is still alive to get him out of his office. A fucked up thing to do to someone. 

Some other random stuff stood out this go around. One thing was when Ben tells Jerry about Laura's death. Laura was their lawyer’s daughter. They obviously are all friends. Jerry is all like, “I’m depressed.” So now Ben suggests they go to One-Eyed Jack’s which I believe Ben owns. It comes out later that Laura was a sex worker there and that Ben basically does all the new girls adding another layer of fucked to the whole situation. Another thing, Deputy Andy would be so fucking fired. This bumbling idiot goes on a kicking-down-the-door type of operation and when they are just about to burst in, he drops his gun and it discharges. One of Twin Peaks’ finest, that one. Also, the same 20 people are at every fucking event in this goddamned town. Laura’s funeral, yeah, of course The Log Lady would be there. Ben Horne courting the Swedes for some dubious business deal? Sure, get Major Briggs up here. So forth. 

Something else I fucking can’t get over is how Laura managed the shit out of her time her last night. A quick timeline of her last day included going to school, writing a diary entry where she said she was going to die (what a drama queen), tutored Josie Packard in English and commented that she understood how she felt about her husband's death which no, ate dinner with her parents and complained about her mother’s asparagus, went to Bobby’s and did cocaine, went back home and did more cocaine, went out with James-meeting him on foot, went on a motorcycle ride with James which ended with her hopping off and running into the woods, met Jacques, Leo, and Ronette at a cabin where the trio partied like insane people, she also slipped in sex with three different dudes in that time, and then she was murdered. That’s one hell of a productive day. 

Finally, for all of Cooper’s irritating shit, there are two things that I live by that he gave. One was the phrase “when two separate events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry we must always pay strict attention.” I don’t believe in anything, not really, but I do listen when the universe is trying to tell me shit. The other thing is treat yo self. Give yourself a treat every day. A little gift to savor on the daily. Been doing this for the last decade and it’s worked out pretty, pretty, pretty good. In that moment I stop time and pay strict attention to what I am doing and fucking enjoy it. It is indeed pleasant.