Dune: Part Two

#12 at the time of writing.

Rewatched Part One recently, and I think it does a fantastic job of adapting the novel and delivering a compelling, moody sci-fi epic. Part Two is even more epic. I was ready to give myself over to it, and my investment was well rewarded.

Director Denis Villeneuve is no stranger to sweeping sci fi epics, with Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 under his belt - both stellar examples of cinematic sci fi - but with Dune, he has excelled himself.

It captured the multi-generational manipulations of power from the book; the dichotomy of Paul resisting - and yet compelled to embrace - his role in sparking a holy war in which he knows billions will die; the richness of the Fremen culture; etc. The two films together are a remarkably complete adaptation of the first book - which makes them very long! But immensely satisfying.

Jodorowski would be proud. (Alejandro Jodorowski was nearly the first person to adapt Dune. His vision for it, which included among others Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger and Salvador Dalí, is the stuff of legends and directly influenced Alien, Blade Runner, and even Star Wars. See this fantastic documentary for more.)

I'm going to read some of the sequels now. I wonder if anyone will ever attempt them on the silver screen?

Random trivia: Christopher Walken plays Emperor Shaddam IV. Coincidentally, Walken starred in the 2001 music video for the Fatboy Slim song "Weapon of Choice", a song which includes several references to Dune in the lyrics ("Don't be shocked by the tone of my voice", "Walk without rhythm and you won't attract the worm").

Alien

#42 at time of writing.

I watched Prometheus a couple of days ago, billed as a prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, so I had to re-watch the film that started it all.

In Alien, the crew of a mining vessel are woken from stasis to find that rather than having returned home to Earth, they've been roused to investigate a mysterious distress signal emanating from a dead planet. They land and discover an alien spaceship with a long-dead captain, and a roomful of hibernating eggs. Unwittingly, they bring one of the eggs back with them. Bad move.

Much has been said about how nail-bitingly tense and sinister this film is. The twists are shocking, and H. R. Giger's notorious alien delivers the ultimate horror kick.

Prometheus was entertaining, but one wonders why (beyond cynical profiteering) filmmakers feel the need to detract from the artful implication of backstory by actually showing the backstory as a separate movie (I'm looking at you and your crummy prequels, George Lucas). Alien was breathtakingly original - 33 years later, Prometheus delivers nothing new.

Moon

Unranked at time of writing.

It's a conspiracy! This film has been voted for by enough people, who have rated it high enough, yet it's not on IMDb's Top 250!

It easily deserves to be. It's a quiet, creepy and wonderful character-based science fiction yarn. No alien invasions nor CGI explosions, just a lonely man working out his time on a lunar mining base.

Directed by Duncan Jones, aka Zowie Bowie, and featuring a tour-de-force performance by Sam Rockwell, this wonderful story manages to pay homage to a golden age of celluloid sci-fi (think 2001, Silent Running, Alien, Outland...), and yet still be totally original. It brings the old tropes right up to date.

Moon was screened at NASA's Space Center Houston at the request of a professor there, as part of a lecture series. Softcore punk porn site SuicideGirls interviewed Duncan Jones about it:

"He'd been reading online that we'd done this film about Helium-3 mining and that's something that people at NASA are working on," said Jones. "We did a Q&A afterward. They asked me why the base looked so sturdy, like a bunker, and not like the kind of stuff they are designing that they are going to transport with them. I said 'Well, in the future I assume you won't want to continue carrying everything with you, you'll want to use the resources on the moon to build things' and a woman in the audience raised her hand and said, 'I'm actually working on something called Mooncrete, which is concrete that mixes lunar regolith and ice water from the moon's polar caps.'"