Monsters from the Id

[mooncliff]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8mFW...eature=related

The most spectacular SciFi movie of all time given when it was made.

And yes, always the monsters from the Id...

[sunskyfan]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Yep, one of my faves. Had balls too especially for 1956. RIP Leslie Nielsen. I miss good Science Fiction movies which actually speculate on our condition and where we are going. I am so tired of zombies and gay vampires I could puke.

Throw in these two for a complete afternoon of thinking about what is happening in the world.

Soylent Green http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU
Roller Ball http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV9ysMZamxs

[don]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Shakespeare could sure scribble

[c1ue]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Soylent Green http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU

I've always been struck by how closely Soylent Green's background history mirrors the AGW-CO2-Catastrophe theory's view of the future.

This is extremely ironic given the 1974 and 1975 Time and Newsweek article about global cooling:

• ^ "Science: Another Ice Age?". Time. June 24, 1974. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...944914,00.html.
• ^ ^{a b} Peter Gwynne (April 28, 1975). "The Cooling World". Newsweek.

[Chomsky]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Interestingly, "Soylent Green" was based on a 1966 sci-fi novel by Harry Harrison called "Make Room! Make Room!" The movie appropriated the bits about overpopulation and soylent/synthetic foods but not global warming or cannibalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Room!_Make_Room!

[thunderdownunder]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Yes I remember all of those great Flicks........ Does that mean we are a current product of what we ingested in the past.
I know I should have seen more Disney but a talking Mickey Mouse was sheer terror for my young mind.

[cobben]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Solaris

Written in 1961 by Stansislav Lem, filmed in 1972 by Tarkovsky.

ascension, stanislav lem novel adaption by andrei tarkovsky. the woman on the movie is a copy of the dead wife of that man which is created by plasmaic ocean Solaris using the very subconcious of the man... deadly romantic, sad, lonely scene, but at the same time the most dramatic love theme i have ever seen...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFAlegTEBUU

final sequence from solaris (andrei tarkovski)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_0UPh5FELg

full movie
http://video.google.com/videoplay?hl...9932379913979#

[mooncliff]

Re: Monsters from the Id

And about the 2002 remake, as always, Roger is spot on.


The genius of Lem's underlying idea is that the duplicates, or replicants, or whatever we choose to call them, are self-conscious and seem to carry on with free will from the moment they are evoked by the planet. Rheya, for example, says, "I'm not the person I remember. I don't remember experiencing these things." And later, "I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me." In other words, Kelvin gets back not his dead wife, but a being who incorporates all he knows about his dead wife, and nothing else, and starts over from there. She has no secrets because he did not know her secrets. If she is suicidal, it is because he thought she was. The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...211220307/1023

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Monsters from the Id

The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person.

Eh ... I think that view is not deep irony, my friend, rather deeply deprived. It is deprived of acknowledgement of the living connections that form between individuals. The groups, marriages, unions, communities, organizations, and numerous other forms of support for and gatherings of common purpose and awareness, some brief, some spanning the generations, have a life of their own. If you replace an individual with only what other individuals know of them, that kills that individuals contribution to these larger connections of which other individuals may be unaware.

[cobben]

Re: Monsters from the Id

"And about the 2002 remake, as always, Roger is spot on"

Tarkovsky was a genius in his own right, and his version of Solaris is of course just that.
Here is another peculiarly similar film (1979) by Tarkovsky for comparison.

Stalker (Сталкер) (full movie)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...7&hl=en&emb=1#

Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, an alien place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers. Over his wife's numerous objections, a man rises in the dead of night: he's a stalker, one of a handful who have the mental gifts (and who risk imprisonment) to lead people into the Zone to the Room, a place where one's secret hopes come true. That night, he takes two people into the Zone: a popular writer who is burned out, cynical, and questioning his genius; and a quiet scientist more concerned about his knapsack than the journey. In the deserted Zone, the approach to the Room must be indirect. As they draw near, the rules seem to change and the stalker faces a crisis

[Chomsky]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Stalker is great and an excellent introduction to Tarkovsky. It's more accessible than Solaris.

[don]

Re: Monsters from the Id

twitter he ain't



then there's the Steven Soderbergh version...

[don]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Blade Runner has its points of interests. Nice to see Dick's original work is getting some air time.

A Test for Humanity in a Postapocalyptic World



By JASON ZINOMAN
Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner” is a stylish action movie starring Harrison Ford as Deckard, a bounty hunter in pursuit of coolly attractive androids. Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,” the 1968 book it’s based on, is a very different novel of ideas, at its essence about an unhappily married man.

In a twist that sounds straight out of the story itself, the movie has become so popular that many fans don’t realize that the imitation is not the original. Edward Einhorn’s new stage adaptation, which imagines a future populated by humans and androids difficult to distinguish from one another, aims to reclaim the spirit of the book. It’s an act of fan love but also dramatically shrewd, since a downtown play is a better forum than a Hollywood blockbuster for a grim meditation on religion, consumerism and what it means to be human.

Set in the wake of environmental disaster, the noirlike plot centers on Deckard (Alex Emanuel), who tracks down androids, tests their humanity with an empathy test and, if they fail, destroys them. The emphasis here is not on the action but on its implications. Since the newer models are so advanced, the fakes can seem more empathetic than Deckard himself. And the question of his own humanity hangs over the entire show like one of the ear-shaped screens of this production.

The humans left on Earth (they have been encouraged to colonize other planets) either worship a Christlike leader on television or a cheerier alternative named Buster Friendly, played silkily by the downtown impresario Trav S.D. The difference, however, between the savior who suffers for your sins and the one who charms is not as great as it seems.

Neal Wilkinson’s set is exactly right: high-tech but also organic, a design that resists straight lines and geometric shapes. Its surrealism (imagine a modest, cut-rate creation by Gaudí) matches the dreamlike style. Mr. Emanuel’s hard-boiled performance may seem one-note, but it suits the play’s purposes. He’s a hero who blends into the background.

What sticks with you are more ghostly images: a fuzzy video screen, a sad-faced android and an opera singer, played by Moira Stone, who seems both completely phony and movingly fragile at the same time.

“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” is playing through Dec. 11 at the 3LD Art @ Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, West Village; (212) 352-3101.

http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/12/0...ml?ref=theater

[mooncliff]

Re: Monsters from the Id

Eh ... I think that view is not deep irony, my friend, rather deeply deprived. It is deprived of acknowledgement of the living connections that form between individuals. The groups, marriages, unions, communities, organizations, and numerous other forms of support for and gatherings of common purpose and awareness, some brief, some spanning the generations, have a life of their own. If you replace an individual with only what other individuals know of them, that kills that individuals contribution to these larger connections of which other individuals may be unaware.

Oh, I think this means something like "Color does not really exist; it is a neurological construct." All the brain receives is digital nerve signals. It then constructs a mental simulation of form, color, texture, etc. In effect a dynamic model that tries to mimic certain aspects of the world, but in the end, the model in the brain and the actual outside world are unlinked and cannot actually be linked because they are physically separate. One has only one's own simulation running in one's brain, so when two people have a huge disagreement, it is not because they are in two different worlds, but because their mental simulations are reacting differently to the same input. Beauty in the eye of the beholder.

I think this comment is not at all meant to disparage human connections, because clearly that is what Solaris is all about. It is throwing into sharp relief that although we are isolated entities, we can in imperfect ways, like the ways in which Solaris reaches out, bridge the gap with speech, music, art, a hug. It makes the bridging all the more astonishing when viewed against the chasm.

[mooncliff]

Re: Monsters from the Id

A couple of years ago, I saw the remastered Bladerunner on the big screen in a digital theater. Absolutely magnificent. One of the best SciFi movies of all time.

Speaking of which, like younglings who had only seen Star Wars on TV and then saw it on the big screen, I was never able to stay awake through Gone with the Wind on TV, but then I saw it remastered on an IMAX screen! Now one of my top 10 movies of all time... and it was made 71 years ago!