wild palms: classic or dud?

only N. wanted chevy.

lorenzo music RIP.

BACK TO THE PALMS.

yes, he did, thank you.

kim cattrall: this is william gibson
james belushi: something about neuromancer
william gibson: mumble

rhinoceroses. tattoos. the fathers. the friends. scientology-like religion 'new reality' or something. people get beat-up a lot.

lillith from cheers and frasier is in it, too, as the star of the virtual sitcom-cum-soap opera 'church windows' which is beamed into livingrooms in three dimensions.

Now THAT'S a Garfield movie.

"I *hate* Mondays."

*squelch*

"Better."

*Nermal stumbles off blindly...*

And from
http://www.skierpage.com/gibson/biblio.htm

Paige: This is William Gibson, Harry.
Harry: Oh, yeah ... "Neuromancer", right?
Paige: He invented the word "cyberspace".
Gibson: And they'll never let me forget it.

totally underrated faulkner book.

-- gygax! (gygax!)

haha, in fact, I was thinking about this miniseries as a result of reading this faulkner book at the moment. I remember a horse and a swimming pool or something, and that is all.

Rhino, actually. And I was thinking of this thing recently myself! WTF

was this miniseries any good at all? i have a sneaking suspicion it wasn't. that was an exiting time for TV though, even though Twin Peaks had tanked, they were willing to take risks on some things...this, vr5 a few years later, nowhere man, etc. of course only the x-files and northern exposure took hold and stayed on the air for longer than half a season

i remember catching a couple of episodes of this as a sci-fi loving 12 year old, but mostly missing it 'cause i had no tv in my room and my parents weren't going to be watching any "weirdo rubbish".

oh well.

super-awesome

was this miniseries any good at all? i have a sneaking suspicion it wasn't

I watched it all (god help me) and I remember it being clunky at best. In no rush to go back and reconfirm. William Gibson's cameo was kinda funny, though. Total bullshit ending IIRC that Philip K. Dick would have handled with aplomb, but not these guys.

i remember seeing some sweaty old man getting a virtual lapdance from a holographic stripper, and that it was set in 2007.

very interesting idea: a film noir that mostly takes place under intense, blazing shadowless LA midday light.

it's not clunky, ned, it's a miniseries. when was the last time you saw a well-paced miniseries?

And I was thinking of this thing recently myself! WTF

I was, too, but that's because it was the answer (question) on a Jeopardy! rerun.

x-post -- Ha, true.

my favorite shows are frontline and CSPAN, though, so i prob have a high tolerance for bad pacing?

i want to mount a stout defense of this show - which is in my all-time top 5 TV things, up there w/ twin peaks, perry mason, the outer limits and star trek -- but i'm not sure how to go about it.

Hey, give it a whirl -- the 'noir in bright light' approach seems a good way to start.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KQq3CDwLKPM

william gibson's cameo:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2J1taQAsHJg

i sort of want to see this now...

netflix'd this -- it was the boyfriend's choice.

this is really pretty awful, in most respects.

i remember this when it was on mtv (right?)

it was really really bad.

*is paralyzed with fear by a vision of a rhinoceros in the swimming pool*

bebe neuwirth is really the only thing i can stomach in this show.

it really sucks because he said he wouldn't watch _the singing detective_ with me unless i watched _wild palms_ with him. that has to be one of the most unfair and lopsided agreements i've ever made.

Third time watching this. Whole bunch of things I like about it.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/5e5da88cd7c8040ffa6b7fc6f5385ce6/tumblr_mf36unSpv41ru7ae1o1_500.gif

I don't think this will be forgotten--I think it's time hasn't come yet.

Definitely some cheesiness, and there's no doubt--a large part of why its reception was mixed, I believe--it was an attempt to out-Lynch Twin Peaks. Something like Robert Morse's casting is very Twin Peaks; as different as Wild Palms is in broad outline, you can feel television executives greedy for their own Twin Peaks lurking in the background.

But so much going on. Angie Dickinson makes an excellent Angela Lansbury, and Robert Loggia has a field day. In terms of all the technological mumbo-jumbo, it's probably more timely today than in '93. (But it also perfectly captures the crack scourge of its day.) The musical cues are fantastic: "Love Child," "No Expectations" (and "Gimme Shelter"--sorry, Marty, you don't own it), "House of the Rising Sun," "Wedding Bell Blues," Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford's "I Need Your Loving." I would think the Tommy-Tully relationship was unusually up-front for network TV in 1993. Everything peaks two-thirds of the way through with Belushi's Mimezine-induced kitchen-hallucination, and the final episode is the weakest. But I really recommend it. You can get pretty cheap used DVDs online.

Something else I thought about: Kreutzer was slated to run for president in 2008. I can think of at least one person on here who would have preferred him.

Scott Woods and I did a Zoomcast on Wild Palms last week--mostly, but not just, about the music.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh_FrtqyPzw

I remember reading about this at the time it was aired but I never got around to seeing it. I watched all 5 episodes of this over the last 2 days. They are all on YouTube. It's a mess but I really enjoyed this. It has a PKD writes Melrose Place vibe about it. The network obviously wanted a Twin Peaks-y proto-prestige event tv show. Quite different from Twin Peaks though apart from the opening credits, Sakamoto soundtrack (not his best work tbh) and the wacky dream sequences.

Maybe a bit of retromania vibe with the characters wearing Edwardian suits, driving 50s cars and 60s boomer soundtrack. The soundtrack has more to do with Wagner's tastes rather than anything else, I'm sure. It does overload itself with themes (evil power of tech, darkness behing the American Dream, Scientology...) and it gets quite convoluted. 18 year old Richard Kelly was definitely watching this as it's a big influence on Southland Tales.

Jim Belushi is/was a terrible actor though.

I don't think this will be forgotten--I think it's time hasn't come yet.

Timely observation here — Wagner’s re-adaptation with Cronenberg debuted at Cannes the day after this post.

It’s a shame that the original illustrated, serialized version of the story from DETAILS magazine never got released in North America. I still have a German translation of it

The miniseries is brilliant. Phenomenal work from Bigelow, Keith Gordon, and Phil Joanou. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score is gorgeous.

Well, I mean, it did get released, just via the magazine!