Pssst, want to check out Radio Free Albemuth in our new look?
Information
- Year
- 2010
- Runtime
- 111 min.
- Director
- John Alan Simon
- Genres
- Drama, Sci-Fi
- Rating *
- 5.8
- Votes *
- 1,211
- Checks
- 54
- Favs
- 0
- Dislikes
- 2
- Favs/checks
- 0.0% (0:54)
- Favs/dislikes
- 0:2
Top comments
-
Siskoid
Radio Free Albemuth is NOT, as I first understood it, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel VALIS. It's actually an adaptation of a later story which also uses the VALIS idea of beings from the stars talking to certain people on Earth, and guiding them towards a more enlightened society. I've seen a number of Dick books adapted for the screen, and some have been great, like Blade Runner, but none have been at all faithful to those books, merely taking the premise and crafting an entirely different story around them. Well, maybe A Scanner Darkly. And now this. It's Dickian to the point of being anti-cinematic. It's sci-fi with philosophical and existentialist stakes, has the sort of wooden dialog Dick has been accused of, and throws perhaps too much into its script, including an only slightly alternate history. There's meta-text as well, just like in the original story: one character plays Dick himself, and serves as a nice tribute to one of sci-fi's most interesting authors. If it left me a little cold, it's because it has such a 90s TV movie look. Not only is it lacking in style, but none of the TV actors in it are given showcase scenes. They're there. They say their lines. And we move on. I wasn't expecting much from Alanis Morissette, but Radio Free has poached actors from high end TV like Boardwalk Empire, so should be able to do more with them. One that will likely grow on me when I do a Philip K. Dick marathon or something. 8 years 9 months ago -
mellery
Here's a kickstarter to get this film distributed
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elizabethkarr/radio-free-albemuth-theatrical-release?ref=live 10 years 10 months ago