Random Rant Thread

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And I watched Dune. It's painted entirely in the color of the dull pretentiousness that I've come to expect from Denis Villeneuve.

I expected him to at least make Baron Harkonnen interesting, though. Unfortunately he didn't. I barely remember Baron being in the movie at all, and we are talking about one of the most memorable villains in the entire history of American literature here.

I'm not baffled by the fact that people love The Sopranos. But I am by the fact that people love Villeneuve. His cinema-verse is vapid ala most zen koans and intellectually uninteresting through and through, a monotonous series of pretentious handheld shots and picture-pretty sepia landscapes.

This is no Lord of the Rings, certainly no "smart person's" LotR either. Let's not insult Peter Jackson by such inane comparison.

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Goddamn it, that guy turns everything into a pretty. That's all he does, and people fall for it. Call me a sexist male chauvinist if you want, but aren't we men? Aren't we?

I have no idea why people are gushing over a man who turned one of the most perverse SF operas into a pretty postcard.

[K1power]

Haven't seen Dune yet, but am looking forward to it based on what I've heard. I'm not familar at all with the source material or the 1984 film, so there's no emotional attachment there.

I've seen a handful of Villeneuve's films and enjoyed them all on some level; liked Sicario and Arrival and loved Blade Runner 2049. I'm a fan of the original Blade Runner (though I'm not too fussed about which cut of it I'm watching, like I am with other films) and thought Villeneuve made a worthy successor. Of course it's a bit of its own thing, but I feel like there's enough connective tissue to make it work. That whole universe still feels as believable as it did in the first film and I love the whole sci-fi noir atmosphere and slow-burn story. And Ryan Gosling who typically plays these reserved-with-pent-up-anger characters was a perfect fit as far as I'm concerned.

All that said I wouldn't say Villeneuve's one of my favorite filmmakers, but I am usually interested whenever he has a new upcoming project.

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I'm not even sure you'll like it even if you like other Villeneuve films. It's "visually stunning" all right, but the script isn't really friendly to the people who aren't familiar with the novel. I went to see the film with my girlfriend, and she was half confused throughout. She was impressed with how "stunningly cinematic" the whole thing was, but didn't quite get the dynamics between the characters, or even that of the Dune world itself.

I would say you will enjoy it more if you know a basic thing or two about the Dune world beforehand. Otherwise you might end up just watching a pretty - I mean, "visually stunning" - postcard. You might like it, but Dune can be so much more than that.

[K1power]

Through the past few years I've picked up some things from people who are fans of the Dune source material and the gist of it seems to be that Dune is almost incomprehensibly crazy.

What I've heard from friends who already went to go see this new film is "it's good but you won't get half the shit that's going on".

While I haven't seen the 1984 film, I know of its cult status and am guessing David Lynch did a better job of 'delivering the crazy', making it less appealing to mainstream audiences in the process.

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The Lynch version was, while being adorable, a mess. We really shouldn't kid ourselves about that, though most of it wasn't exactly Lynch's fault. He did his best given the material and constraints. It was an impossible project to begin with, and the end result was an absolutely horrible film although strangely entertaining at times.

Dune is a tough one to turn into cinema for sure. So you have to make your own when you try to do that. And to me, one of the things that you should NOT do regardless of your approach is using someone like Hans Zimmer for music. Which Villeneuve of course did!

Part of me hopes that this Part One is the incredibly long fucking teaser leading to the greatness that Part Two will be. But that's not going to happen. I was disappointed not because it didn't meet my expectations but because it did. I knew it was going to be a series of pretty landscapes with Hans Zimmer's incessant drums in the background.

Needless to say, my opinion is very unpopular even in my circle.

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BTW, Blade Runner 2049 is the only Villeneuve film that I liked. His style suits that material.

[K1power]

Hahaha feels like I'm stepping into all your cinema faux-pas puddles as I also really like Hans Zimmer.

His Man of Steel score > John Williams' Superman score. Though to be fair, that one is probably not just unpopular, but downright considered blasphemy.

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I do like Hans Zimmer!

It's just that he's a wrong choice for this particular material. VERY wrong choice.

[K1power]

I guess I'd have to see the film first and at least somewhat familiarize myself with the source material enough to make any kind of intelligent response to that. For now I'll have to take your word for it.

[miscmisc]

I suspect you'll enjoy it, though. You don't suffer from the burden of liking the source material too much.

But judging from my gf's reaction, if you have no idea about the basic story line and background, you should prep yourself a bit. It's not like there's an earth-shattering plot twist or anything (Dune is a "big" story with few narrative gimmicks), so spoilers shouldn't be a big problem. My gf's not bad at picking up audio-visual clues and following both the narrative and hidden/underlying one, but was half confused with this one.

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Walton is absolutely right, and this is what the left is extremely worse at than the right.

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It doesn't really feel good to be in a small minority, especially when you are past a certain age. If you are over 40 and still basking in the pleasure of being contrarian, being a "rebel," being different for the sake of being different, you should grow up a bit. I didn't feel good when literally everyone, including, like, all the people that I respect in general, was praising Dune to high heaven, so I'm a bit relieved now that some negative reviews are slowly coming in, most of which seem to go, "Well, it's beautiful and all, but... just a tiny bit self-indulgent and vague perhaps? Or dare I say... boring?"

The biggest Dune fan that I know has watched it five fucking times already, though. He's just profoundly, profoundly moved by the fact that the world that he loves was realized in such a visually stunning way. But I'm just not THAT big a Dune fan. I'm just irritated by things like the movie explaining how the shield works in a pretty amateurish, "forced" way and then breaking the very rule freely later in combat scenes.

He's so overwhelmed by the visual epic that he can overlook those things, including the completely lifeless portrayal of Baron Harkonnen (who might turn into *the real rockstar villain he should be in Part Two instead of that uninteresting flying bald old fatty in Part One, who knows, but it's played by Stellan Skarsgard, so...).

* Basically a cunning, scheming, attention-seeking, homosexual slash pedophiliac Donald Trump of the space age, arguably the product of Frank Herbert's - or any famous author's, to be fair - worst image of a stereotypical "gay" noble man, so it's true that you should be a bit careful in this day and age. But it can absolutely be done correctly.

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The whole thing is beginning to sound like the worst-case nightmare story about low-budget filmmaking.

Filmmaking is sometimes a dangerous business. People die sometimes too, although usually not in the way like the main actor shooting the cinematographer dead.

Have you heard the saying, "Hollywood has been built on corpses?" That has multiple meanings, and some are literal.

If these allegations are true, the producer will have to be held responsible first and foremost.

‘Rust’ crew describes on-set gun safety issues and misfires days before fatal shooting
www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-rust-camera-crew-walked-off-set

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I'm not sure about the "hot" and "cold" prop guns reports are talking about, though. Even guns loaded with blanks were called "hot" in the ones that I have been involved in. And no, no one uses a real bullet for any purpose, unless there is something totally wrong with the producer/director's brain.