Wild Palms (1993)
6/10
Wild Opera
31 December 2014
Wild Palms begins with a dream sequence involving a rhinoceros. There are shots from the director which aim to be cinema such as the scene of the waiter standing by at the table when Jim Belushi and Ernie Hudson are at the restaurant to the jump shot to a maid standing by the table as his kids are eating.

Wild Palms was produced by Olive Stone and episodes were directed by film directors such as Kathryn Bigelow, Phil Joanou.

The setting is is a future 2007 where men were collarless shirts with ties, drive 1960s cars and women have fashion owing a lot to Japan and oddly there is no wifi.

There are however powerful media moguls experimenting with Virtual Reality and a Scientologist like cult, right wing corporate politicians, secret police and a band of libertarian rebels who see the bigger picture of this corporate America and want to stop the Senator (Robert Loggia.)

Jim Belushi who plays a family mind drawn into this new media world as his wife starts to drink heavily, his son is getting to be a powerful child star and his mother in law (Angie Dickinson) has powerful connections to this dark side of society.

Wild Palms certainly brings you a world of soap opera-ish wild ride dominated by Angie Dickinson's performance. It was designed as event television but its big problem was that it came after the TV series Twin Peaks and we the viewers had become spoilt. Wild Palms seemed like a retread with its visual tricks, surreal dream sequences even though part of it owed more to Cronenberg's movie Videodrome.

Looking at it now it comes across as campy whereas Twin Peaks has aged better.
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