A Scanner Darkly
I don’t see why this film got such a bad rap. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t like it, but I thought it was pretty dang good. Its a little annoying that the animation style is used for so many commercials now, and it kind of feels like I’m watching a mastercard advertisement, but it worked well for the subject matter.
[quote=“autephex, post:3501, topic:1923”]A Scanner Darkly
I don’t see why this film got such a bad rap. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t like it, but I thought it was pretty dang good. Its a little annoying that the animation style is used for so many commercials now, and it kind of feels like I’m watching a mastercard advertisement, but it worked well for the subject matter.[/quote]
It doesn’t like up to the potential of the book and the animation effect is completely pointless; a gimmick which wears out its welcome after five minutes.
what movie does live up to the book? i’ve never seen one
[quote=“autephex, post:3501, topic:1923”]A Scanner Darkly
I don’t see why this film got such a bad rap. Most people I’ve talked to didn’t like it, but I thought it was pretty dang good. Its a little annoying that the animation style is used for so many commercials now, and it kind of feels like I’m watching a mastercard advertisement, but it worked well for the subject matter.[/quote]
I really enjoyed this film. I also think it is heavily underrated. I thought the animation style was very cool, I have a graphic novel that was made using screenshots from the movie.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, No Country For Old Men, Rob Roy, Last Of The Mohicans, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Deliverance…
When you consider that Philip K. Dick’s writing was the inspiration for a host of other sci-fi films, including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report, it’s not surprising some people are going to be disappointed by A Scanner Darkly.
So what exactly is disappointing about it, besides the animation?
The animation isn’t exactly disappointing; just pointless for the most part. If they had played with the animation and used it to suggest the effects of drugs by distorting reality I might feel that actually going the animated route had some purpose. In the end, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a better job of creating a psychadelic animated experience.
Dick’s A Scanner Darkly is one of my favourite of his books. It’s quite low key – no epic space battles or anything like that – and it’s a personal book which touches on the effects of drugs and the damage which they can do, without ever preaching. The plot isn’t earth-shattering, but the ending of the book is really, really good. Dick’s writing, even from his earliest stories, always includes themes of paranoia and confused identity; but in A Scanner Darkly I think he handles these themes particularly brilliantly. It just deserved to be treated more seriously and with an appropriate level of grittiness; it is also quite a sad story and I just didn’t get that from the adaptation. In a way, the rotoscoping animation effects, swathed with bright colours, get in the way of conveying what’s in the book. Ironically, although it’s one of the more faithful adaptations of Philip K. Dick’s writing, it still somehow manages to miss the mark.
The way I see it, it’s the sort of film which will appeal to college students who think Hunter S. Thompson is the best writer ever and who have at least one Salvador Dali poster on their dorm room wall. It deserves to be a bit more than that and could have been if the subject matter had been treated with just a little more maturity.
I thought the animation style was more suited to Waking Life, and I think it was a mistake to re-use it again for A Scanner Darkly. But I still don’t think it got in the way or damaged the film really… there were many moments when it was effectively used to portray a warping reality, IMO.
I haven’t actually read the book, so I can’t comment on how it compares. I have been meaning to dig into Dick’s work lately, as I’m sure I will love it… I am fairly familiar with his personal history and I find his life absolutely intriguing.
I did find a lot of sadness in this film personally, but I suppose not until the ending. It was a tad goofy throughout much of the film until that point. So although I haven’t read the book yet, I can understand what you’re saying there.
Exactly, it’s goofy. Whereas it should have been semi-tragic. Not that I’m a massive fan of depressing movies about drugs, but that’s simply what was needed to convey it all properly.
Do yourself a service and read the book. Maybe you’ll agree with me.
Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut comes pretty close.
I’ve only seen the theatrical release, but I find that hard to believe. 
I hate Zack Snyder.
[quote=“TheBigSmokedown, post:3511, topic:1923”]I’ve only seen the theatrical release, but I find that hard to believe. 
I hate Zack Snyder.[/quote]
I didn’t like him for Dawn of the Dead but the Watchmen movie is one of my all time favorites.
I’ll bump up A Scanner Darkly to the top area of my reading list. This gives me another good reason to start reading PKD
Wow, it must be a pretty bad film then ;).
The Leopard comes close to being equel to the book, but not quite.
The Watchmen movie, imo is the best hollywood rendition of an Alan Moore comic. League for extrodinary gentlemen being the worst, they destroyed that story. V For Vendetta was good, but Watchmen was great. Still got my fingers crossed for Top Ten to get the hollywood treatment.
V was good but missed the point on the anarchist elements that Moore wrote about.
Taegukgi hwinalrimyeo aka Brotherhood - Je-gyu Kang (2004)
South Korean war film about the story of two brothers that are drafted (in the most peculiar way) for the 50’s Korean conflit.
Not a bad film I guess, but with a too far fetched/unbelievable story to my taste, almost soap opera style.
Don’t get me wrong the production values of the film are simply amazing, the action war scenes are amazing top nocht, even with some shining toutch’s like the one where we can seeGgerman WWII guns used by the South Korean Army, (notice some MP-40 parabellum sub machine guns, and one MG- 42 heavy machine gun) after WWII the US supplied the South Korean Army with a lot of German captured weapons, in fact those guns saw plenty use in several conflits through all the rest of the XX century.
The acting looked good, and even if more than two hours long, the action scenes just make it impossible for the film to be boring, but the so dramating story of the two brothers take so many turns and twists that i started to count the deads guys in the war scenes.
One thing it’s true civil wars are messy affairs, this to say did I like the movie? yeah but not that much, you need more to than just cool and realistic action scenes to make a movie, even more if you choose a dramatic story instead of more nonsensical care free subject for the film.
3 stars well earned for the battle scenes
Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta is my favourite comic book of all time. I actually own the original script (typed with Moore’s hand-written notes) for one of the parts which was originally published in Warrior magazine.
The movie was pretty gutless. They completely changed the ending, didn’t really know how to handle the terrorism angle, and didn’t have enough time to incorporate a lot of crucial scenes. The Wachowski brothers’ original script was doing the rounds for a long time before the movie got a green light. I have a copy of that some place and when I read it I thought it was superb. Sadly, perhaps due to studio pressure or other influencing factors, they made a lot of adjustments which were for the worse when it came to shooting. I think the influence of the comic on the Wachowskis is interesting, though, because it has some elements in common with The Matrix.
Don’t forget Moore’s writing was also the inspiration for From Hell. I thought that was a pretty entertaining movie, although again it was a poor, brainless type of adaptation.
Watchmen is the only Moore adaptation so far which doesn’t waste the book. Even V for Vendetta somehow fails for being much too short.
Watchmen keeps the spirit, but is a lifeless adaptation which failed to impress me, while the comic is a masterpiece.
Watchmen tries to stay close, too close imo, but then when they always tried to be so faithful to the novel, why did they change the ending?
I watched “Pusher 2” last night, tonight I will be watching “Pusher 3”.