Dune Torrent

jarypat

Dune Torrent

The desert planet Arrakis - we enter the year 10191 and the whole universe depends on the spice Melange which exists only on this dry and desolate planet. The natives of this planet await the arrival of their Messiah who will lead them into a holy war against the evil Harkonnen empire. This is the film adaptation based on Frank Herbert's cult novel.
A Duke's son leads desert warriors against the galactic emperor and his father's evil nemesis when they assassinate his father and free their desert world from the emperor's rule.
Released in 1984 and directed/written by David Lynch from Frank Herbert's sci-fi tome, "Dune" takes place in the distant future, where a Duke (Jürgen Prochnow) and his family are sent by the Emperor of the known universe (José Ferrer) to a sand world from which comes a priceless spice-drug that is essential for interstellar travel. The Duke and his family are slated for assassination, but his son, Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan), escapes and corrals the planet's natives, the Fremens, becoming nigh messianic. If you thought 1974's "Zardoz" was a sci-fi train wreck you ain't seen nothing till you've seen "Dune," perhaps the worst major-release sci-fi flick ever made. Actually, the movie starts out promising as Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) explains the basics, her head superimposed over a space background. The ensuing floating alien sequence is intriguing and well-executed. But the movie bogs down with Paul's tedious preparation for his mission to Dune. The next sequence switches to the home planet of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Kenneth McMillan) and it's so campy with its gay snuff scene that it seems cut & pasted from another movie. Every other scene with the hovering fat bastage is equally goofy. Then there's an uncanny folding-space-to-travel sequence that's cool, but at around the hour mark the movie goes off the rails and never recovers. It becomes so bad you have to see it to believe it. It's unfathomable that this was a major release and cost $40-45 million in 1984 dollars. The basic plot, as described above, is actually simple and it's a good one that could've worked; not to mention, the cast, sets, costumes and many of the effects (for 1984) are stellar. There's a lot of eye candy here; Sting is in his prime as Paul's rival and Madsen & Sean Young are young and breathtaking, particularly the former; Francesca Annis is also striking as the hero's mother. There's some ear candy too with the score by Toto. But the devil is in the details. The overabundance of characters, the pretentiously muddled verbiage (intermixed with strange, long names you can't remember), the campy elements, the lousy F/X (even for 1984) and, mostly, the utter lack of story-thrust doom the film. By the second half I no longer cared about the characters and their story. I just sat and tried to enjoy the eye & ear candy till the end. I want to emphasize that I can handle bad effects and campy or amusing elements in sci-fi, as long as the story is somehow engaging. The original Star Trek TV series is Exhibit A. But, like I said, "Dune" utterly fails to deliver the goods with a driving narrative, particularly after the first hour. If ever there was a move that was a chore to sit through, this is it. Be forewarned. RUNTIME: I saw the original 137-minute cut and that was more than enough; I'm glad I didn't see the Extended Cut, which runs 177 minutes or, worse, the Special Edition, which runs 190 minutes. ADDITIONAL CAST: Silvana Mangano and Siân Phillips are on hand as gross-looking "Reverend Mothers" while Dean Stockwell appears as some type of doctor, Patrick Stewart (pre-TNG) as an elderly warrior, and Max von Sydow as another doctor. There are hundreds of others. FILMING LOCATIONS: Studio work was done in Mexico City with other sequences shot in Chihuahua & Sonora, Mexico; Zzyzx, California; and Yuma, Arizona. GRADE: D+
As per above, I am not a fan of science fiction, I find many of these movies boring. For this reason & the bad reviews this received I did not see this film in 1984. This version is the extended 179 minute version that the director David Lynch had his name taken off of, for the idiotic reason the studio clipped some 20 seconds of an unneeded scene. We are told what happens & we see the result, I for one did not need to see an open heart.If they kept that in, the film would have gotten a PG 13 rating & not the PG proper rating. Sorry Mr.Lynch the reasoning was wrong. I found the movie to be interesting, exciting, likable & above all superbly made, I cannot find any fault with the production, Sets, costumes, music, editing make-up, etc were all award worthy, The special effects were first class & not over done like in some other films. I never read the original book, so I cannot comment on how close the screenplay was. The story is quite involved, with the clever narration all is explained very clearly & you can follow all. The story here is no different than many other space adventures. The Star War series has many of the same plot points. In this type film I would not expect superb award winning acting, Some performances here were better than others, BUT all fit the roles being presented. I was never bored, I liked nearly all the characters,even a few you were not supposed to like. Ratings ***1/2 (out of 4) 91 points (out of 100) IMDb 8 (out of 10)
For all its cumbersome scope (realized on a shimmeringly large scale by Lawrence of Arabia cinematographer Freddie Francis), the film remains an intensely personal epic, Lynch's uncommon emphasis on characters rather than effects lending his exposition a rather remarkable lucidity.
Nowhere. It just does not exist. The closest we have to David Lynch's original vision is the theatrical release. Some people sometimes refer to the extended TV cut as the "director's cut" (and some even dare to offer copies of it in various auction sites under that label), but that couldn't be further removed from reality, as that version was rejected by Lynch to the point of deleting his name from the credits. A legal DVD of Dune: The Director's Cut exists, but that's for the 2000 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, not this film. However, the cast and crew of Lynch's Dune have confirmed that Lynch showed them an 'assembly cut' of the film shortly after principal photography wrapped. Although the film had yet to go through post-production, the reaction was very positive. This cut has not been seen since (as is the case with most assembly cuts). There is also a fan version available, that attempts to get closer to both the novel and David Lynch's original vision: http://www.fanedit.org/ifdb/412-dune-the-alternative-edition-redux It's "Backyard" by Emmett Chapman, included on his album Parallel Galaxy. Chapman was also the creator of the instrument (known as the Chapman Stick) that Gurney plays, repainted and with an added lower part to represent the Baliset described by Frank Herbert in the original novel. Herbert was very complimentary towards the film, impressed that Lynch had managed to include so much from his novel in such a short time. He did, however, take a small issue with the portrayal of Paul as having become a literal god-figure at the end. Both versions contain footage that's missing in the other one, but the Theatrical Version lacks way more footage. Furthermore several scenes have been removed and reinserted afterwards in the TV Version, some of them are edited differently. But these differences aren't mentioned in this comparison because it would break the mold. David Lychn's version is the Theatrical Version btw. He wasn't involved in the TV Version and ordered that his name in the opening credits was going to be replaced by Alan Smithee . The main difference in the two versions is the fact that the TV Version has been split up to smaller episodes. As a result of that, the movie doesn't look like a motion picture anymore but like a big TV production. a5c7b9f00b

Dune Torrent

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