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He's gonna come back with Watkins having a whole new first touch

Conceded 20 shots again, this time to Everton. I don't know what to say about this league if they end up finishing 6th. They are proper crap.

I remember being incensed after the QPR and Bolton losses. We just threw it. Bolton were absolute crap that year, and while the crazy conditions didn't help that day we should have saw them off. QPR just completely played us off the park and a young Eberechi Eze completely ran the show that day. At VP. Felt like I was back in the Lambert days. That's when I knew I was done with Bruce. We were going nowhere with him, it was so obvious. I remember this board being infuriating because there were people who were just happy to be in the top 6 of the Championship and not make it out of the league. Part of it was because Bruce was this old school "no nonsense" manager that still seemed to carry some weight in those days. I'm glad Dean Smith and now Unai Emery have completely shattered that myth and those dinosaurs seem to largely be going extinct. Hopefully next on the chopping block, Sean Dyche.

Very nice lineup. Need McGinn fresh for Spurs. We all remember how he completely bodied them at VP last season.

His performance definitely surprised me. I didn't think he had it in him. Utterly convincing performance as Paul. Apparently he's already in the midst of writing Dune Messiah, and the higher ups are waiting on seeing how this one does financially before green lighting.

I did the same before Part 2, and it was amazing but Part 2 completely blew it out of the water (there's also the matter of viewing it on my modest home setup compared to IMAX). So much happens that Part 1 feels like a prologue in comparison, and not the entire first half of the story.

Isn't 8 just 2 extra games to what it currently is? Plus you face 8 different teams and not the same 3 teams twice. Pros and cons to that as it means we likely won't play at the Bernabeus and Camp Nous until we get to Real and Barca levels, but it also means a nice variety of grounds to visit

It's funny because Monchi looks to be the same height but has adult proportions. It's a very weird picture.

He even scored a free kick and we didn't even know he could do that.

The movie is kind of like a summation/cliffnotes of the book, which is really all you can do with 5 or so hours of film time. One thing it is sorely lacking is the geopolitical intrigue (not that it can really be properly portrayed). It's why it's my favourite book in the series, there are so many plans within plans and feints within feints as they call it in the books between the major players, especially the Baron. In the movie he's just sort of the big bad oppressive guy, but we don't see any of his scheming (and in the book he gains a valuable advisor that isn't shown in the movie that makes his plotting even more potent). Paul's ascension is the culmination/climax of the story but to me it's the way we get there that really makes the story.

That would probably be a good idea. That's how the SyFy miniseries did it wasn't it? Children of Dune is probably the one book in the series that could successfully be translated to an action(ish) movie that the average movie-goer who has never read the series would find enjoyable. And then Messiah is quite literally the opposite of that . Despite probably being my second favourite book in the series, I have to admit almost much nothing happens plot-wise for the entire book until right at the end. Its beauty lies in the struggle within Paul to come to grips with the fact that he's basically space-Hitler (I'm pretty sure there was even a quote where he told someone that there was this guy called Hitler in ancient times who put up rookie numbers compared to him ). Doesn't exactly make for exciting viewing. But as a first act/arc of a movie it could work. God Emperor would be hilarious to see on-screen. It's so outlandish to the uninitiated, that I don't think it'll ever be made and if it is it probably won't have the budget of the current movies.

Quite hard to do with 2.5 hours, and a lot of material to portray. And also the book is kind of like this. It's not really dramatic until the very end (Messiah is even more like this, oh man I can imagine how boring people will find that movie if it ever comes out), but I think the climax was a good payoff and well worth it. The majority of the book is watching the political machinations of the Baron (to be fair, something I felt the movie was sorely missing), and Paul slowly gaining power among the Fremen by convincing them (willingly or not) he's a Messiah until things come to a head at the end.

She'd have been a bad choice too imo. Even as Princess Irulan, she seemed off. Maybe I'm biased towards American accents, but Chalemet seems to be the only one to pull it off and still feeling like Paul. From an appearance perspective I think Zendaya is probably the ideal choice to play Chani, and maybe Villaneuve was leaning to hard into that, to keep visual cohesiveness.

I wouldn't actually know, but I felt that the movie did a really good job of getting across the central themes to people who aren't familiar with the books. I also like that it had more of a "show, don't tell" approach but then again I would like that wouldn't I? It's one of my pet peeves of modern movies/blockbusters, where there's too much exposition and the viewer is taken to be some kind of fool. Also, I think Zendaya was the weak link of the movie as well. It's not even necessarily her acting per se, as I think she does a great job of conveying emotion with her face but it's when she starts speaking that everything falls apart. All the Fremen who can even speak English have an accent, except for her. For some reason she has a perfect American accent, and there's no real explanation for it. It's like they dropped MJ from Spiderman into this and put her into a stillsuit, with her sarcasm and everything. It's really jarring. It's one of my few complaints.

I mean Denis is already my favourite director and the movie is an absolute visual splendor as expected. And with IMAX, it was just an unforgettable experience. But from an adaptation perspective, he absolutely nailed the feel and pace of the story. You can tell the care and attention to detail that went into it came from a true fan of Dune who wanted to do it justice and not just some director who was hired to churn out another adaptation a famous story to get bums on seats. You know how when you watch an adaptation of a book or something else and it's just like a hollow facsimile of the source material? It doesn't really match up to what you imagined in your head while reading. I feel like this is the case for pretty much everything I've seen off the top of my head. For example I've recently finished rewatching Game of Thrones (with my brother who has never seen it or read the books). I love the ASoIaF books, and while the show was good, great even in parts...on the whole it just pales in comparison to the books. It's always in the back of your mind. And we're talking about eight, 1 hour long episodes per season here, and it still can't capture the spirit and depth of the source material. Villaneuve managed to do so with 5 hours to work with. Another recent example is the Netflix Avatar series. It's Avatar in name yes, and the characters visually resemble their animated counterparts, but I'm just watching them go through the motions of the story beats and not much else. It's an Avatar skeleton, with no meat on it. But with Dune 2, every scene has weight to it (it's not just there because this happened in the books so let's show it), and the way the various major plot points are portrayed very closely capture the tone and heft of the book. The climax especially, I never thought I'd see it done justice on the big screen. The other 2 adaptations certainly didn't. You know how when reading it you get the feeling that shit is really going down? That's exactly how it felt. And not in that Marvel-y final showdown kind of way. It really captured that essence of the power imbalance between the Imperium/Harkonnens and the Fremen/Muad'dib and the ramifications of the outcome were clear. But beyond that, there are some things that somehow were even more impressive than the book. For example, without going into details, the scene where Feyd Rautha is fighting in the pits. It's way more detailed and grandiose (and even strange looking) than I'd imagined while reading. Also some of the alterations to the story were mostly positive and ones that I welcome. How many times could I say that about other adaptations? Usually you're left scratching your head like "why did they change that? It's worse now". But yeah, I would say if you can catch it in IMAX, you gotta do it man. It's like I felt Hans Zimmer's score instead of just hearing it. The immersion was off the scale. It also made me wonder what's going to happen with the physical release of the movie. The majority of scenes seem very obviously framed for that IMAX ratio or at the very least something like 16:9 or 1.87:1. If it's presented with the same ratio as Part 1, we'll really lose a lot of information and framing. Just for that I might just go ahead and see it again in IMAX. Just as a pure audiovisual experience, it's absolutely top notch.

Saw it in IMAX. I'm not even exaggerating, that was the best film experience I've ever had. Best adaptation of anything I've ever seen. My favourite book, yet somehow Denis managed to make some aspects of it even better.

Yeah I'm not sad about him leaving Villa (at least not anymore) but for what football, particularly English football has lost. He was one of the most entertaining talents we've seen in decades and we've lost it in his pursuit of whatever (there's been plenty of argument in this thread about what that is). Probably was well worth it to him, but fans of football are the real losers here.

Kinda shows how bad we've been in the PL era. +20 is our best goal difference ever? In a season we finished 6th.

7 wins 7 draws 7 losses. Neutral goal difference. The definition of mediocrity. Can't believe he was the manager of Aston Villa Football Club in the Premier League.

Is he in our Conference League squad?

Let's say he gets like 20 goals and 15 assists and we get top 4. He'd have to be in the running for PFA POTY surely? Just off that alone you'd have to consider him our best ever striker in the PL era.

Mings was also Smith

???

Honestly his video before we signed him is still the best I have seen. Couldn't believe what I was watching. I thought we had a generational talent on our hands. And I remember his debut, came on against Palace and just completely destroyed their fullback (Souare was it?), thinking okay yeah he's going to be ridiculous.