Total Recall, Recalled For You

Unless you're maintaining Unabomber levels of media isolation, you've probably heard that yesterday marked the opening of the newly remade Total Recall. That the movie is getting panned should go without saying. Also unworthy of mention are the pools of ink being spent on Shallow Articles About Philip K Dick which I'm too busy to chronicle.

The good news is that I saw the newly re-imagined Total Recall last night with Mr Hand from the PKD and Religion blog. I totally expected to hate the movie, and so I was surprised when I found myself enjoying it. You want schlock? This movie has schlock out the wazoo!

Now if you're poor and the price of admission will be missed, do not go see Total Recall in the theaters - while the set design and production values look great on the big screen, you can enjoy this one at home. But if you're flushed with cash and like movies, Total Recall is a good time.

A couple of observations:
This movie takes Dick's "bitch-wife" motif over the shark, and it's great fun to watch. You will groan out loud at some of the dialog and soundtrack cues - unbearable. But the whole thing takes itself just lightly enough to get a little Dickian. There is schlock, and there are claustrophobic entropic future settings, and together effect is far more Dickian than anything in Adjustment Bureau. There are also technological innovations (like an elevator through the earth) that make no sense. Don't get hung up on it, folks. Read it as metaphor.

Because that's the thing, I liked this movie on a metaphorical level. I thought it worked pretty nicely to literalize the figurative, and drive home the increased deprivations of Late Capitalism headed our way. Grab some pop-corn, leave your Heidegger at home, and have a blast!

Also, be forewarned, there are A LOT of dodgy chairs in the movie.

The World Sucks, and My Lack of Posting Isn't Helping

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to find the time to post here. Now I've got a second band, a side-project that I'm involved with, and I've been slaving away late at night working on this story, which if all goes according to plan, should get submitted tomorrow. At that point my attention will turn towards the Philip K Dick Conference planned for next year. Time to get going selling t-shirts, raising funds, maybe even getting a Kickstarter project going. Our list of notable attendees includes: Jonathan Lethem, John Simon (director Radio Free Albemuth), Tommy Pallotta (producer A Scanner Darkly), Erik Davis, Ted Hand, and me. That list is sure to grow as I begin the process of tracking folks down in earnest.

The amazing thing is, while I've been away from this blog, the world has gone full Black Iron Prison:

First, Pat Robertson fails to have even the heart of the robot taxi cab at the end of Now Wait For Last Year, as he recently suggested a husband could leave his wife suffering from Alzheimer's, Nice work, Mr Robertson:

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said.

To quote another famous android, "That's the spirit."

But a quote in this article about Amazon seemed to sum up best the way our world now resembles the apathetic futures in PKD's books:

"People who run companies like Amazon operate as though it never occurred to them that it could have been them crawling through the aisles. And the people who run labor unions possess little empathy for how difficult and risky and remarkable it is to build something like Amazon."

And it's starting to really bum me out.

If you've been pining for more Phil Dick content, cursing my name and blog for my seeming indifference, you need to head over to Mr Hand's PKD and Religion blog where our friend has been a very busy little Phil Dick scholar and has all kinds of good posts. Talks are underway to bring Mr Hand's content to us directly here at TDH. So don't give up on us yet.