Dark Highways

Category: Uncategorized

  • The French Dispatch

    The French Dispatch

    This movie made me spend a lot of time thinking about Wes Anderson’s childhood. 

    Can you picture him? Sitting in his room surrounded by copies of The New Yorker and independent comics and smoking clove cigarettes. 

    His only friend, a weird kid like him that he kind of hates. His first love – an older gal pal of his mom who didn’t quite break his heart. 

    Can you imagine the dioramas? Do you wonder how many shows – both puppet and shadow – that his parents must have sat through? I bet their critiques were brutal. 

    I think that boy, who was the definition of too smart for his own good, must have been terribly lonely. 

    By the way, I have no idea what Anderson’s childhood was like. He could have been a star athlete who was voted class president. But his movies suggest something else. 

    Anderson’s adulthood begins with the movies Bottle Rocket and then Rushmore. Then we get The Royal Tenenbaums which becomes a roaring success. It’s such a success that Wes Anderson continues to make what can only be described as Wes Anderson movies. 

    Like the Coen Brothers, his movies are so distinctive they are essentially their own genre. 

    What’s a Wes Anderson movie? Sharp characters full of dry wit. Emotional people and emotionally damaged people almost never show any emotion. Beautiful and perfect sets and costumes.

    Twee. 

    I think he’s gotten better as he’s gone along and I think The French Dispatch may be his best work. 

    It’s set in France in a city called Ennui. That was a bit too twee for me but I’ll allow it.

    It’s about journalists who discover life itself and then report it out to the world. 

    It’s about Bill Murray who plays the editor of the New Yorker style magazine and the father figure to a group of brilliant writers. 

    He gets to say things like, “Don’t cry in my office!”

    And 

    “Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.”

    It may be Anderson’s funniest movie. It’s certainly his most star-packed movie.

    Everywhere you look another famous actor shows up to do something amazing and then gets off stage. I’m pretty sure there is one Oscar winner in it who has no lines. 

    Benicio Del Toro is in a lot of it but he mostly just growls. Tilda Swinton and Frances McDormand both get fun, meaty roles. And roles that you could only imagine being played by these two actresses. 

    Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wright plays a fictional version of James Baldwin and steals every scene he gets. 

    One warning. The movie spends a decent amount of time in a painter’s studio with a nude model. Those of you with kids or parents should be aware. 

    IMDB tells me this is Anderson’s ninth film with Murray, his eighth with Owen Wilson, and his seventh with Jason Schwartzman.

    Which seems to make it clear to me that while the boy may have been lonely the adult found his family.

  • Morbius

    Morbius

    The internet is a funny place. 

    People took this movie and pretended it was the height of cinema as a joke on pretentious film lovers. And then the joke went so far that Sony actually thought they had something and rereleased it only for it to bomb twice. 

    “It’s Morbin Time!” indeed. 

    The short version is that Dr. Michael Morbius has a rare blood disease and finds a cure for it. And because this is a superhero movie his cure mixes his DNA with a vampire bat and turns him into a kind of vampire. 

    He becomes Morbius The Living Vampire! 

    And in Spider-man comic books he’s a fun, tragic, villian. His origin is essentially the same as The Lizard and a host of other Spider-Man villains who are mostly a collection of smart guys who turn into monsters because their science failed them. 

    Spidey is usually friendly with these guys when they aren’t corrupted which adds to the trademark Stan Lee drama when he has to fight them.

    “How can I stop this man, my mentor/friend/boss’s son?”

    “But I must, I will, for if I fail hundreds/thousands/millions will die!”

    Anyway, that’s what it looks like on the page. And then there’s usually a great splash page from Smiling Steve Ditko or Jazzy John Romita. 

    Sony’s decision to create a Spidey cinematic universe means we get movies like this and Venom for villain characters who should not be getting movies on their own. 

    That said, this isn’t a terrible movie. It’s for sure not a great movie. But it mostly goes through the motions and does a decent job in the action scenes.

    I enjoyed Morbius figuring out how to fly by jumping in front of a subway train. And the fight scenes were mostly fine. 

    Matt Smith and Jared Leto are having fun as the hero and villain of the piece. Jared Harris is wasted in a role that gives him almost nothing to do and he looks like he wants to be somewhere else.

    It’s all perfectly average superhero nonsense. 

    The two end credit scenes at the end are hot garbage and obvious corporate mandates that make no sense and hurt everything that came before. I love superhero movies, I love the connecting end credit scenes that the MCU started. But I was honestly offended by these scenes. 

    If Sony wants to bank on its intellectual property this bad why don’t they just do Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen? Or all the other Spider heroes? Who thought a series of villian movies was a good idea? 

    On second thought, if spider heroes are all gonna be done with this level of quality maybe I should shut up. I don’t want Sony getting any ideas.

  • Marvel Phase 4

    Marvel Phase 4

    It’s 1996 and I’m 17 and I was flirting with the girl who sells tickets at the movie theater. I was working concessions and hoping that I was going to be promoted someday to that sweet usher job. It’s dead as disco and so we did not have much to do but chat.

    Finally, a customer stepped up to the window. He was large, wore a skull cap and I’m fairly certain I had seen him around.

    “What’s this duck movie about?” he asked.

    She tried to explain it but it was not easy. It’s a family film she says, and there are ducks.

    Suddenly the light clicked on.

    “Oh, she has to raise the ducks and then get them south?” he said.

    We both nodded our heads and, knowing what he was in for, the patron happily bought a ticket for Fly Away Home.

    Even though I could go see movies for free I somehow missed Fly Away Home. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere amongst the Dark Highways of cinema and the internet. And maybe you, like that movie patron from decades in my past, will be comforted in knowing exactly what kind of movie you will get if you choose to spend time with it.

    I’m fairly certain that no one has ever used this analogy before but have you ever noticed that Marvel movies are like amusement park rides?

    You get on the ride, it takes you for a fun, safe thrill, and then you get off. Most of them are the comfort food of cinema. I don’t know about you, but I think that is wonderful. After all, I know exactly what I want out of a certain type of cinema.

    In a western, I want easy-to-define good guys shooting at despicable villains. In a rom-com, I want exactly what the name implies, romance and comedy. Those should give me a few laughs, a few tears, and usually a happy couple at the end. Horror films should scare. Pixar movies, and most Disney cartoons, begin with tragedy and then show us how to live well and find our place in the face of the heartrending change that is growing to adulthood. Gangster pictures had better deliver urban violence and a critique of capitalism.

    With a Marvel movie, I know what I am going to get.

    Superhero cinema usually delivers quippy action scenes, CGI spectacle, and earnest questions about what powerful people owe to their friends, their families, and the world at large.

    Some of us love this stuff. Some people loudly hate it. I once knew a girl who absolutely would not watch anything with a phaser, a spaceship, or an alien in it. I think she’s missing out, but everyone can decide for themselves which entertainments they want.

    Some people like Space Mountain and some people like The Hall of Presidents. I haven’t watched a reality show since the first season of Survivor but I have seen every version of Star Trek. I am happy with my life choices.

    Marvel’s Phase 4 gave us a lyrical portrait of humanity in The Eternals, a lawyer comedy show in She-Hulk, a glimpse into the life of a Muslim teenager in Ms. Marvel, and an examination of fictional grief in WandaVision and real-world grief through a fictional lens in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

    Before we get even deeper into the weeds let’s briefly talk about what has come before and why it became the most financially successful cinema in the history of cinema.

    After selling the rights to its most successful properties to others, Marvel, then an independent comic book company, decided to start its own movie studio. They began in 2008 with Iron Man, a character that had not been translated into film or television before, and leaned on producer Kevin Feige who has a deep love of the source material. The movie ended with an end-credit tease for The Avengers.

    Iron Man was a hit and audiences mostly enjoyed four other Marvel films, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger.

    Just as Iron Man ended with a tease for The Avengers, The Avengers ended with a first look at Thanos and a bigger story, The Infinity Saga.

    This story would more or less be part of every movie going forward until the end of Phase 3 and Endgame. And while the movies did have their own adventures and concerns there was, for the most part, a tight, easy-to-follow, straight line in every film from point A to Endgame. 1

    We’d never seen that before. I would add the movies were generally well-regarded. Two concerns I remember from the early days:

    1. People were going to have superhero fatigue. To which the answer must be, nope.
    2. The music in Marvel movies sucked. This was specifically about the scores themselves. But that proved to be nonsense and James Gunn showed that a superhero movie could have the same connection to the music world as a Tarantino jam.

    So Phases 1-3 are mostly considered massive successes. So much so that following Endgame the expectations at every level are tremendously high.

    Meanwhile, as we got to Phase 4 Marvel found itself dealing with several real-world issues that had massive impacts on its creative ambitions. First, the world shut down for the coronavirus pandemic and as everyone eventually went back to work there were strict controls over how we interacted with each other in public.

    Second, Marvel was acquired by Disney and found itself with all of the benefits and problems that come with being part of a massive entertainment conglomerate.

    Think of Disney as the murderous gangster Paulie in Goodfellas.

    “Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me.”

    — Goodfellas

    Hey Marvel you want to start a new storyline? Great, we will spend billions on marketing and distribution. Also, we have Disney+ now and we’re gonna need a new show, movie, or special every few months to keep subscribers happy. Covid causing problems? That’s too bad. Now, where’s Moon Knight? Not enough CGI workers in the world available to make all of this seem believable? Well, sorry about your bad luck but She-Hulk needs to release in Q4.

    Disney’s other creative factions, Pixar and Star Wars, pretty much cracked under the pressure. Star Wars films are dead and were mostly rejected by their audience. Pixar is a shadow of itself.

    Marvel rolls on.

    Marvel’s finances remained at the top of the game in Phase 4. They, along with Batman and most small-budget horror flicks, are the only guaranteed winners at the box office. And, Disney+ is essentially the house that Marvel built. Notable exceptions: The Mandalorian, and pretty much nothing else. I love Andor too but I am not convinced that anyone, other than internet critics, actually watched it.

    Critically, Phase 4 is a mixed bag.

    There is no easier mark for Marvel film and television products than me. I’m a guy in my 40s who grew up reading and loving a world of comic book stories including Marvel. I still have a pull list at my local comic book store. I have never thought of a comic as an investment and have instead read every book I ever bought.

    And movies are an escape for me. In my day job, I write about some of the most horrid things humanity has to offer. I don’t watch crime fiction all that often because I live with it five days a week. Instead, please give me a happy story where the heroes are likely going to be noble and then win in the end.

    No one, no matter how good they are at the game, can produce this much and have a near-perfect record. We don’t talk about Michael Jordan’s losses or his time with the Washington Wizards. Tyson and Ali had bad nights before the end. It’s all in the game.

    So here’s some of what I loved and some of what didn’t work for me.

    This stuff was great

    Spider-Man: No Way Home

    This was as good as anything Marvel has ever done. And Endgame level film for 20 years of Spider-man movies that managed to give any fan exactly what they wanted and to bring a satisfying conclusion to three different Spider-men. I watched every Best Picture nominee last year. No Way Home was better than at least three of them.

    Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: Introduced a great new section of the Marvel Universe (Ta Lo) and two new fun heroes. It’s a fun romp and it’s up there with solid movies I can watch again any time.

    Ms. Marvel: Expectations can often lead to disappointments but they can also lead to great surprises. I expected Ms. Marvel would not be for me. It’s a story about a teenage girl who becomes a superhero and deals with her family and her religion. But in the hands of its creative team, it’s a wonderful glimpse at a unique culture (a culture that is seriously underrepresented in American media) a nice adventure story, a history lesson, and a chance for star Iman Vellani to wow audiences with her infectious, happy charm. Marvel TV had a bunch of winners but this was the champ.

    WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye. These shows had wildly different goals but I think all of them succeeded. The Matt Fraction David Aja Hawkeye comic book run, on which this series is based, is maybe my absolute favorite run of comics over the past 20 years. The show didn’t quite manage to hit those heights but it was awful close.

    WandaVision: eventually wore me down with one too many sitcom spoof episodes but it pulled everything together nicely in the end.

    Loki: Someone get Mobius a jet ski. What are we even doing here? Also, bonus points for having the final episode just be Jonathan Majors being awesome. I know several people didn’t like it but I was all in.

    Werewolf By Night: My only critique of this is that I didn’t care for the use of black and white. It seems likely that it is there to make sure a story as clearly bloody as this does not get Disney in trouble. But it’s a fun horror romp that manages to be faithful both to the Marvel comics of the 1970s and the Universal horror movies that influenced them. I thought it was really good. But I also hope that we are going to get more of this soon. I’d like a Giant Sized Man-Thing show please.

    The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. I thought it was near perfect.

    This stuff was fine

    She-Hulk: Attorney at Law; Moon Knight, What If…? and Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness.

    She-Hulk could have easily made it into the great category. But yes, the CGI was not great and there were some definite clunkers among the episodes. Still, it made me laugh a lot, especially because it was designed to punch a certain group of non-fans in the face every week. That ending was spectacular and ripped from the comics. If we got nothing else than the Daredevil stuff and the Wong (and Madisynn) episodes then everything here was worth it.

    Moon Knight: I told a friend who was super-hyped for Moon Knight exactly how they would use his multiple personality disorder to hide expensive action sequences when the trailers dropped.

    And then, they did exactly what I suggested in the first episode. My friend grew very disappointed in the show. I thought it was good though it never quite made it to greatness. As Marvel digs deeper to find new characters to spotlight we are reaching a point where third and fourth-string characters are given a chance to make a go of it.

    But there is a reason why a lot of these characters are often given limited series runs or show up in team books. They are hard to sustain. Not every character can be Batman.

    Mistakes were made

    Black Widow, Eternals, Thor: Love and Thunder

    If this blog has a point at all it’s that I don’t want to spend a bunch of time criticizing things I didn’t care for. The internet is full of people telling you what is wrong with the things they supposedly otherwise love.

    But briefly, Black Widow would have been a lot more fun if it had come out in Phase 3 before Natasha Romanoff died in Endgame. It’s hard to enjoy a superhero romp when you know it ends in a graveyard.

    Eternals: It did its best to mix the Jack Kirby original vision with the Neil Gaiman reimagining. I know people who swear by it. I am not one of those people.

    Thor: Love and Thunder: I laughed a bunch. But in the end, I was disappointed. They took 10 years in the comics to tell the Gorr the Godbutcher story while also telling a story about Jane Foster getting cancer and becoming Thor. This needed more time and people who were willing to treat the material as something more than a way to get from one joke to another as quickly as possible. It was the biggest creative miss of Phase 4.

    Endgame

    If I had to peg the honest criticism of Phase 4 its that the audience really wants another straight line to follow. They want the Infinity Stones and Thanos to be replaced by Mephisto and a multiverse of problems who can be tracked over every movie and show for the next 10 years.

    Marvel may end up doing some of that as we get Kang off the ground but it seems very likely that we will not be doing the same thing, in the same way, moving forward.

    Nor should they. Marvel has actually been at its most successful when it breaks the mold and allows filmmakers like James Gunn and Taiki Waititi (well once) to take the reigns.

    And despite what critics might say Marvel has made some bold television and movies during Phase Four and they seemed willing to experiment even while knowing that some of those experiments might blow up in their faces.

    No one else has ever gone so far before without a reset. James Bond was recast every decade or so and the franchise went in a new direction. The same with Doctor Who and Star Trek. DC defenestrates itself every few years and while I have high hopes for the new regime it will be a decade before I trust that they really will stick with a plan and keep plowing forward.

    The MCU continues on. Some of you out there in cinema land take that as a threat. But there is obviously one answer.

    “I Am Inevitable.”

    — Thanos

    Footnotes

    1. As long as you ignore the Marvel TV properties in Phases 1-3. Which I am.

  • The Fabelmans and the lions in winter

    The Fabelmans and the lions in winter

    Henry II: I hope we never die.

    Eleanor of Aquitaine: So do I.

    Henry II: Do you think there’s any chance of it?

    The Lion in Winter

    It’s central to this movie’s appeal that it could have been titled: Young Steven Spielberg.

    The Fabelmans tells the story of a young boy who is taken to a John Ford movie — The Greatest Show on Earth — and becomes obsessed with it and then transfers that obsession into a love of making movies.

    As the movie continues, the boy’s father, played by Paul Dano, and mother (Michelle Williams), grow apart and eventually divorce. The father is an engineer and the mother should have been a concert pianist.

    Their differences are on display in nearly every conversation they have with the boy. The father explains in painstaking detail how a projector works, and the mother talks of art and love.

    The boy’s childhood is spent making movies with his sisters, then his boy scout friends, and eventually his entire high school class. The boy is his mother’s son and pursues art at every turn. But his father is in him too. At one point he figures out how to make the fake guns in his western look like they are really firing.

    The father’s engineering and computing career takes off and he moves the family twice. In response, his mother buys a monkey.

    That these people stayed married long enough for the boy to be in high school is a damn miracle.

    Meanwhile, he faces a series of personal issues that threaten his commitment to what should be his career. At one point the boy, (Gabriel LaBelle) has something intensely personal to tell his mother. He’s found it in the movies he was shooting.

    But he can’t say it out loud. And that leads to a long bit of tension between the two until it eventually erupts. Finally, he still can’t say it, so he pulls out the reel of film and plays it for her.

    And I thought, “yeah kid, you’re either going to be a director one day or dead at an early age.”

    You needn’t worry, Young Steven Spielberg did quite well for himself.

    One by one, our old friends are gone. Death, natural or not, prison, deported.

    The Godfather: Part II

    When I left the theater I found myself thinking of the men of Spielberg’s generation and where they are now. I was born in 1978 and so the raging bulls — Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese — loomed over most of my film-going life. There are more names that deserve to be on that list but when I think of one of them I almost always think of these four guys together.

    George of course is the easiest to peg. He sold Star Wars and Indiana to the Mouse and retired. As the years have gone by the prequels have grown in stature and his achievements have been reassessed but it seems clear that he never really recovered after the fans reacted so negatively to the new trilogy.

    The thing I remember the most about him is that he kept saying that he wanted to make more small movies, more things like THX 1138, but Star Wars consumed his life. The franchise that is Star Wars has had ups and downs but it seems in good hands now.

    Much of the movies we watched, or the books we read, even the things that consumed the entire world for a season will fade away. Quick, what was the biggest box office hit of 2019? Of 2003? Of 1983? Of 1963?

    These things leave us. But Star Wars will most likely stand forever. He never made those small movies, he’ll have to settle for changing the world.

    Francis is off chasing one more crazy dream. It took him 40 years to be willing to pursue another one after the hell he went through on Apocalypse Now.

    “My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It’s what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.”

    Francis Ford Coppola at a 1979 news conference.

    His new movie, apparently filming now, is called Megalopolis. In an interview, he’s comparing it favorably to Apocalypse Now. I think he’s also financed or nearly financed it with $100 million of his own money.

    “Now with “Megalopolis” I would like to make a Roman epic with the story of an architect who wants to rebuild a utopian New York City after a devastating disaster,” Coppola told GQ.

    This is either going to be a world conquerer or a flop. God Bless him, but Francis has decided he will not go quietly into the night.

    And Marty, who was once going to be a priest, and is now the Pope of cinema. To hear some tell it Marty presides over the Council of Bishops and they cast their favors over what is and what is not real cinema.

    He really got under their skin by telling people what he thought and why. It reminded me of the time Roger Ebert said, “Video games can never be art.”

    Ebert said it, he believed it, and he caught a lot of online scorn and hatred about it. And now, I suspect, most of the world has completely forgotten about it. Tomorrow we shall be angry at someone else we disagree with.

    Marty should say whatever he wants about anything he likes or dislikes. He’s earned it. He’s one of the world’s great directors. I think the real issue though, is not what is being made, it’s that Marty remembers what it used to be like when he and George, and Francis, and Steven were young.

    Back then, the people with the money might take a chance on a weird science fiction romp that blends World War II fighter pilots with Arthurian legend. They might do a divorce movie with aliens with the boy from the back lot who gave them Jaws. They’d let a sickly kid from the city explore the Mean Streets and come back with a story about a psychopath who is obsessed with street crime and women.

    How was he to know that the end of Casino would be an elegy for the Hollywood he loved too?

    The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior’s college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it’s like checkin’ into an airport. And if you order room service, you’re lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it’s all gone.

    Casino

    But Marty’s still out there making movies and tilting at the windmills. He and Spielberg will probably die on the same day. Like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, each of them, I suspect, hunched over in an editing bay.

    And this year, Steven has retreated into his boyhood. They say he cried every day on set because he was, truly, bringing these painful times back to life. Sitting Shiva not just for his mother and his father but his own youth, and the dreams you have when you’re young and you don’t yet know the cost.

    There comes a point in your life when you realize how temporary all of this really is. That everyone you love, and nearly everything you love will just one day be gone. And you’ll be gone too. Even the memories of you will fade as the world moves on.

    But if anything has a chance at it, if anything is immortal at all, it’s the great movies.

  • The Bob’s Burgers Movie

    Bob’s Burgers is one of those shows for me and my family that’s consistently on and consistently makes us happy. 

    Sometimes it achieves real greatness but mostly it’s comfort food. 

    Bob is a chef who consistently refuses to make comfort food in his pursuit of amazing, interesting burger of the day. 

    He’s played by H. Jon Benjamin who has the distinction of being the lead in two animated comedies. He’s also Archer on FX’s spy show. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say he’s one of best voice actors in the world. A comedian who can make you actually believe he’s a poor burger chef or a super spy. 

    Bob is the kind of guy who clearly could have chosen to be a high-end chef. But he’s searching for something else. The show consistently shows how Bob could be richer and much more successful if he would just give a little to the commercial side of his business. 

    His rival Jimmy Pesto has plenty of success but the food is bland and bad. People eat there but no one is ever surprised by the menu. 

    But Bob soldiers on searching, reaching for his art. He’s chasing his own muse. 

    The secret of the show is how Bob’s family supports his choices and how he supports their weird pursuits. 

    His wife, Linda, keeps his depression at bay and sings all day.  She can’t sing well but she loves it and he never tells her to stop. Strong marriages are built this way.

    They have three children in their adolescence.

    Gene is a musician who is searching for his own path like his father but is much more his mother’s son. 

    Tina, the oldest is eaten up with hormones and writes erotic fiction about zombies and boys in their underwear. Of her siblings, Tina is the only one who understands rash actions could have consequences. She’s a bundle of middle-school girl anxiety. 

    According to interviews, someone pulled show creator Loren Bouchard aside and convinced him that the world didn’t need another sitcom with a boy Tina’s age and that he should create a different female character in that role. Absolutely correct. 

    Louise is the breakout. A 9-year-old in pink bunny ears who fears nothing and lives for revenge. Do not cross her. You will die with her teeth in your throat. Also, your death will probably be hilarious. She’s Bob’s child through and through. That’s an issue that causes problems between her and her mother in the series. 

    Kristin Schaal plays her like she’s the sarcastic lead in her own action movie. Which she sometimes is. 

    If there are any faults in this set-up it’s that the kids are occasionally too smart and aware for their ages. Sometimes their lines sound like they came fresh from the writer’s room and not from the mind of these particular children. 

    Mostly it makes me laugh but occasionally it pulls me out of the show. 

    Bob’s world is filled with low-rent criminals and workaday stiffs.

    He has a best friend (Bob is reluctant to admit this) named Teddy who is kindhearted, works as a handyman, and eats a burger at Bob’s nearly every day for lunch. 

    Everyone at Bob’s restaurant is met with kindness. Everyone is shown empathy. Everyone is welcome no matter their particular passions, lifestyle, or choices. 

    One other character worth mentioning is Calvin Fishoeder, the man who owns the amusement park at the end of the wharf and is the landlord of, essentially, every business in Bob’s part of the world. 

    Kevin Kline plays him as an amoral, rascal who seems to be having an awful lot of fun being rich and semi-powerful. If Mr. Burns is the template for lawful evil then Calvin is almost always somewhere between chaotic evil and neutral evil. 

    The kind of guy who would serve you a sumptuous meal and then make a joke about how man is the tastiest animal of all. You would know it was a joke but when you left that night you’d think, ‘he didn’t actually mean it did he?’

    And you would never be completely sure. 

    He’s maybe not quite Groucho Marx as your landlord but he’s close. The word that comes to mind when I think of him is giddy. 

    It’s fun being rich even if you occasionally have to demand rent payments from people you know can’t afford it. 

    The plot of The Bob’s Burgers movie gets moving when Mr. Fishoeder is arrested for the murder of a carney. 

    Now, it wouldn’t have been much of a movie if Mr. Fishoeder had actually done it, and the movie all but points and shouts at the real killer in an opening sequence. 

    But the mystery is a fun bit of plot that gets the children moving through the neighborhood and lets us hang out in some new spots with a few characters we remember and meet some new people.  

    Some of the characters who might be the subject of entire episodes get cameo appearances or less. Linda’s neurotic, cat-loving sister doesn’t get a line at all. 

    But the movie makes what is probably the right choice and narrows the focus to the family. Each member has their own little personal problem to overcome. 

    We’ll mostly, Linda and Gene get shortchanged a bit. 

    The movie really breaks through during the musical numbers. 

    I still remember, or think I remember, the first time someone on Bob’s Burgers broke out into a song. And not just a song but a full-blown Broadway-level musical event. 

    There are three or four of those here. The real villain gets a chance to lay out his master plan while dancing and singing away. 

    I especially enjoyed a large piece involving dozens of dancing carnies and the kids. The song includes Louise telling a bunch of people who are clearly on the losing end of society that if they think they have it rough they should try being nine. 

    The show was good from the first episode but the musicals, which began in season five according to the internet, took it to a better place. 

    It’s not perfect. Or that should probably be it’s not trying to be more than it is. If you like or love the show you will like or love this. You probably could walk into the movie and enjoy it even if you have only turned on the show in passing over the years. Perhaps you could even walk in cold. 

    It’s broad enough that most anyone should be able to follow along. 

    This gets to my complaint. Such as it is. I wish the movie had gone a little deeper into the rabbit hole of the show. We get cameos, we get the emotional punch behind the secret of why Louise always wears bunny ears. 

    We get stuff that’s just for every episode, every week fans. But I wanted more of that. 

    Of course, I wasn’t paying the bill for this meal and I’m guessing a show creator who says I’m gonna make a movie that only the hardcore fans will enjoy is probably going to find out that their flick is not on the menu. 

    I also suspect that nothing that happened in this movie will have any long-term impacts on the show. Unless there are massive changes when the series resumes in the fall Bob will still be pursuing his art. The kids will still be forever in the same grades. 

    Linda will sing in her own unique key. 

    This burger was tasty but tomorrow’s burger will be made the same way, with the same ingredients. 

    I’m sure I will enjoy it.

    Why Is ‘Bob’s Burgers’ So Freakishly Lovable? This Guy.

  • The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

    Each year Christmas comes for us all. It comes to the straits and the squares and to broken people. Maybe especially to broken people. 

    It starts with one of the great Christmas songs of all time. Fairytale of New York. Which begins with 

    it was Christmas Eve babe
    In the drunk tank

    The lyrics get better and worse from there. It tells the story of a New York City romance in the gutter. And of a hosts of Christmas that can’t fix a broken couple. 

    The boys of the NYPD choir
    Still singing Galway Bay
    And the bells are ringing out
    For Christmas day

    In the title scene there is a new Christmas song, written just for the show. And like You are a mean one, Mr. Grinch, it’s an instant classic. 

    So right off the bat I was exceptionally happy with how things were going. If anyone is going to deliver a Christmas musical with superheroes then writer/director James Gunn is the person I would put my faith in. 

    It didn’t have to be much more than silly but it has a strong emotional core and an appealing message. 

    I wasn’t expecting to cry as much as I did. But I’m an old guy with sons and there is a bit of business in there with Yondu, and the special hits that father-son Christmas dynamic like Santa ringing a bell. 

    I love the first set of Marvel movies. I think Avengers is the first one to prove that they could really make this thing work. And when I make my lists it’s normally at the top. 

    But of all of them Guardians of the Galaxy is the one that maybe means the most to me. 

    Because it’s funny. Because it blends Marvel’s great weird comics with cinema style and Tarantino’s taste for needle drops. And because it’s about broken people. 

    We’ve had a sequel, an Infinity War, an Endgame, a cameo in a Thor movie and soon we’ll have a third movie and an ending to Gunn’s collection of science fiction superheroes. 

    But right now we got a Christmas special. It is both true to the spirit of the great classic Christmas specials and true to Marvel Comics. 

    Marvel used to do this thing called assistant editors month. There would be warnings on the covers because the stories that month were going to be exceptionally weird. 

    Weird like Aunt May and Franklin Richard’s battling Galactus. Weird like all of the Avengers being guests on the Late Show with David Letterman. 

    Weird like two of the Guardians kidnapping Kevin Bacon to bring him to Peter Quill because it’s Christmas and Peter is sad. 

    Kevin is Earth’s greatest hero, Peter says so, and after what happened to Gamora in Endgame Peter is having a tough time. 

    So his family helps him out. They help him have a great Christmas. Christmas in space, Christmas in the drunk tank. Christmas for the broken people and the fathers and sons who have trouble sometimes living with each other. 

    You hear it? The bells are ringing out on Christmas Day.

  • Pig

    I believe in Nic Cage.

    You guys watch Brooklyn 99? There’s this great bit about Cage where the show’s happy, yet kinda dumb, lead character is stuck with a snooty classics professor and he tries to get him to watch all the great Nic Cage movies. 

    So in order he describes the plots to Face/Off, Con Air, The Rock, and Ghost Rider. All of which are soundly rejected. 

    The punchline is that after watching all of those flicks anyway, the professor finds out that along with action silliness Cage also starred in amazing films like Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Leaving Las Vegas. 

    I think all I know about Nic Cage’s life is that he bought a dinosaur skull once and he’s related to Francis Ford Coppola. And he had some financial troubles which sent him on a spiral of appearing in just about anything where a check was offered. At least that’s what it looks like from the outside.

    But as I go back to the beginning with Cage you can see that maybe he always took jobs regardless of their merits. Maybe he just likes the work? Maybe he took the best he could of what was offered. Maybe he didn’t care. 

    Oh, didn’t Sean Penn get mad at him once? Cause of the roles he was taking? 

    Anyway, I believe in Nic Cage.

    In 1987 Cage breaks out with Moonstruck and Raising Arizona. He’s suddenly kind of a big deal. 

    But as you look at the projects for the next decade I’m not sure there’s anything there that sticks. That is as successful. 

    Is that Nic? Is that just the way it goes in Hollywood? You will recall that Halle Berry won an Oscar and her next movie, Catwoman, won all the Razzie’s that year.

    In the 90’s Nic Cage soldiered on.

    How weird and wonderful would that Tim Burton Superman movie have been? I don’t think Nic Cage as Superman would have worked. But Nic Cage as Clark Kent? As an alien pretending to be a human so he can keep his friends and family safe while he battles supervillains? That is a performance I would love to see. 

    In ‘95 you get Leaving Las Vegas and then you get three years of pretty great and deeply silly action roles: The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. 

    All of those are ridiculous. But they are all also action classics. I’ll watch any of those things right now on a dare. And there are plenty of movies of every stripe from that era that you couldn’t get me to watch again with a gun to my head. 

    Then he works with two of the greatest directors who have ever done the thing: DePalma and Scorsese. Sadly none of these projects are going to be mentioned in the high points of either gentleman’s career. 

    Is that Cage’s fault? Is it the directors? Was the material just not there? 

    And he follows that up with an action movie about sports car heists in which Cage plays a man called Memphis Raines. 

    I’m tempted to make fun of that name but it’s also maybe kind of perfect? If you were going to call yourself a fake name there may not be a better one than that. It even gives the fake name Nic Cage a run for its money. 

    I’ll spare you the next two decades but suffice it to say Cage goes on kind of like this. Making a mixture of action cheese and low-budget cheese and then popping up every few years with an all-timer of a movie that reminds everyone that he is an amazing actor who can pretty much do whatever he wants with his time. 

    What I’m trying to say is that Nic Cage doesn’t owe you Pig but he made it anyway and it’s amazing. 

    Everything he does here is astounding and I was shocked by how good he is in this. I tapped out on Nic Cage a while ago and only came back for Color Out of Space and Mandy. I liked them both but they are showcases for their directors and aren’t the actor-driven drama that Pig is.

    Ok so, without getting into specifics this is not the movie that the trailer leads you to believe. It is not a revenge picture about a weird man from the woods who is tracking down his stolen, truffle-hunting, pig. 

    Well, I guess it is that, but it is a whole lot more than that. 

    There is a part in this movie that requires Nic Cage to basically stare into a man’s soul, give him a speech, and upend his entire life. 

    The kind of thing that happens in the real world after years of therapy and in the movies after several scenes of build-up. It happens here in a moment. There is no way it should work. 

    I believed every second of it. I believe in Nic Cage. 

    I doubt I’ve seen enough movies this year to really handicap these things but from what I’ve seen Pig and King Richard should both get Best Actor nominations. It’s Will Smith’s year and he deserves it.1 But, let’s all save a little love for Nic Cage. 

    And as you watch this or rewatch it ask yourself what other actor could have done this. I went through the list in my head:  

    This guy wouldn’t have played him that out of shape. 

    The other guy would have balked at playing this much tragedy, with this much weakness and empathy. 

    And I can just see this one demanding that the first thing that happens when the main character comes down from the mountain is that he gets a shower, a shave, and a haircut.

    Nic Cage wears the rattiness like a coat of armor. You can practically smell him. 

    A lot of them would have passed simply because it was a shoestring budget and a 20-day shoot. Have you seen the catering at these things? Pathetic. 

    Most of the rest of them simply couldn’t pull it off. You would have never believed them. And since the whole movie hinges on the performance the whole thing would have been lost. 

    For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. 

    But Nic Cage did it. Nic Cage can do anything.

    Footnotes
    1. HA HA I wrote this originally on Letterboxd before the Oscars.

    How ‘Pig’ Became Nicolas Cage’s Cash Cow

    The 15 Best Nicolas Cage Movies

  • Nope

    You ever been to a comic book convention? Over the years I’ve been to several and I always find them fun but frustrating. There are always these people there with tables who either never really were celebrities or were celebrities for five minutes 40 years ago. 

    And some of them, if they were connected to the right film franchise, make a living selling autographs and telling stories about their time on set. 

    It’s not that I begrudge anyone a living it’s just that I find the whole thing demeaning and depressing. 

    Also, panels with actual comic book writers and artists who created great things are often ignored while a panel with a guy or girl who played a zombie or a stormtrooper on that thing for half a minute decades ago can fill up a lecture hall. 

    Jordan Peele’s Nope is a brilliant examination of fame. What some people will do to get it and what they’ll do to keep it and what it can cost you when you won’t let it go. 

    There were two things in it that connected for me.

    At one point the alien is overhead and you can still hear the screams of people who are dying in one of the most horrific things I have ever seen in a movie. 

    It’s not horrific, so much for what you see, but for what it suggests. It’s the perfect kind of horror shot that forces you to imagine the lingering suffering of other people. 

    Anyway, as two people hide in a house and hope they won’t be killed I thought of the time I was in a newsroom while a Cat 5 Hurricane banged around outside. 

    The power had gone out and we were off the air and there were more than a few screaming and upset young people who called their relatives convinced they were going to die. 

    In order to deal with it I grabbed the only person who still had a cell phone signal and we did a Facebook live with the anchors and weather folks and basically kept working for as long as we could. 

    If you had asked me why I did that I probably would have given you a lofty answer about journalism. But the real reason was that in my mind as long as we were working I was convinced the Hurricane wouldn’t kill us.

    You can’t kill someone when they’re on the job. And if you are working you can’t spend time thinking about the life choices that led you to remain behind instead of getting out of the way and getting your family out of the way of a Cat 5 Hurricane. 

    There is a character in this movie that gets just the right amount of attention. He is a cinematographer who is the best in the world at what he does and he helps the heroes in their quest to get the perfect shot of the alien. 

    And everything about him, from the way he spoke, to his final choice to get a great shot is note-perfect. 

    He reminded me of a guy I heard about from one of my college journalism professors. The professor had been a reporter for the Miami Herald and had been in a photographer’s home and spotted a shot the man had taken in Vietnam of a group of soldiers walking through a minefield. 

    And it took a moment for my professor to realize that the photographer had walked through the minefield first in order to get a shot that would show the men’s faces. 

    “What would possibly possess you?” He asked. “To risk your life for that?”

    “The truth is worth a man’s life,” the photographer replied. 

    It’s been 20 years and I’ve never forgotten that. 

    Oliver Stone made a movie starring James Woods that was loosely based on that photographer. It’s called Salvador. It’s pretty good.

    You have never seen it. 

    Every scene in Nope builds brilliantly on its themes. Every bit of it had me thinking and questioning. 

    The keystone event in the movie is a chimpanzee ripping people apart on the set of a sitcom. These images of the animal covered in blood are terrifying. But you know what was equally disturbing? One of the stars of that show, 20 years later, her scarred face covered with a veil and accepting the applause of a small crowd when she is introduced. 

    Along with the veil she is wearing an airbrushed t-shirt that shows what she looked like when she was a child star. 

    Mr. Peele not only will kill you but he knows exactly where to twist the knife. 

    Another one of the sitcom’s stars is a young child who we meet as an adult. The adult is trading on his small brush with fame by running a dude ranch near our heroes.

    The kid survives his encounter with the dangerous animal unscathed physically but deeply scarred emotionally. And of everyone involved he should have been the one to understand the price of fame and walk away from it. That he doesn’t, and that he pursues it again with a different sort of creature that he doesn’t understand, gives us a classic horror movie trope. 

    The sinner must be punished. 

    And then there are the Haywoods. When you hire these Hollywood horse trainers you will get an entertaining story from them about how they are the great, great, great (great another great) grandchildren of the first horse trainer to appear in the first movie ever recorded.

    That story is wonderful and wonderfully delivered by Keke Palmer. That it is most likely some bullshit their father made up in order to convince white producers and directors to hire him is another twist of the knife. 

    The movie doesn’t explicitly say that the story is fake but at one point Palmer and her brother, played to laconic perfection by Daniel Kaluuya, talk about how their father started this. 

    And I thought, and he came up with a perfect story to tell white producers and white directors that they should hire him. 

    It wasn’t until after the movie was over that I fully realized that Kaluuya was playing the classic, terse, movie cowboy in this movie. 

    He’s the guy you call who gets stuff done. The guy who knows how good he is at what he does and doesn’t need to brag about it and when the time comes he will show you just how amazing he can be. 

    The movie ends with Keke celebrating because in the distance, in the mist her brother is astride his horse, alive and well. It’s a beautiful shot. 

    But as I left I thought did this movie end the way I thought it ended? 

    You will recall that in one of the greatest westerns ever made that technically Shane is still alive at the end too.

    Salavador

  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

    As a comic book fan since childhood, it is hard to express just how much I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although it is occasionally shaky the MCU has done what many of us thought impossible, take a comic book universe and bring it to live-action life.

    It did this by respecting the artists and writers who built the thing and by building a fictional world that chooses to make its heroes and villains realistic, where possible, but is just as willing to throw out realism when necessary.

    So what we get is a best-of-both-worlds situation where the characters look and act right, there are consequences to their actions and the amazing visuals that look stunning on a comic page are brought to life.

    The MCU doesn’t blink at giving you a celestial, or Thanos, or Asgard. And after an early emphasis to explain away everything with science the MCU wisely pivoted to do, just what the comics do, and say that magic, gods, monsters, and a host of other things simply exist in the world and that no explanation is needed.

    It’s also a place, for me at least, full of joy and hope. Maybe the last decade or so has been great for you. I certainly wish you blessings. But for me, these have been trying times. And I got through them with my faith, my family, and, honestly, a Marvel movie a couple of times each year.

    These things are fun and I have fun every time I go to one.

    And if you were to ask me, what am I most looking forward to about the MCU I would tell you that it is an organic and changing thing. Because these are real actors who age and at times decide to move on Kevin Feige and the Marvel team face choices every few years.

    What it seems like they have chosen, and what makes it riveting, is that the heroes of this world, unlike the comics) will grow old and die and be replaced by new characters.

    Marvel sets Thanos up in Avengers and then wisely didn’t pay it off until Infinity War and Endgame 7 years later. Compare that with the fact that Batman has faced off with the Joker and the Riddler twice since the 1990s and will likely battle him again before Matt Reeves is done with the caped crusader.

    And unless the James Gunn administration changes things, Bruce Wayne will forever be about 30 and forever fighting the same three or four villains.

    Meanwhile, unless the MCU really backtracks, Tony Stark is dead, Steve Rogers’s story is probably done and I fully expect Peter Parker to be replaced by Miles Morales before the 2020s end. Here’s hoping Sony understands why that’s a great thing and plays along.

    And yet, the thing that makes me the most excited about the MCU, was what made Black Panther: Wakanda Forever a radically different experience than most Marvel movies. In the real world, the great Chadwick Boseman died from cancer. That left Ryan Coogler considering how to move a movie franchise forward without the title character. Coogler said he honestly considered not making a sequel and also leaving his career behind as well. Such was the pain he felt after losing his friend.

    What he ultimately decided was that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever would be made as a tribute to Boseman and that in the fictional world of the MCU Boseman’s character, T’Challa, will be dead as the movie opens.

    What we have then, as a viewer, is a Marvel movie that is also a wake for a beloved actor and a way for Marvel to continue moving the fictional world of Wakanda forward in its own group of movies and television shows.

    It’s heavy man. It’s a lot for any movie to carry much less a movie with superhero shenanigans that must be employed.

    T’Challa’s kid sister Shuri, played with heart and humor by Letitia Wright, essentially goes through the five stages of grief on screen. The movie introduces both Ironheart, (Dominique Thorne) a new genius with a supersuit in the Iron Man mold, and Namor, who is played by Tenoch Huerta as something more than a supervillain.

    This line, performed by the great Winston Duke as M’Baku, rang in my head all weekend: His people do not call him general or king. They call him K’uk’ulkan, the feather serpent god. Killing him will risk eternal war.

    If you want to know what kind of comic book person I am, after I cried for a while at the first Wakanda Forever trailer I spotted that Namor has wings on his ankles, just as he does in the comics. And I was both excited and nervous. Because how can a comic book concept as weird as wings on ankles look good on screen?

    If Sony or Fox had introduced Namor in the bad old days the very first thing to go would have been the ankle wings.

    But the MCU embraces comics and finds a way, most of the time, to make these things fly.

    The wings didn’t just work in Wakanda Forever they were both amazing and terrifying. They made him, in flight, seem like a rattlesnake ready to strike at any given moment. He was that serpent god.

    Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda once again shows you who she is and how wonderful she can be in any role. Danai Gurira once again steals nearly every scene with just a look.

    Anyway, this film hit its targets and managed to do much more than your average movie. There were several subplots that could have been avoided. I like seeing Martin Freeman in anything but his Everett Ross had nothing to do except set up future things.

    Most of the time I leave a Marvel movie jazzed about what I’ve seen and excited about what is to come. This time, of course, was a much different experience.

    I left the theater feeling at least some of the grief that Coogler, Wright, and Boseman’s friends and co-workers feel. This is what the filmmakers intended. It’s a stirring tribute to Boseman and it resonates with real emotion.

    Those of us who grieve know that the pain endures.

    But joy comes in the morning.

  • Dune

    It is 2023 and I am watching Dune 2. I enjoy the visual style again and am comforted that the story of Paul Atredies is completed. Every element of it comes from the book and so I am not surprised by much but the visual effects are the best we can do in the mid-2020s and the director is the best to ever hold a long shot since Stanley Kubrick or — given it’s setting — I guess I should say David Lean. 

    The spice must flow. 

    It is 1984 and David Lynch has released his version of Dune. I do not see it as I am six and no one thinks it is appropriate for me. Pulitzer Prize-winning Film Critic Roger Ebert gives it one star and calls it a ‘real mess.’ Later critics will be kinder. A friend will urge me to watch it before seeing the 2021 Dune.

    I try but give up 30 minutes or so into it. I might have lasted an hour. The last thing I remember is Baron Harkonen escaping his poisoning death again. I think of poor doomed Leto Atreides. Forever required to die and give Paul a reason for vengeance. And I think, you know, Hamlet’s father always gets the short end of the stick.

    The spice must flow. 

    It is the late 1990s and I am in High School. I read books like they are water. Few payday weekends pass without three trips: a visit to the comic book shop, then a jaunt to FYE for a CD, and then I walk down the hall of a mall —  which has not yet been destroyed by a hurricane or humanity’s need to shop at home in their underwear — to my last stop. It is a Waldenbooks where I will pick a new novel.

    I choose Frank Herbert’s Dune. 
    It moves me in a way few books do. Along with Heinlein’s, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress it quickly becomes my favorite science fiction novel.

    Sometime later I grab Dune Messiah. The second book in the series. I bounce right off it giving up 30 pages in. Sometime later a friend will tell me of Paul’s final fate. I never try to read more Dune. 

    The spice must flow.

    It is 2000 and the Sci-Fi channel releases Dune the miniseries. I find it amazing. It is faithful to the book and has stunning computer-generated graphics. The story is finally given justice in a live-action thing. I can’t wait for what else the Sci Fi channel will do with this technology and a world of great science fiction books that can be adapted. 

    They do movies about tornadoes with sharks inside them until all of what is known as cable television becomes irrelevant. The world of malls and cable television passes away.

    Dune     remains. 

    The spice must flow.

    It is the mid-1970s and Alejandro Jodorowsky is tapped to direct Dune. I am not yet born. As Dune 2021 makes its way to cinemas I will learn that there is a documentary about Jodorowsky’s attempt. I think I should see it but I never do. News reports tell me that Jodorwosky ultimately failed but that he pulled together an impressive list of imaginative artists, writers, and thinkers. One of the great comic book artists of all time, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, creates a 3000-piece storyboard. H.R. Geiger, who created the alien in Alien, is part of the team. 

    The documentary notes that the storyboards and other work by this group make the rounds in Hollywood. It argues that Star Wars, Terminator, Alien, and a host of other movie science fiction have their genesis in this failure.

    In the present this makes me think that perhaps that’s why I don’t have the religious fervor for Dune 2021 that many others experience. Perhaps I have just seen too many versions of this story in one form or another to care as much. 

    The spice must flow. 

    It is October 22, 2021, and Dune is released in theaters and on HBO Max. I watch it at home over the weekend. It is what I expected. God Tier visuals. A familiar story. Director Denis Villeneuve clearly doesn’t feel the need to explain much or engage in character-building dialogue. I think this is probably the right choice. 

    The score is as impressive as the movie. The filmmakers treat a story with giant sandworms and villains who are evil for evil’s sake as if it is Shakespeare. Or as Jadorworsky once described it, Proust.

    There is no flaw here. Nothing is wrong. It is Dune. Or at least, it is the first third of Dune. Half of Dune is still Dune. It will forever be Dune. It is as it should be. 

    Later that week a co-worker asks me what I think of Dune. 

    “Well … it’s loud,” I say. 

    We both laugh. But behind the laughter, I feel something else. Perhaps I have grown tired of Dune. Of this story. Of these people. I want to go somewhere else, I want to see a new story. Perhaps I should create one. 

    Instead, I write a long review of Dune for an app on the pocket computer that we colloquially refer to as a phone. I still use my phone to make phone calls. Those younger than me hate phone calls. Thinking of this makes me feel old. 

    It also nags at me that I never saw this Dune in IMAX. But two weeks pass and I don’t get the chance. Life gets in the way. Dune is replaced by Marvel’s The Eternals. The world moves on. 

    For the next few weeks, my coworkers and I will stop one another and say, ‘The spice must flow.’

    Sometimes we do, ‘fear is the mind-killer.’ Though none of us can get all the way through it. 

    It is 1957 and writer Frank Herbert is in Florence, Oregon. He becomes enamored of the dunes. The US Department of Agriculture is trying to use poverty grass to stabilize the area. Herbert considers the land and comes up with a story about religion, drugs, and ecology. 

    He spends five years writing and revising it. Twenty publishers reject it. It finally comes to life in 1965. It sells poorly and the editor who took a chance on it is fired. 

    Over time, it is recognized as a masterpiece. Herbert spends the rest of his life writing sequels. 

    The spice must flow.

    Roger Ebert gives Dune (1984) a 1 star review

    Syfy’s Dune Miniseries is the Most Okay Adaptation of the Book to Date

    Is Jodorowsky’s Dune the greatest film never made?