hope is not lost today, it is found

a little present on your doorstep

There are so many places in the Villeneuve Dune adaptations where he just...takes all the narrative pieces that Frank Herbert laid out and subtly rearranges them into something that tells the story better--that creates dramatic tension where you need it, communicates the themes and message of the book more clearly, or corrects something in the text that contradicts or undermines what Herbert said he was trying to say.

The fedaykin are probably my favorite example of this. I just re-read a little part of the book and got smacked in the face with how different they are.

(under the cut for book spoilers and length)

So there is this thing that the two Villeneuve Dune movies do together that I cannot stop thinking about, where they will present something (often, a weapon) in a context the first time around where it looks a certain way (often, very sexy and cool). And then they will present it again in a way that doesn't exactly negate your reading of the original context but makes you recoil in horror from the new context.

Thinking about the scene where Paul enlists the Southern Fremen in Dune part 2. I really love this scene, and, let's not kid ourselves, there's an element of power fantasy to it.

But there's something much sinister going on there. Paul specifically screams "I am Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, Duke of Arrakis". The mere fact of calling the planet Arrakis instead of its original Fremen name Dune, and the fact that he claims to be the legitimate Duke of the planet because he's the heir of House Atreides is an insult to Fremen independence. What he was allegedly fighting for this all time...

There's a consistent theme in this scene of Paul refusing to follow Fremen customs, like when he refuses to kill Stilgar and speaks anyway. Paul is doing that on purpose. He asserts his dominance by showing Fremen rules don't apply to him. He can dismiss anything he dislikes about their culture and remake it according to his will.

This scene shows simultaneously the crowning of Paul as a Fremen Messiah and the death of traditional Fremen culture. Paul is pursuing by other means what the Harkonens started.

What Paul is asking of (or rather demanding of) the Fremen, is that they join him in a revolution. But not a revolution towards more freedom, justice and equity. A revolution meant to create a society based around the supreme power of a tyrannical leader. And that's a central component of fascism.

Which can make us question the ethics of Villeneuve's film. This scene shows the birth of a fascist movement in a very epic and heroic light. The intended message of the film is clearly anti-authoritarian, but cinematography leaves much room for misinterpretation.

diadà

Praise be to the person with relative pitch who was just cleaning and realized “hey isn’t that the opening note to darude sandstorm?”

Jonathan Glazer, accepting the Oscar for Best International Film for “The Zone of Interest,” is the first winner tonight to condemn the ongoing atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza

Johnathan Glazer, Oscar winning Director of The Zone of Interest, a movie depicting the wickedness of apathy during the Holocaust:

FLORENCE PUGH Academy Awards (March 10, 2024)

Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars 2024

i feel like we should talk about the classism also portrayed in Nimona

like the whole thing of ballister not being of noble blood, him being a street kid?

ofc there’s the homophobia/transphobia aspect but i haven’t really seen anyone talk about the classism in it

the director literally claims that the start of the “crack in the wall” is the queen giving ballister a chance to prove himself and become a knight

she is fully blaming the prospect of giving non-noble lower class people a chance to become knights as a catalyst for the opportunity for “monsters” to invade or whatever

the queen letting ballister train to be a knight, and her wanting to allow anyone (aka ‘commoners’) to do the same? giving underprivileged people the same opportunities as those that are privileged? and the director finding that so “wrong” or offensive that she literally kills her??

I like how the trauma of Ballister losing his arm was acknowledged, while the movie never implied that becoming disabled made him less.

Losing a limb is a traumatic experience which is given its due, but after Ballister becomes disabled, he's still a more than capable knight. It's implied that he made his prosthetic himself, which means this man built himself a working prosthetic with one hand, proving how skilled he is.

The confiscation of his prosthetic arm is treated as wrong - because that's not just a tool, it's his arm. He made it to be part of him. Ambrosius puts his hand on Ballister's prosthetic hand with all the tenderness that he would use if Ballister still had his flesh hand because disabled bodies can still be desirable, and that's still the hand of the man he loves, even though it's metal.

And when he reaches out to Nimona, it's with his prosthetic hand.