Dune (David Lynch, 1984)

Call me crazy, but I think there might be a connection between the spice and the worms. What that connection is, I'm not entirely sure. But what I do know is... Oh, wait. Virginia Madsen has started talking again. Just a second... Okay, I think she's done. All right, where was I? Ah, yes, the spice and the worms of Arrakis, a sort of spice planet. Since the discovery of the spice back in the year who gives a shit, humanity has longed to control the spice. In fact, according to Baron... What the fuck! (What happened?) You won't believe this, but Virginia Madsen has started talking again. It's my fault. I mean, I had three options at my disposal when it came to watching Dune for the very first time the other night. The first option was the theatrical cut. I said, no way, I ain't watching that. The second option was the extended cut. This option seemed tempting, but director David Lynch famously had his name removed from this version of the film, so, I passed on it. The third option was something called "The Work-print Cut." Cobbled together by a fan(s) of the film, the work-print cut combines both the theatrical cut and the extended cut and uses the notes of David Lynch as a sort of guidepost... I think. Now, I'm not sure if Virginia Madsen's opening slab of exposition is longer in this version. Nevertheless, I just sat through three hours of Dune, and my mind is... throbbing like one of those pulsating pus-laden cysts that litter the right side Baron Vladimir Harkonnen's greasy face. I'm no dermatologist, but I think  Baron Vladimir Harkonnen should start washing with soap that contains tea tree oil. I've read that it helps remove sebum from the skin, thus preventing the chances of your pores from becoming clogged.

Yes, I realize that  Baron Vladimir Harkonnen already has a doctor, played by Leonardo Cimino, who is currently treating his severe case of space acne. But he isn't doing a very good job, now is he?

While I could talk about the Baron's clogged pores for hours on end, Dune isn't really about space acne. It's about spice, baby.

However, it's the acne plagued Baron Harkonnen who says so succinctly at one point: "He who controls the spice, controls the universe."

While the Baron (Kenneth McMillan), the ruler of Giedi Prime and the leader of House Harkonnen, wants to control the spice. He is, actually, under the control of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (José Ferrer), the leader of the Known Universe, who resides on the Planet Kaitain. When Duke Leto Atreides (Jürgen Prochnow), the leader of House Atreides on the Planet Caladan, takes over the Planet Arrakis, a.k.a. Spice World, this enrages the Baron, who, along with his demented sons/gay lovers, Feyd (Sting) and The Beast Rabban (Paul L. Smith), plots to bring down House Atreides, and takeover spice production on the Planet Arrakis.

In-between all this scheming, lot's of weird ass nonsense takes place.

Now, with so many planets and so many characters to keep track of, it's easy to see how someone might get lost.

In order to prevent this from happening, we end up spending the bulk of our time following Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan), the duke's son.

I know, what kind of name for a kid is "Paul"? But then again, his mom's name is Jessica (Francesca Annis). What I mean is, in a film populated by characters with names like, Shadout Mapes (Linda Hunt), a shadowy Fremen housekeeper who is always carrying a crysknife, Thufir Hawat (Freddie Jones), House Atreides' bushy-browed head of security, and Gurney Halleck (Patrick Stewart), Warmaster for House Atreides, Paul and Jessica seem out of place.

While the story of Paul's rise from being a wide-eyed duke in training to a spice worm-riding God is super compelling, I couldn't help but be obsessed by the oft-kilter goings-on transpiring on Giedi Prime, the home of House Harkonnen.

Don't get me wrong, Planet Caladan is loaded with talented actors. The aforementioned Jürgen Prochnow, Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart and Freddie Jones, for example, are all great. As are, Richard Jordan and Dean Stockwell, who plays Doctor Yueh. But Giedi Prime has Kenneth McMillan as the awful Baron Harkonnen, a balloon-shaped tyrant covered in cysts, Jack Nance as Nefud, a Harkonnen lackey...

...Paul L. Smith (Pieces) as The Beast Rabban, a disgustingly vile man who sweats pure evil, Sting as Feyd, a lanky ginger who digs knives and loves doing crunches (the entire planet, by the way, is populated by redheads), and, my personal favourite, Brad Dourif as Piter De Vries (his "juice of sapho" monologue was glorious), the Baron's right hand man, who, strangely enough, doesn't have red hair (edit: Piter de Vries is a Mentat, a human computer employed by House Harkonnen).

Okay, now that you got the image of all those repugnant motherfuckers in your head. Imagine them all in the same green-walled room. I don't know 'bout you, but watching a bunch of repugnant motherfuckers acting all gross 'n' junk was kind of awesome. Did I feel sad whenever the Baron's undulating cysts weren't onscreen? In a way, yes. Yes, I did. There's something about these rupugnant motherfuckers that was quite appealing.

And that appeal seemed to go through the roof when the Baron drains/fucks/absorbs... um... Whatever the Baron did to that boy-toy, who was, for some reason, planting fake purple flowers at gun point, was tremendously discombobulating.

Actually, now that I think about it, if you were to ask me to describe Dune using only two words, I would say it was: tremendously discombobulating. Yeah, I like that.

Kooky wordplay aside. Even though three hours might seem a tad excessive, I couldn't help but be sucked into this unnecessarily complicated world of spice and giant worms. And, in a bizarre twist, I ended up rooting for Paul to defeat my beloved Baron. It's bizarre because I usually loathe these bland Luke Skywalker types. But there was something different going on here. Or maybe it's because Kyle MacLachlan (Showgirls) is awesome. There you go.

I've always wanted to review a David Lynch movie on here. Why I haven't done one is a bit of a mystery. One day, I asked a friend: If I was going to review a David Lynch film, which one should I do? And, without hesitation, they said, Dune. After thinking about it for, oh, I don't know, five whole seconds, I said: You're absolutely right. Dune it is.

Quirky fun-fact: My only connection to Dune up until this point was through the early 1990s techno rave scene. You see, a U.K. techno project called "EON" released two tracks back in '91. And both, "Spice" and "Fear Is the Mind-Killer," sample the movie rather heavily. The spice must flow.

Eyes of Laura Mars (Irvin Kershner, 1979)

The word "chic," to put it mildly, is a tad overused, especially in today's fashion obsessed culture, where things are repeatedly called "chic," when, in truth, they're not really all that chic. However, the same can't be said when it comes to describing some of the events that take place in the Eyes of Laura Mars, a giallo-esque thriller about a fashion photographer who sees through the eyes of an eyeball-perforating killer. Dripping, no, scratch that, oozing, unadulterated chicness from almost every one of its many unclogged pores, this skillfully made Irvin Kershner (yep, the same guy who directed Barbra Streisand* in Up the Sandbox) film is somehow able to capture the du jour essence of the fashion industry during the cocaine and disco era in a manner that will make your inner dandy's spirit soar gayly into the sequined stratosphere. Of course, if you were paying attention, you'd probably notice that I said "almost" when referring to its unclogged pores. Well, what can I say? It's hard to ignore the fact that Tommy Lee Jones' pores do not contain any chic properties whatsoever. In addition, I wanted to pluck his eyebrows so badly, that I nearly bit off my own tongue in a fit of misplaced follicle frustration (proper eyebrow maintenance has always been near and dear to my heart). Having said that, the overwhelming power of Faye Dunaway's urbane, shawl-assisted über-performance managed to supply this cinematic entity with enough voguish energy to fuel multiple movies.

The story revolves around a controversial fashion photographer named Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway), controversial because she specializes in photographing stylized acts of violence ("Blood and Black Lace" would make a great title for one of her provocative gallery shows). Starting off as nightmares, Laura develops a sort of sixth sense, an internalized vision, if you will. Usually striking while she's in the middle of a photo shoot, Laura sees what the killer sees. What's even more disturbing about these visions is that all the victims are people Laura works with. And, on top of that, the murders are eerily similar to images in Laura's photography book "The Eyes of Mars."

Who would want to bump off Laura's associates? An uncouth detective named John Neville (a pre-hard-target search Tommy Lee Jones) is put in charge of the case, and proceeds to question all the people who work for Laura. A miscellaneous group that includes her "flamboyant" manager Donald (the terrific Rene Auberjonois), a couple of models named Lulu (Darlanne Fluegel) and Michele (Lisa Taylor), her jealous ex-husband (Raul Julia), a lace-obsessed sycophant (Michael Tucker), and Tommy (the always awesome Brad Dourif), her twitchy chauffeur/bodyguard. I won't mention all the other folks Neville has his eye on, but I feel I gotta make at least a passing reference to the little person who stands behind Laura at her big gallery show (one that features the sublime photography of Helmut Newton and Rebecca Blake). Let's just say, he was very peculiar, and not because he was small in stature. I don't know, there was just something about the way he just lingered in the background in the two scenes he's featured in that didn't seem right. I guess it's what they call in the mystery business: a diversionary tactic.

Even though the hackneyed "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" by K.C. and the Sunshine Band is the song playing during the hubbub of Laura's trendy expo, what I heard in my head was Visage's "The Anvil" thumping oh so coyly on the soundtrack as a bubbly Darlanne Fluegel monopolizes the proceedings with a breathtaking ease. Sure, the sleek, posing-friendly new wave jam was still swimming around inside Midge Ure's subconscious in 1979 (it would come out three years after this film was made), but I still think it would have been the more appropriate choice.

Awash with red herrings and other plot-based doodads that are customary to the genre, the real star of Eyes of Laura Mars are the film's two main photo shoots. The first one being the infamous "coats and lingerie" shoot in the middle of a busy New York City intersection. Infamous because it's downright bizarre (models claw at each other's crimped hair while two wrecked cars burn in the background), the sequence depicts the artistry and the hard work that goes into creating your average fashion magazine photo spread. Working closely with the models and the hair and makeup people, Laura is like a conductor, commanding the chaos with her discerning lens. Still an influence on modern day pop culture (watch the fur and fire fly in the music videos for "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" by Dominatrix and Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance"), the scene, partially set to the funky strains of Heatwave's "Boogie Nights," is a tour de force when it comes portraying the excesses of the fashion industry.

I don't think anything can come close to topping the sight of Darlanne Fluegel (To Live and Die in L.A.) and Lisa Taylor pretending to wrestle with one another in lingerie.

Saddled with the unenviable task of following the coats and lingerie pièce de résistance, the second fashion shoot, despite the fact that two of their amiable colleagues have been brutally murdered (the world of high fashion must go on), finds the diligent crew stetting up shop on the upper floor of Laura's studio, a spacious warehouse located on the Hudson River. An elaborate piece that I like to call, "the new wave bullet wound shoot," starts off by having each model strike a fierce pose. With the exception of a male model dressed in a tuxedo, all the models seem to be in a sort of trance. The breeze emitting from an industrial fan causes the loose fabric on their sheer clothing to sway violently, giving the scene a strange heavenly quality.

Unlike the gallery exhibition sequence, there's no need to fix the music, as the disco classic "Let's All Chant" by the Michael Zager Band creates just the right mood. The way the scene builds up to the "Your body, my body. Everybody move your body" part of the song was timed perfectly.

Next to the sight of the models fighting in front of those burning limousines in Columbus Circle, I'd have to say that my absolute favourite image in the Eyes of Laura Mars was the shot of a slick-haired Darlanne Fluegel, now wearing a pink see-through ensemble, pouting while holding a small revolver. Not only did it wonderfully capture the whole "What I'm trying to do here is blur the line that separates style and violence" vibe the film seemed to be going for, it had a fashion forward temperament about it that practically screamed: clinically-proven cyborg assassin with a makeover.

If I was forced to spend in an inordinate amount of time stuck in either one of the ocular cavities of any actress on the planet, the incomparable Faye Dunaway would definitely be one of my first choices. In the vicinity of her intense eye region–the film is called the "eyes" of Laura Mars and not the "ears" of Laura Mars for a reason–every time she would get a ghastly vision, you couldn't help but feel as if her eyes were slowly starting to become your eyes as the film progressed. If only I could say the same for her bone structure, as I would kill for her cheekbones. Oh, the things I would do if I was Faye Dunaway in the late 1970s.

Speaking of her body, only someone completely cognizant about their inherent legginess would wear the kind of skirts Faye Dunaway sports throughout this movie. Some boasting as many as three slits per garment (you heard me, three slits!), Faye is one of the few actresses with the rare talent to appear leggy onscreen, yet seem overdressed at the same time.

Integral to the plot, but frustrating from an aesthetic point-of-view, the manner in which each photo shoot was cut short by Laura's murderous visions was frustrating at times. The realization that "fashion" was being literally being killed off filled me with a great deal of sadness. It was like watching the world gradually drained of its chicness. It makes you just wanna put a trashy cocktail dress, call up Amanda Lear and Margaret Trudeau, do a bunch of cocaine, and hang out at Studio 54 for twelve hours straight. Purple garter belts forever!

* Barbra Streisand's "The Prisoner" opens and closes the film

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