'A Scanner Darkly' Reveals Near Future Police State

(Much amused by the description as "A-list stars" of Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. Or did I miss something.)


Ok, well, to an extent they're preaching to a captive audience on that particular site, and it's all very amusing, but the key points remain: the film adaptation of Philip K Dick's seminal novel is imminent. A Scanner Darkly is being created and directed by Richard Linklater in a style similar to that of his well-loved Waking Life - combining 'live' action footage with animation - via interpolated rotoscoping.

Quite frankly, you couldn't ask for a filmic technique more suited to the hallucinatory prose and claustrophobic narrative of the novel.

Plot Summary:
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug Substance D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him. To do so, Fred takes on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob Arctor. And since Substance D -- which Arctor takes in massive doses -- gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative entities, Fred doesn't realize he is narcing on himself.

Caustically funny, eerily accurate in its depiction of junkies, scam artists, and the walking brain-dead, Philip K. Dick's industrial-grade stress test of identity is as unnerving as it is enthralling.

PKD (official site) A Scanner Darkly news here. David's (now year-old) pointless and absurd post about it here (trailer).