And so last night, limping and short of breath, I joined my brother and our friends for a night out at the movies. We opened with an excellent (as usual) pizza at Casablanca’s, and then went to the Sociale, Nizza Monferrato’s oldest cinema, to watch Villeneuve’s Dune.
This was our first movie outing in over 18 months and there were seven people in the cinema last night – five of us, plus two other punters.
Continue readingOf all the movies that have been announced or launched recently, the only one in which I believe I have a proper emotional investment is Dune. I am not a Dune cultist, I have not read all of the books in the series, and I can’t draw you the molecule of the drug Melange like some people I know can, but I always liked Herbert’s novel, and I believe it’s one of the best in the genre.
I did not care much for the Lynch film, I thought the TV series was OK, and I really hope the new movie is as good as promised.
I am also a little worried about what the movie will cause – I’ve seen it happen with other properties. I’ve seen the knuckleheads that started cheering for the “mindless violence, vulgarity and raw sex” in Robert E. Howard after watching Milius’ Conan. I’ve been fending back the dread hordes of the Tolkienoids eager to explain to me a book I had read when they were still in kindergarten. They go hand-in-hand with the guys that will spend half an hour on Youtube to explain Cthulhu and the Lovecraft Mythos to me.
New converts are always insufferable.
No really – look at Sain Paul.
Just sayin’.
Today we lost two great character actors, that we mentioned in the past when we were talking about lost franchises.
Rip Torn was Maax in The Beastmaster, from 1984, and Freddie Jones was one of the many fine British actors that appeared in Krull, in 1983.
Both actors had many other genre credits in their CV – most notably Men in Black for Torn and Dune for Jones.
They will be missed.
Karavansara 