David Dubrow

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Movie Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune

January 26, 2015 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Jodorowsky’s Dune is a documentary on a failed attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune to the silver screen in the 1970’s.  It’s a brilliant film, told in storyboards and extensive interviews.  Even if you’ve only seen David Lynch’s effort (or worse, the SyFy Channel miniseries) and not read the book(s), you really have to watch this movie.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean filmmaker and writer, known best for his bizarre cult films El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Santa Sangre.  He’s also hysterical to watch in this documentary: his enthusiasm for a project decades dead jumps out of the screen, as does his anger and dismay at what happened to it.  In amusing detail he described the hoops he had to jump through to cast Orson Welles as the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen and legendary artist Salvador Dali as the Emperor of the Known Universe, Shaddam IV, for example, as well as special effects wizard Dan O’Bannon and the awesomely talented artist Jean Giraud (known as Mœbius).

If Jodorowsky was brilliant, what stole the show were Mœbius’s storyboards.  Meticulously sketched, the Dune storyboard book is thicker than three Manhattan phone books stapled together.  What Jodorowsky had in mind for the visuals was incredible: it would have revolutionized cinema science fiction at least a year before Star Wars came out.  Legendary artist H.R. Giger‘s work for the visuals was also displayed, as was the art of science fiction illustrator Chris Foss.  Looking at the art for the unmade film is a terribly heartbreaking experience in imagining what could’ve been.

Nevertheless, if Jodorowsky’s vision of Dune had been made, it would have been a gigantic, artsy mess that had little to do with the original subject matter.  Fans of the book would have been horrified at what Jodorowsky had done to it (at one point in the film, Jodorowsky himself says that he would have raped the novel, like he was raping Frank Herbert himself).  At one point, he’d intended to make the movie about 12 hours long.  So it’s no wonder they weren’t able to get financial backing from the big studios: it would have been a massive money pit that everyone except the art house crowd would have loathed.

Even so, it made an awesome documentary after the fact.  Five out of five stars.

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Filed Under: alejandro jodorowsky, documentary, dune, frank herbert, movie reviews, science fiction

Book Review: Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

August 11, 2014 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

It gives me no pleasure at all to write a review like this.  I’m intimately familiar with what it takes to write a novel with multiple characters, attempting to describe events that are epic in scope.  And I understand that not every book is going to appeal to every reader.  You can decide that you don’t like a book, but acknowledge that it’s a difference of personal taste, not the book’s quality.  Nevertheless, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad is an objectively bad book that should never have been foisted upon the reading public.

I tried extremely hard to like it.  It promised to describe a very interesting period in the Dune universe: what caused humanity to throw away advanced computer technology in such a way as to refer to it as a jihad?

Well, you can keep asking, because this answer is terrible.  There’s nothing about it that’s worth your time.  Here are some of the low points:

1) The chapter introductions are trite and without insight.  Take this chapter introduction from DTBJ (Dune: The Butlerian Jihad): “When humans created a computer with the ability to collect information and learn from it, they signed the death warrant of mankind.”  Not particularly penetrating, that.  Why bother reading the rest of the book after that?  Contrast it with this chapter intro from Dune: “There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man – with human flesh.”  That tells you something.  You can agree with it or not, but it’s a great insight into what Paul-Muad’Dib thought.  There’s none of that in DTBJ.  The characters and plotting likewise lack depth.

Sandworm: “Ow.”

2) The writing tells you everything without bothering to go through the whole rigmarole of showing you anything.  An example: “He was a serious young man, prone to honesty and with a tendency to see things in black and white….Much admired by his superiors, Xavier had been promoted quickly; equally respected by his soldiers, he was the sort of trusted man they would follow into battle.”  Oh.  Well, great.  I don’t suppose there’s any way the writers could have demonstrated these traits for us in the dialogue or action of the book.  Instead, the reader is beaten over the head with this kind of information.  Clumsy.  Terribly clumsy.  The writers don’t give us the opportunity to judge the characters on their own merits, and instead tell us what to think.

3) The best parts are glossed over, and the story is mundane.  Evil brains-in-a-jar cyborgs called cymeks begin the novel by attacking a planet.  These cymeks have names like Ajax, Agamemnon, and Tlaloc, but don’t act like their namesakes, and there’s little backstory described or told about their origins.  We get ugly little infodumps about them like cat crottes in a litterbox instead.  None of that intricate weaving of history and current action that we’d come to love from Frank Herbert’s work.  The reasons for voluntarily relinquishing one’s own humanity go entirely unexplored here.

DTBJ was a New York Times bestseller, published by Macmillan.  And it’s awful.  Tell me again how self-published books are the scourge of literary quality, and that the more self-published crap gets out there, the less likely it is great, properly-vetted books will be read.  The gatekeepers missed this one.  Big time.

I got 11% in and had to stop reading.  Don’t do what I did and buy it.  Learn from my mistake.  Save yourself.

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Filed Under: bad book, book review, dune, science fiction

Frank Herbert Would Get His Ass Kicked in a Knife Fight

July 9, 2014 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I just got finished a reread of Dune.  The ecology, philosophical and religious aspects of the novel, of the universe he built, are incredible.  I’m looking forward to reading the sequels, of which there are many.  Even if you didn’t know a lot about the author, even a casual reading of Frank Herbert’s most famous novel would tell you that he did an incredible amount of research on life cycles, planetary ecology, Middle Eastern culture, the nature of aristocracy, and how science and religion can clash.  Herbert was a brilliant man.

But he didn’t know a single thing about knife fighting, and it shows.

Part of my problem with how personal combat was portrayed in the novel was the strange hierarchy of fighters in the Dune universe.  To briefly sketch out the background, personal shield technology had been developed so that most fighting men had force fields around them that they could turn on and off.  A fast-moving object like a bullet would be deflected by a shield, but a slightly slower object, like a hand holding a knife, could slip through.  So for personal combat, you had to go fast on defense and slow on attack.  Also, if someone shot you with a laser weapon (called a lasgun) while your shield was activated, both you and the person holding the laser would be obliterated in a massive nuclear explosion, known as the Holtzman effect.  In essence, Herbert wanted to eliminate guns of all kinds in his science fiction universe.

The best individual fighters in the known universe were both attached to the main character Paul: Duncan Idaho, a “swordmaster,” and Gurney Halleck, a former prisoner of Paul’s enemies.  They developed a form of fighting that was so good, it rivaled and maybe even beat the most feared armies known.  What didn’t work in the novel was that all of this had to be told to the reader, and not shown.  Herbert went into great detail about how the gigantic sandworms of Dune created the spice melange, but when it came to fighting, he fell back on what he knew, which was fencing.  It was unconvincing.

Fencing isn’t anything like fighting with knives.  It’s a long-range form of fighting (or, well, sport).  A knife fight is, by its very nature, an extreme close-quarters encounter.  Blades don’t touch in a knife fight.  You can’t elevate it into a fencing duel; it’s too quick.

The winner in a knife fight is almost always going to be the one with more will, more speed, more strength, and more reach.  He’ll get that all-important first hit in.  Let’s also keep in mind that the idea of a knife duel is an entirely constructed fantasy, not unlike West Side Story.  The vast, vast majority of us don’t get into knife duels. Someone looking to cut you isn’t going to give you a chance to defend yourself: he’ll wait until your back is turned and shank you.

There aren’t a lot of places that teach knife dueling.  Filipino martial artists do flow drills that approximate it like sumbrada and hubud-lubud, but they’re intended to ingrain fighting reflexes, not draw out a fight into a duel.  So the lack of resources available to Herbert isn’t surprising.

Nevertheless, the fight scenes lacked authenticity.  An awesome book despite that.

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Filed Under: dune, frank herbert, knife, knife duel, knife fighting, lovely feyd

“Get out of my MIND!”

June 30, 2014 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I’ve been rereading Frank Herbert’s Dune.  I’ve read it several times since my teens, but this is the first reread in a decade.  Now that I’m reading with both eyes open: one to be entertained and one to see what Herbert did and learn from it, I’m finding brand new things to like and dislike about the novel.  Despite some flaws, it’s still captivating.

Like many, I came to Dune through David Lynch’s movie.  Dune purists hated it.  The critics thought it was laughable.  It was overwrought, overacted, and, in the Alan Smithee extended version, way overlong.

I loved it.  I still do.

It’s colored my reading the book.  I can’t help but read Paul’s dialogue in Kyle MacLachlan’s too-precise voice.  Linda Hunt has become the Shadout Mapes for me.  The late, great Robert Jordan was unfortunately miscast as Duncan Idaho, a small role in the film but a massive one in the books.  Can’t forget Sting as Feyd-Rautha (in later years, when my friends and I played Avalon Hill’s awesome Dune strategy board game, we’d always refer to him as “Lovely Feyd” in a breathy Kenneth McMillan voice).

If I’d read the book first, I’d no doubt have a different opinion of both it and the film.  Better or worse, I don’t know.  The book was definitely better: a typical claim.

Contrast that with Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.  Same situation: I’d seen the movie first, then read the book.  The difference here is that the movie was much, much better.  It was tighter, more cohesive, more entertaining.  The book had some weird subplots that included a mostly superfluous Johnny Fontaine and a young woman who needed an operation on her private parts, neither of which were connected.  Characters came in and out with little rhyme or reason.  It was a fun read, but didn’t do much for me.

Our current media culture tells us that the book is no longer enough.  If it’s popular, it needs a movie.  Or a television series.  Or a movie sequel.  I don’t attach a value judgment to this: it is what it is.  Before I became a dad, I went to see a lot of movies, and I still like to watch them when I have the time.

What the media culture creates is a crossover effect for the book.  The Dune phenomenon I mentioned earlier can’t be avoided.  David Lynch’s bizarre vision of Frank Herbert’s universe has, in part, become my vision of it.  I know I’m not alone in this.  What’s seen can’t be unseen.  Lynch has put himself into my copy of the book.

The late Puzo and equally late Herbert aside, do the authors of these books know what’s been done to them in the minds of their readers?  Translating them to a new medium doesn’t change the words printed on the page, but it does alter our perception of them.  They no longer exist in discrete vacuums; one format informs and alters the other.

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Filed Under: dune, frank herbert, mario puzo, movies, science fiction, the book was better, the godfather, the movie was better

"It began to drizzle rain and he turned on the windshield wipers; they made a great clatter like two idiots clapping in church." --Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

"Squop chicken? I never get enough to eat when I eat squop chicken. I told you that when we sat down. You gotta give me that. I told you when we sat down, I said frankly I said this is not my idea of a meal, squop chicken. I'm a big eater." --John O'Hara, BUtterfield 8

I saw the 1977 cartoon The Hobbit as a little boy, and it kindled a love of heroic fantasy that has never left me. Orson Bean's passing is terrible news. Rest in peace.

Obviously, these young people have been poorly served by their parents, but the honest search for practical information should be lauded, not contemned.

You shouldn't look at or use Twitter, and this story is another perfect example. There's so much that's wrong here that it would take a battalion of clergy, philosophers, and psychologists to fully map it out, let alone treat the issue.

This is the advertising copy for Ilana Glazer's stand-up comedy special The Planet Is Burning: "Ilana Glazer‘s debut standup special is trés lol, and turns out - she one funny b. Check out Ilana’s thoughts on partnership, being a successful stoner adult, Nazis, Diva Cups, and more. Hold on to your nuts cuz this hour proves how useless the patriarchy is. For Christ’s sake, The Planet Is Burning, and it’s time a short, queer, hairy New York Jew screams it in your face!" This is written to make you want to watch it.

In the midst of reading books about modern farming, the 6,000 year history of bread, and ancient grains, I found this just-published piece by farmer and scholar Victor Davis Hanson: Remembering the Farming Way.

"I then confront the decreasing power of the movement in order to demonstrate the need for increased theorizations of the reflexive capacities of institutionalized power structures to sustain oppositional education social movements." Yes. Of course.

You should definitely check out Atomickristin's sci-fi story Women in Fridges.

As it turns out, there may yet be some kind of personal cost for attempting to incite a social media mob into violence against a teenage boy you don't know, but decided to hate anyway because reasons.

One of the biggest problems with internet content is that the vast majority of sites don't pay their writers, and it shows in the lack of quality writing. It's hard to find decent writers, and harder to scrape up the cash to pay them. This piece is a shining example of the problem of free content: it's worth what you pay for.

If you're interested in understanding our current cultural insanity, the best primer available is Douglas Murray's The Madness of Crowds. Thoughtful, entertaining, and incisive.

More laws are dumb. More law enforcement is dumb. The only proper response to violence is overwhelming violence. End the assault. There's a rising anti-semitism problem in New York because Jews who act like victims are being victimized by predators. None of these attacks are random. Carry a weapon and practice deploying it under duress. Be alert and aware. I don't understand why the women Tiffany Harris attacked didn't flatten her face into the pavement, but once word gets around that the consequences of violence are grave, the violence will lessen.

When are you assholes going to understand that this stupidity doesn't work any longer? Nobody gives much of a damn if you think we're sexist because we don't want to see a movie you think we should see. It only makes us dislike you that much more, and you started out being an unlikable asshole. Find a new way to shame normal people.

The movie Terms of Endearment still holds up more than 35 years later, and if you're looking for a tearjerker, this is your jam. One element that didn't get a lot of mention is, at the end, when Flap, with a shrug, decides that his mother-in-law will become the mother of his children once Emma dies. He abandons them, and nothing is made of it. This always troubled me.

You need to read this story the next time you feel the urge to complain. And if you need a shot of admiration for another family's courage, check this out.

Progressive political activist and children's author J.K. Rowling finds herself on the wrong side of a mob she helped to create. The Woke Sandwich she's been trying to force-feed others since she earned enough f-you money doesn't taste as good as it looks when she's obliged to take a bite.

I need you to check out The Kohen Chronicles and pray for this family. Their 5-year-old son has cancer.

Currently, the movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker stands at 55% at Rotten Tomatoes. Don't forget that these are the same reviewers who not only adored the absolutely execrable The Last Jedi, but insisted that you were a MAGA hat-wearing incel white supremacist manbaby for not loving The Last Jedi. So either The Rise of Skywalker is an objectively bad film, or it simply wasn't woke enough to earn plaudits from our movie-reviewing moral and intellectual betters.

It's easy to hate the older pop bands like Genesis for their popularity, but they were capable of genius, and it shows in No Son of Mine.

If you want to know which identity group has more clout, read this story of the Zola ads on the Hallmark Channel.

Rest in peace, René Auberjonois. I remember you from Benson as a kid. As an adult, I remember you as Janos Audron in the Legacy of Kain video game series. You made every role you were in a classic.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 2:
8-year-old: I wrote the elf a note! I hope he writes back.
Me: What did you write?
8yo: I asked if he has any friends.
Me: What if he says it's none of your business?
8yo: *eyes grow dark and glittering* Then I'll...touch him.
Me: Ah. Mutually assured destruction, then.

Elf on a Shelf Follies, Part 1: My 8-year-old got an Elf on the Shelf the other day. The book it came with tells a story in doggerel about this elf's purpose, which is to spy on the kid and report his doings to Santa Claus, who would then determine if the kid is worthy for Christmas presents this year. The book also said for the kid not to touch him, or the magic would fade, and for the family to give the elf a name. I wanted to name him Stasi. I was outvoted.

Actor Billy Dee Williams calls himself a man or a woman, depending on whim; his character Lando Calrissian is "pansexual," and his writer implies that he'd become intimate with anyone or anything, including, one presumes, a dog, a toaster, or a baby. J.J. Abrams is very concerned about LGBTQ representation in the Star Wars universe. This is Hollywood. This is Star Wars. This is what's important to the people in charge of your cinematic entertainment. Are you not entertained?

The funniest thing on the internet today is the number of people angry over an exercise bike commercial. Public outrage is always funny. Always.

One of the biggest mistakes the United States has ever made since WWII was recruiting for clandestine and federal law enforcement organizations at Ivy League schools. The best talent pools were/are available from local law enforcement and military veterans, with their maturity and, most importantly, field experience. We've been reaping the costs of these terrible decisions for decades, culminating in a hopelessly politicized, sub-competent FBI and CIA.

Watching Fauda seasons 1 and 2 again in preparation for season 3 to be broadcast, one hopes, in early 2020. Here's my back-of-the-matchbook review of season 2.

Every day I try to be grateful for what I have, even in the face of the petty frustrations and troubles that pockmark a day spent outside of one's living room, binge-watching Netflix. We live lives of ease in 21st century America, making it enormously difficult to do anything but take one's countless blessings for granted. Holidays like the just-passed Thanksgiving are helpful reminders. There's a reason why people call the attitude of a thankful heart practicing gratitude, not just feeling grateful. You have to practice it. You have to remind yourself of what you have. It's the work of a lifetime.

Held Back: A Recent Conversation.
8-year-old: Oh, and Jamie was there, too. He was in my first grade class two years ago.
Me: Wasn't he held back a year?
8yo: Yeah. It's because he kept going to the bathroom with the door open.
Me: No way!
8yo: And girls saw.
Me: That's not right. They're not going to hold a kid back a whole year over that.
8yo: Well, that's what he told me.
Me: Sounds fishy.
8yo: I believe him.
~fin~

It's right and good to push a raft of politically correct social justice policies on everything else under the sun, but when social justice invades Hollywood, that's just a bridge too far, says Terry Gilliam. Sorry, Terry: you helped make this sandwich. EAT IT.

Rob Henderson's piece on luxury beliefs will have you nodding your head over and over again...unless you subscribe to these luxury beliefs, in which case you'll get mad.

I've made the Saturday bread from Flour Water Salt Yeast so often that I've memorized the recipe. It never disappoints. Never. The same recipe works well for pizza, too.

Liberty doesn't mean the freedom to do anything you want. The true definition of liberty is the ability to choose the good. Anything less is libertinism.

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