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Ooh spinoff!

dune.jpg
 
I first heard that joke on a Radio 2 late night comedy show back when the first Dune was released in the 80s. Wish I could remember what it was called...
 
The reviews for Dune read like unfettered hyperbole. I hope it's as good as they're saying.
 
I first heard that joke on a Radio 2 late night comedy show back when the first Dune was released in the 80s. Wish I could remember what it was called...

lt was called Dune.

You’re welcome.

maximus otter
 
Morning peeps I think that figure on the far right the one in green is a model of me
 
lt was called Dune.

You’re welcome.

maximus otter

Pretty sure Radio 2 never did a comedy show called Dune. It was probably Bernie Clifton's show or something. The punchline to the sketch was "The film that finally answers the question... why do they never go to the toilet in sci-fi movies?"
 
Pretty sure Radio 2 never did a comedy show called Dune. It was probably Bernie Clifton's show or something. The punchline to the sketch was "The film that finally answers the question... why do they never go to the toilet in sci-fi movies?"
Because the aliens won't let them?
 
Dune (2021): Not at all as retro as Lynch's Dune, the Flash Gordon/Steampunk aesthetic is replaced by starker yet still ancient looking furnishings and the Spaceships are more modern than mondo. Still though, there's something of the Imperial Stormtroopers about some of the soldiers, even those out of armour tend to look like Star Wars ship crews. But this is a far darker tale than any SW chicanery. We see Paul Atriedes (Timothée Chalamet) visiting his grandfathers grave who died fighting a bull, Galician Bagpipes are played as the Atriedes family walk along the exit ramp of a spaceship. The spaceships are impressive, a submerged troop/suppies rising up like a whale. But these ships are are like grains of sand compared to the vast Starships, ornithopters are extensively used for transport and combat on Arrakis. The betrayal and retaking of Arrakis by the Harkonnens is vividly portrayed in attacks from above, hand to hand fighting bombings. Here Duncan Idaho(Jason Momos) is given more room to develop as a character than in the 1984 film, it's yet to be seen if Josh Brolin's Gurney Halleck will match or outdo hat of Patrick Stewart's portrayal. The true role of the Bene Gesserit and the early appreciation by the Fremen of Paul as a potential Prophet/Savior is more subtly related by Villeneuve. This is just Part One, i eagerly await the second half. Directed/Co-Written by Denis Villeneuve. 9/10.

In cinemas.
 
Thanks for the review @ramonmercado but, as I've decided on being pedantic tonight, thems isn't 'starships'... thems is 'Heighliners'

Read all six original books and enjoyed immersing myself into the fantasy. Am looking forward to seeing this adaptation.
 
Friend from a GFFA sent me it...but the Datacore was corrupt and I only got the first 15 minutes.

If its all as good as that, then it is a very good film. Don't you think the Navigators were cool (and somehow Warhammer 40K Navigator worthy?)
 
I tried the book many years ago and couldn’t get on with it so lost interest. Similar to Clive Barkers Weaveworld which was another big hit at the time but not for me.
 
*Semi -spoilers* Well not really...

I'm watching it for the third time right now at home and one part I love is how the Bene Gesserit land to visit and test Paul, the rain, the dark, the slightly egg shaped craft they use, it reminded me of a fortean encounter from the classic era of sightings. They expressed their non-Human nature well in that visit scene.

I was annoyed we didn't get to see the Spacing Guild navigators, but they will apparently be featured in part II.
 
Dune, my review:

[TEENAGER MODE]OMG! OMG! OMG! 11/10![/TEENAGE MODE]

Normal service resumes:

I went to our local IMAX to see it with the memsahib, the first time I've been to the cinema in years. I went in with the same type of reservations I experienced when sitting down to watch the first Jackson Lord of the Rings: The fear that a favourite book of my early years would be ruined. Quite the opposite: my expectations were exceeded tenfold.

Looking back, I really can't find anything about which to complain. I had doubts about the casting, but they were rapidly swept away. From my memories of the book, I don't think I could have done any better from the palette of options available to today's directors.

Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard team up again after their triumphant work on the Gladiator soundtrack. Simply superb.

The SFX? Pick any cliché: Jaw-dropping? Mind-blowing? All of the above.

Cinematography? Sets? Costumes? Flawless.

I'd give it 10/10 except that that score denies the possibility of the next one being better, so an enthusiastic 9.9/10

maximus otter
 
Dune, my review:

[TEENAGER MODE]OMG! OMG! OMG! 11/10![/TEENAGE MODE]

Normal service resumes:

I went to our local IMAX to see it with the memsahib, the first time I've been to the cinema in years. I went in with the same type of reservations I experienced when sitting down to watch the first Jackson Lord of the Rings: The fear that a favourite book of my early years would be ruined. Quite the opposite: my expectations were exceeded tenfold.

Looking back, I really can't find anything about which to complain. I had doubts about the casting, but they were rapidly swept away. From my memories of the book, I don't think I could have done any better from the palette of options available to today's directors.

Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard team up again after their triumphant work on the Gladiator soundtrack. Simply superb.

The SFX? Pick any cliché: Jaw-dropping? Mind-blowing? All of the above.

Cinematography? Sets? Costumes? Flawless.

I'd give it 10/10 except that that score denies the possibility of the next one being better, so an enthusiastic 9.9/10

maximus otter

Well that's me convinced!
If even old, cynical Max can wax so lyrical about Dune, then it has to be worth watching!
 
Saw it in IMAX and it was awesome.

I missed it there sadly, all IMAX screens seem to be block booked for the same film for "X" amount of time in the UK at least. Dune until Eternals came out then they all got replaced en masse with the new Ghostbusters when that came out.

It was doing well on IMAX so some screens will have it back next week, in the US at least.
 
Dune, my review:

[TEENAGER MODE]OMG! OMG! OMG! 11/10![/TEENAGE MODE]

Normal service resumes:

I went to our local IMAX to see it with the memsahib, the first time I've been to the cinema in years. I went in with the same type of reservations I experienced when sitting down to watch the first Jackson Lord of the Rings: The fear that a favourite book of my early years would be ruined. Quite the opposite: my expectations were exceeded tenfold.

Looking back, I really can't find anything about which to complain. I had doubts about the casting, but they were rapidly swept away. From my memories of the book, I don't think I could have done any better from the palette of options available to today's directors.

Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard team up again after their triumphant work on the Gladiator soundtrack. Simply superb.

The SFX? Pick any cliché: Jaw-dropping? Mind-blowing? All of the above.

Cinematography? Sets? Costumes? Flawless.

I'd give it 10/10 except that that score denies the possibility of the next one being better, so an enthusiastic 9.9/10

maximus otter

I've spent the past fortnight reading the book, slowly, night by night, and I've just watched the film.

The book was very good (the best thing I've read this year), but I have a few significant reservations about the movie adaptation.

Visually, cinematically, music, sound design, special effects, as you say, Maximus, it's brilliant, but there are a few things that I'm afraid left me disappointed--core directorial decisions mostly:-

First and foremost is the dialogue. Some of it is bad (Kynes: 'He's locked the door' half a second after we watch Duncan lock the door in 'pseudo-300-dramatic fashion'), but more seriously, both writing and delivery are far too contemporary. It's not just the accents, it's the syntax, the idiom and the enunciation: this style of speech (as far as it exists in the world beyond Hollywood/Marvel) won't last my lifetime before evolving significantly, let alone survive 20,000 into the future. Some of the Hollywood actors here sound as if they are trying to deliver their lines in a cool and quotable way.

This is not acting.

Off the top of my head, Duncan Idaho sounds like a surfer part of the time: I'm not gonna die...

Worse, Paul sounds like an American high-schooler; when he called Leto 'Dad' instead of father, my toes curled. I understand that we are to witness his journey from diffident youth to man and messiah, but when he's discussing the death of his father and the flames of a future jihad, he has the same tone as a teenager emoting over his girlfriend who got mad at him at the mall. He's also addressed by some of his father's lieutenants in a horribly casual fashion; the backslapping and winking jokes are a major departure from the formality that is underpinned by their various vows and pledges to the Atreides family. Yes, there is a love between them and him, but Paul is the heir to the Dukedom, and that enforces a distance, especially in public.

Elsewhere, even the supposedly aged Thufir Hawaii managed, "We're good to go!", while Leto came out with 'ass' and 'hellhole' and didn't 'give a damn' among others.

This I did not enjoy.

The Brits get in on the act a little, too, with the weird British computer voices sounding like the safety announcements from B.A. flights, and one Harkonnen henchman coming out with a Cockney 'shut up'.

The reason none of this works for me is that one of the things that surprised me so pleasantly about the book was that the dialogue Herbert wrote actually contributed to the world & myth-building: it was English, of course, but there was a nice cocktail of moderately high formality, lovely neologism (comparatively little of this has made it to the film) and earnest internal monologue that gave the whole story the feel of a futuristic Greek tragedy. Villeneuvre has Leto looking perfect for a future Agamemnon, but the monologues are mostly absent, and everybody sounds as if they're very modern with correspondingly modern concerns.

I've had to read quite a lot of 50s and 60s American literature over the years, and one of the reason I can't stand the inferior end of it is that a lot of the stuff I've read is so linguistically tied to the time in which it was written: the characters speak in such a contemporary fashion that the stories themselves feel pinned to that era too securely. The best of them transcend this limitation with various techniques, the very best actually exploit this to say something universal. My impression while reading the book was that Herbert only once or twice dropped a clanger in terms of idiom that immediately dated the work to 1965.

This dialogue will not stand the test of time. Give it ten or fifteen years and it's going to sound as much a product of the early 2020s as Oasis were the early 1990s.

The other issue is tonal: there is no joy here.

There was in both the Lynch adaptation and Herbert's book a tonal shift. The Atreides were full of trepidation about the move to Arakkis from the outset, but the long spells of tiredness and anxiety that characterise the first weeks on the planet (here highly accelerated, Hawat and Leto seeming under no especial strain) are peppered with moments of hope, insouciance and a general determination to succeed against the odds (Born to lose, live to win, as a great man said). I really liked that Leto and felt grieved that he had to die; I really liked Jurgen Prochnow's portrayal of him in the Lynch version; Villeneuve's character? Didn't really care.

Similarly, Gurney.

Whence the songs? Whence the smile and the wry quotation? Whence the damned baliset!?

The Baron? Is it me or was there a conscious visual reference to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now with the bald head-rub? The fact that he's a gourmand is already apparent by the fact that he's mammoth, but here his only greed is gluttony (and oil baths?) and he's somewhat inert; indeed most of the sexual elements of the story seem to have been curiously stripped from this film.

Perhaps it's understandable to gloss or omit the Baron's homosexual/paedophilic predilections, but Jessica's sexual baiting of the Harkonnes guards in order to kill and escape them is gone, and there's no mention (that I recall) that she is Leto's concubine and not his wife. Feyd-Rautha is yet to appear, but I don't expect his sadistic wenching to feature very highly in the second film. One wonders whether this is wholly an artistic decision or whether a risk-adverse studio had an influence in this 'Cancel Age'?

My scores?

With the sound off: 9/10.
With the sound on: 7/10.

Liked it, will watch again, but as ever, read the book.
 
I've spent the past fortnight reading the book, slowly, night by night, and I've just watched the film.

The book was very good (the best thing I've read this year), but I have a few significant reservations about the movie adaptation.

Visually, cinematically, music, sound design, special effects, as you say, Maximus, it's brilliant, but there are a few things that I'm afraid left me disappointed--core directorial decisions mostly:-

First and foremost is the dialogue. Some of it is bad (Kynes: 'He's locked the door' half a second after we watch Duncan lock the door in 'pseudo-300-dramatic fashion'), but more seriously, both writing and delivery are far too contemporary. It's not just the accents, it's the syntax, the idiom and the enunciation: this style of speech (as far as it exists in the world beyond Hollywood/Marvel) won't last my lifetime before evolving significantly, let alone survive 20,000 into the future. Some of the Hollywood actors here sound as if they are trying to deliver their lines in a cool and quotable way.

This is not acting.

Off the top of my head, Duncan Idaho sounds like a surfer part of the time: I'm not gonna die...

Worse, Paul sounds like an American high-schooler; when he called Leto 'Dad' instead of father, my toes curled. I understand that we are to witness his journey from diffident youth to man and messiah, but when he's discussing the death of his father and the flames of a future jihad, he has the same tone as a teenager emoting over his girlfriend who got mad at him at the mall. He's also addressed by some of his father's lieutenants in a horribly casual fashion; the backslapping and winking jokes are a major departure from the formality that is underpinned by their various vows and pledges to the Atreides family. Yes, there is a love between them and him, but Paul is the heir to the Dukedom, and that enforces a distance, especially in public.

Elsewhere, even the supposedly aged Thufir Hawaii managed, "We're good to go!", while Leto came out with 'ass' and 'hellhole' and didn't 'give a damn' among others.

This I did not enjoy.

The Brits get in on the act a little, too, with the weird British computer voices sounding like the safety announcements from B.A. flights, and one Harkonnen henchman coming out with a Cockney 'shut up'.

The reason none of this works for me is that one of the things that surprised me so pleasantly about the book was that the dialogue Herbert wrote actually contributed to the world & myth-building: it was English, of course, but there was a nice cocktail of moderately high formality, lovely neologism (comparatively little of this has made it to the film) and earnest internal monologue that gave the whole story the feel of a futuristic Greek tragedy. Villeneuvre has Leto looking perfect for a future Agamemnon, but the monologues are mostly absent, and everybody sounds as if they're very modern with correspondingly modern concerns.

I've had to read quite a lot of 50s and 60s American literature over the years, and one of the reason I can't stand the inferior end of it is that a lot of the stuff I've read is so linguistically tied to the time in which it was written: the characters speak in such a contemporary fashion that the stories themselves feel pinned to that era too securely. The best of them transcend this limitation with various techniques, the very best actually exploit this to say something universal. My impression while reading the book was that Herbert only once or twice dropped a clanger in terms of idiom that immediately dated the work to 1965.

This dialogue will not stand the test of time. Give it ten or fifteen years and it's going to sound as much a product of the early 2020s as Oasis were the early 1990s.

The other issue is tonal: there is no joy here.

There was in both the Lynch adaptation and Herbert's book a tonal shift. The Atreides were full of trepidation about the move to Arakkis from the outset, but the long spells of tiredness and anxiety that characterise the first weeks on the planet (here highly accelerated, Hawat and Leto seeming under no especial strain) are peppered with moments of hope, insouciance and a general determination to succeed against the odds (Born to lose, live to win, as a great man said). I really liked that Leto and felt grieved that he had to die; I really liked Jurgen Prochnow's portrayal of him in the Lynch version; Villeneuve's character? Didn't really care.

Similarly, Gurney.

Whence the songs? Whence the smile and the wry quotation? Whence the damned baliset!?

The Baron? Is it me or was there a conscious visual reference to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now with the bald head-rub? The fact that he's a gourmand is already apparent by the fact that he's mammoth, but here his only greed is gluttony (and oil baths?) and he's somewhat inert; indeed most of the sexual elements of the story seem to have been curiously stripped from this film.

Perhaps it's understandable to gloss or omit the Baron's homosexual/paedophilic predilections, but Jessica's sexual baiting of the Harkonnes guards in order to kill and escape them is gone, and there's no mention (that I recall) that she is Leto's concubine and not his wife. Feyd-Rautha is yet to appear, but I don't expect his sadistic wenching to feature very highly in the second film. One wonders whether this is wholly an artistic decision or whether a risk-adverse studio had an influence in this 'Cancel Age'?

My scores?

With the sound off: 9/10.
With the sound on: 7/10.

Liked it, will watch again, but as ever, read the book.

Many good points, Yith. I've read the first book once, about 20 years ago and made it through the Lynch version once, a few years earlier. My memory of each is hazy. In contrast I'veseen this twice at the flicks.

Leto does say to Jessica "I should have married you" and one of the Harkonnens refers to her as his concubine (though this could be construed as merely an insult if you didn't know).

I agree that it is joyless, that does seem to be Villneuve's style. I can't recall the dialogue in the book but the occasional lapses into modern terms did feel out of place. Portraying the Baron as a gay paedo would not have been a good idea, for fairly obvious reasons and removing it did little to harm to the film in my opinion. It is possible that this will come up in part two, though I doubt it.

I thought that the talking book sounded a little like an old BBC announcer and it was meant to evoke a public service announcement, an old documentary or even the Open University. It certainly did that for me.

I really enjoyed it, it looks fantastic but in many ways feels as empty as the huge minimalist rooms and spaces it portrays.
 
I've spent the past fortnight reading the book, slowly, night by night, and I've just watched the film.

The book was very good (the best thing I've read this year), but I have a few significant reservations about the movie adaptation.

Visually, cinematically, music, sound design, special effects, as you say, Maximus, it's brilliant, but there are a few things that I'm afraid left me disappointed--core directorial decisions mostly:-

First and foremost is the dialogue. Some of it is bad (Kynes: 'He's locked the door' half a second after we watch Duncan lock the door in 'pseudo-300-dramatic fashion'), but more seriously, both writing and delivery are far too contemporary. It's not just the accents, it's the syntax, the idiom and the enunciation: this style of speech (as far as it exists in the world beyond Hollywood/Marvel) won't last my lifetime before evolving significantly, let alone survive 20,000 into the future. Some of the Hollywood actors here sound as if they are trying to deliver their lines in a cool and quotable way.

This is not acting.

Off the top of my head, Duncan Idaho sounds like a surfer part of the time: I'm not gonna die...

Worse, Paul sounds like an American high-schooler; when he called Leto 'Dad' instead of father, my toes curled. I understand that we are to witness his journey from diffident youth to man and messiah, but when he's discussing the death of his father and the flames of a future jihad, he has the same tone as a teenager emoting over his girlfriend who got mad at him at the mall. He's also addressed by some of his father's lieutenants in a horribly casual fashion; the backslapping and winking jokes are a major departure from the formality that is underpinned by their various vows and pledges to the Atreides family. Yes, there is a love between them and him, but Paul is the heir to the Dukedom, and that enforces a distance, especially in public.

Elsewhere, even the supposedly aged Thufir Hawaii managed, "We're good to go!", while Leto came out with 'ass' and 'hellhole' and didn't 'give a damn' among others.

This I did not enjoy.

The Brits get in on the act a little, too, with the weird British computer voices sounding like the safety announcements from B.A. flights, and one Harkonnen henchman coming out with a Cockney 'shut up'.

The reason none of this works for me is that one of the things that surprised me so pleasantly about the book was that the dialogue Herbert wrote actually contributed to the world & myth-building: it was English, of course, but there was a nice cocktail of moderately high formality, lovely neologism (comparatively little of this has made it to the film) and earnest internal monologue that gave the whole story the feel of a futuristic Greek tragedy. Villeneuvre has Leto looking perfect for a future Agamemnon, but the monologues are mostly absent, and everybody sounds as if they're very modern with correspondingly modern concerns.

I've had to read quite a lot of 50s and 60s American literature over the years, and one of the reason I can't stand the inferior end of it is that a lot of the stuff I've read is so linguistically tied to the time in which it was written: the characters speak in such a contemporary fashion that the stories themselves feel pinned to that era too securely. The best of them transcend this limitation with various techniques, the very best actually exploit this to say something universal. My impression while reading the book was that Herbert only once or twice dropped a clanger in terms of idiom that immediately dated the work to 1965.

This dialogue will not stand the test of time. Give it ten or fifteen years and it's going to sound as much a product of the early 2020s as Oasis were the early 1990s.

The other issue is tonal: there is no joy here.

There was in both the Lynch adaptation and Herbert's book a tonal shift. The Atreides were full of trepidation about the move to Arakkis from the outset, but the long spells of tiredness and anxiety that characterise the first weeks on the planet (here highly accelerated, Hawat and Leto seeming under no especial strain) are peppered with moments of hope, insouciance and a general determination to succeed against the odds (Born to lose, live to win, as a great man said). I really liked that Leto and felt grieved that he had to die; I really liked Jurgen Prochnow's portrayal of him in the Lynch version; Villeneuve's character? Didn't really care.

Similarly, Gurney.

Whence the songs? Whence the smile and the wry quotation? Whence the damned baliset!?

The Baron? Is it me or was there a conscious visual reference to Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now with the bald head-rub? The fact that he's a gourmand is already apparent by the fact that he's mammoth, but here his only greed is gluttony (and oil baths?) and he's somewhat inert; indeed most of the sexual elements of the story seem to have been curiously stripped from this film.

Perhaps it's understandable to gloss or omit the Baron's homosexual/paedophilic predilections, but Jessica's sexual baiting of the Harkonnes guards in order to kill and escape them is gone, and there's no mention (that I recall) that she is Leto's concubine and not his wife. Feyd-Rautha is yet to appear, but I don't expect his sadistic wenching to feature very highly in the second film. One wonders whether this is wholly an artistic decision or whether a risk-adverse studio had an influence in this 'Cancel Age'?

My scores?

With the sound off: 9/10.
With the sound on: 7/10.

Liked it, will watch again, but as ever, read the book.

Sorry for the late reply.

It's been many years since I last re-read Dune, so filter the following through that prism:

I take your point, but it seems that everything has to be - I don't want to use the cliché "dumbed down" because it isn't quite apt here - let's say adapted to the modern taste, e.g Liet Kynes' sex change.

I believe that a lot of modern cinema-goers would have felt less inclined to go and see Dune were it not for the inclusion of big-name players associated with SF films, e.g. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista; and to have JM, for example, intoning faux-classical dialogue like Timothy West playing Lear wouldn't have rung true.

As to the baliset and songs, well, the director has had to compress 600 pages of book into two films, and not many people complained about the (relative) absence of songs from The Hobbit and LOTR!

I still relish the memory of the film. I'll wait for a year, then buy the Blu-ray Special Extended Edition when it finally arrives, though...

maximus otter
 
Sorry for the late reply.

It's been many years since I last re-read Dune, so filter the following through that prism:

I take your point, but it seems that everything has to be - I don't want to use the cliché "dumbed down" because it isn't quite apt here - let's say adapted to the modern taste, e.g Liet Kynes' sex change.

I believe that a lot of modern cinema-goers would have felt less inclined to go and see Dune were it not for the inclusion of big-name players associated with SF films, e.g. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista; and to have JM, for example, intoning faux-classical dialogue like Timothy West playing Lear wouldn't have rung true.

As to the baliset and songs, well, the director has had to compress 600 pages of book into two films, and not many people complained about the (relative) absence of songs from The Hobbit and LOTR!

I still relish the memory of the film. I'll wait for a year, then buy the Blu-ray Special Extended Edition when it finally arrives, though...

maximus otter

For all my critical points, enjoyed it, which is more than I can say for a lot of new releases I've seen in the past decade or so.

Dune: Messiah arrived in the post this afternoon, and while I've been warned to expect a very different animal to the first book, I'm eager to get cracking with it.

Edit: Consensus among four friends discussing Lynch's version the other day was that as a film it was pretty bad, but—peversely—we all enjoyed watching it a great deal!
 
For all my critical points, enjoyed it, which is more than I can say for a lot of new releases I've seen in the past decade or so.

Dune: Messiah arrived in the post this afternoon, and while I've been warned to expect a very different animal to the first book, I'm eager to get cracking with it.

Edit: Consensus among four friends discussing Lynch's version the other day was that as a film it was pretty bad, but—peversely—we all enjoyed watching it a great deal!
Because of the hype surrounding the new movie, i watched Lynch's Dune a couple of weeks back for the first time in many years. I'd forgotten just how many poor choices he'd made, but visually it is still a treat. The constant internal monologues were annoying. I looked it up and apparently it's in line with the book, which I haven't read, but in almost every case they're unnecessary and the same monologues could be added to any film, but they're not because they shatter the narrative. The whole movie was a worthy experiment, and an achievement, but more can be learned from what didn't work than what did.
 
I never like the Baron in the book, hes supposed to be the bad guy, not an OTT cliched bully.

Taking away that aspect of him is good, even if it lessens our disgust. (I suspect our distaste should be levelled at the Harkonens as a society, rather than anyone individual)

Being fat is embarrassing to begin with.
 
You know that book of concept art from Jodorowsky's Dune that sold for an incredible £2million at auction recently? Well:
News story

The shady group that bought it have announced they're going to make an animated film out of it. Despite not having the rights to the property. As pointed out above, this would be like buying a Batman comic and making your own Batman film out of it because you'd bought a copy, like everyone else who had bought a copy.

The suspicion is the group want to turn the book into NFTs, because of course they do. I doubt they'll get far with this.
 
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