It would be nice to believe that someone, somewhere, someday is going to do a good job translating a much-missed, much-loved television series of my youth onto the big screen, but it’s proving a long, long wait. “Bewitched” failed to enchant, “Charlie’s Angels” was the work of the devil, “Lost in Space” was adrift in self-importance, “Starsky and Hutch” turned a decent drama into a bad farce, and “The Dukes of Hazzard” transformed a likable hayseed comedy into, well, words fail me. Despite this dispiriting track record of mediocrity, junk, and exhausted imaginations, it was impossible not be intrigued by [...]

Philip K. Dick (1928-82), the reliably legendary, always eccentric, and occasionally brilliant science fiction writer whose “A Scanner Darkly” is the basis of Richard Linklater’s dreadful new movie,is often described as a philosopher, a shaman, and a seer. But that’s being kind, the man was bonkers, a nutcase, a lunatic, crazier than a street-corner shouter or attic-roosting aunt. Unfair? Maybe,but then unlike Dick I have never been fortunate enough to be “seized” by a light beam that lifted me “from the limitations of the space-time matrix”and released me “from every thrall, inner and outer.” And if that doesn’t sound deranged [...]