Saturday, October 23, 2021

Been There, Dune That Dept.

This is the edition I had - yours may differ.

As a fifteen-year old, I devoured Frank Herbert's Dune, a satisfyingly weighty paperback with a cool cover. I enjoyed a recent digital re-read, too, although another attempt to get into the sequels was again aborted, because boredom.

The novel is self-serious, wit-free, lacks a clear narrative that impels the reader, yet the epic scope and visionary ideas have a real power. A big part of the story is character based; although a little two-dimensional and cold, they are discernible individuals who develop through dialogue and interaction rather than description. The movie is nearly all visual description, punctuated by bursts of tedious stunt ninja combat. Villeneuve ended his Blade Runner with a fist fight, so he obviously thinks a slugfest is more dramatically satisfying than I do. 

It's almost as if the characters have been stripped of the power of speech, or key scenes were edited out. People appear, intone a few lines, stride about, get killed off. In the book, Doctor Yeuh is fleshed out so his treachery means something. The ecologist Liet Kynes has a pivotal role in explaining how the planet works, both politically and naturally. The movie doesn't bother with any of that, choosing instead to dazzle us with wardrobe and set dressing (awesomeness) and close-ups of Chalamet's hair, which is more expressive than his face. Kynes and Yeuh - along with just about all the others - each get maybe a minute's total talk time, Speech is declamatory, pronouncement, a series of statements. There is no verbal dramatic development, no casual conversation. Screenwriting really is a lost art.

It's a long movie, yet not long enough. A half-movie that doesn't have me anticipating Part Deux with anything more than mild interest. Maybe a T.V. series would have been the way to go. Anyway, here's the soundtrack to Jodorowsky's aborted attempt.




75 comments:

  1. Of corse you want this. You're flesh and blood! You have your urges! Your passions! And yet you exercise a keen critical observation that sets you above the common herd.

    So tell us about your favorite SF movie again, why don'cha. I don't think it's going to be Dune.

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    1. All your readers probably know this, but the best Dune movie never happened. Alejandro Jodorosky , having had cult success with El Topo & The Holy Mountain, decided he wanted to make Dune. He teamed up with everyone from Orson Welles, Amanda Lear, Jagger to visual artists of the caliber of Moebius, H.R. Giger, Salvador Dali & even had Pink Floyd (1974 between Dark Side & Wish You Were Here) set to do the soundtrack. But the financial machinations of the film world doomed Dune for ten years until David Lynch (usually one of my favorite directors) got the nod & then Screwed the pooch.

      And I totally agree that the follow-up Dune series sucked ass. I’m just saying

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    2. Pffff. Not that old duck again. Jodorowsky's planned maybe-or-maybe-not ten hour film would've been a freakin' disaster. People clamoring for that film are totally into fool's gold. His ideas were crazy as fuck and in no way, shape or form would it have been faithful, or more faithful than Lynch's film, to the novel.

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    3. You could call both Lynch's Dune and Jodorowsky's Dune disasters, unfaithful, whatever -- but each one is a fascinating failure. Lynch didn't get full creative control, so his Dune was fatally compromised. Jodorowsky didn't get to make his Dune, but the visual concepts of Moebius and Giger were used in 1979's Alien (which was less a sci fi film than a terrific monster movie that is set on a spaceship rather than an ancient castle or a haunted house).

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    4. To One Buck Guy. We all have the right to our opinions. You have yours & I have mine. Since Jodorowsky never got to make Dune, then it might have been shit as you believe or it may have been great as I invision. Jodorowsky is one of my top ten directors, so that influences my opinion (but so is David Lynch, so go figure). I think jonder nailed it...both are fascinating failures.

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    5. "His ideas were crazy as fuck ..." Well, yes, and this is what makes him an artist, and not just a stylist like Denis Villeneuve.

      (Anyone seen the TV series Foundation? Dumpster fire of boredom. Mind you, I can't read Asimov with any pleasure.)

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  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey

    How you dune?

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    1. Dune okay!

      This guy has much to say about 2001:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXynF2RQJPs

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    2. Why did the Sandworm hide underground?

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    3. Hmm. Why did the ... I get the feeling you're going to tell us anyway. I'm going to fry some bacon.

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    4. I just et me brekfiss - did I miss anytink?

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    5. Rob Ager, the burly Scouse social worker turned film critic, is very interesting on 2001, and not averse to cryptic moves of his own.

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  3. OK, I got here early for this and no blinkin'...

    2001--a bold call. Making me think....

    Plan 9 from Outer Space? JK, JK. OK, tbh, Blade Runner or most anything Harlan Ellison the midget marauder mighta had a mitt in...MST3K?

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  4. Don't remember the name but it was on VHF one night in 1966 or so.....some kind of cosmic ray hits a BarBQ pit and then it goes around eating people. City Of Lost Children....since I remember the name.

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    1. Your movie must have a different name. City Of Lost Children (1995) is one of my all-time favorites, directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet after they made their own movie about eating people (Delicatessen).

      My favorite sci-fi film is probably Buckaroo Banzai. My original nom de blog was Jon Manyjars.

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    2. Buckaroo Banzai & Zardoz are a couple of my faves.

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  5. Favourite SF movie? 2001 by several lengths, with 12 Monkeys a distant second.

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    1. I've been studying this movie for decades. My latest obsession is Kubrick's wilful but unobserved (we have Eyes Wide Shut) fucking about with timelapses and inconsistent POV. Look for the disappearing sweater in the space station scene, en route for the moon, and listen out for the PA announcement. The further you look into this movie, the more it fucks with you.

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    2. Nobody's going to out-obsess the master himelf, even though there are, for example, whole cadres of Kubrick obsessives strictly devoted to the anachronisms and hidden meanings they've rooted out of The Shining. But yeah, 2001 by an incalculable number of lightyears. Its presence has overshadowed every space-based flick that's followed. As a gift, I received a massive Taschen coffee table book called The Stanley Kubrick Archives some years ago. It came with a strip of 70mm frames from 2001 taken from a print Kubrick owned as well as a CD of a 1966 interview with the director. The latter is loaded with fascinating disclosures by SK and is well worth a listen online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa-KBqOFgDQ

      You may have to go back to cats like Leonardo D to find individuals who so completely embody technical and artistic genius.

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  6. i don't like the past or the present and anyone looking forward to the future has got to be kidding.

    PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is the only sci fi movie ever made that speaks the truth.

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    1. Did you know that Ed Wood was a member of the Illuminati? And that his middle name was Weishaupt? Criswell was Master of the Van Nuys Lodge, and helped Wood encode his movies with Illuminati iconography. Mason Brinkwell, the author of "Ed Wood And The Hollywood Illuminati" was burned to death in a parked car (which remained spookily undanaged). His widow destroyed all copies of the privately-published book before it could be distributed.

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    2. as my mom often screamed at me "NOW YOU'VE RUINED EVERYTHING! JUST LIKE ALWAYS!" TMI.

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  7. Replies
    1. Thank you. Now that is a good and thoroughly underappreciated Sci-Fi movie.

      Along the same lines of understated sci-fi is Michael Winterbottom's "Code 46". It isn't perfect, but has a lot of interesting ideas.

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  8. Timid hand raised from the back of the hall for Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. The rotoscoping is a weird relic from the future of movies, but unforgettable. Half way between cartoon and real life, it's a great technique for telling the story of drug addiction. Most crits refer to it as downbeat, but the easily-missed final words - where Keanu reveals he not only remembers thanksgiving but intends to be there for his friends, with the evidence he needs, tell us he won, and is far from the lost soul he appears to be.

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  9. I did enjoy the film documentary Jodoroskys Dune, about the aborted project, seems like it would have been great had the film happened.

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  10. Best sci-fi film, how about Pere Ubu performing a live soundtrack to It Came From Outer Space. And we were wearing 3-D glasses.

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    1. OK that's slightly freaky, I listened to Pere Ubu's "Terminal Tower" on my morning walk today.

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    2. duh, duh, duh, duh!
      duh, duh, duh, duh!
      To the tune to Twilight Zone

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    3. I saw Ubu play along to a showing of "X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes". We didn't have 3D glasses, but Ray Milland could see through US.

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  11. Replies
    1. Thank you, I had this on cassette, a long time ago.

      "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

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  12. Fave Sci fi? movie probably the Tremors series,tv show Cowboy Beebop, book Roadside Picnic (Happiness, free, for everyone, and let no one be forgotten)

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    1. Dune got me thinking of Tremors as well -- great stuff! After my (characteristically?) bold stance on "A Boy and His Dog" being the best story ever a few weeks back I'm not sure if I'm obligated to go with that movie ... No, I think not. "Scanners" was pretty great, a much better adaptation than the Harlan Ellison based film (though it has its charms). Probably my favorite of the many P.K.Dick adaptations though is "Total Recall" in no small part due to its cheesiness. I have found it as entertaining as any other SciFi movie that comes to mind, Blade Runner and 2001 included.

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    2. errr ... I meant "A Scanner Darkly" obviously, not the cheesy 70s movie "Scanners". Though, now that I think about it, "Videodrome" may very well edge out "Total Recall" as my favorite (most entertaining) SciFi flick.

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    3. Tremors is fun. The summer I was 17 I went out a few times with Finn Carter who was a little too obsessed with tennis for my tastes, but I was stuck in Greenville, Mississippi and lucky to meet her...she has, alas, gone on to have a pretty difficult life.

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    4. The Tremors series, at least one to three, are really fun. Though arguably they aren't really science fiction.

      The wife and I just caught "Total Recall on TV again the other day. (It seems it's on every two months or so). We still got sucked into watching more than a half hour of this. Again. Total fun movie.

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    5. I watched Scanners just the other night. The actor Michael Ironside was a great bad guy in both Scanners and Total Recall.

      The most horrifying scene in Scanners isn't the exploding head. It's when the car crashes into the record store, and the crowd pushes its way inside and tramples over all that vinyl. Oh, the humanity!

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  13. Had the same cover on my first copy of 'Dune'. I always thought that the majority of the cast of the Lynch'd version had no understanding of the lines or the plot. The emperor just looked confused all the time. Casting Daffy Duck to play Alia was a strange choice and what on earth were they putting in Sting's water ?
    Favourite sci-fi 'The Fifth Element' if only for ROOOBEEE RODDDDDD ! and 'A Town called Eureka'

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    1. Yeah....gotta say Ruby Rhod was a great performance. Gender-blurry, camp, loud, Little Richard on acid.

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  14. 2001 is still the obvious and overwhelming choice. There's a movie with Peter Weller called Screamers that has a few scenes that capture PKD's writing better than most screen adaptations do.

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    1. Peter Weller is the man -- Screamers, Robocop, AND Buckaroo Banzai!

      "ROBOCOP: Half man, half robot, half cop."

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  15. Replies
    1. Brazil is a fabulous dystopian satire, but is it sci fi? Another film with a similar tone that I love is Dark City (1998). Things happen in both films that are not possible in our reality, but both films also employ old technology as well as cars and clothes from the 1940's and 50's. I noticed the same thing in the TV series "Loki": technology both futuristic and dated (typewriters, antiquated filing systems, etc.), to symbolize inefficient bureaucracy, another theme of Brazil. Apologies for rambling -- it's the end of a long day.

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    2. *cracks knuckles* Satire? Even the original novel, with its titular (oh shut up) inversion of the year it was written, could hardly be called satire. Animal Farm, yes, I suppose, but that was as didactic as it was satirical (and a shit book, too). but 1984 was a glimpse into a possible future, a warning that this is the way things are going. It was not a description of the way things were in 1948. The term satire implies humor at some level - there are no laughs, grim or otherwise, in 1984. It absolutely qualifies as science fiction (or better, as speculative fiction).

      Brazil's detailed focus on bureau/techno/cracy is satirical (easy targets), but within the context of an imagined future, so if we have to categorise it (always a tricky thing with Gilliam), file under SF. Imagining the future is one of the defining characteristics of SF, in the way that imagining the past is of the historical novel.

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    3. I feel like I'm missing something in your response. 1984 is not a satire, but Brazil is not 1984. The Trial also influenced Brazil (and is as mirthless as 1984).

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    4. Arguing on the INTERNET? You crazy kids these days, facebookin' on the i-box and whatnot. In my day we ate goldfish and stuffed phone booths.

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    5. I'm currently working on a new internet fad to replace the meme - the youyou.

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  16. So we get a soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist...?!

    I demand justice for Toto from the movie that does exist!

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    1. OBG mentioned Toto's soundtrack for Dune, so I will repost a comment I wrote on another music blog. Years ago, a fellow blogger had the idea to combine expository dialogue from the Lynch film with music from the Toto/Eno soundtrack.

      He wanted to condense the highlights of the story arc while featuring great moments from an underrated soundtrack. He came up with two 12 minute "suites". I did the primitive audio editing in Audacity, based on his instructions. You can stream or DL the results here:

      https://archive.org/details/2019-06-17-111220

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  17. All worthy contenders, but I'm going to go with a newer film...Annihilation.
    Visually beautiful and Natalie Portman's performance as always is compelling.
    Plus I'm Not completly sure what it's all about.
    I saw 2001 on one of the old huge curved screens that they used to have for blockbusters. Blown away..I thought I was going to marry the girl I saw it with but she fell asleep at some point.
    Deal breaker!

    John

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    1. I gotta say the girl is the one with good sense in that scenario but oh well...

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    2. I saw 2001 when it premiered, mind duly blown, exited with girlfriend who I suddenly noticed was furious with me - for not paying her as much attention as the screen. First time I saw the movie, last time I saw her.

      (OBG - we can never marry.)

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  18. As for the new film. It was pretty good. I don't think you can make a version of the film in which you can spend an extraordinary amount of time on a side character like Dr. Yueh. It was already long and full of exposition, though thankfully much less blunt as the one in Lynch's version.

    Which by the way gets a ridiculously bad rap. I mean, it isn't great or anything, and the timing especially is atrocious with the first hour too slow and belabored and the second way too rushed (again, a little understandable, as they asked Lynch to cut the film down to a little over two hours when he still thought he could have a three hour movie). But comparing the old Dune's first hour to the new one, a lot of it was quite faithful.

    The one thing that didn't work in the new one is, obviously, the non-existing ending. The movie just sort of ends, without much of a climax. But that's the nature of the "one book - two movies" beast I guess...

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    1. "... pretty good."

      Do you write for Cahiers du Cinema, OBG?

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  19. I am so sorry OBG. I thought we maybe could have had something...bur Farq's write,once again I've been denied love by my good taste,,,,,,,,sigh.
    john

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  20. OMG<I am so sorry for the last comment as I meant to say Farq was right!!

    The best things now are the tv series anyway. I wait a few years and binge them.

    That is the long form of story telling.

    John

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    1. David Cronenberg agrees with you, John. From 2018:

      "I started to think maybe the cinematic equivalent of the novel is really a Netflix series that maybe goes on for five years or seven years. Really, this is a new art form. It's not like old television series. I am seeing some series I thought were really quite brilliant, like Tom Tykwer's Babylon Berlin (2017). Fantastic - and like a novel. I thought maybe the cinema as we know it is really writing a short story but if you want write a novel, then you have to do a series."

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    2. From the internet: "Maybe a T.V. series would have been the way to go."

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    3. ... the greatest minds of my generation something something ...

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    4. How's that for a lazy comment? I'm tired, Jonder's tired, we're all tired. The internet has infinite wisdom and and equally infinite (huh?) stupidity. But the 4/5 guys are right 3/5 of the time (e.g. "pleats") but here we are stranded on this god forsaken island, naked and starving, where no one can hear us.

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    5. Naked and starving? I'm wearing a Pleatsuit; "The guys are agreed - for comfort and style, the pleat can't be beat! Now FoamLeisurewear® offers the latest in menswear, a look that says I'm fit for the future! This quietly revolutionary one-piece is at home in any situation! From board meeting to barbecue, from bris to ball game, from funeral to frat house, the Pleatsuit® answers the tailoring needs of the man of today! Watch those gals' heads turn as you walk in the room! Tailored from over one hundred and thirty individual pleats, the Pleatsuit® is the one size onesie that's taking the nation by storm! Available in a range of Now Colorways, including new Duo-Tone, and made from miracle fabric Nylene™, your Pleatsuit© will -

      It's 01:20 hundred hours a.m. in the morning. I'm on my sleep break, and I'm typing garbage. Life is good.

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    6. Stranded? I'm here voluntarily. It gets me out of the house.

      No one can hear us? Good. Given the choice, I wouldn't listen to me either. I'd rather hear waves lapping the shore, and the soft swish of a well-tailored pleat.

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    7. It's not widely known that the Fab Four's early hit was adapted from a radio jingle they wrote for a menswear retailer - "Pleats Please Me".

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  21. Kubrick's film looms so large as to be ungraspable. It collapses under the weight of its own significance as a tenured critic shrieks "Oh my God it's full of references" and emerges shuddering in a mock-up of the Korova Milk Bar, awaiting its transfiguration into ambient music as cinema.

    I love the Lynch film, am obsessed with the 'Alien' franchise (esp the first) but carry a baffling torch for Gerry Anderson's 'Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun'. a film I love far more than it deserves by rational criteria.

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    1. I am familiar with this motion picture and its strange appeal.

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  22. I haven't voted yet. I'm gonna split my vote between Rowdy Roddy for They Live & Bowie for The Man Who Fell to Earth.

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  23. Replies
    1. That's cheatin'! If Repo Man counts, I'm putting a bid in for Village of the Giants

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