Was really quite bowled over by Dune. It's stunning. One of the most visually arresting sci-fis I've ever seen. I loved getting lost in the pomp and treachery of it.
There is a problem though. It's not really a complete film. It feels like a (very long, very expensive) episode. So you leave feeling slightly frustrated. An odd mixture of over and under-whelmed.
You can't hold it against him, he's grappled with some really complex stuff and made a coherent story out of it. Not just coherant, but mind blowing. But if I'm honest, a part of me left thinking: this should probably be a TV series.
A few replies to this along the lines of: 'it says it's part one, what did you find confusing about that?' But even films in a series have a duty to be films in their own right. The Fellowship of the Ring, Infinity War etc. They stand on their own and as part ones. Dune doesn't.
One of the forgotten pleasures of the cinema is watching films with different audiences. As we were stroking our chins at the commentary on colonialism, the teenage girls next to us were absolutely losing their shit whenever the emo chap took his top off
This, incidentally, is partly why I stopped arguing with people on Twitter. You never get anywhere. It becomes this kind of grotesque nerd gladiatorial match in which pithy condemnation replaces logic or evidence.
You can 'win', quite easily, by making fire-and-brimstone condemnations and appealing to your tribe. But both of you always come out of it looking worse than you did before. No-one ever really wins.
DC comics nerds - and I really mean hard core nerds here, ignore this if you aren't - I could use some help. I'm putting together a master list of DC history, including only good runs/stand-alones and major continuity events. If there anything really good that I'm missing?
Last bit here. Going to sort a proper reading order later and break the runs down so they're vaguely in continuity. But this is all head-cannon. I'm not too worried that I'm taking bits from different continuities and smashing them together.
I wish I had more for the epilogue though. There must be more alternative endings around that I haven't heard of. And no, not Dark Knight Returns. It's too bleak to finish with.
Why is going into space the only thing that must be contingent on solving all problems on earth.
People don't say it about any other kind of technological advance. It's considered perfectly normal that we explore new things without having fixed all problems on earth. But apparently our need to visit & explore space must be put on the backburner until we've achieved utopia.
Space tourism will start with the rich - everything does - and soon become affordable for everyone. The tech will be useful on the ground. And the human race will be in a better place if we can all gaze on the earth from above, without borders or differences.
I have read the Frost speech and it is head-scramblingly inane. His actions have directly contradicted nearly every aspect of it.
"We need to stick together". You negotiated our departure. "It is our responsibility to safeguard peace in Northern Ireland." You yourself aggressively pursued the project that put that at risk.
"The protocol has lost consent in Northern Ireland". You imposed it against the consent of Northern Ireland. "We are being asked to run an EU boundary through the centre of our country". That is the product of your negotiation.
Hindsight narrative is gaslighting on a national scale. I remember exactly what it was like in March 2020. The pressure was intense for the government to take action weeks before it did so.
And even if that wasn't the case, they made precisely the same mistake in autumn. Weeks of warnings, completely ignored, thousands dead.
We literally just lived through this. Don't now come and tell us that it didn't happen.