It was the time of heroes, the age of the blockbuster... and here are the best of them... 50: Flash Gordon (1980) Giving life to classic comic book hero Flash Gordon, Get Carter director Mike Hodges takes the reigns in this 1980 sci-fi spectacular and delivers one of the most enjoyable films of the decade. Accompanied by the only good bit of music Queen ever did, Flash finds his way to the planet Mongo, home of Ming the Merciless, and saves our good selves from Ming’s plan to destroy the Earth. Cue a damsel in distress, flying bird men, a young Timothy Dalton and the maniacal Ming himself, played here by Max Von Sydow.
Top 10 Philosophical Movies Of All Time
If you're not quite feeling yourself today, maybe you're, er, not... (PLEASE NOTE: This article, which was published here last year, seems to have become a casualty of this week's site upgrade. I hope to restore all comments - Ed ) Mindfuck: An idea or concept that shakes one's previously held beliefs or assumptions about the nature of reality. ( Urban Dictionary ) Though mentioned in the lyrics of The Rocky Horror Show , 'mindfuck' entered the cultural consciousness with Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 Schwarzenegger sci-fi outing Total Recall … ARNIE: “I’ve got to hand it to you, Cohagen – that’s the best mind-fuck yet.”
A decade into the 21st Century and we have arrived at the future. The promise of Tomorrow. But instead we have looming energy crises, endless middle east conflict and more disappointing, we have no flying cars, Heck, for all the bright and clean future promised in 2001: A Space Odyssey, none of the real companies used as brands in the film even exist anymore. Even moving from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, nobody makes DeLoreans (although they occasionally sell on Ebay), but cloning and tablet computing (as promised by Star Trek: The Next Generation) have more or less come to pass in this century. It is not the gizmos or the distopian aesthetics, that have brought Science Fiction into the new millennium, but the questions it asks of people or society in a future time or place and how they reflect on our own times.
Massive dehumanization, totalitarian government, rampant disease, post-apocalyptic terrains, cyber-genetic technologies, societal chaos and widespread urban violence are some of the common themes in dystopian films which bravely examine the ominous shadow cast by future. A dystopia is a fictional society that is the antithesis or complete opposite of a utopia, an ideal world with a perfect social, political and technological infrastructure. A world without chaos, strife or hunger. A world where the individual potential and freedom is celebrated and brought to the forefront. In contrast, the dystopian world is undesirable with poverty and unequal domination by specific individuals over others. Dystopian films often construct a fictional universe and set it in a background which features scenarios such as dehumanizing technological advancements, man-made disasters or class-based revolutions.
I actually like Michael Cera, but I am aware that many folks do not, and for those people, I am happy to present the new NSFW trailer (language-wise) for Seth Rogen's upcoming apocalypse comedy This Is the End. It features 1) Michael Cera spitting cocaine into Christopher Mintz-Plasse's face, 2) Emma Watson threatening several grown men with an axe, 3) and the graphic, brutal death of Michael Cera. You're welcome.