Word: dystopian
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...have come to see that in their early days, new technology and scientific breakthroughs often serve as Rorschach tests - a phenomenon about which we have little concrete understanding, onto which contemporary social anxieties (and dreams) can readily be projected. As a result we find (often polarized) utopian and dystopian visions being articulated." Humanity will certainly survive the LHC's experiment, Williams added, but so too will its darkest fears about its own destructive potential, and hope for its future...
...status quo, no matter how awful it gets. They never think of forming a community to rebel against the government guards, and only belatedly find a way to escape. Meirelles' camera style is plenty jazzy, with an agitated rhythm and the desaturated color scheme from Children of God (another dystopian English-language social parable from a Latin American director); but his characters are as flaccid as those in so many Euro-films we've seen at Cannes over the years. Their feet glued to the floor, they stand in place and wait for destiny to do its worst...
...readers whose first encounter with Lee is Behind My Eyes, the echo of previous work is not necessarily a problem, of course. In fact, first-timers will find the collection a beauty. Lee is capable of dystopian quips ("The garden was ruined long before/ we came to make a world of it") and existentialist shrugs ("Every player eventually dies") - but it's the lack of bitterness that makes his best pieces so moving. In "Living with Her" - reminiscent of Matthew Arnold's classic "Dover Beach" - Lee's wife urges him to come away from the window and simply lie down...
...Brando was freeing film-acting from good manners, Heston proved there was thrilling life in the endangered tradition of speaking well and looking great. And when he wasn't the movies' avatar of antique glory, he was our emissary to the future: the last man on earth in two dystopian science-fiction films, Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. Heston was the alpha and omega of movie manhood--our civilized ancestor, our elevated destiny...
...that in Vietnam-era science fiction, no less than in other films of the period, happy endings were not mandatory. Even escapist films offered scant chance of escape from the sour national mood. The 1971 The Omega Man (recently remade with Will Smith as I Am Legend) was another dystopian fantasy film. Again Heston was possibly the last human on earth, battling predatory subhuman creatures who might have been the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground or the Watergate plotters. In the jungle that has replaced civilization, reason gives way to armed self-defense. When another human does show...