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Watchcast Schedule for June 2023: A Little Bit O' Lynch
🕑 Added 2023-06-02 15:41:41 +0000 UTCGreetings, Nextlanders! As you may have heard, we've made an adjustment to our schedule for the Watchcast for the next couple of months due to, well, me buying a house! My partner and I are on the verge of closing on a new home and moving by the end of this month, so for the last week of June and the first week of July, we're going to be pressing pause on the Watchcast while I move for the first time in like a dozen years. We had originally planned to kick off the first season of Twin Peaks this month, but now we will be starting that up the second week of July, when the Watchcast resumes.
So what are we doing for the first three weeks of June, before we take our break? More David Lynch, of course! The Early David Lynch category came within a breath of winning the patron poll last month, so we're taking a few of the movies from that category and checking those out as a lead-up to the Twin Peaks watch. Here's what we've got coming up!
Monday, June 5th: Blue Velvet (1986)
We're kicking things off with Lynch's deeply disturbing ode to film noir and psychological terror in Blue Velvet, a movie Vinny described as something he always thought was too dangerous to see when he was younger. This is one of the Lynch movies I did see when I was younger and still very much not in sync with the director and his sensibilities, but I came to appreciate for its genuinely shocking and unpredictable violence. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern are excellent as the idiot kids who Scooby-Doo their way into a truly nightmarish criminal world where Dennis Hopper's demonic Frank holds the power and repeatedly menaces a lounge singer played by Isabella Rossellini.
I don't want to say too much more beyond that as to not spoil anything for those coming to it for the first time, but I do want to give a big old content warning here. If you're sensitive to portrayals of sexual violence in film, this is one you should probably skip.
Monday, June 12th: Dune (1984)
Two of the films on this list were chosen specifically by me, but our third was voted on by our Mission Control and Mysterious Benefactor patrons, and out of the choices of Eraserhead, Dune, and The Elephant Man, 51% of the vote went to this extravagant sci-fi misfire that, despite all the many things wrong with it, I still believe constitutes one of the more fascinating works in Lynch's catalog. I say that specifically because he's more or less disowned it, and it's generally my belief that there's as much to be learned from great filmmakers' failures as there is their successes. Plus, look, while it might not be a particularly coherent adaptation of a notoriously difficult book, no other movie that tried to capitalize on the sci-fi craze of the '70s and '80s ever looked like this.
Monday, June 19th: Wild at Heart (1990)
We did it! And by we, I mean I. And by it, I mean I finally got a Nicolas Cage movie into the Watchcast schedule. It only took a year, but by gum, I done did it. I even managed to grab one that we didn't do for Film & 40s, so this one is fully new to both Brad and Vinny.
I love this ridiculous movie. It tells the story of Sailor and Lula, two crazy kids so over-the-top in love that it seems like the whole world is conspiring to break them apart. More specifically, Lula's banshee of a mother is dead set on making Sailor, well, dead. So she sends a variety of agents after them as the pair set out on the road to wherever they can be free to be as passionately, aggressively in love as they want to be.
If you're a fan of Lynchian weirdness, there's just enough of that bubbling up from time to time to keep you off balance, but the real focus here is on Cage and Dern, who are as good a romantic pairing as I've ever seen in a movie. Their chemistry together is off the charts, and no matter how crazy things get, you never stop rooting for them to make it in the end.
NOTE: As of this writing, Wild at Heart is not available for streaming or digital rental in the US, but I'm including the link in case someone comes to this episode down the road and it does happen to appear somewhere by then. As of now, there's a pretty recent blu-ray release of this from Shout Factory that should be available just about anywhere you buy movies, and I think it may be streaming in some regions outside of the US.
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And that's the schedule for June! We very much appreciate your patience as life changes get dealt with and I get my ass into an actual dang house! I hope you enjoy (or, at least, appreciate) these films and our discussions this month, and as always, thanks for watching and listening along with us. See you at the movies!
Comments
Dominique Pomeroy
I'm happy about the new house but miffed because that week would've inevitably been Mulholland...
Dr. Judge, Private Eye
I'm not sure any list that includes "Blue Velvet" can be considered a 'warmup.' Feels a bit like warming up for a marathon by running a massive sprint.
