A Scanner Darkly
Aug. 30th, 2006 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackIt made me sick. It was quite good.
The animation worked well. Apparently it was a bit mixed, but overall, I quie liked the effect, conveying the feel of the film-- and while I don't like change or complication for their own sake, I like to see people saying "Screw it, the best way of representing this story is [really random visial technique]".
Sometimes it's even useful to be filming in such a way, for instance being able to show imagined scenes in thought bubbles, or to show a few hours of frantic activity as a speeded up video. (It's funny that now VCRs are much less used, crackly lines across a screen still conveys "really fast" -- I wonder if it will when we've forgotten why?)
However, whenever it zoomed, the way the drawing would just float toward you, moving against the background, felt like motion sickness, and at the end I was just slightly nauseated, between the animation, the stuffy cinema, and the twisted plot.
Near the end there was a short monologue where they explained the title, which seemed a bit gratuitous. The concept was there through the film, either reference the quote properly or not at all, it felt odd to where just one sentence seemed to pull out the title specifically, without reference to the original quote.
The stoned characters, especially Barris and Arcter, were written with the sense of ironic humour I love hearing. I laughed very much at some of the protracted exchanged, about the bike, and the car part, even though drunk/drugged conversations in real life don't seem enjoyable.
I haven't read any Dick for ages, and not Scanner Darkly, but the film came across as an enjoyable action story, with a lot of weird shit being incrementally unloaded in the second half, which I believe follows Dick in spirit, if not in the plot of the original ;)
I did find the plot confusing, and not quite sure what's supposed to have happened by the end, but a bit of googling shows that I understood everything generally agreed to be there :)
The animation worked well. Apparently it was a bit mixed, but overall, I quie liked the effect, conveying the feel of the film-- and while I don't like change or complication for their own sake, I like to see people saying "Screw it, the best way of representing this story is [really random visial technique]".
Sometimes it's even useful to be filming in such a way, for instance being able to show imagined scenes in thought bubbles, or to show a few hours of frantic activity as a speeded up video. (It's funny that now VCRs are much less used, crackly lines across a screen still conveys "really fast" -- I wonder if it will when we've forgotten why?)
However, whenever it zoomed, the way the drawing would just float toward you, moving against the background, felt like motion sickness, and at the end I was just slightly nauseated, between the animation, the stuffy cinema, and the twisted plot.
Near the end there was a short monologue where they explained the title, which seemed a bit gratuitous. The concept was there through the film, either reference the quote properly or not at all, it felt odd to where just one sentence seemed to pull out the title specifically, without reference to the original quote.
The stoned characters, especially Barris and Arcter, were written with the sense of ironic humour I love hearing. I laughed very much at some of the protracted exchanged, about the bike, and the car part, even though drunk/drugged conversations in real life don't seem enjoyable.
I haven't read any Dick for ages, and not Scanner Darkly, but the film came across as an enjoyable action story, with a lot of weird shit being incrementally unloaded in the second half, which I believe follows Dick in spirit, if not in the plot of the original ;)
I did find the plot confusing, and not quite sure what's supposed to have happened by the end, but a bit of googling shows that I understood everything generally agreed to be there :)
no subject
Date: 2006-08-30 10:55 pm (UTC)lonely as athe streets checking and couldn't find any open wifi so ended up at Sledge's, where I was offered tea and a sofa :)