Movie #12: A Scanner Darkly

I read the Philip K Dick novel of A Scanner Darkly a while ago (Wikipedia), a little before the movie (Wikipedia, IMDB) first came out. I remember finding the novel difficult to follow due to the split nature of Fred/Arctor's personality, but with time it becomes clear that they are evolving into separate personalities. In the movie it is more difficult to follow, primarily due to time constraints, the separate identities do not become as fully developed, but it does make some sense. The roles of the other characters is more fuzzy, other than Donna at least, as that one is blindingly clear at the end. I forget if in the novel we ever find the original idenity of Fred/Arctor, since it turns out his story of his wife and girls is a hallucination as well.

Keanu did his normal high quality of body acting - and I'm serious about that still. Keanu is not a good actor when you think of his speech or his words, but if you look at how his body moves and behaves, he's amazing. The style of the movie, the animation, worked well, giving it a surreal feeling. I didn't realize it was all drawn over the original, I thought there was an automated process. Wow. I was impressed with the appearance of the exterior of Arctor's house - it's *exactly* what was in my head before I saw anything about the movie.

I would recommend reading the book first and then seeing the movie so you can better follow what's going on. I am not clear how close to the truth it was, so I'm going to go back and read both Wikipedia articles and see how they compare. But it's good overall.

"Everyone kills Hitler their first time"

So I read half of this "wikihistory" page when kadath posted about it, and now upon jrtom's reposting I finished it. Can it *get* any better than that? Wikis, time travel, Hitler, and Robert's Rules of Order!

Movie #13: Déjà Vu

(Can you tell I'm on Spring Break?)

Déjà Vu (Wikipedia, IMDB) starring Denzel Washington with Val Kilmer as a major supporting character is what I would call a stealth Sci-Fi movie. Based upon what I recalled of the trailers and such, I was expecting the movie to be a Denzel Washington action drama, with touches of thriller and some sort of supernatural/ghosts/New-Agey crap. And then they slammed us with Kilmer explaining about Einstein-Rosen bridges and wormholes while Washington throws chairs at monitors and yells something to the effect of "stop talking science and tell me the truth!" Had me in a giggling fit and rewinding to hear it another two times as I totally don't picture Kilmer as a scientist-type, and Washington strikes me as more intelligent and likely to understand time travel.

They did a decent job of explaining the physics of wormholes, and also the sci-fi aspects of time travel, causality, and alternate universes. I like how they resolved his death in the end, and explained a bunch of the small inexplicable things (though I was expecting they would all be explained via messages, not bodily travel). The chase scene is entirely gratuitous, and I admit I zoned out a bit during it, but it doesn't detract overall.

If you're a fan of Sci-Fi, action, and/or Denzel Washington, this one's a must-see. I'm a fan of all of the above, so I definitely enjoyed it.