We are living in the peak era of Twin Peaks. In addition to David Lynch’s riveting television revival (which will inevitably become the best series of 2017, don’t @ me), the iconic filmmaker’s cult classic prequel film is coming to The Criterion Collection this October. Also joining the prestigious collection: Kristen Stewart’s spooky text messages, a murderous mermaid musical from Poland, Stanley Kubrick, and more.
You know Stanley Kubrick was a famously meticulous director. But did you know that he once made Shelley Duvall do a single shot 127 times in The Shining? In the scene, Duvall was being menaced by Jack Nicholson, and he felt the best way to get a convincing performance was to make her repeat it over and over until she was legitimately exhausted and frazzled. That’s just one of the Kubrickian facts featured in the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies!
Given how much space physical media takes up, it’s hard for movie buffs to say no to the great promise of “cloud storage,” and the idea that we could summon anything we want to watch with just a couple of clicks. But so far, reality hasn’t matched the hype. Streaming services have been focused on exclusives and original programming, to the extent that the only way to have access to everything available is to spend hundreds of dollars a month on subscription fees. Meanwhile, older films keep disappearing from the digital archives; and even items that cinephiles “own” sometimes become inaccessible whenever software updates or a site shutters.