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First Pix From New Dune Miniseries
Killjoy_b writes, "Dune fans never had it so good. First Frank Herbert's son's new Dune: House Atreides book came out in February and now there is a new Dune miniseries in the making. You can check out the pics at this Science Fiction Film Site. The page itself is German. Enjoy.
" You know where the fish is.Tim sent this additional page of info. In English.
Most people fail to realize, but Dune is very important in geek culture for the self-referential metaphors. All geeks realize the importance of self-reference. Take, for example, this post on Slashdot discussing metaphors in Dune. It CLEARLY references itself, and thus gives a good example of self-reference. It also uses the expression "self-reference" more times than any valid post should. But I digress.
I'm sure you understand the relationship to the freemen and free software. Though it's been quite a while since I've read the book, I seem to recall "freemen" being spelled with only two "e"s. I could be wrong though, so I choose to continue spelling it logically. If I'm going to look stupid, which I often do (I point your attention to my recent post on slashdot regarding Geek Metaphors in Dune), then at least I'm going to admit it, and look stupid in my own special way. But I digress.
The freemen live in caves in the desert in the Dune books. They are unwashed and seen as lunatics by the more civilized Houses. This is clearly a metaphor for free software programmers. The desert, however, is to be taken literally. Most free software programmers live in caves in the desert. I mean, it only stands to reason. Believe it or not, those caves are mighty chilly, and saves trouble of cooling the server rooms. Though nothing is quite like the pleasure of an ice cold server room. Set aside getting out of summer heat, it lets you wear your all too geeky Mr.Rodgers-esque sweater all year round. I don't know about you, but I certainly like sweaters. But I digress.
And then there are the sandworms. Giant beasts that burrows through the soil. If ever there has been an obvious metaphor for worm-type viruses, this is it. And worm viruses would not exist without people to program them. Sure, that sort of thing might be a good way to understand how protocols and programming works, but any good hacker grows out of that stuff after high school. Angst-fueled education seems to be very prevailent. But the important thing is to not regret it. Sure, I'm not PROUD of alot of the things I've done in the past, and I'd never do it again, but I DID do it. There's nothing that can be accomplished by feeling sorry about everything I've ever done. Take for example the time that I found the dying man behind the 7-11. Yeah, I could have, and likely should have called an ambulance. But I hadn't eaten in a few days, and truth be told I was dead broke. If I had spent more time programming useful software, instead of releasing everything "free", then maybe I could have bought a taco or two. But no one was around, and I made sure not to leave any fingerprints. And it gave me a chance to use that new meatloaf pan my mother bought me for my birthday. Oh, mother, what you don't know . . .
But I digress. Cheese is pretty.
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
Through www.dictionary.com/translate (Babelfish was hosed)... tried to English-ify it as much as possible:
1. March 2000 - Author: Florian Breitsameter
DUNE Miniseries: The first pictures of the set!
On 22 November 1999 work in Prague began towards filming for a 6-hour TV filming of the novel " The Desert Planet " ("Dune"), by Frank Herbert. The TV project has a $20 million budget(US), which can offer thereby a hochkaraetigen occupation and crew.
William Hurt ("Lost In Space", "Dark City" and also "Until The End Of The World") plays the role of the Duke Leto Atreides, which will have to be seen. The film will also feature Italian actors Giancarlo Giannini as Imperator Shaddam IV and to Ian McNeice as a bad baron Harkonnen.
Alec Newman plays Paul Atreides, the main figure of the film. Barbara Kodetova plays Chani, at the page of Alec Newman. With Uwe Ochsenknecht, who embodies the Fremen Leader very convincingly, is represented also a German actor in this internationally filled production.
The film script to "desert planet" was written by John Harrison, who also directs; executive producers are Richard P. Rubinstein and Mitchell Galin. The camera work is done by the three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now).
The marvelous costumes come from Theodor Pistek (obtained a Oscar for the costumes at Amadeus). Additionally the special effect conductor Ernest Farino and the production designer Miljen Kreka Kljakovic are involved in the project. The digital special effects will come from three of studios, among them AREA 51 and One Digital (Babylon 5).
" Dune " is produced by Amsterdam Entertainment Inc., the Scifi Channel and KirchMedia tandem Communications. The US airing is planned for the Fall 2000, in Germany the television airing will air in Spring 2001 (thus only little later).
World-exclusively SF Film.de can show the first photos of the set and the fiming work here now. Thank you for it at Torsten Dewi!
Captions
Reverend Mother Ramallo (?), (Uwe Ochsenknecht) and Jessica (Saskia Reeves)
Gurney Halleck (P.H. Moriaty), an assassin (?), Paul Atreides (Alec Newman) and (Uwe Ochsenknecht)
Chani (Barbara Kodetova) and Paul Atreides (Alec Newman)
(Uwe Ochsenknecht) with blue eyes!
Richard Rubinstein(producer) and John Harrison (director) in the set for the Siege
Vittorio Storaro (camera) and Uwe Ochsenknecht in the background
Source: SFW, audio 51, Torsten Dewi, Victor television Productions, Inc..
Personally, I'm a pretty big Dune fan but this just looks messed up.
The spice is supposed to give the Fremen "blue within blue" eyes...perhaps it just a budget thing but it just looked like they just hired the "Aryan Nation Acting Troupe".
The attire: This is a planet where the Terran Sahara desert would be considered a water-rich oasis. The images portray people running around in Xena-esque garb, which is wrong. Could someone point out one of the images where someone is wearing a stilsuit? To make it worse, one of the images has Paul bare-chested! Talk about that sacrilege of water wasting! (Ok, they could be inside one of the water-tight fremen shelters but still! The suit is an important symbol in the Fremen culture.) No stilsuits and some of them are wearing heavy, cumbersome clothing.
Blades: Traditional Fremen daggers are made from the teeth of sandworms, if I remember correctly. So perhaps Gurney was wielding an off-world weapon?
Fremen: I know looks can be deceiving but these people need to look somewhat like desert hardened survivalists. Supposedly they can take out the Padishah Emperor's Sardukar terror troops. I don't see that here.
All I see is series that may do a few cross-overs with the Hercules-Xena series and all the good guys do flips and acrobatics to take out the bad guys in a non-lethal (and comedic) manner. The fremen are killers, pure and simple. Nothing too personal, its just a basic fact of survival. Even children are taught how to kill at an early age. The survivor of a dagger duel dessicates the loser and keeps the water. The survivor also gains all possessions and marital ties of the loser. I wonder if that will come into play in this series as well?
I hate to be pessimistic but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and try to watch it if it shows in my area. If they butcher either genre (movie or book) I'll be one who won't watch it again.
-Vel
Read the foreward that Herbert wrote for one of the later volumes. He talked about how he planned out many of the novels before sitting down to write the first one, and how certain scenes had to be shifted between the books.
Doesn't sound to me like he was pressured into more...
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Here's a good page to get all the info:
http://pages.infinit.net/bonesnet/Smithee.htm
Here's a quick rundown:
-DUNE was originally released to theatres at Christmas of 1984 in Todd-AO/70MM with a running time of 137 minutes.
-It is obvious that David Lynch shot a lot more footage than what we saw in the theatrical print. Lynch himself envisioned a four-hour epic film. Unfortunately, Universal wanted a running time that would be more accessible to its audience since three-hour- and four-hour-plus films were not currently popular in the 1980s. So the studio had Lynch re-edit the film to its 137-minute theatrical version.
-At one point in 1984, Lynch had announced he was going to release a legitimate "special edition director's cut" on home video, but decided to move on to other projects such as "Blue Velvet". Soon, word and rumor about the extra footage had spread everywhere, and by the time DUNE had finished its original cable run on HBO, Universal felt that the time had come to produce a "special edition" of their own, and the result was released to television in May of 1988.
-David Lynch was unhappy with what MCA TV had done and did not approve of this edition. So thus it was he successfully petitioned to take his name off the credits and replaced it with "Allen Smithee", the standard Directors Guild of America pseudonym for directors who do not want credit for their own work.
-This first TV version of DUNE, pieced together under the (mis)guiding hand of Harry Tapelman, Vice President of MCA TV Special Projects, was originally created for the Turner networks, but instead released to syndication in 1988 on the Universal Pictures Debut Network (which also was responsible for the slightly expanded version of "Legend", and the severely edited version of "Brazil"). Although Universal touted this as having "more than 50 minutes of never-before-seen footage", this actually contained 35 minutes of unseen footage. The remaining 15 contained the repeated main and end credits, a newly shot prologue, and so-called "new" scenes fabricated from outtake and test footage.
A complete list of the changes made is available at the web page I mentioned above.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.