Tag: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books

Magic Most Sinister.

Are you watching closely? I’m having a harder time than usual thinking of what to say about Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, not only because I think it’s a film best seen cold, with as little information going in as possible, but also because, having read the book by Christopher Priest, my experience with the film was very different from that of most folks. As Michael Caine’s ingenieur Cutter notes at one point, successful magic is all about confusion and misdirection — if you know how it’s done, even a complex and fantastic magic trick can seem blatantly obvious from the get-go. So my time with The Prestige was roughly akin to seeing The Sixth Sense and knowing Bruce Willis is a ghost from the first reel. That being said, while I can’t vouch for how well Nolan conceals his own prestiges from the audience here, I found the movie a dark, clever, and elegant contraption, one that suggests razor-sharp clockwork gears and threatening pulses of electrical current, all impressively encased in burnished Victorian-era mahogany. If you’re a fan of Nolan’s previous work, or of sinister mind-benders in general, The Prestige is a must-see film. Either way, it’s among the top offerings of 2006 thus far.

So, what’s the pledge? Slumming aristocrat Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and working-class upstart Alfred Borden (Christian Bale, particularly good) both serve as magician’s assistants to a by-the-numbers prestidigitator (Ricky Jay) — they’re audience plants — and both harbor aspirations of taking their own act on the road. But after an on-stage tragedy involving Angier’s escapist wife (Piper Perabo), a wedge is driven between these two would-be men of magick, fomenting a lifelong rivalry that turns increasingly brutal and obsessive. This becomes particularly so after Borden, the more talented illusionist, comes up with a nifty trick — The Transported Man — that Angier, the more impressive showman, can’t seem to match, even with the aid of his longtime ingenieur, Cutter (Caine). Eventually, Angier is compelled to travel to faraway Colorado Springs to pay visit to a wizard of a different order, Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), and perhaps enlist him (and his Igor-by-way-of-Brooklyn assistant, (Andy Serkis)) in unraveling Borden’s secret. (As apparently required by law this year, Scarlett Johansson also factors in the tale as Olivia, a lovely magician’s assistant bandied back and forth by the two rivals, but it’s a smaller part than you might expect, and newcomer Rebecca Hall makes more of an impression as Borden’s long-suffering wife, Sarah.)

In keeping with Nolan’s usual m.o., The Prestige is not told linearly, but in narrative fragments spurred by memory, sadness, or anger. In fact, the film begins near the end, with Borden first witnessing and then on trial for the apparent murder of Angier. (Well, that is, after a striking title shot of top hats piled up bizarrely in a forest bed, a shot which makes more sense as the story progresses — I’ll admit to being a sucker for films that start off thus.) And, while the film takes a few jags away from Priest’s book (including omitting both the framing device — good choice — and the very last sequence, which I thought was deliriously creepy and somewhat missed here), it nevertheless keeps the basic story arcs of the novel intact. (In other words, and while remaining as oblique as possible, mystery purists may feel somewhat cheated by the Tesla turn the story takes ninety minutes in, but it’s central to the source material, and had to be there.) Also like the book, Nolan’s final hole card is a deeply disturbing one that’ll linger in the senses well after this trick is complete. In sum, along with Memento and Batman Begins, this jagged tale of illusion and obsession should only add to Chris Nolan’s burgeoning prestige: Bring on The Dark Knight.

Dragons and Mayans.

In the trailer bin, two December epics that I suspect will be pretty bad. First, newcomer Ed Speleers gets help from Obi-Wan-ish dragonrider Jeremy Irons in his crusade against the sinister King Malkovich in the new full-length trailer for Eragon (I haven’t read the book, but this screams Sci-Fi channel miniseries.) And the Mayan civilization enters its decline (no doubt the Jews have something to do with it) in the most recent trailer for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.

A Slacker Darkly.


Set in the near future, Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is basically a po-mo meditation of sorts on how both technologies of surveillance and hallucinogenic drugs have warped our conception of reality, and can probably best be summed up as a meditation on the wisdom that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” Unfortunately, while it’s both faithful to the paranoid-android feel of Philip K. Dick’s best work and undeniably unsettling for most of its run, Scanner — a movie I’ve been meaning to see for weeks — never really gets off the ground quite like it should. In short, the film lacks momentum — it feels episodic and choppy, and doesn’t manage to generate or sustain much in the way of narrative drive: Things happen, then more things happen, and then they don’t. (Since the movie is partially about a descent into schizophrenia, some may argue this was the point…but it still means the film stalls out all too often.) In short, I was entertained by Scanner for most of its run, but I also left feeling vaguely unsatisfied by it.

The film, as in the book, follows an undercover cop by the name of Fred (Keanu Reeves), whose true identity remains unknown to all of his colleagues thanks to his mercurial standard-issue “scramble suit.” Early in the film, Fred is assigned to spy on the life of one Bob Arctor, a suspected drug kingpin and trafficker of Substance D, which is a mind-bending and thoroughly addictive substance known to produce vivid hallucinations and, eventually, schizophrenia in its users. The trick is, Fred is not only a slightly-more-than-casual user of this tenacious D, he’s Bob Arctor, and has in effect been ordered to spy on himself…although the more D he takes the less aware he becomes of this ironic fact. (To quote Keanu in another film, “whoa.”)

Regardless, Fred/Arctor then spends much of the rest of the film popping D and hanging around with his girlfriend Donna (Winona Ryder) and his two bizarro roommates, amoral motormouth James Barris and hot-tempered hippie Ernie Luckman (Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson respectively, both expertly doing variations on drug-addled babble that seems, um, unrehearsed.) At first, this is rather fun, sorta like Dazed and Confused with the aggro ratched up to 11. But, ultimately, we’re left with a few too many intermittently amusing scenes of paranoid-stoner schtick, and they get to be repetitive after awhile (and are too laconic to achieve the madcap mayhem of Terry Gilliam’s more rousing and enjoyable Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.) As a result, when the movie arrives at its big reveals near the end (which will remain scramble-suited here), I thought they seemed out of the blue and somewhat unearned. I didn’t dislike the film, and would even recommend it to a certain type of Dickian sci-fi fan. Still, I thought it was missing a certain something (what the French call I don’t know what) that would’ve made it a truly memorable experience.

As most of y’all know (or can tell from the film stills here), one of A Scanner Darkly‘s main conceits is that it was filmed and then re-animated via interpolated rotoscoping a la Waking Life (or those “Talk to Chuck” Charles Schwab ads.) At times, the decision works wonders in giving Scanner the semblance of a fever dream, particularly whenever the creepy, hypnotic, and bizarrely off-putting scramble-suits are onscreen. Nevertheless, a few aphids and interdimensional visitors notwithstanding, the cartoon flights of fancy you might expect come less often than you’d think.

Terry Does Dick | Prison Break.

Speaking of Philip K. Dick, word on the street is the one and only Terry Gilliam will be heading The Owl in Daylight, a biopic of the author set to star Paul Giamatti in the lead. And, speaking of paranoid sci-fi-ish surveillance thrillers, Christopher Nolan looks set to board The Prisoner, as in a film version of the classic BBC series, after he finishes the Dark Knight.