hey all,

Awhile back Will wrote a cool piece on Linklater's new adaptation of the PKD classic coming out this summer...
I just did a rewrite of my blog article about seeing a 20min.preview + discussion with Tommy Pallotta
during the 49th SFIFF for Indybay.org 's "Faultlines" ( the print edition coming out in a week or so in the sfbay area)...
there'll be a bunch of other movie reveiws from the festival in this edition.

While I agree the PKD work is pure genius... and for sure the film is a MUST SEE ( a pretty incredible roto-scoped cast) , I have a darker view...hehe, of what impact this adaptation might ... accomplish?...or not accomplish?

it's only briefly alluded to in this very brief blurb/ article, but am exploring these issues deeper in another article for
a festival in slovenia... so if anyone wants to feedback ... would love to hear some
psychonaut views...

salut,
podp

>>

A Scanner Darkly in the U-Toon Homeland

It's been a long while since I read Philip K. Dick’s “ A Scanner Darkly." Maybe one of the ultimate drug ( survival ) tales ever written, it has all the classic PKD ingredients, which generally means: Be prepared for one mammoth futuristic rabbit hole of trippy and profound parallels with the world you’re navigating Right Now. These worlds are a psycho-socio-political house of mirrors that will have you looking at that grossly distorted image at the end of the ride as something that is not likely to ever bend back to "normal" again. Nevermind the labyrinths of drug-trafficked damage and the abounding but largely unconfirmable paranoias, it's truly the external world where you reside that's on the steadfast fritz, described here in penetrating technicolor and epiphanic illumination !

While there isn't quite as much in the headlines currently about the drug wars as when I was on my PKD binge in the poppy Bush era, Scanner may actually have even more prophetic significance in the surveillance culture of 2006 , Big ol' Brother Inc., and the Hollywood mind colony. So watching a special 20 minute sneak preview at the 49th International Festival of the Richard Linklater adaptation ( which just premiered at Cannes in May and is set for a July 7th release ) was a whopping reminder that PKD had his finger on the pulse of hyper Americana, like tapping the high-voltage track to Suburbia Uberalles and Homeland Insecurity on crack... like a video feedback loop pushing you into the vortex of the dimeshow panopticon.

Tommy Pallotta, the producer and one of the pioneers of the ground-breaking animation technique made famous by his crew's earlier collaboration on "A Waking Life", was invited to present and ask questions at this SFIFF Kabuki preview. The audience pretty much stuck to the techie matters of "rotoscoping", sadly. What will have far more resonating implications from this sure-to-be cult classic will be the questions raised by the penetration of the cartoon world into very serious subject matter. Albeit Dick's pulp novel was itself subterfuge for deep existential and political inquiry, what does this "revolutionary" new film reveal about American audiences receiving a massive dose of education about police states, drug addiction, and very suspicious drug wars through the medium of Hollywood feature toons?? In other words, did The Dream Cartel just get more mindshare??