When I close my eyes, I see the Arrakis desert; space ships; fire and sand.
I went to see a movie. In a theatre. We were about 7 people in there. COVID-19 is still ongoing.
Going to the theatre is not an easy thing for me. The pandemic makes me distrustful of people. They have unvaccinated kids. They touch stuff. They don’t wear their masks correctly.
But I’m also a cry baby. I don’t like cruelty. I don’t like body horror. I don’t like people getting killed gratuitously. I don’t like to see injuries, surgery, wounds. I don’t like non-stop action. I don’t want to see endless fights and destruction. I don’t like breakups. I don’t like unhappy couples. I don’t like to see the struggles of the disabled, nor of cancer patients, nor of women struggling for their rights. When I go to the movies, I want to escape all that.
Sadly, that doesn’t leave many movies. I read the short summaries and think, nope. Nope. Not this one. Nope, not that one. Ugh. No. Nope. Never. Ugh, love of my life, please find somebody else to go to the movies with you!
But I went to see Dune and I liked it.
Loved the sound pressure. Loved the rain, mist, smoke, and sand. Loved the space ship designs. Loved the Atreides actors and the Kynes actress. Happily surprised that the Harkonnen evil did not need extra detail. Happy the camera never focused on the dying on the Sardaukar space port.
Maybe if I start reading Dune again I will get farther than volume two or three? I have six volumes and never got to the end.
More stuff I liked about Dune: the ornithopter. Ornith- implies a bird but I like the dragonfly reinterpretation. I liked the fighting with short swords. Not katanas because there is no cavalry. Not Zweihänder because there are no pikes. I liked that they didn’t just use something that looks like kung-fu but something more like arnis/escrima. Does anybody know more about the martial arts basis in the movie?
I loved the herald at the beginning of the movie.
I wanted to see more of the sandwalk shuffledance! I think about it a lot whenever I cross small bridges that start vibrating (a notorious one crosses the river nearby and when you run across it without changing your running rhythm the resonance is frightening).
I liked the multiple languages, the fact that hidden messages get passed along, it was well done. The book has a lot of inner monologue and that’s hard to translate into a movie.
I heard people say that it was long and boring. Well, I don’t want to see action packed movies, so I was happy. I also don’t want to see Lawrence of Arabia again, so I’ll happily report that a good middle ground was found. They could have shown some more desert and it would not have been a problem, for me.
Thinking about the wall of sound again. I don’t know whether I “liked” it in the sense of wanting more of it, I liked it more in the sense of “wow I am flat now!!” – since the images and sounds keep following me around for days, I wonder whether I’ve simply not listened to loud music and not seen big screens for two years. It definitely left an impression on me.
I think I’ll start a reread of the first book, at the very least. I remember it fondly.
#Movies #Dune
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I am like you, I have always felt films affect me too much so I stick to the less distressing stories 🙂 So I will take this as a good recommendation to see Dune!
– Tom 2021-10-26 23:51 UTC
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Now I’m reading this long post about apparently every scene in the movie. 😆
This is a post about a movie closely based on a book that’s 55 years old. It will “spoil” the plot for you! – Dune Annotated
– Alex 2021-10-27 20:20 UTC
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Funny. I guess I’m not the only one who has problems watching most movies nowadays because of the emotional burden. Most movies leave me feeling really messed up and overloaded, so I honestly don’t watch that many. But I really liked Dune. It’s a very well made adaptation for the book.
– wd-pbp 2021-10-31 00:55 UTC
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I’m on page 254 if the German translation of the book right now. Leto just bit the tooth. I’d say the writing is not as great as I remember it. But it is still good enough to pull me along, the imagery fueled by the movie. And I agree: a well made adaptation of the book!
– Alex 2021-10-31 11:03 UTC
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I’m also reading *Dune* right now! I wondered if your recent way of beginning blog posts with a blockquote was an homage to the way the chapters in the book all begin with some historical quote?
– rnkn 2021-11-16 06:14 UTC
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Haha, indeed, perhaps it was. I remember reading Dune as an impressionable youth and used it for a creative writing project in high school. The feedback I got was “that’s a lot of quotes you used...”
The actual reason is probably my enthusiasm for Midnight Pub and my fascination for framing stories.
my enthusiasm for Midnight Pub
my fascination for framing stories
So I’ve been experimenting with that. Adding quotes about the moment of blogging to the blog itself, here. Adding a framing story of a crew of genderless workers in a confusing hierarchy dealing with library archaeology on Station, or the transjovian miner on Intetebi. I’m not sure it’ll stick, but I definitely want to keep the issue of the author-reader relationship in mind.
a confusing hierarchy dealing with library archaeology on Station
– Alex 2021-11-16 08:22 UTC