Counting the days

Recently we were digging through some old boxes and I found a couple of posters from the 1984 Dune (imdb) movie, the David Lynch one. I took them to work and put them on my office wall. This morning when I came in to work I was reminded of that fall when I was waiting for the movie to open.

I was in 7th grade, and in Mrs. Yvonne Davis's English class when I remember talking about "Dunesday." I was counting off the days until the movie arrived.

I haven't anticipated any movie since quite so much. For one thing, there were many disappointments about the movie as a rendition of Herbert's novel. At the time, I was too young to know anything about David Lynch (I'm kind of glad I hadn't seen Blue Velvet by that time), so the movie seemed much stranger than it does when viewed as a Lynch movie.

I've learned to lower my expectations about movies-from-books since. I liked the Sci-Fi Channel's Dune (imdb) much better.

Mostly what I'm thinking about this morning, though, as I look at these posters from 1984, is that delicious sense of anticipation.

I'm partly put in mind of this, I suppose, because I've been thinking about the upcoming December movie, The Golden Compass (imdb) (trailer here), which I expect to see a lot of protest about, given the way a few people reacted to the Harry Potter books and movies.

It's hilarious to me that people got upset about Harry Potter just because it has magic in it. I mean, those are the people who think magic is real, and who somehow believe that fictional magic leads to real magic leads to...Satan? I dunno.

People will get much more angry about The Golden Compass. I'm still organizing my thoughts on that one. I know some religious groups have already started warning people about it. Which is a shame; it's a great book and I hope it'll be a fun movie. But definitely one people should read before having their kids read it. If they'd do that much, and leave out the hysteria, then there won't be any issue.