Vee

Soooo, I guess I will be the first to say I really liked tonight's show. It was a bit of a cooldown, but it played the beats it deeply needed to with both Maggie and Sasha, who are two of my favorite characters and got a good spotlight. That ending scene with the sunrise was beautiful, and perfectly done by Lauren Cohan and Sonequa Martin-Green (who, it must be said, have real chemistry - feel free to explore the Glenn/Maggie/Sasha triangle in Season 6!). The big family stand against the barn doors was also very well-done. It doesn't matter if it's an old narrative stand-by if it's well-done. Also some very good work by Norman Reedus, as always. He gets taken for granted because he is one of the show's most popular characters, but there happens to be a reason for that; he's very good, and the character is not a cliche. His pain is as valid as the girls' and it played well. I also appreciated Rick's anecdote, and Michonne and Daryl both pushing back against the old Kirkman "we are the walking dead" line, which is a little tired. I think they did all this to build hope for the second half of the season, and I think it's coming through clearly now, through Michonne and Daryl and others, who are pitched as the voice of truth. That means even more coming from Daryl, considering he could easily be a character Kirkman could have pinned his teenage nihilism on, but the showrunners have never allowed that. I could let Eugene, Abraham, whatsername with the cap and several others die, but I am glad Seth Gilliam's character is getting some development. Maggie is clearly not totally not done with her faith, and he is adjusting to the world. I think that's interesting to see and I think there is a place for a more evolver, stronger Gabriel as a man of God.

I don't know why some sort of burlesque performer is having dinner with them, but this TP reunion is pretty cute. Amick, Lee and James Marshall.

Robert Gorrie (Matthew, OLTL 2.0) is on Gotham next week, as the future father of Dick Grayson (Robin). As the Flying Graysons were a family of circus acrobats, Gorrie is decked out just the way I like him - in tight spandex and wearing as little as possible. It looks terrible but I may actually have to watch this.

It's time to bring this back - Troy and Lindsay doin' it during the Storm of Change, February 2003. Malone and Griffith's first full week back, a week or two before things really began to go off the rails. This marked the end of Gary Tomlin's dreadful Troy and Nora pairing, which he had believed would be audience wish fulfillment for the fans of a real pairing of Ty Treadway and Hillary Smith - in the end, no one bought Troy as being any less crazy than twin brother Colin, and Ty had proven to have much more chemistry with Cat Hickland, which led to Troy falling into a twisted, hateful and very hot affair with nemesis Lindsay, which culminated with this. "Take what you came for!" Then Nora walks in on a scene which you probably couldn't show on daytime today, done entirely with some deft editing. The show became very atmospheric and dark very, very quickly around this period, with Frank Valentini taking over as EP and experimenting (very effectively, at the time) with lighting and music. Valentini and Griffith were both into using real, edgy music on the show, and back then they could still afford to use stuff like Tori Amos and Elvis Costello, which plays in the first clip. Raw, visceral, contemporary and morally complicated, the show finally resembled the show I'd started watching as a kid - for a few weeks, and then things got very schizoid and ridiculous for the next two years before descending into sheer hell with Dena Higley.

Don't call it a comeback!

In spinoff news, Jemma Redgrave's Kate Stewart, daughter of the Brigadier, has just been given a Big Finish audio drama series. Rumors abound that the planet of Peladon as well as the Ice Warriors may or may not be featured in Series 9 this year, which I believe is already shooting. Alex Kingston also dropped a comment at a recent American convention that suggested she may be making an appearance as River Song - something about the size of her trailer despite DW supposedly now having a bigger budget - but she may have just been making a joke.

George R.R. Martin's original pitch for A Song of Ice & Fire - over 20 years old - has leaked from the Twitter account of British bookseller Waterstones. Potential long-term SPOILERS abound, but it must be said that it is very old and quite different from the existing product already. For one thing, in this outline, there's no Red or Purple Weddings, Catelyn, Bran and Arya go to the North to fight White Walkers (where Catelyn perishes), Drogo and Daenerys never fall in love and his lies spur her to murder him, Sansa marries Joffrey and regrets it, and Joffrey dies at Tyrion's hands after being maimed in battle with Robb Stark. There's also a big Jon/Arya/Tyrion love triangle which I somehow doubt will emerge anytime soon.

I just don't think Viki should end up alone. I cry when she cries and I like her happy, and I think with JVD's more grey Clint they had both chemistry and plenty of potential for organic drama and ups and downs, which we saw on PP. She was able to be independent and have her own story and force while also having a man, and they were fighting it out over [!@#$%^&*] they frankly should have fought it out over before the show went off ABC, and it was the logical follow-up in their relationship IMO. The whole paper/pride/Lord legacy conflict, and all its throughlines of the professional and the personal and their fundamental differences of opinion on the work and the paper were good story, and they pulled too many punches with it early on by letting it fizzle out with Clint saving her ass. But fortunately it didn't end there. It was also partly due to the machinations of a conspiracy, and it was clear Clint and Viki could and would work through it. I just wish we'd gotten to see that.

I think we were supposed to cry for Nora there, really - I felt the poor Fords stuff came a little earlier, though they remained unbearable to the end of the show. And I don't think we were expected to forgive Clint until well after Gigi's death. As contrived as I found that whole conflict with his heart transplant and as wretched as I found most of the entire show during the spring of 2011, I felt they played both ends of that family divide - Clint's longtime loved ones feeling for him (with exceptions; I think Bo and Nora were pretty conflicted), and other people still having a right to be disgusted with him, including the annoying Rex. I think that's the difference between that storyline and, say, what's going on with Sonny on GH right now, where we are mostly expected to immediately forgive him and Michael is portrayed as unreasonable. Good for little Patrick! It's a shame he couldn't grow up in the role.

I think what Clint did to Nora was awful, but I also was secure with the fact that he never intended for things to go that far, that Eddie was a loose cannon. It helped that Clint's regret is something we saw happen in what was relatively the immediate moment, not as a belated retcon months or years after the fact when Ron tried to cover his own ass, as he did with Franco, Sonny, etc. I thought the darkening of Clint over several years was a slow burn and a great reconception of the character, because it was rooted in his history and his family, and there was something Shakespearean to the runaway son being forced to become his father to save their empire. And I think that what came later, with Clint striking back against Bo and Nora, was great drama, and I enjoyed a lot of it. I thought the climax of it - which I think was in January 2011, with these two aged brothers facing down in the Buchanan stables - was amazing stuff, what soaps do best with longtime characters and conflicts. No other show on the air at that time (or now, really - GH has sequestered most of its older non-Sonny/Luke vets in recurring holding pens) was secure enough in itself and its history to let that kind of drama play with two long-standing characters of a certain age. But I think where they fucked up was with the Nora thing. I think that putting Clint in a position to be partially, if unintentionally, responsible for Nora nearly being violated was the beginning of Ron's meta-epidemic as a writer, of pushing the envelope every time and then never pulling all the way back out. The way he destroyed Todd/Victor with the rapemance was one thing, but with what he did to Clint it began making its own way into all kinds of characters, leading us to what he later did with others on OLTL and GH. That being said, I think they pulled Clint out of it, just barely. Most RC antiheroes since have not been so lucky, speaking for the ones we ever liked at all.

I thought ES and Jerry verDorn had wonderful chemistry together and I was fine with Viki and Clint's reunion at the end of the network show, though I found it somewhat rushed. (Honestly though, they'd been doing a lot of careful groundwork for it for the better part of a year and compared to some post-cancellation reunions for other soap couples Viki and Clint had it pretty damn good.) I always wanted them tried more with other people, though, so I was fine with the PP show breaking them up for a while, though with the conspiracy angle and Clint being drugged it was clear they would find their way back together. Which was fine, because they absolutely crackled onscreen in that drama. He wasn't defanged or just a stalwart, and she wasn't just folding clothes and chiding him.

I would've found Cord and Luna so boring, honestly - two sweet hicks together. I think they did Max and Luna the best they could, and I think they did the only thing they could do with her exit, which was kill her off. I adored them.

I actually loved all those couples, Max and Maggie included. The problem is they spent the next year or so after Malone was fired (and a little longer after that) running on fumes from his supercouples, and there wasn't much good story. The show sort of was just chilling out for a long stretch. It took the big TV Guide interviews on Bo and Nora's sex scandal story with Georgie to get me to pay attention again - something was actually happening.

Man, when I loved The City I loved it.

I just loved them.

Wow! Wrong thread!

Mädchen Amick continues [!@#$%^&*] with us on social media while cozying up to Dana Ashbrook. I have no idea how to link FB posts or images on here, so I will just do this the best I can. The cast appears to be gathering or has gathered, for whatever reason. With Sheryl Lee and Lenny Von Dohlen (Harold Smith). Oh, and I guess that's Kimmy Robertson at the end of the table. With Sheryl and Kimmy Robertson again.

Culliton took over in Oct-Nov '96. I believe Miranda was all him.

AFAIK there is no beef between Kyle MacLachlan and Sherilyn Fenn. It was about Lara Flynn Boyle. I personally don't think there is a real need to go there twenty-five years later, but I do think they sank a lot of time and good writing into the setup, especially for the first half of Season 2, and it was painful to see it go away. If Fenn is available and able, I wouldn't object to a love connection between the characters, but I don't think it has to be there; I think it had a prime moment in the original series, and I think after so long its time may have passed. But maybe not. The trick would be making it relevant to what's happening here and now, and what's at the heart of the show. I remember there was a random rumor, several years ago, claiming that Lynch would set a revival in some sort of parallel or alternate universe, where Laura Palmer was alive and well and still living in Twin Peaks, in order to keep using Sheryl Lee and co. I discounted it, but there has been a lot more talk recently among fans on other boards about Lynch's sort of interest in quantum physics, alternate worlds or dimensions - the revelations by his FWWM co-writer and show staff writer Robert Engels, that Lynch was particularly fascinated by the Lodge spirits having come from 'another place' (dimension, etc.) full of 'garmonbozia,' or with the idea of the doppelgangers running parallel or behind us in time and space. And I was reminded by someone that he has played with those ideas in films like Lost Highway, Inland Empire, etc. since - people being in two places at once in time and space, like Cooper watching himself on the surveillance camera in FWWM. So something like that with Laura would not surprise me.

Oh, I understand. But I think the market for that would be basically nil, sadly. Even if you somehow got the rights to put it on a disc with his one other somewhat well-known film, though, that's still super-super-niche. What I hope for is that it eventually ends up streaming on that Archive.org site or whatever it is, in the public domain someday. Or someone could leak it to YT.

I do love Empire and it's an idea, I suppose, but it bears little to no resemblance, and I mean, it's barely releaseable, frankly - it's very, very, very roughly made. We're talking home video recording or something. I think the only way that could happen is if someone packaged it as an extra on a future release of Gunn's great Ganja & Hess, but that already has a nice Blu-Ray. And who knows what the rights issues are like.

If I can I will do that. I also wish everyone could see the Personal Problems footage I saw a few years back, but after seeing, say, AMC 2.0, with its renewed focus on the Hubbards and social issues, that feels like less of an elegy for good soap potential lost. It got realized again.

Incidentally, your linked article mentions another Bill Gunn retrospective, featuring his extremely rough, guerilla-esque PBS soap, Personal Problems. I saw a very rare screening of that several years ago and wrote about it here, I remember us talking about it. I may have to go see it again - maybe they're showing more, who knows (nevermind, the Lincoln Center link says they're only showing 75 minutes' worth; at BAM Cinematek, they showed almost three hours). The cast and crew will be there, so I may check it out. You have also convinced me to hit Losing Ground, and I hate going all the way up to Lincoln Center.

I think the Touch of Evil restoration is a masterpiece. Seeing that on the big screen was one of the very first films I saw in school. He had many unfinished films - one was a film called The Deep, sort of an old take on the same source material that later became the film Dead Calm in the early '90s with Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane, a three-person thriller on a boat at sea. His version starred Laurence Harvey and Jeanne Moreau. They couldn't finish some key FX scenes in the climax - Welles was always out of money - so it languishes forever, sadly. Wind, hopefully, will finally have a happier ending. Supposedly all that was left to shoot was a car crash or something. Sadly I don't think we will ever find the rest of his footage for The Magnificent Ambersons, which was taken away from him by the studio and recut by Robert Wise, his editor. The film as is is still incredible, but it is truncated. His version of Othello, which ran in town last week, also took years to film piecemeal, around the world, with various money-saving maneuvers. His Macbeth was filmed on the backlots and leftover sets from various Republic pictures; at one point he supposedly stole props and wardrobe from pictures he'd acted in to use in these productions. Both are excellent.

According to a colleague of mine, the release of Orson Welles's final film, The Other Side of the Wind, may finally be happening after years of researching Welles's notes, legal wrangling and BTS strife. At last check, the film is still slated to be aired on Showtime when and if it is assembled from its raw footage and completed. Here's a recent article (10/14) about the completion process. It has been a very long time getting here. This assembly plan is not dissimilar from how Welles's friends and colleagues, including longtime confidante Peter Bogdanovich, re-assembled his masterpiece Touch of Evil from Welles's own editing notes in the late '90s. Beatrice Welles, Welles's notoriously litigious daughter from his marriage to Paola Mori, seems to have finally agreed to not challenge the film's future development. Hopefully this will finally work out. (She is also doing a Q&A this weekend for a screening in New York of Welles's rare and beloved Shakespeare pastiche, Chimes at Midnight with Jeanne Moreau, so that is sure to be an interesting room.)