Tag: villeneuve

Oscars 2022

I haven’t seen enough movies from 2021 to do a “should win” post, and I haven’t paid enough attention to Oscars past to do a “will win post”. But two of my favorite YouTubers have each posted an Oscar-focused video recently, and the contrast between the two is interesting.

Marianna at Impression Blend posted her reactions to the announcement of nominations for the 2022 awards. Marianna is very engaged with the announcement, starting with the very first nomination: Jessie Buckley for best supporting actress, which she and I both applauded. She has mixed, but mostly positive, reactions for a while. Then we get to best director…

In contrast, Maggie at Deep Focus Lens posted about why the Oscars don’t matter. Don’t let that put you off: Maggie starts with reasons why the Oscars do matter. She goes on to give reasons why the Oscars aren’t an indicator of quality.

I’m not pitting these two excellent MovieTubers against each other. Each is my favorite type of YouTuber: an ELK, one who is Enthusiastic, Likeable, and Knowledgeable. I believe that they know and respect one another.

I am more of a Maggie than a Marianna. My favorite piece of evidence in the case against taking the Oscars seriously is the Best Picture category in the 49th awards. One 0f the worst movies I’ve ever seen won, pitted against at least two of the best movies I’ve ever seen. And… but let me skip over Jake G in Nightcrawler, and return to the present.

As for this year, I understand Marianna’s outrage that Denis Villeneuve was not nominated for directing Dune. But I’m less surprised then she was.

What are your views on the Oscars, and on the 2022 nominations?

Dune at the Movies

More than month late, I saw Dune, aka Dune Part 1 or Dune (2021). I wanted to see it on a big screen, more than I’ve wanted to see any movie in a theater for many years. I’m glad I saw it on IMAX and with Max, my teen son.

I’ve read the book a few times, but not for many years. Max hasn’t read the book yet, but I hope that he’s about to start it. I suspect that I was in the sweet spot to see Villeneuve’s movie: if I’d read the book recently, I’d have been frustrated at some of the things left out of the film; on the other hand, I remembered some of the exposition that’s in the books but not the movie.

My overall impression and comment is that it would be hard to do a much better job of filming this notoriously unfilmable novel. I still find Frank Herbert’s world fascinating, about 60 years after he wrote the novel. Villeneuve brings it to the screen wonderfully, mixing huge shots of ships, buildings, and the desert with intimate close-ups of the characters.

My only reservation bigger than a quibble concerns the sound. When I asked Max how he liked the movie, his first comment was that his ears hurt. Mine hadn’t been comfortable either. I mainly blame the theater and its wish to show off its sound system: my ears were assaulted from the start of the preview for Top Gun: Maverick.

That said, I’m not sure that Hans Zimmer’s score is entirely innocent. It’s about as subtle as a Top Gun preview.

I’m about to go over to my Letterboxd account and give Dune the full five stars. My reservations are tiny compared with Villeneuve’s achievement in bringing Herbert’s huge fiction to the big screen.