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Brief write-ups as two reviewed elsewhere
XXIX: Brian J. Robb, Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film (London: Titan, 2006)
XXX: Jason Vest, Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies (New York: Praeger, 2007)
These two books dovetail nicely - Robb's an account of the making of the films from Blade Runner to (just) Next and Vest's a critique of the adaptations to Paycheck. Both include chapters on unofficial adaptations, Robb also includes early radio adaptations, abortive tv outlines and Total Recall: The Series (although not more recent radio plays). He's done a lot of synthesis - cut and paste is not quite fair - and I'd've preferred more academic apparatus in pinning his sources down. (He can point to my Pocket Essential - in his bibliography - and say the same. Hello Mr Kettle!)
Vest begins by noting the snootiness of some critics against films and film adaptation (which must be 90% of films) and argues that there are something like three masterpieces (Blade Runner, Minority Report and Scanner), one dud (Paycheck) and the rest are interesting near misses. I think he's unfair to Minority Report (it's nonsense) and Screamers (it's incredibly layered). Plus "Paycheck" ain't that great as a story. I also get the sense that he never gets sufficiently far from (untheorised) adaptation to see them as films as films. And he keeps coming back to speculating what Dick would think. He'd hate them. He'd love them. Whatever. Both at once even.
Oh, and Spielberg homages Hitchcock but Woo steals from him.
A passing note - I've speed read the Library of America apparatus on the Dick volume. Okay but thin.
XXXI: Nancy Springer, The White Hart (1979)
I know this is only part of the story, but this is the high fantasy forsooth and on my honour my liege which betimes tells the story of a woman of high birth, her cousin-intended (inheritance via sibling's son) and a god who has become a man. Some kind of war, some kind of deer running around being symbolic. I really slid off this.
Read because I need some female fantasy writers for a forthcoming chapter; Springer will not be one of them (although I had hopes of the symbolism of the white hart - is one of them a replicant?).
XXIX: Brian J. Robb, Counterfeit Worlds: Philip K. Dick on Film (London: Titan, 2006)
XXX: Jason Vest, Future Imperfect: Philip K. Dick at the Movies (New York: Praeger, 2007)
These two books dovetail nicely - Robb's an account of the making of the films from Blade Runner to (just) Next and Vest's a critique of the adaptations to Paycheck. Both include chapters on unofficial adaptations, Robb also includes early radio adaptations, abortive tv outlines and Total Recall: The Series (although not more recent radio plays). He's done a lot of synthesis - cut and paste is not quite fair - and I'd've preferred more academic apparatus in pinning his sources down. (He can point to my Pocket Essential - in his bibliography - and say the same. Hello Mr Kettle!)
Vest begins by noting the snootiness of some critics against films and film adaptation (which must be 90% of films) and argues that there are something like three masterpieces (Blade Runner, Minority Report and Scanner), one dud (Paycheck) and the rest are interesting near misses. I think he's unfair to Minority Report (it's nonsense) and Screamers (it's incredibly layered). Plus "Paycheck" ain't that great as a story. I also get the sense that he never gets sufficiently far from (untheorised) adaptation to see them as films as films. And he keeps coming back to speculating what Dick would think. He'd hate them. He'd love them. Whatever. Both at once even.
Oh, and Spielberg homages Hitchcock but Woo steals from him.
A passing note - I've speed read the Library of America apparatus on the Dick volume. Okay but thin.
XXXI: Nancy Springer, The White Hart (1979)
I know this is only part of the story, but this is the high fantasy forsooth and on my honour my liege which betimes tells the story of a woman of high birth, her cousin-intended (inheritance via sibling's son) and a god who has become a man. Some kind of war, some kind of deer running around being symbolic. I really slid off this.
Read because I need some female fantasy writers for a forthcoming chapter; Springer will not be one of them (although I had hopes of the symbolism of the white hart - is one of them a replicant?).
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