Experiencing Dune (and more) again
For the past few weeks, I’ve been reliving Frank Herbert’s Dune universe. I read the original saga way 10 years ago when a friend loaned me the six books that started the journey. Interestingly, I first encountered Dune in the form of a game “Dune 2”. This was THE game then that started my love for real time strategy (RTS) games. Some years later, I got my hands on the “Predude to Dune” trilogy by Brian Herbert and Kevin. J. Anderson (one of my favorite Star Wars authors). Atreides, Harkonnen and Corrino, names that invoked memories of long gaming nights and now they had come to life in the novels.
Today, I’ve just finished the last book in the “Legends of Dune” series. Had to re-read “The Machine Crusade” as my last read was couple of years back and “The Battle of Corrin” rounded up the trilogy nicely. For now, I’m just starting on “Hunters of Dune” and am looking forward to “Sandworms of Dune” and the “Heroes of Dune” series.
What’s weird is that all this old “stuff” is coming back into my life. Trek, GI-Joe !, Transformers… Can’t help but feel nostalgic when your childhood memories come back stronger and with more bang 
WooHoo! I’ve been Simpsonized.
Thanks to BC for pointing this out. This nifty tool at http://simpsonizeme.com/ converts images into your Simpsons persona
Star Trek – Entertaining a new generation
- Romulan Warship (Mining Ship?!) kicking Federation starships ass – Check!
- Kirk in Orion Female’s Bed (I predict green body paint sales volume increasing) – Check!
- Scotty’s Technobabble about transportation to another destination while in warp – Check!
- Spock’s Vulcan Nerve Pinch – Check!
- Spock and Uhura (what was her first name again?) KISSING (more than once!) – Check!
- Lens flare in every scene (do we view the world like this in real life?!) – Wish they hadn’t done it, Check!
Just got back from the gala screening! The 11th film to bear the Star Trek brand is definitely a modern rewrite with a brand new cast. There’s humor between the characters as they get to know each other for the first time and action scenes galore with very well done special effects (just that the lens flare was a tad too much at times).
We watched this movie from two very different perspectives, myself with the experience of watching TOS, TNG, VOY, DS9, ENT (at least twice of each episode, yes I’m a trek fan! ) and reading lots of fiction on the characters in storybook and comic form and YH who is totally new to the Star Trek franchise. I sat down to the movie hoping that they wouldn’t ruin all the years of history and came out feeling that perhaps its a good thing they had done a refresh. After all, the last seven years has been without a new trek movie or series being aired. The new Kirk (Chris Pine) is definitely reminiscent of Shatner’s Kirk with his swagger and all about the action character. Spock (both Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto) shine in their performance. The usual time travel trick allows them to interact and gives a nice twist to how the storyline has changed to accommodate the new cast and direction.
Some minor gripes would be perhaps after getting used to the clean, utilitarian design of the engine room, here we are shown a sprawling network of pipes and archways that looked more in place in a brewery. While it definitely added to the set design and lots of explosions, it felt very cluttered. The bridge with its brand new white tones made me wonder who would want to work in an environment that gave you constant white glare. And “red matter” for the plot device, did we just step into an Alias set (you know what I mean if you watch Alias)?
The villain in the show is the Romulans this time, though we only see a facet of them with Eric Bana being the sad, lonely and psychotic person who seeks revenge for future deeds. There has been many times when this has been done (Voyager’s Year Of Hell) so it’s nothing new as a plot. After Trek II Wrath of Khan, it would perhaps be hard to write another interesting villain but one can only hope with the new direction, we’ll see lots more quality Trek in the years to come.