Not even a band of demons can quite fully hide the inferior shredding on that fiddle faddle.
Dune Messiah has a lot going for it, like the inner workings of palace intrigue and some fantastic elements of world-building (a prime example being the Tleilaxu and their biological tech).
There's also Irulan becoming a key character, her Bene Gesserit POV has a ton and a half of cinematic potential, especially with Florence Pugh at the helm.
But how do you make that Paul and Chani arc satisfying for broad audiences? Also and maybe particularly for reader fans, with how much Denis changed Chani's character from the first book. And even though Paul is galactic emperor, the scale of the story and events does feel smaller than in the first book, there are no new true paradigm shifts.
Things don't get swashbuckling and truly epic again until Children Of Dune, which I loved.
Also to have it ready at this point, means he is eager about it.
Like the man said: "Inspiration does come, but it has to find you working". Well, it seems Denis tapped into that well yet again and before he thought it might happen!
It's not that NATO is weak, it's more a combination of Ukraine being in some sort of a political heritage gray zone and of the insidious way in which amoral corporations became bloated monsters with an insatiable appetite, got its' tentacles in every corner of the world with no oversight, a process that began during the reagan and thatcher era.
If this goes viral, I remember that racist, fanatical republican arschloch who used to do the commercials and realize I would probably not cry if his Papajohn stonk tanks.
Focusing solely on the movie-going experience, I would love to live in a city like LA or NYC where they have a few theaters with added technological features, like 70mm IMAX and/or 4K projectors and/or rumble seats (those must have been amazing with something like Mad Max: Fury Road).
There's at least one 60FPS theater in NYC, it must be wild to watch a film like that just by itself, or even WILDER, in 3D.
But I believe there are a few theaters in Asia - probably in places like Singapore and Shanghai, but don't quote me on that - that screened Ang Lee's "Gemini Man" in the incredible-sounding combination of 120FPS in 4K and 3D, they said it was like the screen dissolved and you were watching the action happening through a huge rectangular hole in the wall.
Maybe lives outside the US. Or just not living maybe in a "battleground" state like Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania.
If you live in a solidly Democrat part of a state that's also solidly Democrat, it's possible you're like double-landlocked away from this sea of politically-supercharged excrement. In areas where most of the political campaign money ends up, even if you don't want to pay attention, you're force-fed this shit wherever you look.
I'm sorry for those who find themselves the direct target of republican propaganda. Trapped like labrats in a hellish social experiment of overexposure to nonstop toxic messaging, billboards and robocalls where "Biden's coming to tAkE yEr GuNz!" or "Kamala Harris hAz TwO mOmMiEs" or whatever, on top of what's already on the national infotainment industry.
Billions and billions of THC molecules, winding their way within veins, passing through the violent pumping whirlpool of the heart, then thrust out with great force via the arteries and capillaries of the circulatory system, carried along by red blood cells, pushed upwards against the force of gravity, towards their final destination in the cerebral cortex, where they take one final step through the blood/brain threshold and into the roiling soupstuff of consciousness...
Krunchy Kuneiform!
Ashurbanipal and Gilgamesh might be the marshmallows.
And just what is Sargon to you, chopped liver-flavored marshmallow?
Words fail me to describe the thrill of seeing this in the theater for the first time, when it came out.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit felt like an impossible triumph, something so outlandish that the mere possibility never even occurred to us, for someone to pull off a project of this scale and ambition, to clear all legal hurdles of wrangling all studios together. Bugs (Warner) and Mickey (Disney) in the same frame, or Daffy and Donald, then there's Droopy (MGM), Betty Boop (RKO/Universal), etc.
Then there's still the matter of overcoming all the insane technical challenges (before the advent of CGI), and also make the "LA noir" story sophisticated and engrossing... this damn movie feels like a genuine artistic statement, with soul and guts and conviction.
It's like director Zemeckis and lead actor Bob Hoskins performed a tandem triple reverse somersault and sticked the landing to perfection. This film delivered on every single potential promise on the bucket list.
This makes it sound like: "In the beginning, there was no work and everybody was happy. Then the shadowy magnates plotted to erect an 8-hour workday".
What actually happened was: "In the beginning there were 16-hour workdays seven days a week; unions struggled to create better conditions for workers, and the magnates resisted, but some basic rights were attained".
But then in 1980, enough bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL idiots neglected to vote, giving the right-wing and its' "make 'murica grate agin" union-hating, Bedtime For Bonzo b-movie actor the power to bust unions by hook and by crook, starting with air traffic controllers.
Things only stagnated or got worse from there. Allowing republican pigs in power - executive, legislative and/or judicial - to take the whole of society for a greedy joyride every four-to-eight years has assured that no change for the better takes place.
Is there a way to watch NYC local access television Manhattan Neighborhood Network on a Roku?
EDIT: I mean directly from the box, NO casting from a phone or tablet.
All their channels are on-air via Livestream - here's an example - but a couple of years ago the parent company Vimeo discontinued their app for Roku, they just digitally yanked it out of our streaming boxes.
Does anyone else see an alleged old painting or black-and-white photo you've never seen before, are unsure if it's legit or a recent fake created with AI?
For example, places like HistoryPorn have some bizarre pictures of weird inventions or WWII experimental weapons.
How come I'm only just now coming across them? Why didn't we see them five or ten years ago, even in specialized forums and subreddits?
Places like ArtPorn or TraditionalArt are a trickier proposition. Here my lack of knowledge is vast, but I've really loved the history of painting for over two decades now, and have recently kept coming across a lot of 18th-to-20th century paintings and painters I've never heard of before; some of these are excellent, I should have known about them... I think. But like I say, there's more that I don't know than what I do. If they are real and not recent AI creations, where are the original and who is digitizing and/or publishing so many of them all of a sudden in the past year?