My friend Kristen says that the movie A Scanner Darkly is uber-fantastic. It hasn’t opened in Japan yet, so in the meantime I’m satisfying myself with the first 24 minutes of the film, viewable at IGN.
"I can see you happy in the shadows I despise..."
Uber-fantastic is quite right. It's like "Waking Life" but with an actual plot and a damned good one at that. I recommend getting it on DVD just for the fantastic visuals alone.
ReplyDeleteOh, and speaking of great new American Sci-Fi, 'Children of Men' kicks some major booty. Makes Blade Runner seem like a Disney film in parts. I was quite pleasantly surprised.
Glad to hear another confirming opinion. I will probably buy the DVD as you suggest, because I agree that the visuals are just stunning! It took 500 hours to make each minute of animation; I'm assuming they're factoring a lot of man-hours including the live-action shoot to come up with that dramatic number. I mean - golly - that's a lot of rotoscoping.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be neat to see is this animation technique, this visual style performed on the live action performers, and then cel-shaded computer-generated sets. Whoooo.