And nobody even mentions Total Recall? To my mind, it’s the only movie that truly captured the Dickian shtick. When the doctor explains to him what will happen if he doesn’t take the pill, and we blithely accept that the doctor was a stooge of the bad guys, congratulate Arnie on his smarts when he kills the doctor and his fake wife, and then watch while every single thing the doctor said comes true.
Sure, it’s let down by having overlit scenes, gaudy colour schemes and a director who can’t tell good acting from bad, but it rises above that. It’s an amazing script that was given to the wrong people.
Hey … i just watched paycheck … and it seems to scream HK B MOVIE!!!
here’s the kind of movie that johnny woo started doing way before he became this idol that everyone worshipped … it’s so hk’ish … they way the eyes are set up in lock step filming, all these funky “conventions” like the pigeon, the lottery ticket (gambling is such a huge theme in hk movies … i’d think 1 out of every 3 hong kong movies is about gangsters and lotteries, or poker, or some sort of gambling) …
the ending is classic hk style, where the good guys live happily ever after (a three some!!!)
has anyone watched the movie “Once a Thief” (NOT the tv series, which sucks) ?? it’s exactly the same ending … 2 guys and 1 girl … one set of boyfriend/girlfriend and the tagalong buddy that gets to share the loot …
instead of a sci-fi movie, it’s an hk movie with a bit of action (NOT a kung-fu movie)… but it is a love story first and foremost … yes … it’s an anemic love story, but that’s what hk love is all about :)
i think the actors had fun doing this movie … they weren’t asked to do a whole lot of acting, which is exactly what hk movies back in the 80’s and early 90’s were about … all personality … chow ran fat just being himself, no acting allowed… jet li just kicking ass and acting like a monk, which he was like in real life a few decade ago (he was a student at the shao lin monestary for his training and then winning the chinese kungfu championships made him into a movie star)
the fact that ben afflec didn’t really have any personality was just captured on the screen … uma was having loads of fun … laughing at how dumb the script is …
btw, I’d recommend “Once a Thief” to anyone who wants to watch a kickass movie …
Did no one notice Uma’s character had the same haircut as Rogue in the Age of Apocalypse, inked minly by Roger Cruz and Joe Mad, both big anime fans who brought the style to NA comics?
Only once so far - a French movie called Barjo, an adaptation of Dick’s excellent non-genre novel Confessions Of A Crap Artist.
Hollywood has not served Dick well. While Blade Runner is a terrific movie, it isn’t a particularly good translation of the source novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? in that it drops quite a few of Dick’s more interesting ideas - the religion as shared hallucination, or the mood organ, or the idea of robotic pets as status symbols. The art direction and cinematography is so visually overwhelming that it serves to obscure what themes do remain from the novel.
Total Recall works only at the crazy-Verhoeven-action-movie level; Ah-nold is severly miscast as a Dickian hero, and the script seems to miss a few levels of irony. Interestingly, Cronenberg was the original choice for this movie; he worked on it for about a year before the studio insisted on casting Arnold, and he dropped out. I would have loved to have seen that movie instead.
So far, the best interpretation of Dickian ideas and themes has come from Cronenberg himself; Videodrome and the under-rated eXistenZ especially play around with many of Dick’s ideas and themes. There’s even a wonderful in-joke nod to Dick in eXistenZ - the name of the fast-food restaurant (as seen on the side of the bag in one of the motel rooms Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh stay in) is “Perky Pat’s”.
