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More News On Dune Miniseries
Yodel_Spoogenshortz write:s "Here is an update on the Dune Miniseries being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment to be shown in December of this year on the Sci-Fi Channel. The site has more photos and press releases. Earlier Slashdot articles on the upcoming series can be found here and here. For information on the Dune book series look at the Official Dune Web Site." Dune is an absolute classic, and probably my favorite book of all time. I'm hoping they don't screw it up.
You mean like they did the original movie? (big grin).
The original movie was so bad (in my opinion), that I wrote a letter of condolence to Frank Herbert. Never got a reply back...
Mark Edwards
Proof of Sanity Forged Upon Request
The obvious comment is: "you mean like they screwed up the film?". However, I'm in a very small minority here, because I actually like the film. Sure, it's not a particularly accuracte representation of the book, but that doesn't make bad, just different. As for it being a favourite book of all time? Well, no, but it's in my top 5, certainly. And I still think the film's good. I dread to think how the LotR film is going to differ from the book (now that is my favourite book of all time), but it may still be OK in its own right. I've got a horrible feeling that it's not going to be, though.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I don't know about you, but I think muadeeb(sp?) was a geek. Think about it - he gets somewhere he's never been before (Dune) and knows everything about living there. Geeks can go anywhere and not suffer jet lag or become disoriented. Then he pissed off The Man who came after him and everyone he knew. Metallica, RIAA. Need I say more? :) Finally, he struck up a deal with the locals and brought the entire universe to it's knees. Only a Real Geek could do that!
It's clearly written in the 60-70's in the US of A. The world view and such things as mind-expanding drugs are of that time.
I'd take a good Stanislaw Lem over them any time. They don't convert to movies (at all), though.
I just hope you do know Star Diaries, Cyberias etc. over there, don't you?
Then again, I am the same guy who found Hyperion too seriously written. Your distortedness may well vary.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
There are certain books that never need to be produced into movies or tv shows. The "mind numbing" detail as one slashdotter puts the film technically out of the money reach for most tv productions. The incredible length and breadth of the book puts it out of the reach of a simple 2 hour Hollywood production.
I am one of the people who like the book. The political play was fun. The plot was deep and intriguing IMHO. The attention to detail and the fact that many of the political implications are drawn from an interesting perspective of someone writing at the end of the era of colonialism and into the cold war period makes it actually more interesting.
Would I have read a series of books just like this? No. Did I think the original book still deserved to be called a classic? Yes. Should it ever be tried on the little screen as a mini-series? Only if you got the bucks and talent to do it right!
ACK
Many people hated it either because they read the
book and though it omitted too much, or hadn't
read the book and thought it was too confusing.
Like Goldilocks I thought it was just right
(but could have been longer). I loved how they
they represented the different Houses as different
historical eras and ecological environments.
I welcome the new mini-series too.
A classic piece of literature should be
reinterpreted on the screen each generation
because there are new social insights and
movie making skills.
Is that the same Stephen Donaldson that wrote about Thomas Covenant? I just couldn't get into his Thomas Covenent series, I found his writing to derivative of LoTR, and it just didn't grab me. Has his writing improved?
Yup, The Gap series is my favourite recent sci-fi. However, don't judge the whole 5 books on the strength of the first one (which imho is really a novella) which isn't that great. The characters go through hell, insanity and worse. Anyhoo, I shan't spoil it for you.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
.. if you ask me.. from the looks of the stills, seems to me the people in arrakis have plenty of water/food to go around.. i remember sean young from the movie and the other fremen in the cast were thin, almost anorexic looking, like you would expect from people who've spent their lives living in a desert world.. the new cast seems to have better access to nutrient-rich food than seems reasonable.. then again, pictures make you look fatter than you really are.. no wait, that was tv..
just a thought.
------ Poo-tee-weet?
"Meesa Stilgar-gar Binks. Yousa in da wronga place, we gonna tak-a you watta"
"The mindkiller fear is. Wait for the danger to their kind and kill them, a real human would" said the Reverend Mother Yoda.
"Ghani, I am your grandfather, join me"
Hee-hee,
George
I'll admit, I really liked Dune. When I first read the trilogy, in 8th grade, I lovd teh first book, and thought the second and third dragged. I've since reread the second and third, and appreciate them more, now that I've experienced life a bit.
Anyhow, things that I loved about Dune.
1) The Machavellian Politics. It's refreshing to see corrupt, machavellian political machinations, with various factions plotting against each other, hiding their true motives. Too much science fiction is full of well meaning, pure at heart politicoes, it's nice to see some evil, greedy folks for a change (cf. Larry Niven, is there anyone in his books who isn't motivated by good intentions?)
2) The level of detail. I really dig the level of detail and backstory in the books, though I can understand the MEGO affect for other readers. The glossaries, the appendices, I love them. This does backfire though, as the latest books in the Dune series (I'm thinking of House Atriedes here) are just a verbatim retelling of the backstory, lame, lame, lame.
3) The flaws the main characters have. It's nie to see main characters with personality defects, it makes Dune fit right intothe Greek Tragedy genre.
4) Dune, the planet. Dune just sticks with me, Herbert described it so well I could write a hundred stories there.
Okay, the flaws, there are a few.
1) The warfare. Okay, Herbert was trying to make a realistic explanation for the lack of guns due to sheilds. But then you can't use shields on Dune. In my mind, a platoon of Marines with M-16's should have been able to take out the planet then, wasting Fremen at 500 yards who were only armed with those pesky zip guns.
And no one has come up with a technology to take out shield armed opponents at a distance besides the lasgun? Here's one, a cannon that shoots nets. You do it today to capture birds, why not Sardaurkar. Once their safely entangled in your nets, smash their heads with a sledgehammer.
2) The later books. They lose the magic. Book 4 is okay, then they go downhill. As fasr as the new one, they should dig up Herbert's body, wrap him in copper wire and make a generator out of it, his body should be spinning sop fast.
George
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
...used to be my favorite author. I know I'm in the minority when I say I loved the Thomas Covenant series. I know everyone hates the main character cause he's a whiny loser, but get over it. There are dozens of great characters in those books. And the storyline and themes go quite a bit beyond anything else in the genre.
But, Donaldson is a classic "overwriter", as I call them. His descriptions are over the top. His depiction of his character's internal struggles is particularly overdone, and, to me, painful to read. The gap series had all the same self-conflicted characters as Thomas Covenant series, but without any really memorable characters, I thought. The themes are all the same though, which is interesting.
These days, I enjoy more simply told stories (not necessarily simpler stories), and my current favorite author is Lois Bujold.
Regarding Dune (oh, yeah, that's what this thread is about), I thought it was a great book. The movie would have been fine, except it was such a great book, and I'd read it, so I was disappointed. The rest of the series is worthless except for #4 ("God Emperor of Dune").
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
From the stills I've seen, it doesn't look like they're being too faithful to the novel in terms of details and production design. The stillsuits don't look like they process the body's entire moisture (and let's face it, one of the best things about Lynch's version was the production design and its faithfulness combined with weird stylizationg - take the fetish-looking stillsuits for example). Fremen with no water discipline? Come on...
It's possible that this miniseries will be more of an interpretation (It looks like it's way more D&D than Sci-Fi. Everybody looks like an extra from _Jabberwocky_). This could be the project's saving grace - Lynch fell flat because he tried to capture the entire scope of the novel and ALMOST caught it. I'm not gonna hold my breath, though. None of the Sci-Fi network's productions have really impressed me.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Everyone remembers the David Lynch Dune film, but has anyone heard of the Dune movie that was never made.
s ky_991019.html
l
It was the idea of Alejandro Jodorowsky, director of El Topo and Santa Sangre, to adapt Dune to the screen. His ideas for adapting Frank Herbert's novel were interesting enough, but his list of collaborators were INCREDIBLE: H.R. Giger, Moebius, Pink Floyd and Salvadore Dali.
But unfortunately, this was pre-Star Wars and no one wanted to finance a sci-fi movie like Dune. It died a pathetic death, save only for some preproduction art.
To find out more, please check out:
http://www.spiderstratagem.co.uk/failure.htm
http://www.space.com/spaceimagined/dune_jodorow
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/6796/jodune.htm
A BILLION dollars? How did you come up with that figure and what did it do that caused that damage. Did it cause hardware to blow up? Did it steal it from bank accounts? Hmm? I am so sick of hearing about damages that a virus or what ever causes without telling us how that figure came about.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Even professional writers don't always understand that the channel (or medium) demands certain characteristics of a story/plot/characters in order to make it work well in that medium. For example, everyone knows early movies were "talky" and "stagy" in a way that no half-decent films are now. In the early days, writers for the big screen assumed that plays could be pretty much transported to the screen. One might take advantage of the easier facilities for making realistic backgrounds, but basically films were treated as "plays, filmed."
That didn't work, because the nature of film is that it gives us NO time to reflect. For example, if I am watching a play, after the character speaks I know I am in "real-time" to the extent that there is some time to consider what she said. In a film, I never know that; there might be an instant (jump) cut to a totally different milieu or character or even time. Plays have to introduce such discontinuities, giving us time to adjust, films don't.
If I want to really explore an issue (which is usually the main thrust of a sci-fi text), a novel is the best format. If I want to make a strong emotional effect without, however, imparting much information, films work better than almost anything else. In film, one can convey character, attitude, mood, or emotion in seconds.
If I want to explore an issue and really involve my audience, while leaving them free to think and take in information, I believe nothing works better than the good old theatre (2500 or more years old, and still going strong!). If what is said will matter, tv or tv miniseries are best; film is at its best when it is used as a primarily visual medium. Novels are more cerebral, and readers can pick them up and put them down; they remain to some extent more detached than is possible in a film (except the Woody Allen film "Interiors," which I recall left me looking at the cinema's wall clock waiting for my companion to finish watching it!).
Now, if you have a favorite book (novel) and really want to make a good film of it, take a look at what Spielberg did to Jaws (and other novels): trim all the subplots, simplify the characters, be iconic in your casting (i.e., typecasting, especially for smaller roles). Have one strong theme and never forget what that theme is... it's the only thing viewers will take from your film (fear of the water/sharks!).
Short stories make the best films, and this is true for the sci-fi genre, especially. Long books like Dune (which I really "dug," to use the idiom of those days!) are great at allowing us to think about or absorb complex ideas like the way society is structured by its environment, or the long-term effects of altering the environment... But Dune really can't become a good film and still explore that kind of issue in depth. Even a tv miniseries (which would have a better chance of conveying the subtle texture of the novel) will necessarily oversimplify. Is Atreides the good guy? Can that be answered in a simple yes/no way? Can tv handle the greys of his character as it develops?
Vorkosigan Saga - by Lois McMaster Bujold
Honor Harrington - by David Weber
I am told that the Seafort Saga by David Feintuch is also good but have not had a chance to read it yet.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
I heard that 5 hours of footage were shot, but no film is ever made with the intention of using everything that was filmed.
The source for this is a book called "The Making of Dune" (by Ed Naha). It stated that David Lynch's first cut of the film was about 5 hours long. The first cut of any film is normally quite long but this was meant to be a fairly tight cut. Some of the extra footage can be removed by tightening scenes and removing padding and unnecessary sub plots. But to reduce the film to the studio's required length a lot more had to be sacrificed.
This happens a lot and the discarded footage is the source material for a lot of the Special Editions such as Aliens and Abyss. Though I believe the extra footage for CE3K was specially filmed.
Another memory of this book is that after the first screening of test footage of the sandworms all the men came out feeling inadequate and they realised they were going to have to be very careful about how they filmed the worms in future.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
IIRC David Lynch's original cut of the Movie was some 5 hours long. In order to get it down to the final length they removed entire subplots. I don't know anything of this "Director's Cut" but suspect it restores some of this material.
In particular they removed the subplot involving Paul having to kill a Fremen (Jamis?), when they meet some Fremen while escaping, in order to gain acceptance. He then takes responsibility for his widow and children (who become in effect his bodyguards). This explains the two young boys seen in amongst the groups of Fremen around Paul later in the movie.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
It seems that this is a website thet pre-announces the website that may arrive in June to pre-announce the mini-series
Am I getting this right or is my mind unhitched?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
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