I liked A Light In August more than The Sound and the Fury, but I need to reread it. Sorry I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about it now.

You’ve re-read The Sound And The Fury too then, right? I wonder if there’s anyone who ever “got” that book on their first reading, it seems like you’d HAVE to re-read it.

Are you going to review the 2017 Gilmour Live at Pompeii?

Back in the old days of Babble, probably two decades ago, I listened to The Pros And Cons Of Hitch-Hiking, something I’d been ignoring, just because everyone on Babble (Prindle especially) seemed to rip on it nonstop. I listened to it as background music while browsing the Internet and found it boring and forgot about it (bear in mind, I had not heard The Final Cut and would not actually bother to do so until probably 2013.)
This incident counts as the ONLY time I’ve listened to anything by any Pink Floyd member going solo, besides Barrett.
I’ve never tried Gilmour solo, though I know his solo albums have a better reputation than the two Roger-less Floyd albums, probably because Gilmour didn’t have to live up to the blockbuster name of Pink Floyd.

Glad you still like Dune. I should reread those books and then read the last three.

Oh, you’ve NEVER read the last three? God Emperor is good, the two he wrote after it are completely forgettable shit.

I remember saying that the new Dune movie seemed like it would be more confusing to than the David Lynch movie, and Norville responded that all you need to know to >understand the plot is “Atreides,” “Harkonnen,” and “Spice.” I think that was because I was trying to read all the little crumbs that are just references to what you identified as a “huge, indispensable part of the book” put there to keep fans happy as something viewers would recognize as actual information that were supposed to mean >something in the movie. I don’t remember the examples though, and I’m not rewatching it to find it.

I’d agree with Norville’s assessment–most of the supporting characters were handled pretty generically in the Lynch movie and they’re really not much of an improvement in Villeneuve’s. The Villeneuve movies handle the problems with Paul becoming a messiah figure significantly more than the Lynch movie does, but that doesn’t mean much of anything because that’s setting the bar very, very low.
Of course it’s going to be more confusing than the Lynch movie anyway because the Lynch movie seemed like it was aimed at the Star Wars crowd in 1984 more than the Villeneuve movie would have been aimed at, say, the MCU crowd in 2021-23. And if Lynch had gotten final cut–and his claim that he didn’t get final cut is ALWAYS the reason he gives for why the movie was such a load of crap–I still think it would have been mostly aimed at the Star Wars crowd, because that’s what the producers were looking for.

So I guess the target age was 12 to 38?

I’m trying to wonder who born in 1927 read Dune in 1965, and I’m having a hard time picturing that person, but who knows–the book wasn’t supposed to have sold very well right away, which leads me to the funniest bit of trivia about Dune, which is that it was originally published (in that thick volume with the weird elegant font for the book’s title contrasting with the silly yellow detective-paperback font used for the author’s name) by CHILTON, who publish big thick automotive manuals. Ever been near a rack of books and seen THESE? I sure have:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F326068619391&psig=AOvVaw0J3RkWkl4n7aAmxuFY2ygj&ust=1723051902888000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCNDgqtny4IcDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ

I’ve never seen mentioned Last Year At Marienbad. I’ve seen it described as a horror movie, but last year when I asked what horror movies I should prioritize and mentioned it, someone said “It’s only horror if you think existential dread is horror.” I know you pointed out that nobody else cares about this (as if it needed pointing out) but it was nominated for a Hugo award in a year it went to “no award.” Whatever, they did that they year of Carey too. The “Dramatic Presentation” category was always a throw away >garbage award, and the category where the people receiving it didn’t care either.

I don’t know about the categories of Hugo awards much…what’s “year of Carey”? (Did you type this on your phone and get ruined by autocorrect?) I guess Marienbad leaves you with a slight sense of existential emptiness afterwards but it’s really more of a difficult mystery, and I was too sick of the style by the end of the movie to really feel much. Nowhere near as much as La Dolce Vita, or to use my favorite example of a movie leaving you feeling alienated and sad by the end, Under The Silver Lake.

Re Troy, I never bothered with it because I expect it to suck, but in principle complaining about “liberties” is silly. The Greeks didn’t have canonical versions of their >legends. The Greek dramas aren’t necessarily consistent with Homer in their stories relating to Troy. A version without the gods in it isn’t even trying to channel Homer >though.

Right, right–I bet a lot of people don’t even know the sack of Troy isn’t IN the Iliad.

You know that rape and infanticide are important parts of the traditional sack of Troy story, right?

Oh I know, I know. I was just pointing out what’s used to make the director’s cut longer. Don’t watch the movie, ever; I know for a fact you’d completely hate it.

Also regarding Janie and Monkey, I won’t stick up for the album as having great lyrics, but I do think it was the last album where Steven Tyler personally cared about anything that he was writing.

I don’t remember which one “Monkey On My Back” actually is, but I did read up on why Tyler decided to write a song about child abuse, and his reasons were “like whoa, I read about this child abuse story and it, like, horrified me!!”

Glad you liked What It Takes. That’s the best of the later powerballads. It, Cryin’, and gag I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing are the three that got played alot beyond the tour for the albums they were off of.
Even if the next album was a huge hit, I think this was the last album where things were going well behind the scenes when they put it together.

I’m listening to it right now and while it is indeed a thoroughly shameless load of corporate swill, it’s not really a worse album than the two before it, not by much. Just a little bit more embarrassing in terms of the crassness. Should I rewatch the videos to see if I too will end up pissing all over poor Alicia Silverstone like George did? (He devoted a whole paragraph of that review to her!)

??? Really??? I thought their live albums were the heart of their reputation. They certainly put out numerous live albums with all of the same songs on them. Anyway, I think >that’s their best album. Deep Purple was a better_ band_, but Blackmore’s guitar playing is probably better on the Rainbow albums.

I suppose Blackmore’s wankery is a better of way of stretching a song out than what Led Zeppelin did to stretch their songs out. It’s not that I wasn’t able to find ANYTHING in praise of Rainbow live besides George, but not many of the review sites I frequent have covered Rainbow. They’re just not that popular anymore, I guess.

You don’t like live albums. Are you going to listen to Aerosmith’s Live! Bootleg? Maybe you’ll hate it, but you should hear it. You don’t need to listen to their other live >albums, but that one is historically interesting.

I just often find myself disappointed with live albums because I find myself cringing at having to accept “this is how the band actually SOUNDS, y’know” which is so frequently worked into arguments in favor of major live albums. I admit this is a flaw of mine.

The Times They Are A-Changin’ has some great songs, but half of it is boring. People might complain that the album is humorless compared to his others, but when I saw him live the day after George W. Bush was re-elected and he played the title track, I could only interpret it as a joke.

Didn’t Dylan have to publicly claim that “Tweedledee And Tweedledumb” wasn’t about Bush and Gore?

It’s a measure of Forbidden’s forgettableness that I didn’t remember that Ice T was on it. When you said ‘“Get A Grip,” though, is really awful.”“ at first I though you were saying “Compared to other dinosaur rock bands of the era, Aerosmith put out an even shittier album two years earlier,” but then I realized you were just talking about another >Black Sabbath song I’d forgotten.

“Get A Grip“‘s last minute goes like this: “GETAGRIP–yeeeah!! GETAGRIP–yeahhh!!! GETAGRIP—yeaaahh!!! GET A GRIP, GET A GRIP, GET A GRIP, GET A GRIP ON LIFE!!!!!!”
It’s very bad and very grating.
The music video is, to use Paul C’s words, “hilariously shit”, it’s animated in a crappy hand style that makes me think of the Beavis And Butthead Do America video if Mike Judge only had $3, and it’s full of naked female butt cheeks so NSFW: