Celan

21 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

Wasn’t it Grima Wormtongue?  He is honestly an awesome actor. My favorite role of his was in Deadwood. 

Sting played Feyd Rautha in the Lynch movie. Brad Dourif played Piter de Vries.

I liked what DV did with the Harkonnens. He even gave them an in-world reason why they're so creepy.

3 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

I don’t see the two things as mutually exclusive. Paul inhabits the BG’s savior role too well, uses it for his own agenda, and creates a movement that he cannot control and ultimately just decides to roll with. That meant becoming a warlord and developing a force of personality so intense that even a Reverend Mother recoils at his Voice.

That's just the thing, though- it's his Voice, not his voice.

1 minute ago, The Good Doctor said:

All of this is true at the start, but he does ultimately grow to inhabit the role that was designed for him. So much so that he takes it further than the Bene Gesserit ever planned or wanted, and becomes so powerful that they lose control over their own artificial prophesy. Paul is every bit the charismatic alpha warrior by the end.

I'm not so sure about that. His jihad is a force on its own, that even he can't really control, which is why he has to take ever more spice to stay ahead of events.

I think the thing with Paul is that he's not supposed to be alpha male, leading man material. He's a boy who comes to power through manipulation, his own through his training as well as centuries of Bene Gesserit lever pulling. I had to make this point to Colonel also when we first watched the movie and the Syfy series.  

It's all the more apparent in Villeneuve's version, since he makes the Bene Gesserit hand in events more clear than the books did.

Well, all in all, nothing in the movie made me go "oh fuck no." It was more like ???? 

I want to see it again, but probably won't be able to for a while.

Kevin Costner has a series of four movies coming out, classic westerns. One comes out in June and the other in August, the second half of the quatrology isn't filmed yet. Costner is not my favorite actor, but I'm always up for a classic western, so at least those are something to look forward to.

We also watched The Queen's Gambit on Netflix which was quite good. A fictional series about a 1960s female chess champion.

16 minutes ago, TheCzarsHussar said:

OoooOooh I see, 84 gets shit for changing stuff from the book (The retarded raining was a demand from the studio not what Lynch wanted), but the new one gets a pass

I can't wait to see it as well though. Trying to see if anyone in my friend circles have seen the first.

There's nothing as goofy as the mechanical voice modules.

Arguably the character changes are bigger, so, like I said, I'm still not sure about those.

2 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

I saw a preview where Chani criticized the Great Houses for having gender roles as opposed to the enlightened Fremen, which is a funny departure from their Sunni-inspired culture in the books. But that’s Hollywood for ya.  

I’m going to see it this week. Was gonna today but my friend who wants to see it with me is dragging his feet on watching the first one. I’m excited, though.

At least it feels pretty organic to the story, not as shoehorned-in as with other movies. And they didn't do the marketing thing where they insult original fans.

I saw Dune 2 last night. It was pretty damn awesome as a spectacle.

Some surprising changes from the books. Overall, I think they were okay, though there wasn't anything where I thought "oh I love that," like the change to Jamis in the first movie. It feels like they're making a lot of concessions to the zeitgeist, having to lean quite heavily into Fremen independence particularly with Chani.

I found an old notebook with what I'm sure is something that @ColonelKillaBeeput me up to doing- an attempt to write a rap. Presented without further comment.

This is Radio Celan with the right sounds

Fillin up the mic, I make you bow down

And acknowledge I'm the baddest bitch

They don't teach that shit in college

I'm killin and billin, your account is payable

Try to beat my rhyme but you ain't able

HBO greenlit another season of True Detective with the same awful showrunner. 

My BF is having heart surgery on Dune 2 premier day, so not sure when I will get to see it, probably sometime the following week.

This is long, but the first half hour is the best part and enough to get the gist. It makes me admire Herbert more that he wrote such a complex story that explores the topics of colonialism in an actually interesting way instead of the heavy-handed preaching that a modern writer would use. If a modern writer even dared to appropriate Islamic history at all.

Speaking of bad TV...

It seems that everyone's favorite writers, D & D, have been given the task of adapting the Chinese sci fi series The Three Body Problem for Netflix. Anyone read the novels? They seem to be pretty controversial- supposedly they are innovative sci fi but people complain about paper thin characterization being used to throw out a bunch of techno-philosophy. And supposedly the narrative structure falls apart even further in the sequels.

Sounds like a great challenge for our boys.

It just amazes me that the writer picked the wokest of woke endings and then expects us to be surprised by it.  

Oh shit, Jodie Foster spoiled the ending of TD s4 in an interview.

It is peak modern storytelling and exactly what you would think if you watched this dogshit series.

Putting in spoiler tags just in case anyone has a masochistic wish to watch the worst TV series of the year.

1 hour ago, The Good Doctor said:

Granted, I didn’t watch season 3 of Witcher. I’m told it only gets worse as it goes.

I only watched ep1. By then it stopped being fun even as a hate watch.

2 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

I feel like knowing nothing about Halo would only be of benefit to a watcher, because the first season at least was downright insulting to Halo fans.

But even if you don’t care about that, I wouldn’t reccomend it. It’s bad even just taken as its own thing. Even the studio knows it, hence why they replaced the showrunners, apparently retconned two episodes, and branded season 2 as a correction to season 1’s mistakes. 

That bad? At least they aren't doubling down, like most of the other terrible shows- Witcher, RoP etc.

Should I try to watch the Halo series? Keep in mind that I don't know anything about Halo, not the first thing.

I've been watching Mare of Easttown again, since people were favorably comparing it to TD s4. I had watched it at my BF's house and must have slept through some of it  because I don't remember it being this good. It's really good.

1 hour ago, The Good Doctor said:

I’ve been between Broken Empire and some of Louis L’Amour’s stuff. Got you to thank for getting me into both of those. 

I should go back to Louis L'Amour for a while as a palate cleanser.

I think we talked about Lonesome Dove? Those are good, too.

13 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

Got any interest in Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson? I haven’t read any of their stuff, but it’s well acclaimed. And Sanderson is apparently a fast writer, so he doesn’t keep his fans waiting decades for each sequel.

I read one of Sanderson's. It was kind of silly, I didn't enjoy it.

I think I'm going back to crime and suspense novels. There they at least have to wrap the story up or audiences won't put up with it.

9 minutes ago, The Good Doctor said:

I’ve heard Joe Abercrombie is good if you’re into the dark and gritty fantasy like Mark Lawrence and GRRM write. I picked up the first book in his trilogy but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

A few years ago I read Throne of Bones, which was very good. In some ways I even preferred it to ASoIaF. But it’s fairly lengthy and I don’t think it has any sequels yet. Or at least didn’t when I read it.

I have tried several times to read The Blade Itself and couldn't get into it. Maybe I'll try it on audio book. 

I'm not sure I'll be able to finish Asimov's Foundation series. I've really tried. I do love his short story anthology, Robot Dreams. They are really thought-provoking stories.

I finally fished R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse series. I can remember telling Colonel years ago that he had to pick it up because it had great depictions of battles. It did have those in the first trilogy, but the second trilogy was absolute misery and torture. I think I'm done with fantasy novels, personally. Other than Mark Lawrence, I haven't enjoyed really anything I've read in fantasy since GRRM's first books and those have soured. So now I'm down to Tolkien. No one has improved on him in 70 years.

Two things in that clip gave me unreasonable satisfaction:

1. The thumper makes a mechanical sound when it lifts.

2. Stilgar calls Paul "Usul" and not "Muad'dib."

10 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

@Celan @TheCzarsHussar

I liked everything in this. The worm riding sequence is amazing. Villeneuve is for sure one of the best directors in the world right now when it comes to epic cinematography.

 

Wow, that gave me chills and movies do that so rarely anymore. Awesome!!! My birthday is February 23rd but David and I are celebrating it the weekend this comes out and I can't wait.

2 hours ago, The Good Doctor said:

I don’t know who Erik Kaim is, but it sounds like he’s right about this one. Lots of trash coming out lately.  

At least with a series like True Detective, a bad season doesn’t do any damage to the rest of the show. 

He usually reviews games. I don't always agree with him but he seems to be an honest reviewer at least, because a lot of critics heaped praise on this turd.