Scanner Darkly

Watch the first 24 minutes of A Scanner Darkly now!

In order to make sure that more people become interested in their new Richard Linklater movie A Scanner Darkly, Warner Bros has made an unprecedented move and put the first 24 minutes of the movie online. While this is a great teaser, it also means that, when you watch, you probably cannot stop yourself from going to see the rest of the movie. However, if you, like me, don't live in the United States and have to wait much longer for the movie, I'm not sure if it's too smart to go clicking this link. Then again, the makers of Pirates want us to wait almost a year for the rest of their story, so a few weeks or months shouldn't be too big a problem...

New Scanner Darkly Posters online

There's a bunch of new posters for A Scanner Darkly floating around online, and all you have to do is click on the thumbnails to see them in a bigger size. The four new posters fall into the category of Character Posters, and I'm sure they would look pretty slick hanging on your bedroom wall.

'Glitch' hinders Scanner Darkly release

If you have been wondering why A Scanner Darkly was pushed back from it's original release date, you don't have to look any further than this article on canmag.com. Apparently, the rotoscoping technique used for the movie, which traces the original images, adding a 'drawn' feel to them, was not without it's problems. A glitch in the program urged Richard Linklater to hire more people and work even harder than they already were, sadly to no avail. The making of the movie has taken longer than expected, which led to the delay. To read the whole story on this, click the aforementioned link!

First Scanner Darkly reviews surface online

The first lucky people have seen A Scanner Darkly, and their findings are starting to appear online. One of the sites where you can find these reviews (not completely without spoilers, so beware) is, naturally, Aint It Cool News, and it is interesting to see how the opinions are varied. Of course you hope that everybody is over the moon about the movie, but then again Linklater's aninmated movies always bring with them a mixed response. Click!

New A Scanner Darkly trailer

There's a new trailer for A Scanner Darkly doing the rounds on the Internet, and it's even cooler than the previous one that we have all been salivating over. Just click on the link to have a good look. I hope you will be able to enjoy it, and that you are thinking of supporting this highly original movie by going out to the theater and buying a ticket when it comes out this summer, because we need more movies like this.

Check the official Scanner Darkly poster

The official poster for A Scanner Darkly has got to be one of the coolest posters in recent times. I'm not sure if most people will agree with me there, but this new poster, composed of images that we have seen on the internet here and there already earlier, is a very slick piece of work, that will only whet the appetite for this movie more. Click the thumbnail to get a bigger look at it.

Scanner Darkly to hit in July

And finally, we have a release date for this intriguing movie: July 7th. Of course, the date has been shuffled around so much now that you can never know if this will REALLY be the day that we can see what Richard Linklater can come up with, but I guess it's safe to take a pencil and lightly scribble the name of the movie into your agenda.

A Scanner Darkly trailer

Maybe you read what A Scanner Darkly is all about and you are still wondering what it's all about? Have a look at this trailer then, which is frankly not going to help you much, but which looks pretty damn cool and which will surely convince you to keep an eye out for this intriguing new movie.

What is A Scanner Darkly?

A Scanner Darkly is not the type of name movie's normally get. We're more used to catchy, cool sounding titles and Hollywood has made us unused to handling names that require you to think a bit. It's a good thing that Richard Linklater, super-director of movies like Dazed and Confused and Before Sunset/Sunrise is making this adaptation of the original Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report) story, so that we can be assured that there will be a faithful transition from book to screen. Yeah yeah, I hear you think, that's nice and all, but what is the movie about then? It plays in the future, like all of Dick's stories, and paints us a bleak picture. The war on drugs is lost and a large part of the population is hooked on this drug called Substance D, which has a rather interesting side-effect: the user develops split personalities. Cop Fred (Keanu Reeves) uses this drug and has thus developed his own split personality, which is called Bob. Now this Bob is one of the biggest drug dealers in the city, and Fred decides to try and bring Bob down. Confused? Understandable, but you have to admit that an idea like this also sounds very intriguing. I think we can trust that Linklater will be able to turn this story into a very interesting movie.

You can already see that from the style of the movie. Linklater uses a technique where real actors are traced over by animators, while the real actors are also still visible in the background. If you have seen Linklater's Waking Life, you probably recognize this style. Some people hate it, some people love it, personally I think it looks frickin' cool. The combination of story and style could deliver us one of the best movies of the year.