A Scanner Darkly...

[Zeus]

This movie looks fucking cool. Never read the story, but I'll see it for the style alone

http://www.apple.com/trailers/warner_in ... arkly.html

[SineSwiper]

You know, I was about to make a joke about how "A Scanner Darkly" isn't a complete fucking sentence. But, fuck that! The preview was fucking cool: cool fucking style, a Phillip Dick story, and Reeves always does a great as a neopunk actor.

EDIT: This project is very exciting for us -- not only because of the caliber of talent behind it, but because we believe that it will be the very first faithful adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story.

iMDB features a Plot Summary for the movie, but I almost don't want to say what its about now, given the amount it could reveal. Unless any other trailers choose to reveal it, it seems like a major plot surprise.

[Kupek]

I was impressed with the trailer. I have a friend who loves Philip K. Dick stories, but has been often dissapointed with the movie versions, so this got my attention.

[SineSwiper]

I just realized that I said 'fuck' about four times in three short lines. I need to stop doing that.

[Zeus]

I was impressed with the trailer. I have a friend who loves Philip K. Dick stories, but has been often dissapointed with the movie versions, so this got my attention.

Wasn't Total Recall based on a Dick short story?

[SineSwiper]

Loosely based, yes. I think movies like that are why there would be a debate on movie versions screwing up the book versions. (From this article: It's too bad David Cronenberg, who was originally asked to direct, was not allowed to make his version of the film. Cronenberg submitted twelve scripts which were all refused. The last one was turned down purportedly because "it was too much the way Dick would have done it himself." Now what kind of logic is that?)

Bladerunner may have been close to accurate, but there was a lot more on how the replicants were more human than humans were in the book. AI was based on a short story, but much of the movie was added unto where the story ended, I believe. Same with Minority Report.

[Zeus]

You just can't make a completely true movie from a book, they're different forms of media with different forms of delivery and completely different audiences. You have to change SOMETHING otherwise it doesn't work and/or won't get made. Remember, sci-fi films are relatively expensive to make as they require effects, sets, etc. So, they don't get done unless a market can be identified. If you make them too intelligent, there's too small of a market for a $50 million budget film...

Screamers was a great film, but relatively standard sci-fi fare. If that so happened to fit the book, great. But it might have just been an easier story to do properly.

[SineSwiper]

That's funny. This film is being praised for being close to the book. Lord of the Rings is being praised for being (fairly) close to the book. Sin City is being praised for being close to the comic material.

Yes, there are books that are hard to be made into films because of the technology. Logan's Run was a good example, but the film that was going to be made was to correct that issue, and be closer to the book. The first Wonka movie wasn't very accurate, but this newer one is very close to the book. In that case, there wasn't even a good reason to not stick to the book.

Hollywood is slowly slowly slowly realizing that the closer you make the movie to the source material, the better the movie becomes. There are some subtle changes that may need to be made, but for the most part, the person that wrote the book and had the vision is a better judge of how the story should play out rather than some director that wants to make a quick change to the story for the hell of it.

Why do I have to repeat the same fucking conversation over and over again? Why not just read this thread so that we can skip the same ol' argument?

[Blotus]

Linklater's certainly branching out, as far as the subject matter of his films goes. I wouldn't have expected this from the dude behind Suburbia and Dazed and Confused (don't get me wrong, I like both of those movies).

The look of ASD is like a beefed-up Waking Life, also by Linklater... just in case youse didn't know.