50 | OCTOBER 21 • 2021 

A POTENT SPICE, A 
COMEDY, A SLASHER, 
OPIATES & GOOP
Dune opens in theaters 
Oct. 22. The film will also 
be released on HBO Max 
Oct. 22 and stream for 30 
days. Dune is based on a 
1965 sci-fi novel of the same 
name by the late Frank 
Herbert that became a 
favorite of hippies and “New 
Agers” and still has some-
thing of a cult following.

It is a difficult novel 
to adapt for the screen. 
In 1973, Chilean-French 
director/writer Alejandro 
Jodorowsky, now 92, had 
a top-notch film cast lined 
up, but the potential costs 
soared and the movie was 
scrapped. In 1984, David 
Lynch made a film based 
on Dune, also called Dune, 
and it became the biggest 
critical and financial flop of 
his career.
The new Dune stars 
Timothee Chalamet, 25, as 
the overseer of a dry, very 
inhospitable planet with a 
valuable natural product, 
called “spice.” Spice can 
increase a user’s lifetime 

and enhance their mental 
abilities. Everybody wants 
“spice” despite the difficul-
ties in obtaining it. 
Dune has played several 
film festivals and has already 
opened in many other coun-
tries. Reviews are mainly 
positive, but a fairly large 
group of respected critics 
gave it a mild thumbs-down. 
Also opening on Oct. 22 
is Dispatch, a comedy with 
three different plotlines. 
These plotlines are all 
connected to the closing 
of a French newspaper’s 
Kansas office. Directed 
and written by the “quirky” 
Wes Anderson, the cast 
includes Timothee Chalamet 
(again), Adrien Brody, 48, 
and French actor Matthieu 
Amalric, 55.

CATCHING UP
I neglected to mention 
Halloween Kills in my last 
column. It opened Oct. 15 
and, no doubt, will be in 
theaters until Halloween. It 
also began streaming on 
Paramount+ Oct. 15. Kills 
is the 12th Halloween film 
made since the original 1978 
film. The original co-starred 
Jamie Lee Curtis, now 62. 
She also co-starred in three 
“direct” sequels to the first 
film.

Halloween Kills is the sec-
ond film in a planned three-
film “reboot” of the slasher 
franchise. The reboot 
pretends that nine films in 
which killer Michael Myers 
seemed to die, and some-
how survived, were never 
made. The reboot began 
with Halloween, a 2018 film 
co-starring Curtis. In this 
retelling, Myers was in a 
mental asylum from 1978 to 

2018. After his release, he 
went back to his bad ways. 
At the end of the 2018 film, 
Myers is trapped in a burn-
ing house.
In Kills, we learn Myers 
survived the fire and Laura 
Strode (Curtis) organizes a 
mob to finally, for sure, kill 
him. The supporting cast 
includes Dylan Arnold, 
27, and Kyle Richards, 52. 
Arnold’s first big role was in 
the 2018 Halloween film. In 
both pics, he plays Cameron 
Elam, boyfriend of Strode’s 
granddaughter, Alyson. 
Richards appeared in the 
1978 Halloween movie as 
Lindsey, a child Strode baby-
sat, and she plays Lindsey 
again in Kills. Richards had 
a “middling” acting career 
that virtually ended in 2006. 
However, she became 
much more famous when 
she began appearing in 
the reality show The Real 
Housewives of Beverly Hills 
(2010-present). She married 
“high-end” realtor Mauricio 
Umansky in 1994 and con-
verted to Modern Orthodox 
Judaism. Umanksy was 
born in Mexico and raised 
in the States. His mother, 
Estella Snieder, 71, a pop-
ular Mexican TV psycholo-
gist, frequently appears on 
Real Housewives.
Here’s another catch-up 
item: Dopesick, an eight-ep-
isode Hulu mini-series, 
began streaming Oct. 13. It 
focuses on the victims of the 
Oxycontin opiate addiction 
plague and, oy, the role of 
the (Jewish) Sackler family. 
The Sacklers are now notori-
ous as the former owners of 
Purdue Pharma, the compa-
ny that developed, market-
ed and “pushed” Oxycontin. 

Michael Stuhlbarg, 53, 
co-stars as Richard Sackler, 
76, the former head of 
Purdue Pharma.

GWYNETH’S GOOP
Most of you have probably 
heard about the “touchy-
feely/New Age” products 
on the pricey Goop web-
site. The frequently sat-
irized Goop company is 
the creation of Gwyneth 
Paltrow, 49. 
 In 2020, Goop expand-
ed to documentaries, with 
Paltrow hosting a six-part 
series (Goop Lab) which 
covered such topics as 
energy healing, anti-aging 
and psychedelic drugs. 
There were many com-
plaints that the series 
contained a lot of medical 
misinformation.

On Oct. 21, the six-part 
documentary Sex, Love & 
Goop starts streaming on 
Netflix. Paltrow hosts real-
life couples as they explore 
their bodies and try to 
enhance their relationships 
with a focus on understand-
ing how people experience 
pleasure differently. The 
couples are aided by sev-
eral sex and relationship 
experts. 

CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

ARTS&LIFE

NINE STARS VIA WIKIMEDIA

Timothee Chalamet in two films.

ANDREA RAFFIN VIA WIKIMEDIA

Gwyneth Paltrow

