What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

I don't think there's any way they make movies of the dune sequels, because each one disappears further up it's own ass than the last and they would make for terrible incomprehensible movies.

It's been a long time since I read them tho so I'm not an expert by any means

I think the over-arching plot is fine, it’s just the writing that gets crappy. I could see the final two books (or final four if you include Brian’s culmination of the cycle) being condensed into one or two movies and being far more enjoyable for it. The problem is going to be God Emperor which is almost all talk and introspection. But you could easily stop at the end of any of the first three books and feel like there is a conclusion, albeit not a fully comprehensive one.

The good thing is that directors like Denis Villeneuve and Nicholas widing refn are probably the PERFECT directors to try to capture all the subtle intra- and inter-personal non-verbal dialogue in the books. The way folks can analyze body language and convey thoughts and emotions through facial twitches is something these directors are good at.

The problem is that stuff can be very boring to actually watch, even if it is somewhat dynamic and tense on the page. Lynch handled it better IMHO with the internal monologue but even there there are bits where actors are kinda staring into space to allow one actor to get through their little speech.

I see Paul as someone who made choices and then, at some point, realized the end result of those choices and didn’t like them. He wasn’t destined to become anything. He - and others - made decisions in his life that combined to lead his life in a direction.

He comes to the realization that after a certain point, he could change some of the details of what happens but the result of everything that happened before and the part others play mean that he had lost control of where his life was heading.

Reading the Dune novels as a young person helped shape how I view my own life. How the choices I’ve made, the happenstances and the choices others made have shaped the path of my life and, in a sense, trapped the end result into a certain range of outcomes. The further along I progress, the more clear the convergence point of these choices and events.

It’s not that any of us have lost free will, it’s that we cannot control everything, that the consequences of our decisions and actions limit our futures, even in ways we may not see or understand.
Even if we take action to drastically alter our life’s momentum, even that decision was made in the context of what has come before and it’s direction can be limited by those factors as well.

Life is a combination of internal and external forces shaping your existence.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and I am sad that the pandemic is causing my favorite parties and events to skip another year. But then I think upon the Edgar Allan Poe story The Masque of the Red Death, and realize that I am not willing to risk death or long-term illness for the sake of a costume party. When I was looking for something to watch last night, I found The Masque of the Red Death (1964) in the Roku menu and decided to finally give it a shot.

It started out a little rough, as I had to re-set my modern eyes to see the old-style stage production without it seeming cheap. But then the magic kicked in, as soon as Vincent Price began talking. His charismatic villainy easily carried the whole movie, though the atmospheric sets and costumes helped. Since the original story is pretty brief, the movie pads out the story with the plight of some prisoners, and also an adaptation of the Poe story Hop-Frog. There are also some gratuitous appearances of a raven. But the story is surprisingly compelling for the first hour, then falters in tempo a bit and drags out the famous ending. I was little disappointed that there were only four colored rooms and one of the colors was wrong, if only because the source material is so short and undemanding.

I have long been fascinated by the creative process, and enjoy spotting creative influences. I could be wrong, but I suspect that this movie was a key influence on George R.R. Martin when he was writing A Game of Thrones. It's mostly just a gut feeling, but there is an ominous early line of "winter comes" that is similar to Martin's "winter is coming." And the dwarf who played Hop-Frog seemed like a clever, witty fellow somewhat similar to Tyrion Lannister. The cruelty of Prince Prospero was comparable to more than a few nobles in Martin's books. Anyway, it's just a feeling, and I can't prove it. But for what it's worth, Martin would have been 16 when this movie came out, and it would have likely made a strong impression because it was so different from other movies of the day.

Ah_Pook wrote: I don't think there's any way they make movies of the dune sequels, because each one disappears further up it's own ass than the last and they would make for terrible incomprehensible movies.

It's been a long time since I read them tho so I'm not an expert by any means

Villeneuve is hoping to make this a trilogy, with a third movie based on Dune: Messiah.

screenrant.com/dune-movie-sequels-denis-...neuve-trilogy-plans/

Shellhead wrote: Villeneuve is hoping to make this a trilogy

DUN3

I'll see myself out...

Kmann wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Villeneuve is hoping to make this a trilogy

DUN3

I'll see myself out...

I hope you are DUN.

D4NE

DUN5

6UNE

Oh God, it just doesn't stop until the Butlerian Jihad!

This is actually how the Butlerian Jihad started. Bad DUNE memes corrupted early AI hooked up to the internet, leading each subsequent generation of AI into a murderous downward spiral.

Gregarius wrote: I'm far from a Dune or Herbert scholar (I think I read the first three books many years ago, but only the first again earlier this year), but I thought part of the point was that Paul WASN'T meant to be the savior?

The only time the term "scholar" is used in genre fiction appears to be in relation to Tolkien and Herbert. You can be a "Tolkien scholar," but not, for example, a "Marvel scholar." Instead, you are a "Marvel fanboy." Likewise, no one has ever claimed to be a "George Lucas scholar" or a "Gene Roddenberry scholar" or a "George RR Martin scholar."

Why is that? At one point does the fanbase of a particular author shift from "fanboy" to "scholar?" Who bestows this level of increased respectability and prestige?

That's an excellent question. I do know of scholars for things like Lovecraft (S. T. Joshi) and there are certainly 'scholarly' writings on many fantasy writers to include GRRM, Harry Potter, and even Firefly.

Basically you just need an enthusiastic PhD student to write a good thesis paper, at least some interested crowd to buy the book, and bam, you are a scholar

Content helps, particularly if it discusses timeless things like the human condition or just has such rich detail like LOTR. A wealth of related writings and letters to examine, or the herculean efforts of a Chris Tolkien collecting all the drafts is immensely important (I still get a giggle that Strider/Aragon was originally a rugged hobbit named Trotter). The author being dead helps as well, so they can't contradict your theories

There are marvel scholars, though their knowledge tends to be more about character appearances and the like, rather than more lofty ideas like motivation and symbolism. If the level of discussion is about who would beat who in a fair fight, doesn't lend itself to much introspection.

I used to lead a lengthy ASOIAF reading group and there is a LOT of depth there, both surface discussion and subtext. GRRM has the command of human character that lends itself to "scholarly" effort IMHO. I'm sure there are Robert Jordan Wheel of Time scholars, soon to be very frustrated by the new show or perhaps wealthy if they were hired as consultants or can leverage the show into a YouTube channel or something.

These days I don't think the weighty tome of annotated notes happens as much. Scholars, such as they are, are running social media and youtube channels to make money. So more posh and glitz for clicks, less small groups of devoted fans gathered in a living room discussing a book with a glass of sherry in one hand and a church warden pipe in the other.

Batman: The Long Halloween (2021) on HBO Max was good. It's nearly 3 hours long, so it was broken up into Part 1 and Part 2. It effectively functions as a Batman Year 2 story, featuring a mob war and a mysterious serial killer. It might also be the best Harvey Dent story ever told. The Long Halloween also offers Naya Rivera's final role, as the voice of Catwoman. Jensen Ackles and Josh Duhamel provide the voices for Batman and Harvey Dent, while Katee Sackhoff does the voice of Poison Ivy. That night, I dreamed of gangsters.

I was re-watching Dune (2021) and it occurred to me that the guild ships look about the size and shape of worms so the navigators are riding worms through space.

I watched 1984's Repo Man. This is one of those films I get through and think... I can't say I liked it, but I didn't dislike it either. It just kind of happened.

I recall liking Repo Men, which also stars Emilio Estevez, much more.