Dune Part One

Fremen Popsicle

Dune Part One
aka Dune
USA/Canada 2021
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Warner Brothers

I remember when Denis Villeneuve was first announced as the director of yet another adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. I said at the time that if anyone was going to be able to capture the inherent beauty of a sand planet then, given his track record it was Denis Villeneuve. Even though, at the time, I was still angry at him for attempting to make a sequel to the greatest movie ever made (aka Blade Runner reviewed here) and then making a great looking film which was absolutely unlike the spirit of the original in any way, shape or form (which you can find reviewed by me here).

That being said, I was surprisingly uninterested when this film finally got released and it took some hefty recommendations from my friends to actually bother sitting down and watching this one... despite wanting to hear what Hans Zimmer did with the score. I remember seeing the David Lynch version in the cinemas back in 1984 and being similarly disappointed in it, especially since I knew Lynch was capable of making something as brilliant as Eraserhead. I think I also read the book around a similar time frame and... yeah, I liked the novel well enough but wasn’t a huge fan like my father was. I never got around to reading any of Herbert’s sequels and I still don’t feel the pull of it, to be honest.

However, I did sit down to watch the new version, eventually and... yeah, it’s okay. Not too terrible. Better than Lynch was allowed to get away with at any rate. It’s influences on film properties such as Star Wars are certainly apparent and the special effects departments are good enough now to render the necessary nuts and bolts workings of the universe which the characters inhabit as something fairly credible, it has to be said. It also should be mentioned that the personal shields used by the various fighters in the field are in no way an improvement over the big, blocky, Tron-like effects in the 1984 version (I haven’t bothered watching any of the TV shows of the various novels) and I think they still look a bit lame, to be honest.

We’ve got a star studded cast on this one, of course, including Timothée Chalamet as main protagonist Paul Atriedes, Rebecca Ferguson as his mum, Oscar Isaac as his dad, Zendaya as his Freman love interest (seen mostly in visions with a small amount of running time in this version, since this film only covers roughly the first half of the first novel), Jason Momoa as Duncan (although why there are bagpipes on the score because he’s called Duncan is beyond me), Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Charlotte Rampling. They’re all as solid as you’d expect from them and help carry the story along at a leisurely pace. There have been comments made that Chalamet is a bit wooden in this... well I don’t know the actor at all but I think he actually plays the role with the suitable amount of gravitas and royal burden a role like that should be played so, yeah, I’ve got no complaints and I think much more emotion might have killed his credibility a little, to be honest. I seem to remember that Kyle MacLachlan was accused of something similar back in the day so, yeah, I think this is the right approach to take with the character.

The film is exquisite to look at, as you would expect from a director like Villeneuve and this gives it a kind of epic feel, like a lot of his movies have, even though it’s obviously been truncated to fit the pacing of his take on the story. There are some nice moments and some suspenseful scenes (such as when the remote, silent assassin comes for Paul) and although it is appropriately slow for the source material, it never gets boring... although I’m not sure I could sit through it again anytime soon.

I should shout out that the ornithopters, machines I’ve been reading about for years in various science fiction and fantasy tales (especially some of those by Moorcock), are beautifully rendered on screen and the absolute impossibility of their movement within the confines of a man made object is neatly transcended by the special effects people at least rendering their mechanics in a visually appealing way. I’m not sure the same can be said of the sand worms though and I think I could have done with seeing them a little bit more... Villeneuve tends to hide them in the sand like they’re on an episode of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time and save the full look at one for the last part of the movie.

Zimmer’s score is absolutely fine and, sounding like a lot of his other scores of late... and that’s not meant to be a slight, I actually like this composer a lot and I think that’s just the power of his personal, musical voice coming out. That being said, the Arabian flavour of some of the score did, at times, sound almost like it was tracked in from the 1982 Vangelis score to Blade Runner, to my ears. Again, though, I think I’m just picking up on the distinctive style of the music in certain parts of the Blade Runner score which obviously shares the same inspirational source.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about this new version of Dune, in all honesty. It was not as boring or as terrible as I was expecting and, all in all (and without having seen the TV version), I’d say it’s certainly the best cinema release version we’ve had of the story thus far. If you’re a fan of the novel... or even of David Lynch’s neutered version of it... then you’ll probably get a kick out of this version so, yeah, don’t sit on the fence on this one like I did. It’s really, as I said, not too terrible.

Jupiter Ascending

Ascension Of Disbelief

Jupiter Ascending
2015  US
Directed by The Wachowski Sibs 
UK cinema release print.

You know, I so wanted to title this review Jupiter, Arse Ending, because I’d already been primed by the film’s promotional trailer, to expect one of the worst sci-fi films ever made. Seriously, just like Kingsman, The Secret Service (a film I reviewed here), the trailer for Jupiter Ascending did absolutely nothing to make me want to go and see this movie. The trailer's a mess of clunky dialogue and hollow, non-contextual special effects clips that actually put me off wanting to go for this one. And if I’d missed seeing this one at the cinema, I might never had gotten around to it because a trailer this bad... blimey! And that would have been a shame, as it turns out.

So why did I luck out and go and see it then? Simple. I heard that Sony Music they were releasing a double CD album of the film’s score by one of my favourite contemporary composers, Michael Giacchino. Now, Giacchino’s involvement alone would not have gotten me into the cinema and past that awful trailer, to be honest. What actually got me there was the fact that a double CD album meant that Sony were invested in releasing two discs of a score... so they must have had some faith in it. A score must be pretty special to get the two disc treatment these days and, since I’d already been to see what can only be the worst film I’ll see this year, and a lot of other years besides, Mortdecai (which I review here), I figured there was surely no way that Jupiter Ascending could be anywhere near as bad as that movie had turned out to be.

And so I went to the cinema last night to see, and hear, Jupiter Ascending for myself... and I was both delighted and disappointed by it.

Delighted because it’s, frankly, a damned good escapist, pulp sci-fi movie which is rarely pulled off as entertainingly as this one is and disappointed because, as I said in my opening line, now I don’t get to use my cool Jupiter, Arse Ending title for the review. Damn!

So why does the film work so well?

A friend of mine, Jason Pyke, had told me that it was a bit like Dune crossed with Brazil and that’s a pretty good little summation, I think... one which I’ll look at in more detail in a minute. It’s pretty much a film which covers all the bases and is influenced by a lot of science fiction and space opera over the years. A lot of the influences are not hard to pinpoint and there’s really no reason why this mess of a movie should hold together as well as it does... but it somehow seems to pull it all together and transcend the possible disasters that most postmodern amalgams fall prey to... and has fun doing it along the way.

Some of the things that really shouldn’t work are the clunky dialogue that actors and actresses like Mila Kunis (as the perfectly pulpily named Jupiter Jones), Channing Tatum, Sean Bean and Eddie Redmayne are having to try to say whilst keeping a straight face. It’s seriously bad in some places but the performances, coupled with the way it’s edited, seem to make up for it in a way that the trailer, to be fair, couldn’t have possibly been able to hide. The always brilliant Eddie Redmayne (see my reviews of his films My Week With Marilyn and The Theory of Everything) is somewhat uncharacteristically over the top here... using a terrible ‘treacherous royalty’ kind of accent and a performance which should leave you laughing but... I honestly don’t know how he got away with it but it just about works here... strangely enough.

There are a few things, asides from the performances and awesome visual effects, that the film does have going for it. It really is not unlike the Dune books by Frank Herbert, although the ‘spice’ has been replaced, right up front, by a commodity which will have any sci-fi fan worth his or her salt quoting a certain famous Charlton Heston line from the movie Soylent Green. However, to offset the tone, the film seems to work with the same kind of methodology of a Roger Corman movie... but instead of a scene of gratuitous nudity inserted for every ten pages of script, you have an action sequence to offset any of the plot as it runs it’s course. So it’s very much... talk - action scene - talk - action scene - talk - action scene in the most transparent way but it works like the best examples of that kind of escapist product works, the same way an old Doc Savage novel or a good 1930s - 1950s theatrical serial might work. And it keeps you entertained.

Also, it’s noticeable that a lot of Joseph Campbell’s theories about ‘story and myth’, the ones that George Lucas was making such a fuss about a little while ago, are woven, almost by default, into the story and screenplay... so it works really well when you have ‘magical aids’ to the heroine’s “call to adventure” like antigravity boots and the control of bees thrown into the mix. It’s wild and hilarious at some levels but it moves so fast that you never get the time to be anything other than caught up in the story.

And, yes, you do have a sudden insert into the middle of the movie which is basically ten minutes of Franz Kafka as filtered by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil... which somehow fits right into things and is capped off with a lovely little cameo of a role played by Terry Gilliam himself. A nice little cherry on the cake for that scene and, like I said, this movie is not exactly quiet about its various influences.

Fans of British comics who are familiar with the famous, multi-part epic Judge Dredd story The Day The Law Died will also recognise a strangely winged variation of the terrifying Kleggs, although they are not actually called that here. Also, the arguably ‘real life’ aliens known world wide as The Greys are mixed into this intoxicating cocktail of a movie in a way which is both sinister and representative of their place and function in modern Urban Myth and UFO Folklore. In fact, after a bit of a clunky scene, it was these characters who really pulled me into the mythology of the movie and allowed me to "buy in" to what the Wachowski’s are trying to achieve here... which is, at the end of the day, a hugely entertaining pulp fest reminiscent, it’s true, of various 1950s sci-fi stories but with a lot of heart behind the spirit of the final product... and a lot of action too.

Now, while Jupiter Ascending is unlikely to be winning any awards, it does have a strong, central female protagonist and an underlying romantic story set to a background of upper echelon, royalty and politics... and a heck of a lot of punching, fighting, chasing and general mayhem exploding onto the screen at the drop of a hat. If you go and see this movie, love it or hate it, one thing you are not going to be is fed up with it.

Oh, and as for that Giacchino score I was so anxious to hear... fantastic. Operatic and action packed scoring which isn’t completely buried in the mix and will have you tapping your toes along with the galactic obliteration. It’s a great score for a great little, big budgeted B-movie. A B-movie which, impressively, transcends its short-comings, of which there are many, and polishes it up into a fast moving, entertaining thrill ride which is over way too quickly. Definitely a film that should find its audience, I think. And if you like pulp sci-fi adventure yarns, you should seek it out too.

Jodorowsky's Dune

Dune And Dusted

Jodorowsky's Dune
2013 USA
Directed by Frank Pavich
Screening 12th October 2013 at the London Film Festival

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of those directors who seems to violently split people when his name comes up in conversation. There are those who think he is quite mad and find his films too challenging to stick with and will let you know about that in no uncertain terms. And there are others who relish the directors own style of creative madness and embrace his films as the great works of art that they should, like all great art, be perceived to be.

Having said all that, I tend to have a more muffled and jaded reaction to his work than most people I talk to on the subject, who seem to be pretty much outspoken either for or against his films... which I think says something in that, at the very least, Jodorowsky’s work has effected them to that extinct (which I personally feel is a good thing). I know that I myself, while having no real shocks or surprises from this director’s works (nor many others in recent years) do, nevertheless, enjoy his movies and speak of them in a positive manner. And, certainly, I remember heading off to the Metro cinema in London (now sadly lost to us) with my friend Kerry back in 1989 to see the movie which was to be my personal introduction to this director’s work, Sante Sangre. I loved that movie a lot, with it’s comfortable and seductive blend of high art and trashy b-movie sensibility... and this has carried through over the years in a more sedate manner as I’ve seen his earlier works such as Fando y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In fact, my friend Kerry bought me a box set of this man’s first three movies as a Christmas present a few years ago... for which I am grateful.

Back in about 1979/80, when I would have been about eleven or twelve, I was in one of my favourite comic/book stores (Forbidden Planet) and spied in the “art books” section, two very expensive tomes by the person who would soon become one of my favourite artists... H. R. Giger (Necronomicon and Necronomicon II). I can’t remember if the text was in English on those original editions but I suspect not. When I received these two books for Christmas and birthday, I fell in love with the bleak artwork in the pages and was astonished to see a photograph of the artist, H. R. Giger, sitting around in a desert with my other art hero of the time, Salvador Dali. It was pretty amazing and, from what I could work out from the text (yeah, it must have been in a language foreign to me, I reckon) the two had been collaborating on conceptual designs for a movie version of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi classic Dune. As it happens, I was wrong about the nature of the collaboration, but I’ll get to that soon.

Now, I’d not read Dune at that time in my life but, as a child growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was almost as impossible a book to escape as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings. It, and it’s sequels (I think there were only three sequels at the time but, as I’m sure you know, there are many more now) were all over British bookshops for many years and, even had they not been, there was usually a copy hanging around the house as my dad was a big fan at the time. When the David Lynch version of the movie got made I was not all that impressed with it, to be honest (neither was Jodorowsky, in one of the funniest and most memorable scenes in this film). Perhaps if I revisited it nowadays I might be more receptive to it but, to me, David Lynch was the spirit of Eraserhead... not the version of Dune that ended up on the big screen and underwhelmed audiences at the time.

Frank Pavich’s new documentary film, Jodorowsky's Dune, tells the story (of which there have been many rumours in the past) of the time when Jodorosky wanted to make an epic version of the movie... and how it all fell into place and then, after a long time in pre-production, got thrown away in favour of a version which was simpler to understand by the suits in control of Hollywood. And as you may expect from anything associated with Jodorowsky... it’s a mad tale.

H. R. Giger was, indeed, invited to do some of the conceptual art for one of the planets, which he did and which was pictured in those Necronomicon books I was given as a teen. Another major designer on the film was Chris Foss, the illustrator who many will remember had a gift for paintings of highly detailed starships which graced the covers of almost every science-fiction book going in the seventies and eighties. If you see a Chris Foss starship design, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. His work is so distinctive. What the documentary doesn’t mention, and I’ve no idea why, is the other thing that Fosse is equally well known but actually less famous for. The black and white illustrations in the original best selling editions of The Joy Of Sex.

The tale of the movie gets more and more brilliant and less and less likely as Jodorowsky talks extensively for the documentary. He recruits Dan O’ Bannon’s services for the film (after saying no to one of Hollywood’s leading special effects men, Douglas Trumbull) and then secures the services of, among others, Salvador Dali to play the Emperor, Orson Welles to play the Baron Harkonnen, Mick Jagger as somebody who I completely forget and Pink Floyd to do the music for one of the planets. They are Jodorowsky’s “Dune warriors”. He even gets his son trained in various combat styles to ready him for the part of Paul.  And as crazy a mix as that all sounds, Jodorowsky’s stories of how, for the most part, these people just turned up in unlikely places when he had no idea how to find them and then said yes, is even crazier. And the way he courted both Dali and Welles is absolutely amazing and something I don’t think I’d heard before.

The documentary culminates in the famous, rare book which was put together to sell the project (honestly, I can’t describe this here, you just have to see this movie) and  finishes by showng the influences on cinema resulting from the pilfering and reusing of the concepts created by Jodorowsky’s extended “Dune family”. Some of which are easy to see and others... which are not great examples, I would have to say.

Pavich’s film is absolutely fascinating and rivetting, using mostly talking head footage by Jodorowsky, Foss, Giger and others close to the production, but also from the underused director Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil) and Jodorowsky’s good friend, the director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives). There’s also some animated sequences where the director brings some of the storyboards and designs for the film to life and, as I was very relieved to discover in the Q & A session with the director after the screening, the people in question had been very careful to just breathe a little life into the original drawing and paintings for the animations, rather than add their own baggage into the mix.

The whole thing sails along at a pace which is a reflection of Jodorowsky’s own unique personality and enthusiasm for the project and it also has a kick ass score by Kurt Stenzel, which is quite “in your face” but catchy and appropriately mixed into the film. It’s a bit reminiscent of the small scale chamber works of Philip Glass but it is quite distinctive and hypnotic and although it strikes you right away as you’re watching, the music doesn’t distract from the people who are talking on screen and is very mindful of the job it needs to be doing.

So there you have it.

Jodorowsky's Dune is a great documentary made by a director who knows when to step back from the material when needed and who knows well enough when to add a bit more to it to make it interesting without intruding on the hearts, minds and words of the people being interviewed on screen. It also brings us the full tale of one of the classic unmade films in movie legend, which is something we should all be grateful for. So, if you want to know about all this stuff then you should definitely try to see this movie. It’s worth the price of admission just for the late Dan O’ Bannon’s description of his first, drug tinged meeting with Jodorowsky. Don’t miss out on this one.