Wild Palms

How to describe this series? Imagine if Shakespeare was alive during the late sixties and seventies and decided to write a sci-fi epic at the height of the early nineties hype about virtual reality, and you'd only be in the same ballpark.

The story? Okay, the story revolves around an unassuming family man, Harry, who only begins to realize the strangeness that is going on around him. A secret police force are kidnapping people. His daughter refuses to speak. His son is developing some violent behavior. His wife is withdrawing into a bottle. And a strange woman from his past is offering him a glimpse at a world he could only imagine before.

Combining elements of Japanese and Eastern myths, Phillip K. Dick's quest for reality, Twin Peak's surreality, a grand opera's sweep, and science fiction's imagination, Wild Palms sets up the dominos of a world that could be and then lets them fall.

Harry is drawn into the New Age cult of a powerful senator who is about to transform the world by introducing a new form of media - one that is so close to being real that it's often hard to tell the difference. If you had the choice of this world, or a world of your own creation, which would you choose? But what if that world was being controlled by someone with their own agenda? And as the world starts to deal with those questions, a group of libertarian `Friends' attempt to stop the senator any way they can. Two powerful houses will fight until there is only one remaining.

This is not a series for everyone. It isn't sci-fi in the genre of Star Trek like most television fans are used to. It's also told in the fashion of an opera, with high melodrama and amazing leaps of logic. And lest you think that it is heavy, it also has some great patches of absurdity. But it is thought provoking, and has something to say about technology, religion, power, politics, drug use, and a range of other topics. And it says it in a way that doesn't speak down or make the audience feel they are being unduly manipulated. It is fine television for a very small audience.

I loved Twin Peaks and have watched the whole thing a few times, but it seems to lose something each time. I will always argue that TP was important and revelatory when it first aired, but memory amplifies its merits. I find the first three or four episodes are the best, followed by a rapid decline in quality.

Wild Palms has stuck in my head from the era also. It's a strange mini series adapted from an equally strange comic that featured a weird take on Scientology. It was originally published on the last page of Details (U.S.) magazine back before it became a tiresome hetero-meathead lifestyle rag. The "TV broadcast as mind control agent" is a thoroughly exhausted plot device, but I don't think the merits of this are in the plot; rather the characters passing off song lyrics as dialog, and startling scenes like one involving Angie Dickinson, a seven-year old and a tanning reflector.

This is not the usual grade-Z Jim Belushi project He's pretty good in this. Dana Delaney alone seems to strike the wrong chord. It also was somehow spared Oliver Stone's characteristic heavy-handedness and clumsy direction.

WP has a rating of 7 here and that is what it merits. I saw some of the series back in 93, but have just re-watched it all. The quality of the cinematography is excellent and in that area the series holds up well. However, there are some major downsides to WP. One and the most important, some of the acting is incredibly bad, to start with, that of Belushi. The Trivia section says he had no idea what the story was about, so he simply recited his lines. One has the impression, most of the time, that he did just that. Loggia is Loggia, another Type A, overacted performance. Catrall starts off weak, but gets better. Angie is the real disappointment. She looks great and is perfect for the part, her clothes are fine, her scenes some of the most intense, but her acting is often wooden. I find Delany the best and most consistent, though other reviewers don't like her. The music is overblown and the one good piece, the background music to the most intense scene, the ending of Hungry Ghosts, is obviously influenced by P Glass's music. The series shows its influences clearly: 60's counter-culture, Scientology, and perhaps a little less obviously, Meet John Doe. In fact, for me, the latter is the main thrust of the series. However, the way the story is handled leaves something to be desired. It is too neat and clean, not open ended. However, the series obviously had some major influence itself. Those are easily seen in the Matrix series, in Caprica, and most obviously and essentially in Inception. Nolan would probably deny it, but half of Inception is lifted from WP. So, kudos for an idea that has had some mileage. Also, the series has been compared to Twin Peaks, but there is little to compare really. As said, the acting of WP is not esp thrilling whereas I find not a single character is weak in TP. The music for Badalamenti is far superior to that of Sakamoto. Both series look excellent. One area where WP beats TP is that WP is a closed story, a true miniseries. TP got out of control and thus lost some of its power. However, for me, TP is still a series I could re-watch without problem. So, finally, at the end of this long-winded review, WP is good, but not great. It would a great choice for some sort of re-imagined series à la Battlestar Galactica.

When this mini series was first broadcast, most people had never used a computer, the NSCA Mosaic browser (later to become Netscape Navigator) had just been coded. Thus allowing those with a data connection to graphically browse content at glacial speed. But just consider the list that follows which tallies their actual occurrence.

The Web = The web Tony Krietser =Donald Trump Chickee Levitt = Mark Zuckerberg Mimecom = Facebook Mimezine = Oxycontin The Florida Bomb = 9/11 The 90's Depression = The Great Recession The Fathers = Rebublicans with a capital "R" The Friends = Liberal Democrats Josie = Melania? Watch this excellent mini series with your politically astute frienew and you will have a BLAST finding current and near current tie-ins. Then you'll have one final question. "Where did Olivier Stone get a time machine?!"

This is a cult favorite, and in my opinion, it is Oliver Stone's finest achievement in film. This film watches much more like David Lynch-- If you liked Twin Peaks, then get a copy of this as soon as possible. This film is actually very deep in the examination of our society in how it portrays the masses as being glued to their televisions and easily controlled by media giants, and how much religion is cultish no matter how big. I recommend you watch it if you have a brain in your head and like to use it. It's not just another action movie that seem to waste the projectors at movie theatres these days...