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Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' To Be Filmed
bowman9991 writes "Could this be the new Blade Runner? SFFMedia reports that Celluloid Dreams has obtained the movie rights to Philip K. Dick's science fiction masterpiece 'Ubik.' First published in 1969, Ubik's central character is Joe Chip, a technician for a telepathic organization that employs people with the ability to block certain psychic powers so they can secure other people's privacy. In the novel, the dead are kept in 'half-life,' a form of cryogenic suspension, with limited consciousness and communication ability. A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes. It'll be hard to film, but fantastic if they get it right!"
From The Summary: "A mystical substance called Ubik, available in spray-can form, is the only thing stopping reality from disintegrating before Joe's eyes"
From Wikipedia: "This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life."
Draw your own conclusions about what chemical properties it may have.
Flamebait. Total Recall was totally relevant. Where else would you find a 3-boobed chick? Kuato Lives.
....they need: 1) A good actor as they had in Harrison Ford. 2) Faith that their audience is intelligent, so they don't have to go all "Summer blockbuster" on us. 3) A director who is willing to give the film the atmosphere it needs. Let's cross our fingers we get all of these.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I hope a gifted director comes along and makes a GOOD science fiction adaptation of Asimov's Foundation series.
There's no way that Ubik could be filmed for a mainstream audience. The plot features telepaths and anti-telepaths, communication with the dead, time travel, coin-operated apartment front doors, people who suddenly turn into dust, a bomb blast that may or may not have killed all of the characters, and the usual questions about the nature of reality. Just figuring out a way to explain what the hell is going on will be a pretty big challenge. During the whole course of the plot, time is flowing backwards, so the filmmakers would have to build not just a static version of New York City, but one where all the artifacts are gradually transforming into their more primitive forms. If they can pull this off, it will be amazing, but its hard to imagine anyone tackling it without a big budget, and the eccentricities of the plot seem to preclude that. Its a wildly imaginative and thought-provoking book, and I hope someone makes it into an amazing film, I just don't expect it to ever happen. The one Dick book that I'm surprised hasn't been filmed is The Man in the High Castle, which has a much more conventional plot (by comparison) and would be more accessible to a mass audience.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is largely set in a potentially realistic dark future setting, some things more advanced, others decaying. Most of the environment is easy to make real without making it look silly, not to downplay the great work done by Ridley Scott and everyone else involved. The one aspect of the novel that would be difficult to reasonably translate to the silver screen is Mercerism, the animal worshiping cult/religion of the future. So, they dropped it from the film, which takes a slightly different view anyway. (The only reason it would be difficult is because the way in which one tries to become one with Mercer is very abstractly represented throughout the novel.)
Ubik on the other hand is almost entirely abstract stuff. In fact, it is more abstract than the Mercerism stuff. There is some great imagery in Ubik that would be easy to translate, but by and large, making the novel come to life without making it look ridiculous would be very difficult. The way I picture Ubik, the scenes would have to appear incomplete for most of the novel, from the standpoint of anyone in cold-pac, and that would be much harder to pull off. I doubt anyone that the current Hollywood industry is likely to pull it off. The best they could hope to do is to make something reminiscent of The Thirteenth Floor.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Everyone slams Total Recall because they don't actually comprehend what actually was going on. So they hate the movie because what they think was actually going on was not what was going on at all.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I watched Blade Runner in the theatre. Came out thinking "WTF did I just see?" (and that was with Ford's voiceover explaining everything!) I was confused yet knew there was something there. Bought the widescreen VHS a while later and it really grew with each viewing.
Now I'm a diehard fan and just love it. My gut feeling hints that most big fans weren't until they had a few viewings.
Trolling is a art,
This, of course, is totally distorting the scene to make it sound more shocking than it actually was. When you phrase it accurately, "shooting the enemy agent who was pretending to be his wife", it sounds a lot less shocking.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
One of his books has a character called "Horselover Fat", which is apparently a translation of his name. Philip is derived from Philoppos - a greek name meaning lover of horses, and Dick is German for Fat. I think he was probably okay with his name.
I loved the effect in Waking Life because they used it more as a base, then hand animated on top of it and actually made good use of the fact that it was no longer live action. Best example I could think of being when the girl was explaining love and they animated what she was saying as if you could see her thoughts.
Fit the premise of the movie perfectly.
It also seemed to help guide you towards what was important as most scenes seemed to be just as detailed as they needed to be, with some things shining through more.
OTOH, A Scanner Darkley used it more as just a form of special effects, a filter to be left on to make the movie pretty. I didn't dislike it as much as some of the posters here did, but it was much more of a gimmick than an artistic tool for sure.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
You all know that Dick already wrote a script, don't you?
From wikipedia:
"Attempts to produce an Ubik film
In 1974, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin commissioned Dick to write a screenplay for an Ubik film. Dick completed the screenplay, turning it in within a month, but Gorin never filmed the project. The screenplay was published in 1985 as Ubik: The Screenplay (ISBN-13: 978-0911169065)."
I have. I have not read it. Anyone knows if it is any good or do i have to have my own judgement -.-