A Scanner Darkly

[strange_complex]

I've just been out to see the above with nigelmouse, at a fabulous cinema called the Hyde Park. Leeds City Council inform me that it was originally built as a hotel in 1908, but became a cinema in 1914, and has been one ever since. It's a real treasure, and I could quite understand why nigelmouse said he often goes there as much for the cinema as for the films

Comments

Leeds International Film Festival

[nigelmouse]

Oh, and the lineup for Leeds International Film Festival should appear here soon. There's a link to last years site which will give you an idea of the kind of stuff that gets shown.

The Hyde Park is still officially my favorite cinema of all time.

Re: Leeds International Film Festival

[strange_complex]

Great, thanks for the link - I'll keep an eye on that!

[steer]

Bah. I wanted to see that last night but nowhere in York was showing it so I ended up seeing "The Wicker Man". It's a favourite book of mine.

Rotoscoping itself is not that new as a technique. A favourite computer game of mine "The Last Express" used it but it's been used since the 30s and famously in the 1970s Lord of the Rings.

Glad it was an enjoyable film though -- doubtless I will catch it when it comes out on DVD. Rotoscoping is pretty appropriate for Phillip Dick's obsessions with the blurring and nature of identity.

[strange_complex]

Well, I accept that people were drawing over live action film to create animations in the '70s, or even the '30s, but surely they couldn't have been using computers to fill in the gaps between drawings back then?

Was The Wicker Man as bad as I'm assuming?

[steer]

*grin* True the computer part of it was (I think) a 90s invention. Still, you did remind me of one of my favourite computer games "The Last Express" which used the technique and made the biggest loss in computer game history [I'm now bidding for an old copy on Ebay].

I thought they did a pretty good job with Wicker Man really but then I don't hold the original especially sacred. What they did well was to keep some measure of tension in a film where you know what will happen from the start.

[rich_r]

I have to admit I gave up on the book. I'd ploughed through several other of Dick's novels, and enjoyed some. But 'A Scanner Darkly' just left me so confused as to who was who and what was going on that I decided to read something else instead. I might go back to it and have another go though.

[steer]

*laugh* Well it is about merging and confusion of identities.

[rich_r]

I certainly found the identies to merge, and it all quite confusing.

When I've finished the book I'm reading now, I'll have another look at it I think. Maybe I just had Dick-overload (no innuendos please), having just read 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch' and 'Martian Time-Slip' just before. I did like 'Martian Time-Slip' though, but it ended a bit abruptly.

[dakegra]

the Hyde Park Picture House is fab. Uncomfortable seats though!

Um. You know we'd pencilled in lunch today? My to-do list has reached simply terrifying proportions - can we do next week instead? Really sorry about this.

email me: dakegra (at) yahoo co uk

[nigelmouse]

It depends when you last went to the hyde park, as they got new (and more comfortable) seats about a year ago. It's now no longer painfully uncomfortable to sit in there.

[dakegra]

this was a midnight showing of Blade Runner, about 12 years ago...

:-)

happy to hear they've sorted the seats out. They were quaint in their way, but sore on the bum.

[nigelmouse]

Yep, they were good in an old fashioned, authentic kinda way. I also found the uncomfortableness (is that a word ?) helped keep you awake during the all-nighters they run.

The seats haven't gone far, I've heard they're now at the commonplace, used for thier own cinema room.

[huskyteer]

I saw this over the Bank Holiday weekend with my dad and loved it. I'm a fan of PKD but hadn't read this one, and neither of the libraries I'm signed up with has it :(