Subject: More Non-War SF Movie Reviews

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack

FOOLED YA! The movie I rented was the 2000 remake of "DUNE".

Actually I did not rent it because of the war, I rented it because I
had long been wanting to see for myself how they adapted the great
novel this time. But of course, as Howll and Papa Joe discovered one
radio show back in 1991, Arrakis IS Iraq and the "spice" indeed must
flow. It's Sardaukar versus Fremen and all that. That's an Hour of
Slack rerun. (If I had a computer program that would replace audio of a
person saying "Quayle" with audio of a person saying "Cheney" we
wouldn't have to do a new show for a year.)

Anyway I have not seen the entire 3 or 4 hour thing yet, but so far I
must say it beats the unfortunate David Lynch version.

I'm sure that for a few days there existed a GREAT David Lynch 9 hour
version of Dune, but then the ever present executives made the
ever-wise decision to edit it down into a lovely looking colring book
with laughably stiff dialog and gigantic confusing plot holes left
mostly unpatched by voice-overs.

"Dune" always cried out for a miniseries and I can't complain too much
about this adaptation.

I know this is old news, but I was frustrated about not being able to
see the bad Riverworld yet so I had to do Dune. Plus I see the same
people are doing "Children of Dune".

I get the impression this thing was a U.S. - Czech coproduction.

Another reason I bring it up is that it dredged up ancient history.
While I was watching the opening credits, much to my surprise I saw
that the special effects supervisor (a major above-the-line position)
was an old coworker of mine, Ernest D. Farino.

Farino was the OTHER Dallas stop-motion guy, and editor of the
techno-zine "FXRH" aka "Special Visual Effects by Ray Harryhausen". He
is my age and we both worked for Century Studios in 1977. He was
super-straight at the time although I heard that he loosened up after
moving to Hollywood and getting a divorce.

His effects for DUNE were impressive and I checked the IMDB to see what
he'd been up to. I had checked some years ago, and saw that he had
directed a kid's show, Captain Time or something, but this time he was
listed as having done the TITLE SEQUENCES for a shitload of big movies,
including all of James Cameron's movies up to TITANIC. He was "fx
producer" on the horrible "Starship Troopers" and "Screamers," did some
stop-motion for Carpenter's "The Thing" which got cut, AND for "The
Terminator."

But best of all, he actually DIRECTED a "Land of the Lost" back in 1991!

And something in Germany in 1999 called "Noah's Ark."

NOAH'S ARK!!

Now I have a quest.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: More Non-War SF Movie Reviews
From: "nu-monet v5.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> ...He was "fx producer" on the horrible "Starship
> Troopers"...

Excuse me? EXCUSE ME? Since WHEN is bug-porn
"horrible"?

(admittedly, the goofy geekball they got to play
the MI officer just looked silly, despite being a
blatant ripoff of Papa Joe. And the giant alien
"brain bug" was pretty spherical-pizzoid.)

But I mean, really, the battle scenes were cool
and they didn't over-do the neo-fascist aspects
of the future, except that the neo-fascists ruled
the WHOLE EARTH.

Besides, I know a guy whose group was hired to do
a single sound effect for the movie. Of a big
bug stomping sound. Paid him a lot.

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Original file name: More Non-War SF Movie Reviews - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:39