Futura!!!

Whatsisname!

And that guy!

And the wrestler!

The weird thing, when this movie was released, I was all “oh, I hated the first Dune movie, so I’m never gonna watch this one”, but then I checked my blog post about that movie — and I totally misremembered. I loved it! Why didn’t I remember that? So weird.

Anyway, that just goes to show: You should always blog what movies you’re watching. And now I’m watching Part Two.

Futura!

It’s Zimmerman!

I respect that there’s no recap — “as you know, Paul, you’re the son of a king who was killed by the eeevil Harkonnen in the previous movie” — but I have to admit I’m slightly confused. I don’t remember these people! But still, I’m enjoying this a lot! So far.

Hang on… that apostrophe isn’t a Futura apostrophe! What’s going on!

See?

TSK TSK VILLENEUVE! YOU ARE DISSAPOINT

Aww.

Oh right — I’ve seen this shot before.

Somebody was tweeting comparisons between the bluray version and the Max version, and I thought it looked kinda fake, but indeed, the bluray version is very horizontal.

You gotta admit that it’s a bit confusing that they cast a woman 12 years older than Timothee to play Timothee’s mother.

That’s not Sting!

Are we black and white now!?

Wow, that’s a cosy hotel room. Kinda like the one I stayed at in London last week — it had black rubber floors.

OK, I’m a bit bored now. It’s, I guess, kinda brave to have a movie start with 90 minutes without much plot, and basically being a training sequence. And it’s been entertaining mostly, but now it’s kinda sagging.

Hopefully the movie is going to start now — there’s a bit more than an hour to go.

It’s a bit amusing that the Eeevil Sting Guy’s Evil Genius plan is just to actually bomb the Fremen instead of, like, running around and being shot at by them. That’s so… genius. And evil!

Man, these Arabs have excellent sound systems… Paul was ranting in the middle there, but all these hundreds of thousands of people could hear him.

Hey, it’s Post Atreides.

I think I have that headpiece.

These algorithmically generated crowds just look silly. And why didn’t the worms eat all the soldiers anyway?

I liked this… but I have to admit to being bored a bit, too. It’s not that the movie is overlong (at almost three hours) really — there’s nothing that feel superfluous, exactly. In many ways it feels like it’s recapping a story? I.e., perhaps it could have been longer?

I think the parts that were most boring were when we had to go through plot points. Like, when Paul drank the Secret Potion — that felt like we were going through the motions. While the more offhand, less plot-driven scenes were more entertaining?

But I did like it, anyway. And it was fun watching Stellan have so much fun playing the eeeevilest guy.

It also felt like the middle part of a trilogy, but I guess it’s unsure whether there’ll be any further Dune movies?

Dune Part Two. Denis Villeneuve. 2024. ⚃

I’ve never seen this before. I was a huge Talking Heads fan up an until Remain In Light as a child (my elder sister had most of their albums; I was 12), but their first album I bought myself (Speaking In Tongues) I found kinda naff. So when this came out the year after, and all my friends finally got into them (and the live version of Psycho Killer was playing everywhere) I was doing the stupid teenage hipster thing and thinking I was all over it.

But man, this is awesome!

I would have loved this.

I admit it: I was wrong. Once! When I was er sixteen, I guess? 1984? Yeah, that tracks. But I was listening to The Smiths and Ministry by this time.

Oh, I didn’t know that Tina played the pick-ey guitar part on Home. Makes sense, though.

<menswear guy>That suit should be bigger.</menswear guy>

Wow, I still feel exactly the same as when I was twelve years old listening to Crosseyed and Painless: Why can’t that song just continue forever?

One thing I kinda regret is watching the half part of this with the subtitles on, because it corrected so many misunderstandings I had about the lyrics. I’ve always thought it was “TV’s in the bedroom, inventing situations” not “Judy’s in the bedroom” and so on, and I prefer the versions of the lyrics I made up back then.

Anyway, this is absolutely fantastic. (Even if some of the songs have a distinct lack of much needed Adrian Belewness.)

Stop Making Sense. Jonathan Demme. 1984. ⚅

I got this DVD because I read Casanova Frankenstein’s fantastic autobio book (with Glenn Pearce). He described how seeing this movie randomly on TV in the early 80s was a real eye opener and kinda changed his life? So I had to see this.

Oh, I guess the Police were the biggest name here…

I don’t think that this was originally in 16:9? Oh, it was! I mean, 1.78:1. That’s unusual.

What I understood from the book was that this would be a compilation of concert footage bits? And it is! Did they have one big show where all these people played or is it cut together from many different dates?

Right:

Punk, New Wave, Reggae and Techno bands from Europe and the US recorded live in several locations in 1980.

Looks great, anyway.

What’s Jools doing here!?

I bought Klaus Nomi’s album just the other year… and while I admire his schtick, the music is kinda naff? “HUMOUR OUT OF MUSIC” is a slogan I could almost sign off on, but there’s plenty of bands that take funny concepts (like Matmos) and make something awesome out of it, and… other’s don’t.

This movie is 99% just shots of people playing on stage. One song per band. No talking heads. Nobody talking about how radical this music is or whatever. No explanations. No pauses between acts. I love it! But I also like these occasional shots of the audience.

Very realistic shot of what it’s like to be in the audience.

Rare non-stage shot…

… but it leads into these comedy punks so it makes sense.

I love The Au-Pairs. So many fantastic bands on this thing. Those Police guys have good taste!

All the acts are really sweaty, too, so these shows aren’t just the band doing one song each or something. Did they like put on a huge festival spanning weeks with a couple bands per day?

OK, not all these bands are as well-remembered these days.

Is that Pere Ubu? I just bought a complete box set of their stuff, but I’m not familiar with what they’re playing…

Man, that was awesome. I saw them live a couple years ago, but the performance here was so precise… just amazing.

Most of these are shot in pretty big venues, but here’s one from a small one.

Hey! The Police started the movie, and here’s another Police song? They’re the only band that gets more than one song? SUCH NEPOTISM¹.

Such edgy drum kit. Not a jazz at all.

What!? Another Police song? But with Jools!?

Oh, it’s while they run the end credits. Well, that’s OK then — the first one while the opening credits were running, so while they did three tracks, only one of them on their own, like.

Now there’s like two dozen people on stage, so I guess at least some of these bands played the same night to do this movie.

Well, that was kinda awesome? I don’t have any negative things to say about this. The sound is great, it’s filmed perfectly, the selection of bands is almost impeccable, and there’s nothing annoying at all. That doesn’t really happen. So it’s top grades from me.

I do wonder what the story behind this is, though. How did they get financing? 34 bands? So much film filmed? Who financed this? And did MTV help or hurt the movie?

Urgh! A Music War. Derek Burbidge. 1981. ⚅

¹For wrong values of.