Apr
30
Twin Peaks: The Visual Soundtrack
Filed Under David Lynch, Laserdisc, TV Shows | Leave a Comment
| Twin Peaks: Visual Soundtrack | |
| Year | 1992 |
| Director | Unknown |
| Actors | None |
| Disc Layers | 1 |
| Source | Laserdisc |
| Image Quality | Excellent |
This Warner Brothers-licensed oddity of Twin Peaks fanaticism, released only on laserdisc in Japan, presents the Twin Peaks soundtrack album accompanied by professional-quality, shot-on-video images of various Twin Peaks locations. Japanese captions and subtitles play throughout, along with the occasional English title card.
For those familiar with Angelo Badalamenti’s incredible score to Twin Peaks, the presentation of the images perfectly suits each track. “Laura Palmer’s Theme” plays over shots of an abandoned railroad car “graveyard.” “The Bookhouse Boys” takes you on a tour of the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office. You’ll also get a glimpse of the RR Diner and its famous pies, among several other famous film spots.
Though it may test your attention span towards the end, this is an interesting piece of documentation for fans. In fact, the best way to watch it may be the imagine that the events of Twin Peaks actually happened and that you are watching a documentary film about the murder of Laura Palmer. The broken-down reality of the locations, in contrast with the romanticized beauty of the show, certainly make it feel this way.
The source for my DVD is the original laserdisc and the video quality is excellent. I wish the Japanese titles could be removed, but after a while I stopped being bothered by them. The scenery changes with each song, making what could have been the world’s most boring home video a moderately interesting look at the people and places of a real life Twin Peaks.
Apr
29
Logan’s Run: The TV Series
Filed Under Science Fiction, TV Shows, Unknown | Leave a Comment
| Logan’s Run: The TV Series | |
| Year | 1977 |
| Director | various |
| Actors | Gregory Harrison Heather Menzies Donald Moffat Randy Powell |
| Disc Layers | 1 x 3 discs |
| Source | unknown |
| Image Quality | Very Good |
Logan’s Run is one of the classics of 70s science fiction - a combination utopian/dystopian portrait of a future society in which everyone lives inside a shopping mall, travels easily from location to location via public transportation, enjoys liberated free love, and voluntarily dies at the age of 30 as part of a government-run population control. Although the original novel produced two sequels (written to take advantage of the movie’s popularity), the movie never saw a sequel - but it did produce a quality, but short-lived series of the same name.
Logan’s Run: The TV Series follows the logical continuation of the movie if Logan and Jessica had continued running rather than return to Dome City to overthrown the system. They quickly pick up a companion, an android named Rem, and the three go about encountering various unusual groups of survivors who live in the wasteland outside the city - all the while followed closely by the sandman Francis.
Like other science fiction series of the 1970s, Logan’s Run is very episodic - every story begins and end within the time frame of the episode. Their conflict with Francis runs throughout the series’ 14 episodes, but it’s usually just a background plotline or a reason to increase the danger of an episode. The stories usually strive for the psychological and sociological exploration that was done so well on Star Trek , but they fail to reach such heights.
The series is surprisingly entertaining, however, and fans of the movie and 70s sci-fi should enjoy it. Though some episodes lag during the second act, they usually pay off in the end. Gadgets, hovercrafts, and other low budget futuristic devices abound, the interactions between the characters are sometimes intentionally humorous, and flimsy temporary sets provide a sterile future without dust.
I picked up this set at a comic convention - a great place to get cruddy-looking DVDs - and was surprised to find that the video quality of this set is extremely high. I can’t imagine that an official DVD release (which doesn’t exist) would look any better. The image is sharp and the compression is done really well, especially considering that each single-layer disc contains more than 3 hours.