At least you didn't start mixing your franchises - 'here's Gandalf and Neo riding into Hogwarts on Aslan just before the Persian army attacks'

10-episode self-contained series: sounds great. Can you have a treatment on my desk by 9:00AM tomorrow?

Good on him. Who can begrudge him those billions if he's doing things like that, rather than snorting coke off hookers.

Subtext - wait until you get to 'God Emperor of Dune' - the entire book is cryptic conversations like what you describe:  profound but opaque discussions of human nature buried in layers of 'clever' sub-text. As a school-kid, I thought I was too dumb to get it, but 20 years on, I think that a second reading would reveal a bit of pretentiousness.

Yes, casting Paul is make or break. Otherwise you get an Orlando Bland in Kingdom of Heaven scenario where the entire epic scale is let down by a pretty boy on his gap year.

Big fan of Dune. Read the first four when I was in school, met Frank Herbert just before he died and saw the movie at the cinema a few times. Have since preferred both the Alan Smithee '3 hour' cut and the TV series for going into greater detail. Haven't read the 'cash in on my daddy' sequels/prequels - have you?

I don't think a 2 hour move can do justice to all the complexities of Dune, no matter how awesome the effects. It's not an action movie nor should it be a SPFX extravaganza. A 3 x 3 hour LOTR treatment would be sufficient, but I can't see Hollywood greenlighting a glorification of 'Taliban guerillas' (desert-dwelling religious freedom fighters with Arabic names fighting evil corporations extracting spice/oil from the sands).

A lot of the criticism about John Carter was directed at its bland scenery. Dune's is potentially even more bland.

What did you think of the 'filmed on a Prague soundstage' TV series?

Howard Shore's 11 hour LOTR scores (sustained high quality)
John Williams' Star Wars scores (among the best ever)
Most of Clint Mansell's scores, especially The Fountain and Moon
Heat
Also Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans is epic (also love The Insider)
Gladiator - Lisa Gerrard's contributions are evocative during the end death scene
Ridley Scott movies generally have atmospheric scores: Blade Runner is a classic, as is 1492 & Kingdom of Heaven and Hannibal
Most of Angelo Badalamenti's scores for Lynch e.g. Mulholland Drive
A Single Man (similar to The Fountain), as is The Road's score
Kubrick: Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut scores
Alien3 - the best of the Alien series's scores imho
Master & Commander
Ennio Morricone's collaborations with Sergio Leone
The Mission - better than the movie
Witness - Maurice Jarre
Dune by Toto
Others with selected great tracks: True Grit, Meet Joe Black, Gattaca, Rocky, Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, Up

Yey! Thanks for TTT 

Are there licensing & permit issues with these? Restricted zones? Presumably the blades could injure someone if the pilot lost control or it malfunctioned?

America must be the far green country under a swift sunrise

Thanks. Fascinating article. At least we'll be spared Lucas' Red Tails sequels & prequels.

Yes, Dawkins is a great writer, and despite the current crop of crazy Republican candidates, the Creationist moment has been beat, at least for a while.

In the same class as Dawkins: for his clarity, accessibility, and provocative slaying of sacred cows is Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist. Books like 'The Blank Slate' and 'Better Angels of Our Nature' are up there with Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' in literally changing the way we think by busting dozens of myths society just takes for granted as 'collective received wisdom'.

Wright Brothers to Yuri Gargarin was just over 50 years. Every decade until the 60s there were major breakthroughs with flight, from passenger planes, jets, supersonic, rockets, orbits and moon landings.

But in the last 40 years, we've regressed in terms of transport technology. Here in Europe, we're told 'rail is the future', an 1830s invention.

The 1970s had some bold robotic missions to the planets too: Pioneer, Voyager and Viking. This current decade looks paltry by comparison, with a lot of missions cancelled or 'descoped'.

30 years of tax cuts doesn't help. Since the shift to the political right in early 1980s, western governments are perpetually broke.

Also, we've hit a wall re: new propulsion. It was looking great when we rapidly went from sail to steam to internal combustion engine to rocket, but a new power power source is long overdue. Scramjets? Fusion? Antimatter? All too hard, either with the theory or the engineering. Maybe all the easy problems in science have been solved and it's going to take longer than we thought to get to the next 'order of magnitude' step in progress. Instead of an acceleration in major breakthroughs in transport technology, we're experiencing an deceleration.

Isaac Asimov envisioned a future in his Robot series where humans don't travel anywhere, but the world comes to them via VR 3D holographic screens. After all, IT communications has shot ahead in the same 40 years that transport has stagnated.