Lathe of Heaven

blacbird

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A few weeks ago, in search of a couple of movies I wanted to show to my English composition classes, I stumbled across a local video store that was selling all their VHS tapes for $1 each. I found two I needed for my class, but also stumbled across a video of Lathe of Heaven, from the Ursula LeGuin novel I read many years ago, and regard as one of the finer SF novels of the past few decades. I'd never seen it, and watched it last night. It was a made-for-TV thing, with obvious commercial breaks, but those weren't terribly intrusive. The major actor star was James Caan. Without further comment, I'm curious to know if anyone else has seen this, and what they think about it.

caw
 

Night_Writer

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I saw this. Or at least, I think I did. Many years ago, on a PBS station, I saw The Lathe of Heaven. But the lead actor was Bruce Davison. Could there possibly be more than one made-for-TV version of this movie?

What year was the James Caan version made?
 

Night_Writer

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I never knew about this one, either.

The one with Bruce Davison was excellent.
 

Manuel Royal

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Me too -- read the book in the '70s; remember the 1980 Bruce Davison movie; was unaware of the 1982 Lucas Haas movie. But, they're both available via Netflix, so I'm going to check it out.

ETA: Ouch! I'm reading some of the customer reviews on Netflix. (Reviews of the 2002 movie.) "Do not subject yourself to this pathetic hate-crime of a movie."
 
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shawkins

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I saw this when it originally aired, but not since. I remember liking it pretty well. Maybe not absolutely world class, but pretty decent as made-for-tv goes. Plus I've always had a thing for Lisa Bonet. And it certainly was a better LeGuin adaptation than some. (anybody see Earthsea?)