Richard and Dick

I've seen previews for A Scanner Darkly for a while now. Linklater uses the technique that worked in Waking Life, a kind of modern retake on rotoscoping. Rotoscoping was somewhat popular in the 70s as a way of making cartooning more realistic.

Essentially, it involves doing live filming with real actors, then taking that, and tracing out the movements. The result was a bit odd. While the outlines moved like real people, since they were traced from real people, the interiors were as flat as Saturday morning cartoons, and about as expertly drawn. They lacked the kind of care that you find in a decent Disney (or Don Bluth) cartoon (which is becoming increasingly rare in wake of extremely popular Pixar films).

The kind of rotoscoping used in Linklater's films have a dreamy like quality. The goal isn't to produce extremely accurate reproductions of people (otherwise, why bother going through this laborious process)? There is a "floaty" quality about the drawings, as if body parts are not quite fixed onto the body. Eyes and eyebrows float in a sea.

The graphics for A Scanner Darkly are much crisper, more detailed than in Waking Life.

When I watched the previews, at first I thought it might be a kind of thriller, something dealing with mind-readers, and a kind of Big Brother society. You know, typical sci-fi post-apocalyptic kind of stuff. As more previews came out, there seemed to be less of this, and more of the dazed discussions that Linklater is more known for, but it seemed rather stupid.

The result is neither heavy sci-fi, nor stupid discussions.

This made made me think that most science fiction falls in a few categories. There are the space adventure kinds of film, mostly inspired by Star Wars. There are space horror films, mostly inspired by Alien. There are post-apocalyptic films, like, say, Mad Max or Planet of the Apes. There are utopia/dystopias of the future, like Logan's Run or even the Matrix.

Hard science fiction tends to explore issues like time dilation, faster than light speed travel, and so forth. Some science fiction almost doesn't quite qualify. In the early 90s, some SF writers were writing about alternate histories. What would happen if the Library of Alexandria survived, or if the difference engine were made practical.

Among science fiction writers, Philip K. Dick is a strange one. Apparently, never that successful when he was living, he's become quite a bit more popular since he's passed away. The first really "successful" Dick film was Blade Runner based on a short story called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

While this didn't lead to a deluge of Dick films, they did trickle in over the years. Total Recall, Paycheck, Minority Report and some lesser known movies were based on Dick stories, though often rather loosely based.

I can't say I've read much Dick. The only thing I read recently was a short story of a man in the future who's been told that he's a replicant, i.e., a robot duplicate of a human being. Since we're reading from the perspective of the person, we're sure that he's human. Dick often likes to play with the reader, making you wonder whether the narrator is indeed accurate. Indeed, this story was compelling enough to have been made into a film with Gary Sinise (one I had not heard of when it came out). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did a take on this where O'Brien was being pursued by crewmates, and he was wondering why they were going after him. The story is essentially the same.

Dick worries about reality and identity. At the time, this probably seemed awfully strange to people reading his work. With films that approximate his world view, people have begun to find Dick is not nearly as strange as he first seemed to be.

A Scanner Darkly is mainly science fiction because of one thing, and that's the scramble suit, which causes the wearer to appear like many different individuals. It's not entirely clear why the suit is even used except to hide the identity of the wearer, except it's so obvious that it isn't a person, that you'd think people would notice.

But nearly everything else, from cars to surveillance to cell phones is stuff that could happen right now. Essentially, the film is about the paranoid effects of a drug called Substance D. The government is waging a war on drugs, and has an undercover operative named Officer Fred, who has been asked to spy on Robert Arctor, a guy who might be linked heavily to drugs.

Fred wears a scramble suit so not even his colleagues know his true identity. This must be the case since Fred and Arctor are the same person so he's asked to spy on himself. Fred/Arctor has been taking Substance D himself as part of his duties, and so he's not doing so well.

Arctor lives with two other guys played by Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey, Jr. who are paranoid due to their drug intake, and also is dating a character played by Winona Ryder, who is believed to have links to people of greater importance.

Like much of Linklater's work, there isn't a particularly strong plot, though this one is somewhat more focused than usual, which is about both the effects of drugs on people (mainly, making them paranoid) and the cops who try to stop them (though not as much on them).

I must say, while I was watching it, I was intrigued about the depth of view I was getting, creating a somewhat realer than real effect. There is a little bit of nudity, and there is thought about whether the actors get nude, or it's something the rotoscopers do afterwards.

The film never gets really scary, nor suspenseful. Even the paranoia seems very much a problem of the characters on screen, and not something that's totally immersive as an experience.

In addition, I've been watching Peter Greenaway's The Falls. I had expected, with a title like that, that it was about, well, waterfalls. But it's not.

This is one of Greenaway's earliest films, from the late 70s. It's also one of his most British films. As with any Greenaway film, it takes some getting used to. It too has a science fiction like premise. 19 million people have been affected by the VUE, the violent unknown event.

The title is drawn from the subset of the 19 million who's surname begin with the word "Fall". Thus, some 70 or so individuals are described.

From this, you see Greenaway's fascination with lists, and some burgeoning interest in nudity, and some issues with language.

Mostly, it seems like a documentary. What happens in a Greenaway world where 19 million people have been afflicted? Not much. Everyone seems to go about their own business, and no one seems to care the affliction has even occurred. The effects are, apparently, some illnesses (these are rattled off in lists, and it seems Greenaway has at least taken the pains to find real afflictions, as some of them sounded familiar to me), a fascination with birds (almost suggesting the people are becoming birds, though the film makes no attempt to have characters sprout wings or feathers), and characters inventing new languages.

For example, there is the story of two twin brothers (Greenaway seems fascinated by that as well) who were as close as brothers could be that are afflicted by the VUE and each begins to speak two different languages until they can no longer communicate.

There is a sense that this is making fun of British documentaries, especially in oddly fastidious details (so-and-so is the brother of blah, has a fascination with sparrows, occasionally complains of fever, etc). These elongated sentences are typical of the entire film.

This is certainly the most atypical of Greenaway films, as it uses a documentary style to present the storyline, where most of his films try to tell a story (of sorts, since both plot and character are often not that fascinating to Greenaway--he's often more interested in visuals, and the contrast of prim and proper with things that are baser, like death, love, etc).

I've also been watching a series of short films called Boys Life 2. These are all gay-themed. Each story is about two minutes.

Must Be The Music is about four friends that head to a gay dance club. There isn't much of a story, but the characters seem interesting enough. One guy is talky and aggressive. One guy is closeted. The main character sees the cutest guy at the club, and hopes to meet up with him, but the talky one looks to muscle in. If this short works, it's mostly because it evokes the kind of personalities (I'd imagine) that one would really find in real life.

Indeed, with only twenty minutes to work, simple stuff like plot may have to be thrown out, as you try quickly to establish character, provide personality, and possibly throw in a conflict.

Nunzio's Second Cousin is the only one of the four to have someone approaching famous, and that's Vincent D'Onofrio. (Actually, Seth Green has a bit part in the short too). Eileen Brennan seems familiar. D'Onofrio plays a gay cop who dates a black leatherman. A group of guys decides they want to do some gay-bashing, but Randozza (D'Onofrio) is having none of that. He forces the kids to apologize, and tells the leader of the group to come to what seems to be his house, or be subject to more punishment.

It ends up being the house of his very Italian-American mother, who apparently, hasn't been informed of his son's proclivity.

The film seems like it's taking a somewhat positive view. A kid who's gay-bashed sees that even a cop has a mother, but it ends rather bizarrely, with the cop telling the kid and saying that he may gay-bash, but it won't prevent him from being gay, and then kissing the kid before sending him on his way. Of the four, it comes closest to having a conventional plot.

Alkali, Iowa is the weakest of the four. It depicts life in the midwest as a gay son discovers his dad (what happens to him is not clear) was also gay. Mostly, this short tries to convey a sense of living in farm land in the midwest.

The Dadshuttle is the strongest of the four and shows savvy in its twenty minutes. Rather than having a real plot, it deals with a dad and his son, as he drives to drop him off at the train. Dad likes to tell stuff about mom and so forth. As time goes by, you discover that the two dance around the son's gayness. Dad just doesn't want to discuss it, so he tries to talk about other things.

There's something highly observed about this. Even the son changes the focus of the talk to what Dad wants to talk about. The son says he has a "friend" who he wants to invite back for Christmas. Dad says he has to ask Mom since she makes those decisions. The son says his friend is sick, and it's implied though never said, that his friend has AIDS. The son says he feels fine, though clearly the son isn't so sure, and neither is his dad.

The best short films often have a much smaller point to make, and thus, the short form is well-suited to this. It would be harder for this film to run even an hour and a half without more of a plot. To capture the essense of a conversation is something a short is particularly good for.

I've always thought that there theaters should support more shorts. For example, you pay a ticket and can watch three shorts, while these shorts show for twenty minutes break for ten, and then back for another twenty.

Although gay/lesbian films are a kind of genre, in a sense, they also aren't. Films about gay and lesbians are often like films set in other countries. They depict stories very much like "straight" stories, such as romantic comedies. Therefore, it's possible to combine genres with gay themes. Thus, Brokeback Mountain was the "gay Western" (and a rather revisionist Western, too). (Obviously, this doesn't preclude other genre combinations like SF Western, a la Serenity).

I'd like to see more genre mashups. For example, it was said, at one point, that Rupert Everett might play a gay James Bond character. That would be cool, if for no other reason, I'd like to see Everett play that role. He has a certain cool that would suit a James Bond role.

I'm hoping to catch up with one of Greenaway's latest, which is The Tulse Luper Suitcases. The name Tulse Luper is, in fact, mentioned quite a lot in The Falls.