Weekend Reads (12/18): “Dune,” National Film Registry, Anne Rice, Kickstarter
Recommended weekend reading material for December 18, 2021.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Jeffrey Overstreet’s review of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune reflects on his own childhood love of the novel, the pitfalls of adaptations, and his hopes for the second movie.
[W]hat moves me most is how the film’s faithfulness to Herbert’s vision reawakens the compelling chemistry of awe, dread, and curiosity that I experienced when I first read the book. And that enthrallment is never disrupted. Unlike Peter Jackson — or most major directors working in this mode today — Denis Villeneuve doesn’t ever make a movie that takes me out of the movie and gets me thinking about his decision-making. It feels like exemplary, unselfish filmmaking in a time when too many directors are in it to make their mark with signature style. As the film plays, I’m not thinking about the director; I thinking only of Dune.
Like Overstreet, I, too, would love to watch a four-hour extended cut “so that we can hear more from the characters, learn more about what Mentats are, observe how space travel is achieved, and get a glimpse of this Emperor everyone is talking about.” Unfortunately, Villeneuve has dismissed the idea of an extended or director’s cut. The upcoming 4K/Blu-ray releases, however, will include a number of special features that will presumably expand upon the film’s universe.
Denis Villeneuve is currently working on Dune Part Two, which will be released in October 2023.
And if a second Dune movie wasn’t already enough, Denis Villeneuve is adding yet another classic sci-fi adaptation to his repertoire: Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.
First published in 1973, the novel is regarded as one of the cornerstones of Clarke’s works. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a 31 by 12 mile cylindrical alien starship that enters the Solar System. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries.
Presumably, Villeneuve will begin working on this after he’s finished Dune Part Two. Between Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, Dune, and now Rendezvous with Rama, Denis Villeneuve is proving himself to be one of today’s greatest working sci-fi directors.
Another one of my favorite film critics, Steven D. Greydanus, has written a brilliantly thought-provoking review of Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Working for the first time without his brother, Ethan, with material proposed to him by his wife and frequent collaborator, Frances McDormand — who played Lady Macbeth on stage five years ago at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, and reprises the role here — the elder Coen brother approaches this oft-filmed material in a thrilling spirit of discovery rather than subversive reworking or reimagining.
The Tragedy of Macbeth, which stars Denzel Washington in the title role, opens in theaters on Christmas Day, and begins streaming on Apple TV+ on January 14.
Some details have been released about Suzume no Tojimari, the next movie from Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering with You).
Suzume no Tojimari is the story of a 17-year-old girl Suzume who lives in Kyushu that discovers a door with the aid of a young man. Upon opening the door, more doors appear across Japan, bringing disasters and bad luck. Suzume must close the doors found in abandoned buildings across Japan before the country falls to catastrophe.
I thought Weathering with You was OK, but Your Name is a modern animed masterpiece. I’ve been a Shinkai fan for years, ever since I saw Voices of a Distant Star back in 2003, and I’ll always be excited when he announces a new film. Suzume no Tojimari will arrive in Japanese theaters sometime in the fall of 2022.
The Library of Congress has announced this year’s entries into the National Film Registry, which serves to highlight films that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
The 2021 selections represent one of the most diverse classes of films to enter the registry, with movies dating back nearly 120 years and representing the work of Hollywood studios, independent filmmakers, documentarians, women directors, filmmakers of color, students and the silent era of film. The selections bring the number of films in the registry to 825, representing a portion of the 1.7 million films in the Library’s collections.
Via Vulture. Some of the selected films include The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Return of the Jedi, Stop Making Sense, and Wall-E.
The Playlist has posted a list of their most anticipated TV shows and mini-series of 2022. Several of their picks are on my list, too, including Halo, The Lord of the Rings, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Russian Doll, The Sandman, and of course, Ted Lasso.
Last week, the Polygon staff published a list of 2021’s best favorite video games, and now they’re back with 2021’s best sci-fi and fantasy books.
If you love books then you know: They aren’t just escapism, they also inspire introspection, making us think harder about the world we live in. This is precisely the promise of great science fiction and fantasy — categories we’ve chosen to consider in a list together, as fantastic books continue to blur the line between the two speculative genres (and besides, we love to read them all). These 20 books span genres and perspectives — from space operas, to Norse mythology retellings, to romances with a dash of time travel. But all of them gave us something new to consider.
Noted horror author Anne Rice, most famous for her vampire novels like 1976’s Interview with the Vampire, has died at the age of 80.
Her writing career spanned over 30 novels, beginning with Interview with the Vampire in 1976. The book spawned an entire series now known as “The Vampire Chronicles.” A second series of interconnected novels — a collection now entitled “The Lives of the Mayfair Witches” — was born out of 1990’s The Witching Hour.
Rice was also well-known for her (conflicted) religious views. In 1998, Rice became a Catholic after decades of atheism. But in 2010, she announced that, although she still believed in Christ, she was quitting Christianity. And though later called herself a “secular humanist,” she also reaffirmed that “my devotion to Jesus remains fierce” in this 2016 interview with Alice Cooper.
Bruce Springsteen has sold his entire catalog — 300 songs, 20 studio albums, and more — to Sony Music for a cool $500 million.
For his entire 50-year-long career, Springsteen has released his albums through Sony imprint Columbia Records. He was granted ownership of his earlier records in the late 1980s and 1990s as an incentive to re-sign with the label. Last month, Springsteen was in negotiations with Sony to sell his album catalog while he also simultaneously shopped around his publishing catalog, which was under Universal Music Publishing Group, according to Billboard.
Via 1440.
David French continues to be a voice of sanity in these highly factious and divided days. His recent Dispatch column is a sobering assessment of the state of White Evangelical politics.
I’ve always recognized the flaws in the movement, and my response to the question of whether theology and doctrine were of primary importance to the movement was always the same — for all its flaws, Republican Christian conservatism is mainly driven by deeply rooted, theologically coherent faith convictions and not by the perhaps more deeply rooted “folkways” or customs of a disproportionately white, disproportionately rural, and disproportionately Southern American subculture.
I no longer believe this to be true. I now see that when theology and culture collide — or when theology and partisanship collide — a disturbing number of white Evangelicals will choose culture. But they’ll still believe they’re choosing faith, and that profound misunderstanding is contributing to a dynamic that is tearing this nation apart.
And speaking of sobering, Derek Thompson considers the stagnation of American society, from the types of movies produced by Hollywood to the slowdown of scientific discoveries and technological innovation.
Driven by popularity metrics, scientists, like movie studios, are becoming more likely to tinker in proven domains than to pursue risky original projects that might bloom into new franchises. It’s not that writers, directors, scientists, and researchers can’t physically come up with new ideas. But rather that something in the air — something in our institutions, or our culture — was constraining the growth new ideas. In science, as in cinema, incrementalism is edging out exploration.
Hackers and cybercriminals have taken advantage of a massive vulnerability in a piece of widely used open source software called Log4J.
Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told industry executives that the vulnerability was “one of the most serious I’ve seen in my entire career, if not the most serious,” according to US media reports. Hundreds of millions of devices are likely to be affected, she said.
Check Point said that in many cases, the hackers were taking control of computers to use them to mine cryptocurrency, or to become part of botnets, vast networks of computers that can be used to overwhelm websites with traffic, to send spam, or for other illegal purposes.
Some of the companies affected include Amazon, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco. No severe security breaches have been reported yet, but that doesn’t mean none have occurred. Companies are often reticent to admit to any such breaches, if only because they can be a PR nightmare.
Popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has received a lot of criticism for its recent decision to move to the blockchain. Among the critics are indie tabletop game designers who rely on the platform for funding new projects.
Among the chief concerns expressed by critics were the highly questionable ethics — ranging from reports of scams to allegations of money laundering — and steep environmental costs of crypto and its associated technology. While Kickstarter’s announced blockchain provider Celo claims to be the world’s first carbon-negative crypto platform, the title is achieved via carbon offsetting — in other words, making up for the carbon used in the process by planting trees and investing in other such eco-friendly projects - rather than direct reduction of its carbon footprint.
Kickstarter’s announcement is filled with some pretty lofty promises (more openness, more innovation), but it contains few concrete details. (For example, just how, exactly, will a blockchain help backers determine a project’s viability?) Granted, I’m pretty skeptical of anything blockchain-related, but this feels like more of a PR move than something that will actually benefit anybody.
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