The Fandom Vs. George Lucas

There's no other way to get a wedge into this than to just straight up start. God help me, I'm going to talk about Star Wars on the Internet. As of late, such things have become kind of a festering cesspool. I'm aware of that, but this is yet another attempt at an exorcism. I've been doing very good at un-fucking my personal headspace in 2023, thanks in part to how engaging with David Lynch and Criterion movies has kind of rewired me, but this is some shit that's been stuck swirling around in here for like a month. You see, I'm not going to complain so much about the films as I am their fandom. It's a specific part of their fandom, as even I'm smart enough to draw the line at pre-Disney. Just as well, anyway, because at the forefront of the discussion is the man who sold the films to Disney. I need to get out my thoughts on the legacy of George Lucas, interrogate a little the specific ways the bigger Star Wars fandom has reacted to it, and try to hypothesize why they react the way they do.

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: February 2023 Trip Report

(TW: animal abuse, discussions of bigotry)

Welcome back to this thing! There's always a gap between when I write these and when you read them, but for this particular project it's bigger than usual. Whereas you get to see it at the end of the month, I'm here in the first week of February and I've only seen one of the films you're going to read about. It's a doozy, though, and I have some other thematic interesting films planned given the month, trying to match the general tone and ethos that is February. Before all of that, though, the continuation of the journey. When we ended January, we intersected with my journey into the ethereal realms of David Lynch with Eraserhead. We open February by continuing to do that, with...

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 3) [Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces]

(In addition to the content warning which you should heed below, I'm also going to add a spoiler warning: This post will reveal who killed Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. If these writeups have made you curious about the show and you don't know who did it, I urge you to check out the show and see the mystery unfold for yourself. I have to talk about it to express the way this film made me feel, so I cannot be vague about it. Please understand, and tread carefully.)

(CW: parental abuse)

I've put this off for long enough, but when you understand what we're dealing with here I don't think you'll blame me. The last time we were here, we skirted around a secret shame, peeking into a girl's diary and finding only darkness and despair within. Despite that, though, there remained a disconnect. It was a disconnect that I myself created to try and shield myself from the alternative, which was too horrible to contemplate. A shield can only last so long, though, and its defense finally shattered. That last dark arrow which tore through me, which left me harrowed and haunted, staring in stunned silence as a swirling storm of inevitability crashed forth upon me? It was called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. A film which I tried to tape when I first encountered the diary, but bounced off of back then. I was older and wiser now, and in the right headspace to watch the movie. As shameful as it was to look upon the Secret Diary, there is one positive. It did give me insight into Laura Palmer, and more importantly extra empathy for her plight and tragedy... and that's what this film is all about.

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: January 2023 Trip Report

Welcome, friend! This space... well, this space is something special. If you've followed the growth and evolution of my internal landscape over the last year or two, you may have noticed a certain disillusionment with genre fiction over that time. I had certain frustrations which reached a boiling point and frothed out of me like a venomous poison, venting and ranting and spewing. The toxic exorcism had one point: Genre fiction, for me, had become less about reflecting the issues of the real world and more about referencing its own self. I attempted to get that shit out of my veins immediately, and placate myself with something different. Something real, but also something with a hint of genre fiction to wean myself away a bit after that excremental exorcism.

The result was A Quantum Microcosm, Adrift On The Sea Of History. I watched the show Quantum Leap, talked about its highs and lows, and fell in love with it for being raw and real in a way I was missing. That's where we are today in the good old internal landscape, as I write this on January the 9th of 2023. Let me tell you, in brief, about the journey a friend of mine took. My friend Joe had and has a similar disillusionment with genre fiction, and his flavor is of the superhero blockbuster variety. The MCU wore this man's patience down like an eroding sandstorm, and like me Joe wanted escape to something raw and real. Joe found it by becoming a classic movie buff, escaping the orbit of nerdy interest fiction and setting sail on a cosmic journey of new experiences that really did reflect the real world.

Why do I tell you this? Because Joe has seen and heard my similar frustrations, and for the holiday season of 2022 gifted me with a lifeline. Thanks to Joe, I now have a year's worth of access to the Criterion Channel, a streaming service repository of classic films, offbeat arthouse pictures, and lots of other strange and wonderful things. The keys to my own rocket to escape genre fiction are here, and I'm ready to blast off... but where do I begin? Helpfully, there's a guide of sorts to that. I present to you the Criterion Challenge, 2023 edition. Here we have 52 distinct categories and lists of eclectic diversity, and the viewer is encouraged to build their own year-long Criterion film marathon from them. 

I did just that, and I built my stepping stone path out into the mad wilds of Criterion, where I hope to broaden my media viewing horizons. It's a journey that I think I'd like to share with you, and so I'll attempt to write a little about each film I encounter. At the end of every month, I'll post my handful of capsule reviews, and at the end of the year we'll see what we have. This is a leisurely space for you to check into once a month, and maybe find some films and experiences outside of your wheelhouse. It's what I'm doing, and I invite you to come along for the ride. Being that I'm posting this at the end of January, if all goes well, you may have to speed through the first five or so films to get to the leisurely pace. It's okay, as long as you're having fun. Well, then. What did I watch in January? Let's start this madcap journey.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 2) [The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer]

"The girl who received this diary on her twelfth birthday has been dead for years, and I who took her place have done nothing but make a mockery of the dreams she once had."

Like the people of Twin Peaks reacting in shock and horror at her sudden and untimely death, I thought I knew Laura Palmer. What I knew was a half-remembered dream, an ethereal echo of happening upon a book long long ago and reading through it. A nightmare in prose form, a horror story of a girl descending into darkness and eventually being killed by it. Years later, I saw how the town she lived in reacted to that loss and the secrets which came to light about her. Then, at the halfway point of that show, we learned who killed her. The network practically strong armed the creators of the show to solve the mystery, and they did. What the show became after that is sort of a mess, and the fact that it both righted itself near the end is a small miracle. It even managed to full circle itself back to the story of Laura Palmer, in an esoteric way. Still, the need to answer the question, to reduce the feeling and emotion of the loss of Laura Palmer into something to be solved, revealed, put back onto the fucking shelf as a closed case... it hurt the show. I could summarize what the show decayed into, but I'll just point you to this Tumblr post.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 1) [Twin Peaks 1990]

This is not a place you were supposed to find yourself in. We have had many coffee shop dates, you and I, but you must understand that I am an introvert at heart and sometimes I enjoy my solitude. I fully intended to come here on my own, drinking my coffee and eating my slice of cherry pie in the blissful loneliness that is a comfort to me. I say this not to imply that you have intruded upon that solitude. Far from it. It is the warm and kind gesture of a mentor and friend, speaking honestly and truthfully, which made me decide to invite you to join me for this particular coffee date. They happened to pass by my table as I muttered to myself, not speaking to you but to my own sense of self. In these casual whispers and mumbles they heard a spark of poetic bliss, a spark which burned like a crackling fire quite unlike any before. That spark, that praise, made me realize that I simply must invite you here. It will be a coffee date unlike any you have had before, but it is one that we will navigate together here in this strange ethereal diner of my internal landscape. Don't be scared of the flame. Place your order, take my hand, and come with me. It will not be a long journey, but I hope that I can capture that blazing flame and turn it into song. 

Fire. Walk with me.

Frezno's Games Of The 2022 Thing!

 How do I usually begin these again? I forgot. Well, we're into it now so I guess it doesn't really matter, now does it? We've both made it through another year, and as is customary I am going to talk about some computer video games I played in that year. I will say that it wasn't as many as previous years. Doing two big projects like the zombie one and the Quantum Leap one, along with real life stuff that distracted me in the fall, kept me off of the gaming a bit. It may be something I put more time into during 2023, but I have some ideas for things to watch that might be worth writing about. We'll see. That's a concern for the future, though. For now, let's talk about the year that went past... in games.