Saturday, October 25, 2008

[the andromeda strain] recurrence of a new theme


I watched three and a half hours of the mini-series DVD The Andromeda Strain last night and apart from the action which I quite liked, despite the suspension of disbelief in certain places, the thing which has struck me about almost all modern films I've seen in the past month are the themes:

1. that only a kick-ass woman can win through these days and men are basically inadequate [admittedly, this particular series is not a bad case of that];

2. the boldness with which the military industrial complex's clandestine agenda is being used to fill out the baddies' characters, something which was not permissible in Hollywood some time back.

3. the black mood themes of modern films.

Do films pander to public tastes or do the tastes reflect the themes of modern films?

UPDATE: I've just finished the mini-series. This book/film/mini-series has provoked a mini-discussion which I thought I'd bring you. How does time travel work? I don't mean how does it work but how does it overcome logical problems?

Example - in the Terminator series, the machines send a machine back to terminate John Connor. He sends a machine back to terminate the machine, thereby setting off a different reality, a different path. Yet Skynet follows the original path. If someone else from the future sent someone back to create a third path, somehow we'd have a multitude of actual historical paths not gelling with each other.

What would that do to both history and perception?

10 comments:

  1. I think the themes of modern films reflect how society has changed.

    Thinking of how time travel might work is always a bit of a head bender.

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  2. Difficult concepts.

    Fred Hoyle discusses them in "The Intelligent Universe", as a sort of "Pull into the future".

    This implies there must be a discernible future that does the pulling.

    If true, interference must only be at a "quantum" level.

    Something jibes with me that this is possible, indeed probable.

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  3. Jeesh, My fingers are going faster than my brain.

    I must also say that somehow in the last decade we have missed the pull.

    Sigh!

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  4. Far better to women kick ass rather than twist their ankles like they invariably did during chases in films of yore...

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  5. Oh yes, Jams - we don't want twisted ankles.

    Cherie, Bob - relativity seems to accept wormholes as possible but not probable.

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  6. Relativity be buggered, this has NOTHING to do with relativity or wormholes.

    Frequencies, frequencies, the forgotten frequencies.

    I'll explain in a few months, when I will take the time so that I have the time.

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  7. James.

    Anon on your blog has been banging the drum on frequencies for a while now.

    He probably knows something.

    Take a look back!

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  8. Just tll me hown I can go back and have a do -over. :) I don't need to know how it works, just that it will. :)

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