Twin Peaks - The First Season (Special Edition)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Dense with allusions and truthfulness, 2008-02-19
David Lynch is a genius. A mini series is a very difficult genre because each episode is rather long and must end with some unsolved suspense. Moreover altogether it is many hours on one single essential piece of suspense and it runs the risk of getting boring, of slowing down and of losing interest for the audience. What's more that genre is used quite a lot on American television with the soap operas. That miniseries also runs the risk of being compared today with the film, and of course it is. The film is short, dynamic and to the point all the time, perfectly concentrating on one single line of suspense. So what can David Lynch do to rejuvenate the genre, to regenerate the rules and inspiration of that genre? He does a lot and that's where he becomes a genius. First he embeds in his own miniseries short scene of a standard soap opera as the counterpoint of his own work. Then he multiplies allusions, visual or not, text or images or music, to many other series and authors. For one example the appearing of a black raven here and there is similar to the use of that animal in some of Stephen King's films or books. But these allusions are never comical, never derogatory. They are always there to provide the film with more depth, a cultural depth that I call a cultural ellipse. Those who see the ellipse get to that depth. Those who don't see it don't miss anything in the meaning of the film itself. But the best part of this series is the way the actors are directed. The scenes are systematically banal, standard, very trite even, especially the dialogue, and these scenes and these dialogues have been used many times in many TV series or films. But the actors are directed in such a way that the satire that could appear in these scenes is totally defused because the actors play them in an absolutely serious, truthful and even sincere way. Finally the various episodes are so inventive in surprises and even shocking revelations that we are really taken along in quite a dynamic way. So that watching the series after the film is quite interesting because of all the levels the film was obliged to push aside and that are developed here in full length, particularly all the elements showing the ugliness of life in this small community torn apart by rivalries and hatreds among the people, especially those who have some responsibility as for the future of the community itself. So get to it and enjoy it, especially if you like the succulent and over-ripe style that David Lynch uses so often. br / br /Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines br /

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Great DVD but, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY THE NEW GOLD EDITION COMES OUT 10/30/07!!!, 2007-09-05
I don't care if people don't like this but, DON'T BUY THIS DVD SET!!! A BRAND NEW SET WITH BOTH SEASONS IS COMING OUT OCT 30,2007. It includes both seasons of twin peaks,the pilot episode plus an extras disk. The picture has also been redone to look much better and the sound has also been remastered. Don't take this the wrong way I'm a huge Lynch fan and I just don't want people to waste their money on this if they want the whole series. If you don't want all the episodes then by all means by this thing it's the only way you can get the first season on it's own. By the way if you want the new edition of both seasons w/ all the bells and whistles you want the "TWIN PEAKS GOLD EDITION" thats the newest edition. thanks for reading my review.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

You _can_ still get new retail copies of season 1 on dvd, 2007-04-28
1) amazon.co.uk + 30$ dvd player that will handle PAL and region 2 br /2) ... br /3) a d*mn fine cup of coffee

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Break the code, solve the crime, 2007-04-28
"Twin Peaks" was the ultimate cult TV show -- suspenseful, complex, hilariously written and with hidden layers that casual channel-flippers might not catch. br / br /And though it's only eight episodes, the first season of David Lynch and Mark Frost's "Twin Peaks" is a brilliant piece of television, with a dozen subplots all somehow linked to the mysterious death of the beautiful, troubled Laura Palmer. Brilliant writing, quirky acting, and great cherry pie are all mixed up in the darkly eerie season. br / br /For the record, it doesn't contain the pilot episode, where Laura is found "wrapped in plastic," and Special Agent Dale Cooper(Kyle McLachlan) is called in to investigate. Nope, the first season starts with the episode after that: Cooper continues to enjoy the comforts of the hotel, while continuing the investigation -- and getting some surprising results from the autopsy. br / br /What's more, the question of who killed Laura is getting more complex, due to a bloody shirt, a drug deal, a secret affair and a heart necklace. People catch glimpses of a one-armed man and a grey-haired killer -- and Cooper has a prophetic dream with both men, as well as a red room, a double of Laura Palmer, and a tiny man who dances to jazz music. br / br /While Cooper tries to sort out his evidence and dreams, he finds that Twin Peaks is not the small-town idyll he thought it was, and Laura Cooper was enmeshed in its darkness. There are secret love affairs, town crazies, drug smuggling, corporate devilry about a mill, and an evil presence that lurks in the woods nearby... br / br /"Twin Peaks" is hard to even describe, because the plots were a perfect balance of the surreal and mundane. It starts off as a basic murder mystery that allows us to the see the underbelly of rural America. But starting in the second episode, it becomes something much, much more. br / br /Lynch loads the storyline down with eerie symbolism, creepy visions and inscrutable (but important) lines ("Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see...."). But he and Frost also spun up some wonderfully quirky scenarios, such as Cooper throwing stones to determine who killed Laura, or his famous dream of a dancing midget and a strange Laura double, both talking in a weird "backwards" manner. br / br /And the dialogue has that brilliace that most series cannot keep going for long ("Fellas, don't drink that coffee! You'd never guess... there was a fish in the percolator"). Considering how strange the characters are -- including Cooper -- it's not too surprising that it's crammed with quotables ("Black as midnight on a moonless night...." "Pretty black"). br / br /And the characters are VERY strange. Cooper himself is played with quirky brilliance by McLachlan -- he's a bright, lovable, friendly kind of guy who loves Tibetan mysticism, tape recorders and a "damn fine cup of coffee." He's not your average hard-nosed FBI agent. br / br /And Cooper flanked by a number of talented actors playing two basic varieties of characters: the relatively normal ones with a slight quirk, such as abusive truckers, the sheriff, teen lovers, obnoxious FBI agents. And the REALLY strange ones, like the weird Log Lady, the one-armed man, the spacey Lolita, and the eerie spirits that haunt Twin Peaks. br / br /Quirky and surreal TV is currently in vogue, but they all stem from the little town of "Twin Peaks," and the first season is an entrancing experience.

8 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

Limited Availability, 2007-04-13
I totally agree: Things should only be available for extremely limited amounts of time, and then never available again save for at an exorbitant resale price. How else would the people who happened to be in the right place at the right time be able to gloat about their "accomplishment" in buying a thing when it was available? br / br /Hey, people should just EXPECT that things aren't going to be available for reasonable durations of time, and blow ALL THE MONEY THEY HAVE on them just to make sure they get these things before they're GONE FOREVER. br / br /Viva la glorification del consumerismo!