My daughter Jessi and I are visiting Kenyon College here in Gambier,
Ohio, today. We arrived last night in time to see a free showing of
the movie “A Scanner Darkly” hosted by the campus film club at the
huge bright new “KAC” (Kenyon Athletic Facility). This film
combines live action and anime styles and features an impressive
cast including Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr.,
and Woody Harrelson. The small KAC film theater was packed and
the movie, while disturbing in content, was fascinating.
It was
very cold walking back to our hotel and frost was forming on the
ground. There was no cell phone service for Cingular on campus
but the wireless net works fine. We are getting ready for Jessi’s
interview with the admissions department now…
KatysBlog 
I saw the movie on a long-haul flight recently, and it certainly kept me interested. You’re right – the themes are disturbing.. and I think the option of adding various special effects through the ‘animation’ styling was well used.
Personally, my vote goes to Robert Downey Jr. for stealing the show. He managed a level of barely-supposed paranoid mania which I haven’t seen since Johnny Depp’s rendition of the late Hunter S Thompson…
Incidentally (and this isn’t going to surprise many film buffs or sci-fi buffs), the author of ‘A Scanner Darkly’ was Philip K Dick. He also wrote ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ (the basis for Bladerunner), ‘Minority Report’, and ‘We can remember it for you wholesale’ (used as the starting point for ‘Total Recall’. And others….
When you think that between 20 and 40 years elapsed between the books and some of the corresponding films, it’s a pretty amazing legacy.