From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sat Dec 23 2000 - 22:49:03 MST
At 12:13 AM 24/12/00 -0500, John Clark wrote:
>* The Lathe of Heaven: Made by PBS about 20 years ago. I thought it was
> excellent but Isaac Asimov hated it.
I haven't seen Asimov's criticism; how interesting. I was going to mention
that movie but thought people on this list would probably dislike its
humanist critique of ostensibly melioratist but actually power-hungry
scientism (although they shouldn't). What John failed to mention is that
it's a faithful rendition of a [lesser] Ursula K. Le Guin novel, and she's
one of the greatest sf writers of all time. What's more, she was writing
that novel to some extent as a hommage to Philip K. Dick, and I still think
it's the best PhilDick movie made so far.
Another movie nobody's mentioned is DEATH WATCH (LE MORT EN DIRECT), dir.
Bernard Tavernier in 1979, with Harvey Keitel as a cyborged TV reporter, in
a nearly deathless near future, whose job is to follow and observe/report a
dying woman using his built-in eye camera. Bleak and moving, more adult
than practically any other sf movie I've seen. It's based on a quite good
novel by D. G. Compton, THE CONTINUOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE, aka THE
UNSLEEPING EYE.
Damien Broderick
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