Little White Lies Issue 90: August/September/October 2021

Fusing high science fiction, real-world geopolitics, environmental science, zen mysticism and messianic dogma, the universe created by author Frank Herbert in his 1965 novel ‘Dune’ and its sequels can seem dauntingly complex. That’s because it is. Set millenia in the future at a time of entrenched Imperial power and feuding Great Houses, the books span multiple centuries and thousands of light years of settled space – though the main action takes place on the desert world of Arrakis, source of the fabled spice melange, and known to its inhabitants as Dune. “Beginnings are such delicate times…” Like a number of his SF contemporaries, Frank Herbert was a mystic visionary in the guise of a square-suited ’60s everyman (fig. 1). A journalist, critic and lecturer with a penchant for ecology, Buddhism,…

Denis Villeneuve loves a challenge. The Quebecois filmmaker turned a horrific real-life misogynistic massacre – the sort of material that would normally yield only the lowest form of exploitation – into 2009’s sensitive Polytechnique (shot twice, in French and Englishlanguage versions). He adapted José Saramago’s unfilmable novel ‘The Double’ into 2013’s sublimely singular Enemy. He took on a sequel to Ridley Scott’s much loved Blade Runner and crafted from it an soulful epic of humanity’s evolution. Blade Runner 2049, from 2017, and 2016’s excellent Arrival, marked Villeneuve’s own evolution towards science fiction, and now he is characteristically essaying another impossible work: Frank Herbert’s expansive 1965 novel ‘Dune’. Shot in IMAX, the first part of this sprawling space saga, with its internecine, interplanetary dynastic struggles, its desert uprisings and gigantic worms,…

Ever since Rebecca Ferguson first received international attention for the British historical serial The White Queen in 2013, she has carved out a reputation for bringing elegance, fierce intelligence and complexity to her roles. She is equally compelling playing a predator in the 2019 Stephen King adaptation Doctor Sleep, or the prey of a killer space alien in 2017’s Life, and she is also partly responsible for the huge uptick in quality of the recent Mission: Impossible films. This year she is being transported thousands of years into the future for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, playing the conflicted concubine Lady Jessica. She explains what she brought to the role and how this adaptation reimagined what a mother, a mistress and a protector could be. LWLies: It’s been a long two years…

The 1960s was a decade of unprecedented change– particularly in the world of film, withmovements such as the French New Wave and NewHollywood marking a radical departure from the norm. In celebration of this innovative era, we partneredillustrators to reimagine iconic films from the’60s, creating a striking collection of posters thatconnect great design of the past with artistictrends of today. LWLies Sixties is part of 99 Days Of Design, from 99designs by Vistaprint – discover more at 99designs.com/99daysofdesign…

1. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME A sapling-slim, trilingual boy who looks 15 and a sadistic LA scion who looks roughly 32 are playing, respectively, a 17-year-old and a 24-year-old graduate embarking on a hot, formative love affair in Northern Italy in Luca Guadagnino’s ultra-romantic Call Me by Your Name. Chalamet, who plays the teenage Elio, did appear in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar in 2014, but has failed auditions for The Neon Demon, The Theory of Everything, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and White Boy Rick since then, making his proper introduction in Guadagnino’s film feel like a contemporary version of Vivien Leigh achieving stardom in Gone with the Wind. Critics praise Chalamet for what they perceive as an extremely naturalistic turn as a conflicted, impetuous adolescent, realistic enough to…

Patrice Vermette is one of Denis Villeneuve’s longtime partners in crime, having hooked up with him during their formative years as budding filmmakers in Montreal. The pair have worked together on every film except Blade Runner 2049, and Vedette is now uniquely attuned to his creative cohort’s unique aesthetic impulses. Coming together to make Dune is a dream project as both have grown up obsessed with the book and the massive potential it held for a screen adaptation. LWLies: You are credited as production designer on Dune. Could you explain that role entails? Patrice Vermette: My role on Dune was to provide visual environments to Denis’ vision. I had to create the environment in which the story unfolds. And that can be the right set, the right battlefield, the right…