FILM
TOP 5
Timothée
FOUND SOUNDS: FEBRUARY 2024
Chalamet as Paul Atreides in Dune: Part
What’s in Boulder’s headphones?
II. Courtesy: Warner Bros.
BY BOULDER WEEKLY STAFF
S
ound hounds, rejoice! We’re back with your monthly roundup of the bestselling new releases at Paradise Found Records and Music (1646 Pearl St.) Below you’ll find the definitive ranking of Boulder’s top five albums in February, based on sales data from the city’s last store dedicated exclusively to the sale of new and used vinyl. 1. IDLES Tangk 2. MGMT Loss of Life 3. GRACIE ABRAMS & AARON DESSNER The Good Riddance Acoustic Shows 4. BRITTANY HOWARD What Now 5. PHISH Round Room (reissue)
— Jezy J. Gray, arts and culture editor
STAFF PICK
The seventh studio album from California goth-rock queen Chelsea Wolfe is the genre-busting songwriter’s most ambitious offering to date. Alongside producer Dave Sitek of millennial art-rockers TV on the Radio, Wolfe’s beautiful and bruising new LP, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She, marries flavors of industrial electronics and trip-hop with the melodrama turned up to 11. Don’t miss our interview with the artist in the March 21 issue of Boulder Weekly, ahead of her upcoming gig at the Gothic Theater in Englewood.
For the complete Top 10, visit bit.ly/FoundSoundsFeb. BOULDER WEEKLY
SPICE WORLD ‘Dune: Part II’ is a Shakespearean spectacle BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
Y
ou know he’s the one because he’s a movie star with piercing eyes, floppy hair, goth vulnerability and untapped strength all in one. He’s Prince Hal making good. His name is Paul Atreides. It’s the name his parents gave him, but not the one he’ll be remembered by. Names are important in Dune, be they taken, given or blasphemed. Paul takes the name Muad’Dib on the sands of Arrakis, also known as the planet Dune, where the melange, or “spice,” is harvested for the rest of the galaxy. Who controls the spice controls the power. That’s why Paul (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother, Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), are on Arrakis: The house Atreides was responsible for overseeing spice production until the Emperor (Christopher Walken) eradicated the Atreides — save for Paul and Jessica — and installed the House of Harkonnen, led by the grotesque oil-loving Baron (Stellan Skarsgård), in their stead. That’s about all the backstory you get for Dune: Part II. Director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel hits the sand running with no catch-up or flashbacks. Not that you really need any: Dune traffics in so many archetypes and story conventions that it connects far-reaching dots through familiarity alone. Paul’s conversion to Muad’Dib on the sands of Arrakis cer-
tainly rhymes with Saul’s conversion to Paul on the road to Damascus. But when Dune’s Paul enters the Fremen’s sacred temple and announces, “I am the way!” he becomes more messiah than apostle. Though, considering his royal heritage and encounters outside the palace walls, maybe a parallel to Prince Gautama Buddha is more apt. All of this is part and parcel of the hero’s journey or monomyth — an ancient story that has been replayed and revised countless times. Some of the most successful storytellers in the history of civilization have either cribbed from it or borrowed it in totality. Shakespeare knew his way around the monomyth, so it shouldn’t be surprising when Paul turns the corner from messiah-in-training to warrior king and Villeneuve’s movie enters full-blown Henry V territory. Familiar? You bet. Exciting? Absolutely. Dune is huge. The whole movie thrums with bombastic images and sound. Hans Zimmer’s score rattles your seat — unless you see it in 4DX, and then the seat will rattle itself — and Villeneuve and cinematographer Greig Fraser craft a canvas so vast it engulfs you.
ON SCREEN: Dune: Part II opens in wide release on March 1.
FEBRUARY 29, 2024
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