Noble Realms — a Scanner Darkly

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-16T15:33:21Z

I just saw Slacker a few days ago. It was pretty instresting and I liked how it moved from person to person. A few good scenes and idea's popped up here and there - the metaphysical girl with the cards and the group of guys talking about the masons. And some parts were just funny. It's a pretty decent movie. I'll second the recommendation.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-16T07:14:05Z

phlux wrote:

Has anyone here seen the waking life - which is similar.

I've seen waking life - yes, there are similarities.

I also recommend "Slacker" which was Linklaters's first feature film. There are a few overlapping concepts in that one as well - but delivered in a different type of film.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-16T06:23:15Z

Saw this movie the other day, and it wasnt as impressive as I thought it would be. THe middle was rather boring and it was pretty myopic - focusing on some random drug addict in a small group of friends with no indication of "importance" (Robert Downy's cahr)

Overall the concept is great - but the execution is pretty poor. I liked the movie - but it wasnt as ground breaking as the hype surrounding it. I really liked robert downey in this movie - he was a pontificating psuedo intellectual who used big words to make himself sound smart. I have known many people like him.

Has anyone here seen the waking life - which is similar.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-14T20:22:05Z

I remember in Anaheim, this neighbor came over and asked my mom for a ride
to "church." I was in grade school, but even I could tell he was very stoned on
something strong. He needed to go meet his pusher...

I couldn't put it in words though, I only knew, though I lacked the knowlege to
describe it. Thus, knowing my mom was a good person and would be falling for
it and unable to tell this obviously desperate man no, I rode along in the Volks
with her to an empty church. I think I did this to protect my mom...psychically, mentally. When we got there, he looked around shifty eyed for someone, and
said he was meeting someone there..."thanks"....and waiting for us to drive off,
of course.

I really thought he was basically a good person, simply addicted beyond belief.
The area was then fully saturated with addicts...twice we were ripped off, once of
two expensive bicycles, another of hunting rifles. I think it was this guy. We were
easy prey. It was nothing "personal"...he just needed the money for the drugs.

They also sent their kids to be "friends" with me and scope out our place for
valuables. I know this now, it's only too obvious. I just couldn't see it at the time.

I tell you this in part to add veracity to the idea of authenticity in PKD's book.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-03T05:27:16Z

Believe it. Dick and his circle of friends were VERY into doing drugs. Phil suffered from bouts of mental illness as a teen and by the time he was grown he surrounded himself with stoners and junkies. There is a famous incident where Timothy Leary and John Lennon called Phil up to tell him that his novel, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" was the first great LSD novel. In that novel, marooned astronauts were consuming the drug Can-D Years after the sixties were had faded, Phil ruefully thought that Leary was a dangerous shyster. The pleasant days of innocent tripping inevitably turned into a dark, ominous nightmare. People began DYING of the drugs they were taking. The sense of paranoia was very strong. Your buddy could well be a narc. Phil has related these events i n several novels, "VALIS", " Flow My Tears", "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer," and others. VALIS actually begins with the main character mourning the suicide of a drug addict. Among PKD fans, "Scanner" is known to be one of Phil's most autobiograhical novel. The germ of the story arose of of a terrifying break-in and vandalism of his home, which was a haven for the neighborhood junkies and stoners. The cops actually accused Phil that he vandalized his own house. Phil, being a freak-out paranoid couldn't disprove him. The only way he could was if he could watch himself. And now you know the rest of the story...

So those people were real. Phil missed them terribly.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T21:36:49Z

wandering1 wrote:

I think that was a list of names of people that Philip Dick knew who died from various issues related to substance use.

That was my first thought, but the list just kept coming. I found it hard to believe that he knew that many people with issues that serious from drugs. Wow!

I've had a lot of my friends get into serious problems with drugs, but by far the most common negative effect has been long prison sentences.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T19:22:20Z

They claimed that A Scanner Darkly would be opening in Charlottesville, Virginia on July 28th, but somebody done lied! Nothing yet. Oh, but we have that great new piece of cinematic wonder, "John Tucker Must Die." Maybe it's because Scanner is R rated, and Cville wants to pack in as many PG and G movies as possible, because it means higher revenue....? Get in the families and teenyboppers, I don't know. Forget the adults.

So if anybody knows of any theaters in Virginia playing Scanner, I'm still up for a roadtrip. Just point me to the theater.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T14:23:27Z

Yeah, the acting in the movie was superb. I still need to watch it a few more times to pick up the things I missed. One line that stuck out was "There is nothing worse than a man who is afraid of his own shadow".

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T13:55:39Z

A wonderful movie. The scene-stealing antics of Robert Downet Jr. were particulary pleasing.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T09:36:21Z

limukala wrote:

Does anyone know what the statement at the end (by Philip K Dick) was referring too, and the list of names? I was a little confused by that.

I think that was a list of names of people that Philip Dick knew who died from various issues related to substance use.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-08-02T05:19:18Z

Wow, it finally came to a "theater near me," well, not quite, I had to drive an hour and 20 minutes (at a cost greater than the two movie tickets for sure), but it was well worth it. Definitely a movie I'd like to watch again. Dark, and a little disorienting.

Does anyone know what the statement at the end (by Philip K Dick) was referring too, and the list of names? I was a little confused by that.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-07-31T02:34:08Z

I saw the movie last night, and it's great. Dark, but great. Funny, too. I needed the humour, because I was freaking out at the sensation of vertigo induced by by
own memories of living in Anaheim from the ages of four through eight, and in another part of Orange County until age ten. The houses are the same, only much
more run down. By the time we left, the clean cut look of Robert Arctor's memories
of the house (when his wife and children were there) had already begun to fade.
After the last orange groves were chopped down, the area already lost most of the
charm it ever had. Most of the interesting people lived between the cracks even then, and I could easily see it looking as bad as it does in the movie in seven years...yet I noticed an Orange County reviewer stated she thought the movie "really could be anywhere." Of course, the surviellance society already is/
can be anywhere without prevention, but the particular feeling of Anaheim, the
particular darkness and humour, was distinct. I wonder why Phillip K. Dick picked
Anaheim, in particular. I'll do some research, and if anyone here has any insights,
I'd appreciate it. I have some ideas of my own aready...maybe they have to do
with the Nixon era and our parents getting caught up in something...to think that
way then would have been seen as paranoid schizophrenia, yet I think that the way
the system is/was set up (problem, reaction, solution through the medium of man)
is very close to how it is. Now I intend to read Dick's books and get into this more.
There were alot of very strange syncs for me that have left me reeling. And man, when I was watching the freeway scenes, it was like complete deja vu, it was like experiencing it again. It's exactly how the freeways are there. In some odd way the animation overlay makes it seem even more "real", as memories and dreams
are "painted" by us in our minds.
The rotoscoping effect is perfect for this movie; it is such an odd sensation.

I need to see it again, and I'll buy it on video; I could say alot more, but suffice it to say that it had a huge impact on me, despite the fact that it's all rather subtly done for a "sci-fi" flick. It gets right into my skin, and it stays there. It's a unique
experience, one of those rare gems that comes along every so often (say, 30 years?!) and makes you want more. It's acerbic antidote to Hollywood treacle
pablum. Somewhere, something is afoot for the good, waking people up here and
there in dribs and drabs...it's like a head popping up from sleep, shaking itself, sputtering, and saying "Huh, wha? Did anyone notice...something is amiss here?"

I'm sure I missed the scene with Alex Jones. Was it when Arctor was walking at night and a guy got put in a black van by the cops? Hmmm...alot of details yet to
discern.

It's not about "the places I know", of course, but somehow seeing it happen like that
in a place I know, well, it brings it home...it's like seeing the process of time stop
photography, futureized. It lays bare before my gaze, the worst possibilites, and
by reverse engineering, some better probable futures....

without albino lizard bitches!

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-07-18T18:43:30Z

I saw it over the weekend and also recommend it highly. There is too much to catch in one viewing; even if I don't catch it again during the theatrical release I'll surely be acquiring my own copy when it comes out. I read the book late last year and have been devouring more and more PKD since then. He's always managing to relate to the themes on NR both tangentially and directly and I now consider him one of my favorite authors.

It's not too much of a spoiler, but there is a particularly great Robert Downey Jr. non-sequitur line about "albino shape-shifting lizard bitches" that had me rolling, and a few others like it. Also some fairly deep stuff about the dead using the living and vice versa toward the end. I don't remember the lizard line from the book though; I wonder if Downey ad-libbed it or if it was written in.

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-07-18T06:26:20Z

Xenopope wrote:

The only unique perspective I would have about it would be my conceivable reason for the special type of animation 'overlay' effect. Has any other movie ever done this?

Richard Linklater, also directed Waking Life. I was under the impression that they developed this software for the production of this movie. Also highly recommended if you haven't seen it before. They shot the movie with regular video, and then got different painters to trace over it with the software to give it the swimmy animation style. I'm looking forward to seeing A Scanner Darkly.

Edit: I found a wikipedia page for Waking Life (quote missing embedded links):

Waking Life is a digitally rotoscoped and animated film, directed by Richard Linklater and made in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame. This technique (called Rotoshop) is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, which was invented by Max Fleischer in the 1930's.
The title is a reference to George Santayana's maxim that "[s]anity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."

Re: a Scanner Darkly

2006-07-18T03:10:12Z

Hi all just saw the flick and it was somthing to go see. The only unique perspective I would have about it would be my conceivable reason for the special type of animation 'overlay' effect. Has any other movie ever done this? interpolated rotoscoping? First thing I thought of was it could be a more effective way of administering subliminal messaging into the psiche. . . it did have a few of the quickly 'swooshing' flash screen scenes . . I hate that. And then there's the obvious element of desensitization or dehumanization in the general theme of the story but even with a few of the more suble scenes - Alex Jones getting carted off by the 'ringleaders' and the fast-forewarded porno scene on the surveillance monitor.

Other than that the plot and storyline were great. Even the ending had something in store to throw you for a bit of a loop.

Definitely a must see.