Off Topic Thread 5.0

So I managed to see the Villeneuve Dune movie. Before I dip behind the spoiler filter, let me just say that I enjoyed the film and will watch it again over the next few weeks. I think audiences may be a little divided but there is too much to like for me.

The rest is spoilers:

Spoiler Warning

The biggest flaw by far with the film is that it's clearly (at best) half a film. The third act ran into serious pacing issues, they didn't have enough time to further delve into the larger conflict and I came away a little unsatisfied given the spectacle of the opening 90 minutes. While the final third was slower and more intimate and clearly necessary for the character development of some of the leading protagonists, it didn't feel like the natural end point of a complete film. As such, my main gripe is that as an opening instalment of a series, the film falls into the trap of not being it's own complete movie.

If I had some other complaints it would be down to the under utility of some of the cast (I suspect that will be remedied in the coming sequels) and the failure to use certain scenes to greater impact. One example of this is Rabban's character. There is one scene later on where he is executing a bunch of Atreides survivors and it's shot in a very sterile fashion, almost like a War documentary. Whilst I can understand this approach, I felt it was a missed opportunity to really show the menace of Rabban and give Bautista something to work with in a film where for the most part he just stood around looking sadistic but doing little.

Aside from the above, the film looked amazing. The distinctiveness of each of the key powers was remarkable, and the overall spectacle of the Universe created by Villeneuve was perfect. Skarsgård, Ferguson, Mamoa and Isaacs anchored the film, and Chalamet was a solid Paul Atreides. Despite only accounting for less than half the story told in the David Lynch adaptation, the Dune universe was far more fleshed out and I'm happy to live with a weaker third act for the story to be properly set up.

I read the first two books when I was 16 so my memory of them is at best hazy, but some of the more detailed characteristics of the likes of the Fremen have been adapted flawlessly and the power players from the Imperium to the Bene Gesserit and the Harkonnen along with their specific motivations all come together commensurately within the wider narrative.

I was looking forward to this movie for a while and I have greater anticipation for the next instalment having seen it.

Dave_The_Sheep

Jealous.

swiwi_

Lady Parts. Best TV comedy I’ve seen in a good while. Admittedly I’ve only watched the first 2 episodes so far but it’s got me chortling away to myself.

molloyjh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118049814#Comment_118049814

Yeah I really enjoyed it too.

hold my beer

Anyone know how to ignore a poster who has set their profile to private?

Dubinusa

Just got back to the U.S! It was a great week back home, although mum is really struggling, dementia! Awful to watch someone struggling th memory issues.

Ireland is an insanely beautiful country!

Clegg

The Cobblestone is under threat, the Trinity Science Gallery is closing and now Chapters Bookstore has announced its shutting up shop. This is thoroughly depressing for a Dubliner.

Teferi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089639#Comment_118089639

More space for badly needed hotels.

stephen_n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089736#Comment_118089736

Have to put the homeless somewhere.

Dave_The_Sheep

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089639#Comment_118089639

Gutted about Chapters. Used to love spending an hour or two strolling around it, particularly upstairs. Thoroughly depressing is right.

All to be replaced by some gouging hotel or something. Fantastic.

Who the fcuk are all these people needing a hotel

Teferi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089856#Comment_118089856

Dublin city councillor's bank accounts need them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089843#Comment_118089843

have been reading through the thread on reddit and it doesn't sound like a great place to work

Former Former Former

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118089856#Comment_118089856

It isn't being replaced by a hotel.

It's closing because people don't go to bookshops any more, and Parnell St isn't exactly a retail destination.

CatFromHue

Pretty much.

I don't mean it in a mean way but how often did people annoyed/upset at those things closing actually go to them?

Bookshops don't just have online to compete with but also Kindles.

Dave_The_Sheep

Was in Chapters there the weekend just gone, oddly enough.

Yeah, it's location did not help at all, it's true. Probably the only thing I'd head up that way for.

There's loads of footfall on Parnell St, there's 3 supermarkets and the Ilac Centre within a stones-throw of Chapters. It was there for decades, it's not the location imo. Mixture of Covid, competition with Amazon/online retail, and people buying fewer physical books imo. It's a real shame imo.

Suspect we're going to have a lot of crap left over this year...

Teferi

Yep, we've had two trick or treaters. They were rained off.

We'd a load even with the weather.

That's some fairly intense cringe from the web summit opening.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118105557#Comment_118105557

Paddy Cosgrave is a tool with an inflated sense of importance. Always has been.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118105668#Comment_118105668

Went to the web summit once, thought it was shite. Never knew much about Cosgrave but making up dead healthcare workers last year was despicable and should have ruined him publicly. Seems he has a pretty unhealthy obsession with certain politicians, but has really taken things to an absurd and deeply unprofessional new low with this stunt.

molloyjh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106240#Comment_118106240

What did he do this time?

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106273#Comment_118106273

Opened WebSummit with a spiel about Varadkar.

awec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118106240#Comment_118106240

It is a load of shite. I would bet that the overwhelming majority get absolutely nothing out of WebSummit other than a hangover.

Cosgrave tries to paint himself as a big tech CEO, in reality he's an event planner of a sizeable, but not huge event.

thomond2006

TechBro rails against corruption having been laughed out of the room by the Irish government for looking for half of Dublin to be shut down for his Wifi-less tech event.

Next.

stephen_n

Got a replacement dive housing for my camera a few weeks ago. The company is Chinese but despite having the item marked as a repair. It seems to have attracted EU Vat on top of and administration charge for import duty it shouldn’t have attracted. Which is then subject to Irish VAT too. I am currently trying to find any sort of contact details to discuss this with FedEx and tell them to shove it up their jaxy.

jacothelad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118105557#Comment_118105557

If ever there was an emperor’s new clothes moment for Johnson his speech provided it, He has made a laughing stock of this country and you have seriously to ask who in their right mind thought the content of that speech was a good idea? It was so butt-clenchingly bad I can’t believe any if his team would allow it which leads me to think that it was the blond buffoon’s idea.

The hunch backed toss pot just cannot do serious. He needs the attention. He needs the laughs. So he started what should have been a plea to world leaders to put aside their self-interest and work constructively together with a reference to James Bond. If he’d stopped at that, he might have got away with it. But Blunderwank is compulsively needy. So the rest of his short speech was peppered with bad gags. Cows farting. Boris the Clown possibly still being prime minister in 2060 when he’s 94. Further references to not everyone being able to look like James Bond.. The Fat Out-Of-Controller is really a lightweight. A balloon of noxious gas in a thin skin. What the hell does Johnson think he's doing at the opening of the crucial COP26? Stupid question, I know; he doesn't think, or even imagine a future beyond next week…and his next freebee from those who openly bribe the Tories to enrich them at our expense.

All of which was met with silence by the world leaders assembled in the marquee. I swear if they had been able to find some eggs they would have thrown them at him. To say Johnson lost the room with his rambling nonsense and die on your arse ‘jokes’ doesn’t come close to how much of a disaster it was. And the quieter it got, the more desperate Johnson became. You could see the flashes of panic in his eyes. Only Boris just can’t do serious. Few things give me greater schadenfreude than the Clown finding himself up against an audience that isn't laughing along. The needy imbecile must f*cking hate it. A PM with more self awareness, and a less massive and fragile ego, would have just said welcome to Glasgow, and then introduced David Attenborough. Just imagine if we could have a PM with the gravitas, intelligence, experience and integrity of Attenborough, and send Johnson to remote corners of the world to film icebergs falling apart or even better. To abseil down into an erupting volcano.

And this is what he has turned the UK into. A laughing stock of a country. Asleep and maskless in some of the photos beside 95 year old David Attenborough. Boris the Moron is a national embarrassment. Just sit with that. Sit with it firmly for he only knows how to act the fool. It is dangerous. He is dangerous. The emphasis on "act", because, like everything in the public eye - including his fake name - is an act. A devious, dangerous and thoroughly amoral man. He's a **** moron, the idiot’s idiot, would be ostracised or ridiculed down the pub, gibbering idiot that he is. The world must look on and think ‘who the hell thought voting for that was a good idea?’.

It was interesting to note just how bad a public speaker he is when his audience isn't jam-packed with sycophants, toadies and fuckwits. The most he can manage is to be the idol of the Daily Heil lot...Sadly there are enough forelock tugging morons around for this shower of **** to carry on robbing us blind until the end..which if they carry on as they are, will be sooner rather than later.. I'd have more confidence following a brain dead slug than this criminally embarrassing clown.

pickarooney

He has his bad points too, though.