geekhack
geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: intelli78 on Fri, 16 January 2015, 02:25:25
-
Any of you guys watched this yet? Awesome pilot from Amazon Prime. It's an alternative history-- what if the USA lost WWII? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RSGIVVO/
-
in case you didn't know, it's actually a book by philip k. ****. you should check it out. it's a good read.
-
in case you didn't know, it's actually a book by philip k. ****. you should check it out. it's a good read.
Yeah man, it's on my Kindle now. Free w/ Kindle Unlimited at the moment.
-
dope. gonna have to check this out. thanks for mentioning it!
-
heard about the book but haven't really read it yet. i should probably watch the movie first so i don't get disappointed if the adaptation is bad. thanks!
-
i should probably watch the movie first so i don't get disappointed if the adaptation is bad.
**** books are incredibly bizarre and convoluted, and usually filled with pathetic and paranoid characters.
Unlike most book/movies, where "adaptation" and "faithfulness" are issues, movies "based on" **** books generally have so little to do with the books that you don't even think about it.
Screenwriters have mostly taken his books and stories as little more than "conceptual frameworks" and reformulated the plots and characters into a cinematic style.
-
I saw this show up with all the the other pilots I will check it out tonight maybe.
-
Is it available to watch in the UK Amazon site? I read the book a while ago and am curious about the TV show... Also did they change the name?
Edit: yeah you can watch it in the UK, but the app won't let me download it, because apparently I already have??? And I'm not a Prime member
-
i should probably watch the movie first so i don't get disappointed if the adaptation is bad.
**** books are incredibly bizarre and convoluted, and usually filled with pathetic and paranoid characters.
Unlike most book/movies, where "adaptation" and "faithfulness" are issues, movies "based on" **** books generally have so little to do with the books that you don't even think about it.
Screenwriters have mostly taken his books and stories as little more than "conceptual frameworks" and reformulated the plots and characters into a cinematic style.
Agreed.
Best case in point, Blade Runner sets the perfect world up for Do Androids Dream of Electic Sheep. And actually adds to the book despite both being pretty diffrent in terms of plot and characters.
-
Also, someone needs to make Ubik into a high budget TV show... Like for ****ing real.
Cccccc-combo
-
I had never heard of this until now. Looks really interesting. Thanks for mentioning it, I'll be sure to check it out. :thumb:
-
Sounds interesting. I'll torrent it tonight and try it out :)
-
Well Ive managed to watch the first half of the episode and as someone who's read the book the show takes the world **** created and the story of the book in an interesting direction.
I'm not really surprised that they amped up the drama, though tbh I'm a bit disappointed, the way the book builds tension is really great and that seems to have been mostly ignored for the show, which is a shame, but I guess understandable.
Also the changing of the media that Grasshopper comes in is a massive deal, changing it from a book to some sort of alternative reality movie is a lot more explicit and in your face than it being a book, which could be used in some cool ways to flesh out a TV series.
The only negative I really have about the show is the style of the world. For me The Man in the High Castle was set in the 60's, but the TV show seems to have made it more like Blade Runner, without the flying cars, which is a real shame I feel because the whole setting of the cool 60's mixed with Nazism was a really cool visual in the book that would (I feel) have made the impact of America being controlled by the Nazi's much greater, as atm it just seems like another dystopian Sci-Fi show, with Nazi's being used due to a lack of imagination to create a similar 'bad guy'.
-
So this is a TV show? Ongoing?
I suppose that I spaced out and read "pilot" in the OP as "trailer"
-
So this is a TV show? Ongoing?
I suppose that I spaced out and read "pilot" in the OP as "trailer"
It's just a 1 hr pilot for now, but if it gets good feedback (which it has been), Amazon will turn it into a series.
-
After watching the rest of the episode and thinking about it as a whole, I feel a little more negatively about it.
I'm aware the TV show was never going to live up to the book, but I'm a bit disappointed that they leaned so much on rushed poorly written personal drama that wasn't really in the original book. And the last 1/4 of the episode feels so rushed and nonsensical that it's just silly, which is a real shame.
I think if your going to adapt any of ****'s work you really have to understand the material and the message it's trying to give and then adapt the characters and setting to retelling that message in a diffrent format instead of worrying about which character did what. It's why Blade Runner works so well, it retains the message and the feel of the book, but retells the story and changes the characters to fit.
I don't really think the TV show achived that and while it's a book worth putting into TV show format, I don't really like the way this was done and I think it could be handled in a more inteligent and interesting way.
-
Hrrmm.... I don't see any space ships or Alien-babes... not the show for Tp4 it seems..
Are they going to addd space ships later?
-
I don't see any space ships
**** was a cerebral writer with deep mental and emotional problems that he worked out through his writing. It was almost coincidental that his medium was "science fiction" but that was really the only arena that gave him enough space (pun not entirely intended) to operate in.
Try "A Scanner Darkly" or "Confessions of a Crap Artist" to see something more down-to-earth.
-
I enjoyed this show and would definitely watch it regularly. Never heard of the book but perhaps it would interest me enough to read it.
-
Got excited, show it was a tv show, xed out.
-
The Verge actually did a really good write up off it;
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/19/7852355/the-man-in-the-high-castle-amazon-philip-k-****
-
It could be good if amazon actually follows through and takes it to series... but I don't have a lot of faith in them due to how they handled 'The After' where they said they would go to series then quickly cancelled the whole thing. So disappointing. They also so far have a terrible track record of doing anything at all with all these pilots they have had. Maybe they would be better off with movies where it can be a one and done deal.
While the pilot seemed a little rushed and thin with a lot of things they were trying to pack in to make the introduction to the universe it takes place in... I thought it was fairly good overall. It felt like the 1960's look to me, granted not 1960's America per se, but 1960's Germany or Japan with some American influence mashed in. I do like a lot of ****'s material I have read, but was not familiar with this book it's based on so I viewed it without any bias in that regard.