Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
December 2007 activity
Total Log Entries: 47
- Adam (6)
- Andrew (0)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (3)
- David (0)
- Eva (0)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (8)
- Jenny (0)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (5)
- Megan (1)
- Rumsey (6)
- Teddy (0)
- Thomas (0)
- Timothy (0)
- Victoria (2)
Total Comments: 12
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (4)
- Zodiac (0)
- Charlie Wilson’s War (0)
- The Savages (0)
- Hell and High Water (0)
- The Witnesses (0)
- Keane (0)
- We Own The Night (0)
- The Golden Compass (2)
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (0)
- Michael Clayton (3)
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (0)
- Scrooged (1)
- Dangerous Days (0)
- Harvey (0)
- Blade Runner (0)
- The Passing Show (0)
- In The Line Of Fire (0)
- Peeping Tom (0)
- Control (0)
- Rescue Dawn (1)
- The Kingdom (0)
- Superbad (0)
- Mildred Pierce (0)
- Knocked Up (0)
- Beowulf (1)
- Now, Voyager (0)
- A Girl Cut In Two (0)
- Alexandra (0)
- Dune (0)
- Absolute Wilson (0)
- Berserk! (0)
- Fast Food Nation (0)
- Bewitched (0)
- Helvetica (0)
- Kind Hearts and Coronets (0)
- Love Songs (0)
- Lady Chatterley (0)
- No Reservations (0)
- Juno (0)
- Eastern Promises (0)
- Death Proof (0)
- Control (0)
- Southland Tales (0)
- Once (0)
- Blue Velvet (0)
- The Mist (0)
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Dune / USA / 1984
“The sleeper must awaken.”
Like Kyle MacLachlan’s hair therein, Dune is astonishingly crafted and just too big not to be silly. What must be whole chapters of Herbert’s text are condensed into a few jumbled minutes of screentime, especially in the film’s last act, and the bewildering amount of narrative pruning could not have been made more apparent if each cut were accompanied by the sound of an axe falling.
And this is a pity, as there is much to Lynch’s film that shows a great deal of promise. Every frame reveals new wonders of production design, even when the ersatz-Star Wars action sequences (and lousy mattework) bring the film’s already uneven pace to an unceremonious halt. But given the film’s troubled (and utterly fascinating) production history, it’s a wonder that Lynch has made a film that is intelligible at all (however slightly), let alone one that so perversely trades on many of the same themes, images, and oddities that he has pursued throughout his career. There’s more than one weird connection between Paul’s dreams here and Henry’s in Eraserhead, and Lynch’s trademark pure-evildoing and starry-eyed prophecy are both firmly in line with similar moments in Blue Velvet, inter alia.
And if that’s still not enough to make you want to see the movie, there’s this.
Tom’s thoughts on the Extended Cut
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal DVD
19 Dec 2007 5:37 PM | Submit Comment