So Dune, the Newest

 

As "franchises" go, this has been a rewarding one. I read the book in 1981. I watched the David Lynch production in 1984. I caught the Sci-Fi Channel's take in Aughts. I read all of the Herbert Dune books then. I tried the professionally published fan fiction afterwards and dropped it quickly. Now I have Denis Villeneuve's two movies. Watched the most recent of the iterations last night. I made a whole afternoon out of it even. You'll have to as well.

It has everything I expected, AND more it was more good than bad.

The casting is spot on, and I say this as someone that has read the books. Okay now that I said it, I should go on and clarify. Timothee Chalmet, born in NYC BTW, works as "Paul" so well, every guy below the age of 40 trying to not have a chip on their shoulder will relate. Whatever Zendaya is (I'm sure she has a full name somewhere), she takes the Muadid's squeeze to places where a real woman would actually go, as opposed to the book. Paul Baptiste as Rabban the Harkonnen is a piece of bronze set in glass for perfection in the role he was playing-- you want brutality based on overall insecurity? You got it.-- Josh Brolin as the uncle that we all wished we had? He's so there. And everybody else highlighted was great as well, complete with a lot of characterization, but the scripting didn't do them justice. More on that later.

The design of the overall work is almost beautiful. Repressed women from the Baltic in the 12th Century to most of the Muslim world today will look admiringly at the cocoons that the actresses that represented any female that had procreated already in the tale with awe. Once again, dudes wearing armor seem to be wearing the most ineffective protective gear ever. The most disappointing aspect of the artistic direction is the failure of producers to show why anyone would really want to, or not, live on Arrakis, err Doon, err "Dune, desert planet." Pools of water with dusty gatherings and a lot of shadow is a city block, not 3/4s of a planet.  That said, riding the giant sand worms of the planet as a mass transport system was rather believable.

The political and war dynamics depicted in the movie are as weak as it is in the book Dune. Something about a parliamentary of monarchs system subverted by an autocrat, their elected emperor, happening within that parliamentarian system using a faction of mean baddies. There is an awesome tactical combat scene. While it is meant to show that Villenuve's hyper-accurate understanding of managed violence, it is bonding moment between Paul and Chani despite the "hyper-detail." Overall though, the "warring" depicted in this take of the book is silly. Still the ornithopters as the solution between helicopters and airplanes shows why Herbert understood speculative science while writing fiction. If anyone can make sense of the movie's last part battles, please let me know. The Character dialogue did explain the premise changes nicely though.

Short points in the tale can only be blamed on the author, Frank Herbert. The bad part of the movie were the bad guys. There is the mean baddies, the Harkonnen. Then there is the two-faced Emperor which is supposed to be evil. The Director of this movie gets that and shows part of this point.

Big meanies get defined beautifully. Okay the Harkonnen of Gedi Prime are the worst of humanity. This translates as something akin to, umm Star-Finnish (FUCK YOU HERBERT). They live on a world where the suns themselves bleach humanity from its own selves. Pale, but fuckable apparently. The astrological and autocratic women, Jezzi-Jizz-habitat, not beholden to the autocrat, come up with designs trying to make an off-spring which they'll hate anyway when it shows up. In the end something about scheming women with a master plan covered up by the peanut butter-covered mystery box laced with grape jelly-flavored betrayal. Nothing but trouble, I'm sure.

The evil of Emperor though is stillborn. While Christopher Walken is the most powerful of any of the Padushah Emperors I've seen to date, he is just not given enough to do. He appointed Duke Leito AtTreesandWater to Planet Dune.Oil.and.Cocaine to replace Finns Gone Bad for some reason. His Supreme-ness then betrays his pick using his own roid rangers from heavy gravity to help out. I think he then posted a letter of confession in the mail to somewhere he was sure it'd never be found. Suddenly a white-bread messiah, the son of the betrayed tree-hugger Duke, comes forward and calls for hollywoodwar.Why that Herbert and Villeneuve have so much contempt for this Character could have been a bit more detailed. 

Overall, the movie is a Godzilla of a sci-fi movie. I'll still have to watch New Village's, my nickname for Villenueve, two movies about Dune together. I hear there there might be more movies about Dune coming. I'll go see them.

Flash Gordon: New Takes Don't Hurt

A great take!

Science fiction movies are not stagnating. It's not the reboot that is turning movies into tripe.  Reproducing these works is like new takes on Shakespeare, the artistic vision and thematic direction of each production allows the artists involved to get comfortable with epic scope without becoming Tolstoy or an abject failure. I bring this up after seeing so many YouTube critics are weary of basically anything J.J. Abrams and Marvel or Star Wars from Disney and most of post 2000 Star Trek. Me too, Brother and Sister, I am developing a bias against big money movies with catered-to internet fan bases. As for long standing stories, the reboot of a classic tale of speculative fiction whether it be a TV series or film, it is like fresh water from a nearby mountain stream that freshens up things up in a landscape well known the a person. Flash Gordon while fully trademarked and copyrighted by its owner Hearst Communications, is a cycle of speculative fiction that is right up there with John Carter of Mars, War of the Worlds, and even Frankenstein, in my opinion, in terms of potential and impact on imaginative stories to be told. As much as I bemoan the stagnation of fantastic culture losing its creative spark, I can't say I mind reboots for the most part.

My pick for Thun the Lion-Man in Flash Gordon: Disney Defeated available 2027

I still need to clarify this. TV shows shouldn't be rebooted or turned into motion pictures. That is at least without the original casts. If one wants to do an homage, do one; do not revamp a decent piece of culture into hardcore camp. Big name actors in movies "introducing new audiences" to "old television classics" from twenty years ago in a 90-120 minute with format-scripted modern changes should be left to realm of parody.

It's been a long ride with Flash for me. My first introduction to the Flash Gordon cycle was in Germany about '74. It was in English but had been produced in Berlin from the 50s with Steven Holland. I can't remember Ming or Mongo ever being mentioned. There was something about Pluto or Charon and a space-based FBI--kind of boring and hokey. In the States in like 1979, I started watching an animated series Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All on Detroit's Channel 20 (I think). There I started learning the classic Ming Vs. Earth saga. Someone drove me to the mall to catch the 1980s sexual chocolate take on Flash Gordon with Freddy Mercury as Ming (wink) and some dude with dyed hair as Flash's stunt double-- still a good movie, a lot of hot chicks and hawk-men.  When I got my license, I'd be introduced to the serials by late night TV on CABLE at my sister's apartment. It was all so cool. Throughout the years, I'd read works from the 30s and still be like "Wow. That is kewl." Most recently, I've been taking a look at comic books, mostly diminishing any respect I ever had for comic book producers and writers. Today, I catch a comic strip, which I think is net-based, but the writing is great. It is even adding to the vast lexicon of my favorite Science Fiction heroes and villains yet. It has been anything but a straight line, but now that I know the chronology of releases, it's only gotten better. I absolutely adore the CBC's take on Flash Gordon from 2007-- got problems with it? I'll fight you.



Indeed, with this "franchise" it still evokes excitement when I hear about the next take. I am much happier with my varied experiences with Flash Gordon, since the 1970s, than I have been with, say, Star Wars or Star Trek. I suppose it's because the milieu of this spaceship-laden folklore isn't based off of internet searches of vocabulary to determine what is the next popular thing, but has a long catalog of themes and ideas already discovered awaiting interpretation.

The Batman 2022: About Time

 Okay I am turning into an old chimpanzee. For all thoughts and musings about this or that, when it's new and shiny I just love it. For all my love of Zach Snyder's Batman, over the years after rewatching them over and over again, I couldn't help thinking, 'There is just too much going on.' Stop trying to get three storyarcs into each movie to show that the film producers got Batman. This film seemed to get that as well. While there was a lot going on, there is a lot that isn't.

I enjoyed that the city of Gotham gets defined more and not reinvented. In case you don't know this in the some old DC material back in the late 80s, the cities of Gotham and Metropolis are shown on a map. they actually correspond to cities in the real world. Gotham, New Jersey is on the east coast of the state. If one looks at a map of that city and turns it upside down and combine it with Ocean City, NJ, wallah; Gotham City, DC-verse. Yes that is how much of a fanboy that I am of Batman. In the movie past-takes on the details of Gotham are not discarded, but built upon. Allowances to the Joker movie is made with loose ties of a particular gang. There is even a bit of the infrastructure is hinted beyond a central water line following a subway to Wayne Towers making the Aftermath scenario that every Batman take has to have since the 90s more understandable than earthquakes or holding a city hostage by blowing up bridges with the threat of a nuclear bomb by inconceivably powerful terrorists. So the metroplex itself isn't just a metaphor for city-life and degeneration of true American values. One starts to get a grasp of how big cities and their peoples are entrenched in their environs as much as other people anyplace else.

Speaking of not reinventing, did I mention that the movie doesn't have the origin story. It builds upon it that origin story but doesn't Spiderman itself in the foot. Heck this movie might, could be related to the flix released in previous years. It assumes that the folks watching the movie don't need an explanation as to why a man is dressing up in a silly costume in a world where sometimes villains shoot lasers out of their eyes. In superhero movie sense, it allowed to viewer to smooth over the bumps in continuity from movie to movie like normal people do with, say, James Bond movies. When Disney does that everyone is like "so natural." When DC does it, everyone cries at the injustice of it all.

The characterization, overall, is rather awesome. So while Robert Patterson can't be bothered to wear anything but a tee shirt, because he works out and isn't terribly handsome to begin with, he makes a decent young Bruce Wayne. His Batman works, because he does have to hide behind the mask to show any sort of grim determination as opposed the depths of his eyes with their confused self-discovery look that teen idols tend to have. I could understand why the folks of Gotham liked the guy but couldn't figure out that he was "THE Batman".  Patterson's Billionaire-playboy-sad orphan's relationships with Alfred Pennyworth and the Cat Woman had a lot of Chemistry, not just chemistry, whether he was wearing a mask or not.

The villains hit on all cylinders. The Penguin was a people reader and as hard as Batman when seeing the failings and strengths of those around him. Plus he had Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum working the door. I did not like the Riddler's gimp outfit, just put the Court of Owls in there already, but as a character-arc, it worked. I am falling in love with John Turturro as a "that guy" in movies as well the lead in others. He's in his prime and knows how to read his part as Carmine Falcone.

As the cop fetish goes, the movie stays consistent with both Hollywood tropes and what we expect from law enforcement in a world where folks have to dress up in costumes to right the wrongs of the world. They're tough and smart, but they're dealing with the Batman and supervillains.  Lieutenant Gordon, was angled just right. Jeffery Wright is growing on me. 

They TOYS are awesome. Motorcylces, Batmobile, the Batarang, and the utility belt all used just enough to show it is all about the bling helps when it comes to higher purposes.

 Overall, a Loch Ness Monster, on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla. I hope Zoe Kravitz doesn't hate me for not focusing on her very good portrayal of Selina Kyle.

Hard Core Artists

Ah those days. Those days of before being Left or Right were already decided. I mean the right had such nice things as nice uniforms and nicely choreographed dance steps that could be called marches. While the left limped off into sympathy trips. I would go on to get my uniform, but I knew it was lie.

There is the abortion issue. So far removed from the knowledge that folks with a lot of hormones tend to group together and do things like have sex. This needs apparently needs to be hidden from mass consumption, except in every TV series and movie ever. It tends to make sex by folks way beyond the procreating age, well, profitable. But this consideration is for only old folks until cable news networks need to get involved. So explaining birth control is hidden but sex scandals are all the rage. In the end, no one can tell "kids these days" about birth control but they can preach about who should be the next president of the Untied States. The "left" according to our media input cannot explain the vagaries of sexuality let alone tell a young adult to tell their partner to put a condom on because of cultural considerations-- you see the listener might be Baptist or Muslim.

American Gun Control is a favorite frankly because of all the money around it. The money around it appeals to a lot of Americans because it's not really big money. Thanks to the Second Amendment, which is about people keeping governments from turning them into serfs, gun makers are an exploitative industry. Firearms are so available that folks can't keep their kids from participating in school shootings. And a person can't touch it because it's an Amendment to the constitution of America. Just like Slavery and the 3/5's compromise was actually written in the founding legal basis of these United States. Lord knows, we couldn't outlaw bazookas and assault rifles because they can sell for about half the paycheck of the average shop-keep. In the end, it keeps law enforcement agencies which are not allowed to do their jobs because of this amendment over-employed and looking for something to do. I guess it's all good, but we all know that it isn't.

So where the policing forces of these United States can't do much about armed oppression of minorities, they seem to have found their outlet in making sure our slums are full of suspected murderers and criminals to merit peacekeeping. This policing often leading to death sentences for people that can be accused of misdemeanors according to their State's legal code, and not providing much security for anyone living in those slums, still is the end result signifying LAW AND ORDER for people many miles away so that they can see the TV reports and proclaim that more anti-democratic laws need to be passed.To make sure the futility of reform is underscored, police will provoke riots and encourage looting.

So that leads me to the title of this post, Hard Core Artists. This not a solution to the problems that I have listed above. I use the label to indicate that we must be creative.

Eternals: Kirby was Kewl Before it was Hip

 While I had an encyclopedia of Batman since like 2nd Grade, I never bought a comic book until I came across Jack Kirby's The Eternals in the fall of 1976. I don't even think it was a first issue. As a side note, the second I bought was Kamandi which was being written by Gerry Conway and Chic Stone, not the title's original creator a certain Jacob Kurtzberg (Jack fukking Kirby). These two purchases were like mana from heaven, both delving into ideas that the two biggest movies, Chariots of the Gods and Planet of the Apes, that I had ever seen. This was the start of my love of Kirby and his works, especially the clunky 1970s stuff.

When I saw the trailer for the flik, with its less-than-Kirby looks and feel, I can't say I was overly excited. The focus seemed to be on minor characters mentioned as nods to tropes in various mythologies and then lost by the original author, until Marvel would start rewriting them using the hip and happening authors of the time. The works of these later authors were doing their best to fit the cycle into the rest of the publisher's comic book universe.

Still, the movie release this month happened at the right time. People are getting back out to movie theaters and Peryton and I could really use a dinner and movie night. So almost impulsively, I bought some tickets online mostly to find where in the heck the place was in my new hometown. I should mention there will be SPOILERS in the following text here.

Okay, as in the standard comics to film crossing there is a lot of to be outraged over. Not only was the premise of the Eternals somewhat altered, the Deviants, the essential foils to them, were generic Japanese video game space-holders in action sequences probably done before the movie's script was written. Gone were the analogies between gods and characters from fable and myth to superherodom. Then there was the gender-swapping and repurposing of many of the characters away from Kirby's yarns about them and into new roles that younger, meaning non-Cold War-raised North American males, audiences could find appealing. Can't really say much of the movie looked like it could've been designed by its author-artist. And the overall result was not a bad piece of celluloid at all.

Okay so the Eternals are ageless and nearly indestructible beings that are sent to act as the guardians of terrestrial humanity by the Celestrial, super-dooper big ass beings that kept the universe (as in the physical space) from going falling into entropy. As you'd expect, the main characters mark their time in millennia if not millions of years. Ajak, Ikarus, Thena, Makkari, snd Sersi are lumped in with supporting characters like Phastos, Druig, Kingu, Gilgamesh, and Sprite. Whoever the leader is gets to chat with the god-ish Arishem. These are the young lions that Babylon, the oldest city that the script writers think that anybody would recognize, would use to show order to early humanity. They shepherd our species here and there whenever a spindly, sinewy species that likes to resemble video game doodles of wolves or dragons with eight eyes known as the Deviants wants to eat us.
Well, it's all a sham. The Celestrials use planets of sentient beings as eggs to make omelettes that feed their young. Our characters are not here to establish peace and stability for the perfect civilization to emerge. The Eternals are the dogs which keep the foxes, as long as they're Deviants, away, until the Celestrial infant is ready for its birthday brunch. The immortal heroes die along with their foes and their charges and are rebuilt into new bodies. This iteration of Ajak sees this as wrong and works to undo this brutal ritual using the tools that she has, her compatriots. This is where the fun ensues. There is a good, if not surprising, plot twist, for once, in this movie.

The large cast is the thing I am seeing other ppl criticizing the movie for. I frankly think it works. The comic books always had too many characters and things going on; hive-minds, uniminds, and ultimate judgement being only the more notable ones. The writers, Chloe Zhao, Patrick Burleigh, with Ryan and Kaz Firpo, give each of them something to do in the tale going on around them. I frankly love how the two bigger names, Ma Dong-seok (Don Li) and Angelina Jolie are given roles where they get to phone it in when they need because of the familiarity that they have the roles that they are given.

My disappointment comes from the video game villains that the Deviants are. Okay Kirby's design for them was rather like evil muppets/goblins with a devil thrown in trying to still have an edge. But there are some rather kewl characters like Lord Tode, Kro, Reject and Karkas. The whole Thena/Kro relationship thing could've been a first movie and the events of this film an awesome sequel. I mean sheesh, Kro was voiced by Bill Skarsgard-- I suppose its chic these days to have bigger name, but not too big, name actors doing limited vocabulary (Groot, Shark, and now Kro).

The film does what it's supposed to which is work in the Eternals into Disney's rendition of the Marvel Universe. The gods of Asgard being human-like aliens already stole the science fiction take on mythology that Kirby was striving for with the series. Making them get into the deeper side of world-eaters like Galactus and world-destroyers like the Celstrails or say Annihilator. So things are getting ready for the more Jim Starling take on comic book sci-fi, that is when he wasn't forced to steal Jack Kirby's DC work (Thanos), so he can get wrapped around the axle with his take on religion before it got old and boring, Adam Warlock and the weird things that ensued from there in various comic sagas.

The movie was a Bigfoot on the scale of Smurf to Godzilla. Perhaps the following movies featuring any of the Characters presented here will be full enough of Easter Eggs from the comic books to keep them interesting, but they've kind of painted themselves into a corner story-wise.

Dune '21: New Tale with Old Eyes

 As a guy that read Dune from 6th to 7th grade in the late 70s, I have been lucky enough to have witnessed three takes on the tale. When I say lucky I actually mean it. From David Lynch's take in the 80s, then the Sy-Fy Channel's (then called Sci-Fi) production, with some Jodorowsky's audio/visual scribblings, and finally this latest take by Dennis Villeneuve; it's been great fun. I have been able to not only watch how different productions interpret the book, to watching how the takes are influenced, or not, by each other. In a world of mega-corporation scooping up all brand names, Frank Herbert's quirky little franchise still provides a little fresh air on artistic expression in speculative fiction.

At the same time, I wish I could watch the movie without ever having seen the other films or read the books just to see what I really think of the movie. 

Get over the gender-swap outrage already

 Still I have only my old eyes. Maybe it's being simple, but I have found the latest take to be the most interesting watch. Its focus on characters that are not Paul gave a lived in feel better than any of the dust or heavy-looking equipment lying around on the sets. Characters such as Baron Harkonennen, Duncan Idaho, and Liet-Kynes are given not only a bit of depth but also things to do during the movie. While their portrayals have never been shirked upon by earlier productions, in this movie they have things do and say which are not just setting up the next plot point.

A strong point for me was the pacing of the movie. While true Dune-Fans will bemoan the parts that were left out, I like that when film seemed to be dragging a little, the script moved on to the next bit of development rather than introducing voice overs of the characters' inner dialogs. The deep thoughts might've been decent world-building in the novel but has always come off as sheer exposition in the medium of screenplay. A lot of the Herbet take on his universe is not there, but I already know what is going on. I have to admit, again, that I need to find somebody that isn't familiar with the setting from the books or previous movies to get their opinions.

Most of the Dune universe looks decent in Villeneuve's work. A lot of it reminds of the used paperbacks I read in the 70s and 80s, I believe they were printed in the 60s. Though I don't like the weird-beards of the Sadukar, I found the sequence on Secondus captivating and terrifying. This flick's take on the Harkonnen was the best to date-- Raban and his savagery is given just enough space while the Baron can be viewed as a one time warrior as well as a glutton. The spaceships and whatnot were passable, they were ovals and rectangles, big meh. Thopters were okay. While the battle scenes were thought out, I found them silly, ie. impaled people fighting on after a Constitution Saving Throw because of script-armor bonuses I suppose. 

The long time reader and viewer of Dune in me wonders if the forthcoming second part of this production's two-part film cycle wonders if it is going to fill in the missing parts. At the same time, I wonder what the overall work will look like if the missing parts are just left out. Is Villeneuve making an action and adventure story set in a sphere romance and not concerned about the "deeper" meanings its fandom worries about all the time. Well, only time will tell. Who even knows if the Hollywood system and the Canadian film board will even bother helping get the next movie off the ground at this point?

Comparing the takes, I have commend all the directors by not being overly bound to first the book or then the director(s) before them, still the tale comes out in the tellings. Now this current take may grow on me, I've only watched it once. It's a Loch Ness Monster in the Smurf to Godzilla rating system.

The Deep South

 The really deep south is about being owed. Somehow folks working at convenience stores are subject to the temperamental whims of folks needing lottery tickets regardless of the labor demands for the industry-- at least in the minds of the lottery ticket buyers. But somehow, saying "Sir" or "Mam" in every sentence makes everything okay. Because those assholes are "southern" and that is because how they raised. It's about about being subservient to folks with cash willing to spend or something or another.

Now about the White Supremacist thing about the south, well it's done.  At least on a working class level, there is only distrust between Spanish-speakers and guys wearing Thor's Hammers as a necklace while hitting on 19 year-old women. No one over 24 years old likes like 19 y/o women nor their boyfriends. Wile the rest of us deal with reality.