04 October 2007

fun with dystopias

I do love me some dystopia.

If you know me a little, you know I embrace my inner geek and watch a lot of Sci-fi with a side of fantasy and horror. It seems as if these genres tell more about the narrator's vision than others, and dystopias (usually some sort of SF, although LOTR can be one too) even more so, focusing on the negative aspects of a imaginary society to point out a hopefully better one.

It can be quite sad and desperate and woe is the human race, but at the same time it can give a good laugh too. Like why do the buildings always have to look so Art Deco and the bad guys (and good guys too) wear Gestapo uniforms? Dresses and flowy clothes suddenly not convenient anymore? You try to do those combat moves in a stiff uniform, LOL!

Most of them have precious little nature in them, it's all city and ruins (and space). And for some reason people don't sweat in the future (although some movies do show the grubbiness of life, thankfully) .

So most of the movies in the list I've watched, but I'm really crazy about just a few, like Serenity (FINALLY some feminism, thank you Mr Whedon!), 1984, Metropolis of course (trailer), Star Wars (the old trilogy pretty please...), THX 1138 (you'll never think about Bach's opening choir of the Mattheus Passion quite the same... ;-) ), Fahrenheit 451 (Oskar Werner who played Montag, the main character, had also played Mozart in a 50's bio pic and I used to have quite a crush on him!)(I was about 12... ;-) ), the Matrix, Blade Runner, La cité des enfants perdus (Director Jeunet being of my favorites, cf Amélie Poulain), Dark city (a classic with a dreamcast, and a creepy kid in said gestapo uniform... :-p director Proyas made The Crow and I, Robot as well) and my recent discovery of Himmel über Berlin (I saw City of Angels when it came out, but boy am I glad it didn't compare to this -at all! what were they thinking?!).

And that's just a few movies, don't even get me started on literature! ;-)