As I was reading Ubik I thought of a movie you guys might want to check out. It's called Primer - it focuses on the same ideals of time travel and creating time paradoxes and the like. One of the most complicated movies I've ever watched. Let me know if you watch it.
4 comments:
I strongly, oh so strongly, concur.
This movie is excellent. I saw it when it first came out and actually revisited it over streaming NetFlix the other day.
After, perhaps before, look up how much they spent making this movie. I found it astounding.
What's crazy is that this movie has very similar facets to what Dick is talking about as far as harnessing subsequent actions. I wonder if the writer/director of this movie credits this book.
I ran across this movie a couple of months ago on the IFC channel when I was doing my usual random flipping of channels. It made me stop. I watched the whole thing; a great movie. i imagine they spent very little. Proving: It is the writing that makes a movie, not the special effects.
As far as harnessing of subsequent actions (and this is off the the top of my head and without too much reflection (how about that as a qualifier)): what i get out of Philip Dick is the modernist project to control actions/causation and the paranoid belief that someone or something is in control of everything somewhere (thus the anti-semitic ramblings of Pound, Eliot, and Yeats). I'm not sure Dick is comfortable with the chaos and multiplicity of realities he describes in his novels. But I will write more after I re-read Ubik (It has been months since i read the book or saw the movie). I am taking the book with me to the AVID conference I am going to in Dallas this week, so maybe I will write from there if there is an internet connection for free. Surely there will be.
For those interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
I consider it totally unfair this page NOW has a graphic explaining the machine. Do NOT look at the page if you intend to watch the movie (and have not yet).
I spent hours with a notepad figuring this out!
Oh, and the budget was ~ $7K.
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