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Pirates Shmirates
I saw A Scanner Darkly last night. I enjoyed it but I don't know if I would generally recommend it to anyone. You should see it if you know what you're getting into; having read the book counts.
* Boy, are the trailers misleading. In one way that's good, because the story so isn't the paranoid dystopian thriller that the trailers make it out to be, and so my concerns of outrageous plot deviations were put to rest. On the other hand, I worry that audiences will feel confused and frustrated at seeing a very different movie than the one they were expecting.
* I forgave the rather oddball depiction of the "scramble suits". While the book didn't precisely describe what they looked like, I'm fairly certain that they didn't give their wearer the aspect of a constantly shifting chimera; that would rather defeat the purpose of an indentity-hiding, blending-in disguise. But they looked really cool, so who cares. I also noticed that PKD's face (see icon) briefly phased through the Arctor-suit during its first close-up.
* The movie very closely followed the book, including several lengthy scenes of the brain-addled junkies sitting around in their cluttered house talking paranoid nonsense. The actors hammed it up and it was fun to watch but boy, there was certainly a lot of it. They could have cut half of it out, but then the movie would have been only 45 minutes long.
* I misted up at the unexpected postscript text, which was taken word-for-word directly from the final page of the book. Even now I feel affected at how the author's name lingered for an extra half-second on the black screen before blipping out. I worried about the rest of the audience feeling more confused or uncomfortable by its presence, though.
* Boy, are the trailers misleading. In one way that's good, because the story so isn't the paranoid dystopian thriller that the trailers make it out to be, and so my concerns of outrageous plot deviations were put to rest. On the other hand, I worry that audiences will feel confused and frustrated at seeing a very different movie than the one they were expecting.
* I forgave the rather oddball depiction of the "scramble suits". While the book didn't precisely describe what they looked like, I'm fairly certain that they didn't give their wearer the aspect of a constantly shifting chimera; that would rather defeat the purpose of an indentity-hiding, blending-in disguise. But they looked really cool, so who cares. I also noticed that PKD's face (see icon) briefly phased through the Arctor-suit during its first close-up.
* The movie very closely followed the book, including several lengthy scenes of the brain-addled junkies sitting around in their cluttered house talking paranoid nonsense. The actors hammed it up and it was fun to watch but boy, there was certainly a lot of it. They could have cut half of it out, but then the movie would have been only 45 minutes long.
* I misted up at the unexpected postscript text, which was taken word-for-word directly from the final page of the book. Even now I feel affected at how the author's name lingered for an extra half-second on the black screen before blipping out. I worried about the rest of the audience feeling more confused or uncomfortable by its presence, though.
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my dislike for linklater (or for the cult of linklater) is high enough that i will probably catch this one on cable, if at all. (since his other 2006 film, fast food nation, count avril lavigne, ethan
hackehawke, and wilmer valderamma among its cast, i'm marginally more likely to see ASD.)no subject
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