Month: January 2019

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Lady Gaga Calls Out Trump, Government Shutdown During Vegas Show

From Billboard:

The singer paused during her performance of "Million Reasons," saying, "If the fucking president of the United States could please put our government back…there are people who live paycheck to paycheck and need their money."

She then took aim at Pence, whose wife Karen is under fire for accepting a job at a school that excludes LGBT children, adding, "And to Mike Pence, who thinks it's acceptable that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ: you're wrong. You say we should not discriminate against Christianity. You are the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace, Mr. Pence, and you can look yourself in the mirror and you'll find it right there."

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It Looks Like It's Happening

There have been rumors of a rebooted/reimaged Dune movie in the works for years now. But it looks like it's finally happening.

As I may have written before, when the original Dune came out in 1984 I was ecstatic. The Dune series remain my favorite books of all time, and while it was a difficult, convoluted story, I knew the first time I read it that it was deserving of a proper screen adaptation.

That being said, when I saw David Lynch's version, I walked away sorely disappointed. Visually stunning, what I saw on screen matched almost exactly what I had visualized while reading the novel. But halfway through the story had been changed to such a degree that it was almost unrecognizable. And Paul making it rain at the end? Water is poison to the sandworms, so he would've effectively destroyed all spice production then and there.

I had my hopes dashed once again with the Dune and Children of Dune miniseries that appeared on the SyFy Channel in the early 2000s. This time the story matched the books almost perfectly, but the visuals were off. They looked cheap and I not-so-affectionately refer to the production as "Planet of the Hats." Still, it was better than nothing, and better than Lynch because at least it followed the original storyline.

That's why when I heard that Dennis Villeneuve (most recently known for Blade Runner 2049) would be taking the helm this time around, I had my hopes rekindled that we'd finally see a Dune worthy of its beloved status.

This production will star Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) as Paul Atreides. The cast will also include Rebecca Ferguson (Mission Impossible) as Lady Jessica, Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Beast Rabban, Charlotte Rampling (Broadchurch) as The Reverend Mother Helen Mohiam (perfect!), and Stellan Skarsgård (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again) as Baron Harkonnen. The other major roles have yet to be cast, but I'm optimistic because of who has already signed on.

The film is expected to begin filming in Budapest and Jordan this spring.

Precious few details have leaked out, but today I found these enigmatic photos on a Dune fan taken in Jordan that were simply labeled, "Arrakis, Jordan. Wadi Rum. Our New Home of Dune."




Squee!

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A Rapidly Spreading Cancer

They're popping up like toadstools after a rainstorm, or more accurately, a rapidly-spreading cancer: multi-story apartment/condo complexes in central Phoenix that are destroying historic (although not protected) landmarks in their wake.*

It is a trend that started several years ago and shows absolutely no sign of abating—at least until the next housing crash mercifully puts it out of our misery.

Phoenix used to limit their multi-family developments to at most three stories in height. This saved the developer money because no elevators were required, and the complexes fit in nicely with the surrounding neighborhoods. But no more! Now 4, 5, or 6 stories are commonplace, and from the looks of it, all of these developments were designed by architects who have never set foot in a desert.

Dark charcoal gray—or black—or deeply colored exterior walls. Yup. Makes perfect sense in an environment where the sun beats down 90% of the time, fading everything (something I immediately noticed upon moving back from Denver) and whose heat will simply be absorbed to re-radiate at night, further increasing the heat bubble hovering over the city in summer and diverting any incoming thunderstorms.

Along those same clueless-designer lines, walls of glass. I'd hate to think of what the cooling bills will be for the units, even if the windows are double-paned. This actually started in the early aughts with a complex I actually lived in (although my particular unit was a more traditional design). Arioso boasted two story units with huge walls of glass

But hey, they all have granite countertops and laminate flooring so it's all cool. Never mind that the vast majority of these units have no storage whatsoever. Years ago you'd get at least a coat/linen closet and a small outside store room on your patio/balcony. But I guess all that square footage adds up and could easily be allocated to even more units to rent out! And it seems their target demographic doesn't own stuff anyway; these apartments/condos look to be more collegiate fuck pads than actual homes. And WTF is up with these "studios" with "bedrooms" with no windows or second means of egress? How does this meet code?!

And don't even get me started on the ridiculous amount of rent they're charging for these shoeboxes…

*Not actually destroying. They're keeping the most architecturally iconic parts of the buildings to quiet the public outcry…and turning them into leasing/sales offices.

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Found This…

…while doing some cleaning today.

Kind of surprised I never gave it to the dogs to destroy. I almost don't want to now…

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A Hospital is a Weird Place

A hospital is a weird place. In one room a man is holding his son for the first time. In another room, a man is holding his father for the last time. In yet another room, some idiot is having something that should never have been shoved up there in the first place removed from his rectum.

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Released 41 Years Ago Today

Alec R. Constandinos: Romeo & Juliet (1978)

So many memories attached to this one, but the one that stands out the most was taking the record into Jerry's Audio in Phoenix (one of many high end audio stores at the time) and having it played through a pair of Gale401's. At the time the Gales were my dream speakers, priced somewhere in the stratosphere and completely unobtainable on my $2.75/hour Broadway Southwest Sales Associate budget, but to my young ears (that could actually easily still hear to 20kHz!), they sounded even better than the JBL L100s. I knew all the salesmen at Jerry's and one of them (a notorious hard rocker) came running into the listening room yelling, "What is this disco shi…" He stood there for a minute listening and finally said, "Damn, that sounds good." Romeo & Juliet was supposedly one of the first records mixed down from a 48-track master and even today it does sound damn good.

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Unnecessary

One of the movies we didn't get a chance to see when it came out last summer because of financial constraints was Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Based on the reviews I'd read, I took the fact that I missed seeing it when it was in the theaters as a blessing in disguise. When it appeared on BlueRay a few weeks ago I briefly considered purchasing a copy, but again lack of funds prevented me from doing so.

It appeared on Netflix a few nights ago.

I was not impressed. In my opinion it wasn't so much a bad movie as simply an unnecessary one in the Star Wars pantheon. Yeah it provided backstory of how Han and Chewbacca met, how he won the Millennium Falcon from Lando Calrissian, and provided the expected stunning special effects and action sequences, but I came away thinking, "They went to a hell of a lot of trouble  making this film simply to explain away a stupid technical error—Han's bragging that he "made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs" (a parsec being a unit of distance, not time) in the original Star Wars film.

Maybe it's just the curmudgeon in me, but I'm starting to believe there can actually be too much Star Wars; that the magic is being diluted.