Kevin's Watch

wayfriend wrote:

matrixman wrote:

wayfriend wrote:Herbert: This movie will sell more of my books? Then I love it.

Did he come across as that cynical to you?

No.

But in Hollywood, everyone always "loves" what they are working on, the director is always "amazing", and the cast is always "great to work with" .... regardless of what they really think.

Exaggeration. There have been plenty of writers who have hated adaptations of their novels, even before the films were released.

Kalkin wrote: Read Herbert, you'll thank yourself for it. And read his son's sequels. they are quite good. The prequels are okay.

Wait...some of the son's books are sequels? After "chapterhouse?"
I thought they were all prequels...now I gotta go look [I never read prequels, I hate them].

Vraith wrote:

Kalkin wrote: Read Herbert, you'll thank yourself for it. And read his son's sequels. they are quite good. The prequels are okay.

Wait...some of the son's books are sequels? After "chapterhouse?"
I thought they were all prequels...now I gotta go look [I never read prequels, I hate them].

Yeah, he and Anderson also wrote Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune. Supposed to to be based on his Father's outline and note. Not bad.

I've heard from another member who has read the Dune prequels (duchess of malfi) that they are terribly written and violate established canon. (Yes, I am actually talking about the Dune prequels, not the Star Wars prequels. ) Since I respect duchess's opinion deeply, I have not gone anywhere near these prequel novels. (Not that I don't respect your opinion, understand.)

However, as I'm fascinated by the Dune universe, I'm still open to the possibility - remote as it is - of reading these dreaded prequels. But you'd have to convince me it's worth my time. So what exactly do you mean by not bad?

And just to give a long overdue reply to the earlier conversation involving wayfriend (and then Loremaster):

I would have been more inclined to believe Herbert was being disingenuous about liking Lynch's movie if I had thought it was a piece of crap. But that's not the case. I think it's an extraordinary movie and I'll keep saying that until I'm blue in the face. If I like it that much and then hear that Herbert says he likes it too, I have to believe we're on the same wavelength about what makes a good adaptation of Dune. Obviously many people do think Lynch's movie is crap, but that's not my point here.

I guess Im just biased, I hated Lost Highway, I hated Twin Peaks, and I hate Lynch's hair.

I'm far removed from a fan of Lynch as well. I've actively disliked everything I've seen from him except Dune and the Elephant Man. And after looking over the movies he's done on IMDB, those were movies he made back to back. And I also don't understand why Lynch wants Lyle Lovett's hair.

I must say I did not like the movie, mainly because I felt the storyline was all over the place. Things like references to Ix in the first 10 minutes when Ix played no part in the movie was just wanton, indulgent and superfluous. Similarly the use of quotes was artificial with whole scenes set-up to allow a particular quote from the book to get in. I also felt the religious awe was rather pathetic, trying to ape the fifties biblical depictions in that faux De Laurentis style. What was stunning were the costumes, the visuals, scenes, backdrops and props. the special effects ranged between excellent (sandworms) to adequate (folding space and guild navigator).

I can understand Herbert liking what he saw, from a depiction perspective he must have been delighted with seeing his minds eye illustrated for him. However the movie was shot with 5+ hours of film cut or rather slashed, to considerably less for the "studio".

The TV version was better in my view, but neither really created the universe that was the needed to stage the drama.

The sequel books are pretty much what you'd expect; two dimensional, flat stories that work at a pulp fiction or re-tellings of the history behind the true stories. Interesting but not rivetting; like a patch of spice spread out on the sands to catch smugglers with......