Month: March 2026

Dune – Part 2 (2024) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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Just as with my review of the first installment of Dune, this will not be one of my usual reviews where I describe the plot.  Once again, I’ll give my impressions of the movie as someone hitting the story for the first time, since, as I mentioned before I’ve never read the books and only have a vague sense of the story and the author’s message, if there is one.

First off, the cinematography is top notch.  If the movie is blending actual desert landscapes with CGI it’s seamless and extremely realistic.  Or maybe the whole thing is CGI in which case it’s even more remarkable.  The acting is very good although casting Christopher Walken as the galactic emperor is jarring for me.  It’s almost impossible for me to see him in a film and not expect some kind of joke.  But he has very little screen time and the rest of the cast is very, very good.

The plot seems to be a combination of Lawrence of Arabia with a science fiction galactic political intrigue story.  And that may sound sort of flippant but actually I think the storyline is handled very skillfully by the director.  The pacing and the building to the climax is done with great skill and the final battle and its outcome are great.

What the filmmaker went for here was a combination of a personal story about Paul and his friends and family against the backdrop of a spectacle which is the revolt of the Fremen against the off-worlders who have dominated their world for centuries.  The reason I mentioned Lawrence of Arabia is because Paul is an outsider who is accepted by the Fremen just as Lawrence was accepted by the Arabs in their struggle to liberate themselves from the Turks.  And the Fremen are obviously modeled after the Arabs with “spice” as a stand-in for oil in the real world.

I don’t know if the movie is very faithful to every detail in the novels but in my opinion both this installment and the previous movie provide top-notch science fiction cinematic entertainment.  The protagonist and his friends are extremely likable and their adversaries are almost literally cartoon villains that in some cases seem hardly human.  And watching their defeat is almost as much fun as seeing Paul victorious.  One thing though, Paul’s mother belongs to some kind of female religious magical cabal that has a lot to do with control over the nobility of the empire.  I find myself repelled by all of them including Paul’s mother.  I’d like to see all of them burned at the stake as witches.

So, my take on all this is simple.  The plot is consistent enough to pass the suspension of disbelief hurdle and the action of the plot is lively enough and entertaining enough to keep you watching right through to the end.  I can’t see how I don’t rate it as highly recommended.  And the movie ends in the middle of a giant war so obviously we all have to save up our pennies to see the third and possibly further installments when they arrive.  So, three cheers for Dune: Part 2.

More Marketing Stuff

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So, I spent some time yesterday and today sending a few complimentary copies of the book to reviewers and adjusting the Amazon Ads to concentrate on the “targets” that have produced sales.  So far it looks like the ads that work best are where Amazon selects viewers that have done a search for another product that is either “similar” to my book or “complementary” to it and place my ad somewhere on that search result page.  How Amazon gauges similarity and complementarity is of course the black box.

These targets that they decide on work better than matching my book to searches that contain keywords that my book has been matched with like “techno-thriller” or “vigilante justice” or “suspense thriller.”  These also work but at a lower rate.  So, what seems to be the case is that Amazon seems to know what they’re doing better than anybody else.  And I guess that makes sense.  The algorithm is the wizard behind the curtain but apparently, he’s not some medicine show tramp whose balloon was blown off course.  He’s the real deal.

So now that I’m running the marketing show I’m excited again and waiting for that magic moment when the algorithm decides that I’m ready for prime time and blankets the Amazon universe with free advertisements for my magnum opus.  And every time you open up an email from Amazon, my book will stare back at you in all its black and white splendor.  And once the ten millionth copy is sold, President Trump will invite me to the Oval Office and present me with the Trump/Kennedy Center Medal for the Most Beautiful Literature.  And I’ll autograph a copy of the book for him.  It’ll read, “To DJT, from one native New Yorker, to another.  You, kooky nut, you.  Don’t ever change.  Jake Barter”

But I digress (or hallucinate).  Of late I’ve read just how much AI novel writing has become sort of a catastrophe.  Apparently, there is a sizable segment of the book reading audience that is perfectly satisfied with AI slop.  And I don’t think this is shocking.  Think of what now passes for entertainment on broadcast television.  It’s already down to the level of mindless machine output.  I guess the question will be whether there will be a reaction to this, with a flight to quality occurring.  Even leaving my own personal writing out of this, I’d hate to think that literature will completely disappear from the face of the Earth in favor of subhuman cargo-cult knock-offs.

Well, I guess there can be all kinds of entertainment products out there.  After all, a big part of marketing is identifying a niche that isn’t being serviced optimally.  But it does make me wonder what that niche is for me.  Disgruntled right-wing old guys?  Well, why not.  Talk about a despised minority.  We’re positively reviled by everyone out there.  But I am hoping for a larger audience.  I have a small test audience of women who won the Goodreads giveaway.  I’m hoping for some feedback from them pretty soon.  I’ll compare them to the few women that have already read the book in my circle of friends.  It might be interesting

Must Be Global Warming Again

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I was looking at the Accu-weather forecast for Dunwich.  There was a special miasmal ectoplasm alert on for the area (as usual).  But the temperature forecast was eye-catching:

Tonight: Clear and bitterly cold.  Lo: 4°F

Tomorrow: Mostly sunny and cold; the coldest day until next winter.

That was an interesting statement.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Hearing that it would get down to 4°F was in no way cheery.  Single digits and below is a special part of the “charm” of New England.  Camera Girl and I prepare for this by stacking two hundred pounds of blankets on top of ourselves in bed and use snorkels to get air.  So, no, I’m not looking forward to tonight.  But to hear that from now on until next year it will not be getting horribly cold again is like being someone trapped in a flooded building where the water line is only inches from the ceiling and you’ve been dog paddling for dear life and breathing the last few inches of air for hours praying you wouldn’t drown and finally the tide begins to recede.  You experience a sense of relief and victory over a horrible enemy.

It snowed today but I waited until about 2pm and the sun came out and melted the dusting on the driveway.  I went around trimming back the ten foot piles of snow along the edge of the driveway just to show them who’s boss and how limited their remaining time would be.  I think as I struck with my shovel I taunted the snow in a somewhat insane manner.  It’s been a long winter.  The other day I was able to get the snowblower working.  I poured warm water down the chute and like magic it was completely functional.  So, all of the horror from last week was unnecessary.  But uncertainty ruled and I didn’t want to use up any time fiddling with the machine when I knew I barely had enough daylight to shovel myself out from a foot of snow.

But all of that is behind me.  From now on melting snow will be the reality and preparations will begin for spring.  Already we are preparing for the next milestone.  St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and Camera Girl will prepare her version of corned beef and cabbage.  Lately she hasn’t been boiling it.  The cabbage is sauteed and the beef is pan fried but it still connects us with the patron saint of the city of our birth (before Mamdani installed the minarets on St Patrick’s Cathedral).  After that Easter is right around the corner and dare I hope some lamb could be on the menu?  Camera Girl despises lamb.  She prefers ham or pork for Easter but every once in a while, she’ll provide a lamb alternative for lepers such as myself who enjoy a little flavor at Easter.

But all of this is premature.  Tonight, I’ll add another hundred pounds of blankets to the pile and we’ll hunker down to 4°F one last time.  And who knows, in a few weeks I might even start saying, “Boy I hope it cools a little, I’m stifling.  Must be global warming.”