- This topic has 6 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi I have seen a fantastic British sci fi film called Hardware. It very much had the same sort of feel to me as the Max Headroom film that my friend covets.
Not a happy film but very striking imagery and a soundtrack that stays with you .
I think I liked it best because once again all the men get themselves killed and a woman has to sort it all out Lol.
Yeah, I’ve been a fan of that film and the composer Simon Boswell ever since I saw that about a decade ago, I think it manages to pull off both the post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk atmosphere really well.
Didn’t know Max Headroom was that similar in style, always wanted to watch the original film, but never managed to find it, heard some great things about it.
Hardware is probably the best film in the style so far, but I’d also recommend the comtemporary films Prototype X29A, Death Machine and of course the japanese classic Tetsuo.
Hi fisk0 your tips have been good so far so I will look out for those others you mentioned, none of which I have heard of!
Yes Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future is brilliant, even has a similar soundtrack in places, it has a real anarchic feel that everything is falling apart, slightly mad. I have started to recognise this in British films.
There’s another japanese cyberpunk classic I’d recommend, though it’s not dealing with cyborgs or transhumanism or anything like that, but as you liked the anarchic/madness aspects of those I think it might work – the 1982 Sogo Ishii film "Burst City" (who also directed the Einstürzende Neubauten short film Halber Mensch), which focuses on a group of punk rockers and biker gangs squatting some abandoned buildings outside Tokyo, which are to be demolished to make room for a new nuclear power plant. The main characters are played by actual prominent japanese punk musicians from that time, most notably The Stalin which I think is still one of the most well known punk groups in Japan today. There are lots of musical interludes by the groups, wonderfully crazy editing and great low life punks versus high tech cyber cops battles.
The movie was re-released on DVD in the west just a few years ago, so it’s not that hard to come by anymore
I looked up Burst City on Imdb but the reviews were not so good…not that that means anything some of my favourite films are hated by everyone else…wasn’t clear whether the dvds have English subtitles? I will look on Amazon
The Region 1 DVD release from 2007 does have english subtitles, not sure how many other releases there are.
It’s by no means a perfect film, few of the films in the genre are, I found Burst City to be thouroughly enjoyable though, I didn’t think it dragged on like one of the reviewers on IMDB said, but of course, the people who gave 10/10 are exaggerating how good it is.
Not sci-fi, but Richard Stanley related (the director of Hardware), as back in 1990 he made a documentary that’s pretty interesting in the post-9/11 world – he went to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and his film crew followed a group of Taliban (possibly actually Al-Qaida, can’t remember exactly) rebels and civilians during and after the conflict. It’s not narrated, just the Afghanistan landscapes and people backed by Simon Boswell’s soundtrack.
I’ve heard one of the camera men was killed in combat during the shooting of the film, though by the looks of it that isn’t true, might be possible someone confused that with a later event, as camera man Carlos Mavroleon is the only credited camera operator that is listed as dead on imdb, and he was killed under similar circumstances when shooting a documentary in Pakistan for Frontline in 1998 (about 10 years after they shot this).
It’s worth checking out imho, the entire documentary is included as an extra feature on the Dust Devil DVD, which is also an excellent film by Richard Stanley. Imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275056/
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.