Movies

JohnnyCashFan said:
I really enjoy The Man Who Knew Too Much, you can really get wrapped up in it. Rear Window as well. If it makes your feel better they still show plenty Hitch in film school.
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Yeah that was a good one too. Here's what I've watched:

Dial M for Murder
The Man Who Knew Too Much
North By Northwest
Rear Window
Rope
Strangers on a Train
To Catch a Thief
Trouble With Harry
Vertigo

Still to see:
Psycho (have seen before)
The Birds (have seen before)
Marnie (never seen)

I may do a ranking eventually...
 
CrazyDiamond84 said:
Yeah that was a good one too. Here's what I've watched:

Dial M for Murder
The Man Who Knew Too Much
North By Northwest
Rear Window
Rope
Strangers on a Train
To Catch a Thief
Trouble With Harry
Vertigo

Still to see:
Psycho (have seen before)
The Birds (have seen before)
Marnie (never seen)

I may do a ranking eventually...
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The only “must watch” I think you’re missing from this list is Notorious, try to squeeze it in if ya get a chance.
 
kvetcha said:
It’s the first half of the book. It’s all WB would bankroll and Villeneuve didn’t want to try to jam the entire thing into one movie, so he basically bet on himself that it would be successful enough that WB would greenlight a sequel.
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ugh. I mean, it makes sense. but UGH. presumably up to when jessica and paul meet the fremen. I knew something felt missing from the trailers and I just couldn't place it: no scenes from after that.
 
yukbon said:
ugh. I mean, it makes sense. but UGH. presumably up to when jessica and paul meet the fremen. I knew something felt missing from the trailers and I just couldn't place it: no scenes from after that.
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I'm praying we get a greenlight announcement by the end of the weekend.
 
ayayrawn said:
I feel like I'm committing sacrilege as the big sci fi fan I am, but I finally read Dune last month and... did not like it.

I'm expecting Dune to engage me on a visual level and not really elsewhere, so this will definitely be a theater viewing.
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I kinda recommend at least finishing out the first trilogy (Children and Messiah). The remaining books are much shorter than Dune, and shit gets weird in a fun way. The series is a massive inversion/indictment of the white savior trope.
 
ayayrawn said:
I feel like I'm committing sacrilege as the big sci fi fan I am, but I finally read Dune last month and... did not like it.

I'm expecting Dune to engage me on a visual level and not really elsewhere, so this will definitely be a theater viewing.
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I have found that it takes a certain frame of mind to get into that first book, which is really unique in it's scope and world-building; if this is your métier, Dune is one of the classics and Frank Herbert's writing is deft and both, somehow, economical and poetic.

kvetcha said:
I kinda recommend at least finishing out the first trilogy (Children and Messiah). The remaining books are much shorter than Dune, and shit gets weird in a fun way. The series is a massive inversion/indictment of the white savior trope.
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Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks -- I loved Dune and found children and messiah progressively ok-er and verging into 'i can tolerate this' territory, but after that they were just trash. Messiah particularly felt like a cash-in attempt and everything after that felt progressively worse, except Chapterhouse which Herbert wrote while and just after his wife died and comes off as this like, paean to the divine feminine and like reading a dude's grief poured into a book. The whole Duncan Idaho ghola thing was bad and dumb.

And let us not speak of Brian Herbert's 'prequels' 'based on his father's notes' -- I feel there's only one review necessary:

215480403_bc9zA-L-2.jpg
 
yukbon said:
I have found that it takes a certain frame of mind to get into that first book, which is really unique in it's scope and world-building; if this is your métier, Dune is one of the classics and Frank Herbert's writing is deft and both, somehow, economical and poetic.



Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks -- I loved Dune and found children and messiah progressively ok-er and verging into 'i can tolerate this' territory, but after that they were just trash. Messiah particularly felt like a cash-in attempt and everything after that felt progressively worse, except Chapterhouse which Herbert wrote while and just after his wife died and comes off as this like, paean to the divine feminine and like reading a dude's grief poured into a book. The whole Duncan Idaho ghola thing was bad and dumb.

And let us not speak of Brian Herbert's 'prequels' 'based on his father's notes' -- I feel there's only one review necessary:

215480403_bc9zA-L-2.jpg
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(I love God Emperor. 😬 )
 
yukbon said:
I have found that it takes a certain frame of mind to get into that first book, which is really unique in it's scope and world-building; if this is your métier, Dune is one of the classics and Frank Herbert's writing is deft and both, somehow, economical and poetic.
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I enjoy world building to a degree (although my patience for epic stuff has dwindled in the last few years), but I just found it kind of a slog. Thought Herbert's writing was certainly interesting, but there were segments of the book I thought were so silly (pretty much every Harkonnen chapter where the dialogue amounts to 'it is i, the evil baron harkonnen, mwahaha'). I also found Paul a deeply unlikeable protagonist. Real 'white boy tries DMT once and thinks he's hot shit' vibes.

I acknowledge that it's a hugely influential and important book though. With how influential it is though, I feel like I'd already read it several times.
 
yukbon said:
ugh. I mean, it makes sense. but UGH. presumably up to when jessica and paul meet the fremen. I knew something felt missing from the trailers and I just couldn't place it: no scenes from after that.
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Yeah, the rumor is it goes up to the fight with Stilgar (I think it's Stilgar).

My pie-in-the-sky hope right now is we get multiple sequels greenlit and he knocks out the second half and Messiah in two movies.
 
I know next to nothing about Dune but will watch the film this weekend. At home. *gasp* But yeah it's not something I have a lot of hype for, though I am interested. And staying at home and watching it on a platform I already pay for just makes sense.
 
LeSamourai said:
Today I learned that the director of the definitive masterpiece of giant CGI snakes eating Jon Voight, Anaconda, was directed by Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa's cousin, and it's my favorite new bit of trivia.
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I remember loving Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter in college.
 
Dune good. Dune big.

I did walk out of the theater realizing while the movie really does nail the scale and scope of the book, it completely lacks the interiority. While told in the third person, the narration is still intimately tied to what a specific character is thinking and experiencing; it's part of why the book's such a psychedelic experience.

Example:

Doctor Yueh exemplifies this. While it comes across a little overdramatic in the book, he's depicted as incredibly ambivalent, torn between his desire to save his wife and the deal he's made to save her. You get some idea of how brutal and far-reaching the Harkonnens' grip is, some history of the Atreides family, and actual character motivation. In the movie, Yueh is just there in several different scenes, then steps out of the shadows once the betrayal happens, and just sort of goes "welp, it was me all along."

The idea of Paul as a messiah is glossed over as well; there's plenty of talk of him being "the one," but not much talk of who the one is. The Bene Gesserit conspiracy isn't really expressed, and Paul's existence as an ubermensch result of a generations-long eugenics experiment is conveniently omitted. This may be stuff for the sequel though, as realizing he's basically a plant might be a dramatic turn for his character. Though it might've helped to give him an arc in this movie.

It's entirely visually impressive, the design is really cool (though you could get the same effect staring at the Dopesmoker album cover), and it was cool to see an epic movie for grownups which doesn't hold your hand (though wasn't this supposed to be R? I got the impression the movie was cutting around violence), and hope maybe the sequel will attain more of the depth I was expecting.
 
Bull Shannon said:
Dune good. Dune big.

I did walk out of the theater realizing while the movie really does nail the scale and scope of the book, it completely lacks the interiority. While told in the third person, the narration is still intimately tied to what a specific character is thinking and experiencing; it's part of why the book's such a psychedelic experience.

Example:

Doctor Yueh exemplifies this. While it comes across a little overdramatic in the book, he's depicted as incredibly ambivalent, torn between his desire to save his wife and the deal he's made to save her. You get some idea of how brutal and far-reaching the Harkonnens' grip is, some history of the Atreides family, and actual character motivation. In the movie, Yueh is just there in several different scenes, then steps out of the shadows once the betrayal happens, and just sort of goes "welp, it was me all along."

The idea of Paul as a messiah is glossed over as well; there's plenty of talk of him being "the one," but not much talk of who the one is. The Bene Gesserit conspiracy isn't really expressed, and Paul's existence as an ubermensch result of a generations-long eugenics experiment is conveniently omitted. This may be stuff for the sequel though, as realizing he's basically a plant might be a dramatic turn for his character. Though it might've helped to give him an arc in this movie.

It's entirely visually impressive, the design is really cool (though you could get the same effect staring at the Dopesmoker album cover), and it was cool to see an epic movie for grownups which doesn't hold your hand (though wasn't this supposed to be R? I got the impression the movie was cutting around violence), and hope maybe the sequel will attain more of the depth I was expecting.
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Seeing this tonight. Can't wait.

I even liked the Lynch movie, so my standard is mostly 'can I bury myself in this world for three hours?'

also, uh, Rebecca Ferguson.
 
I gave it a chance but I thought Dune was really boring and dull. Like yeah, it has a big scope, but it was just so visually uninteresting. I'll give Lynch credit that even though his movie was incomprehensible, it was at least fun to look at and certainly wasn't boring. It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen or anything but it didn't do much for me. I don't know. I have a feeling this is going to be like Blade Runner 2049 all over again where saying you don't like it will get people telling you "you just don't get it." Which, as someone who has never read the book, maybe I don't. I hope the people who have been waiting for this movie for a long time enjoy it though. I'm going to just assume it wasn't really made for me.
 
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