Cahiers also found room in its top 10 for the first season of 24 in 2002. The original Twin Peaks made a fair share of lists, while former Time critic Richard Corliss routinely peppered his lists with Simpsons episodes in the early ’90s.
#BEST MOVIES 2017 FILM COMMENT SERIES#
Yet the publication still dubbed its list the “best films” of 2017, and the labeling is what kicked up the kerfuffle.Īnother argument both publications could make is that while putting a TV series or TV episode on a list of the best films of the year is unusual, it’s not unprecedented. Instead, it asked them to vote for what they most loved on a screen of any size - “screen things.” The publication tweeted out a wide variety of non-films, from short online videos to video games, that received solo votes. The foremost argument Sight & Sound has advanced for the placement of Twin Peaks on its list is that it didn’t ask the critics it polled to limit their list to only movies. (We’ll just have to wait and see how the American Film Comment responds when its top 10 list is published.)ĭes Cahiers du Cinéma /CQjFLNrP0M- Cahiers du Cinéma December 6, 2017 Both the UK’s Sight & Sound and France’s Cahiers du Cinema, which have reputations as being among the most intellectually rigorous film journals, placed Twin Peaks: The Return within their top two. The debate over Twin Peaks’ status kicked off thanks to the annual top 10 lists by two of the most prestigious film publications out there. I didn’t think I’d get a chance to use the Twin Peaks pictures again. The case for Twin Peaks as a film You must forgive me. So let’s look at it through the lens of Twin Peaks. A question like, “What is a movie?” or, “What is a TV series?” is becoming harder and harder to answer with every passing year, and it has huge implications for how stories are told onscreen. But as more and more projects occupy a weird in-between space, this conversation will only continue to grow, and it will expand to include even casual fans of film and TV. The major distinction - movies are made to be consumed in one big gulp, while TV is consumed episodically - still mostly stands. Twin Peaks was the only TV show that made sense this summer
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Why is the Netflix film Mudbound a movie at two hours and 20 minutes, while Amazon’s Fleabag is TV at just under three hours? As the classic distinction between movies and TV shows collapses, as all of our screens increasingly become the same thing, the idea that movies are something you go to see in a theater, while TV is something you can watch at home, increasingly seems alien to many. As a TV critic, I am loath to allow film critics to “take” Twin Peaks just because it’s from beloved auteur David Lynch (behind such films as Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr., and, uh, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk W ith Me).īut the debate gets at something fascinating happening in the film and TV world right now.
So just what’s going on here? To those of you not intimately steeped in what we in cultural criticism call “the time of year when we all throw together a top 10 list and pretend it’s objectively true,” it might seem weird to have a big debate about whether Twin Peaks, which aired on TV, over 14 weeks, and was divided into 18 hour-long episodes, is actually a movie. If I ever become a major TV writer/director, when I finally make an OSCAR-WORTHY movie, I will describe it as "really just a short TV show," and then walk away from the burning wreckage I leave behind.- Todd VanDerWerff December 5, 2017
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