Ikarie XB 1

Here's an amazing scene from an ultra-rare, kitschy, trippy, Soviet-style SF film, Ikarie XB 1 (aka Ikaria XB1, Icarus XB1 and Voyage to the End of the Universe). Czechoslovakia's first science fiction film, this remarkable 1963 movie tells the story of Starship Ikaria XB 1's 2163 trek to Alpha Centari. ("Voyage" was the savagely cut, English dubbed version released by American International Pictures.)The film is generally apolitical, except for this remarkable scene, in which the explorers enter a derelict 20th Century space craft, littered with evidence of capitalist immorality. The visuals are striking. Corpses of tuxedo-clad, gambling westerners, their bodies preserved by open vacuum. The crew killed by their own chemical hand-weapons as they fought over dwindling oxygen. The ship laden with nuclear weapons -- still active after centuries.Ikarie XB 1 is an ambitious, thoughtful, intelligent film that was decades ahead of its time. It's an ultra-rare "must-see" for any serious SF fan, with high-concept elements galore: a trip to proxima centaura; time dilation; future foods, fashion, music and dance; first-contact protocols; increased longevity; artificial intelligence; bulky socialist robots.It's said the screenplay was inspired by the work of Stanislaw Lem, including "The Magellanic Cloud" from 1955.

Crash (1996)

Crash is a film written and directed by David Cronenberg based on the J. G. Ballard 1973 novel of the same name. It tells the story of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents, a notable treatment of paraphilia which caused considerable controversy on its release. The film stars James Spader, Holly Hunter, Elias Koteas, Deborah Kara Unger, and Rosanna Arquette. Crash opened to mixed and highly divergent reactions from critics. While some praised the film for its daring premise and originality, others criticized its combination of graphic sexuality with violence. Although it was nominated for the Golden Palm at the Festival de Cannes, it instead won the special prize for daring, audacity, and originality. The film's notably eerie music score was composed by Howard Shore. Certainly not for the easily offended, Crash nevertheless continues one of the most fascinating filmographies in contemporary cinema - a work that fits comfortably along side films like Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, films that peer into psychological corners of society not before exposed to the light. Dark, scary, ugly and beautiful, Cronenberg's cinema realizes some of our darkest thoughts.

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Scanners GIF Snapshot !!!

Dead Man (1995)

Dead Man is a 1995 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. The movie is something of a Modern Western, dubbed a "psychedelic Western" by director Jarmusch, which includes twisted elements of the Western Genre. The film is shot entirely in black-and-white. Some consider it the ultimate postmodern Western, and related to postmodern literature such as Cormac McCarthy's novel, Blood Meridian. The decision to make this movie in black and white is quite brilliant. First of all, it adds a dream quality to the story (most people dream in black and white) - a color of memory or hallucination, or rather a color of something forgotten. Secondly, B&W film creates perception of being in Hell and may symbolize fight of light and darkness, good and evil. Thirdly, it may be interpreted as color of print on paper - like in graphic novels. Sin City used the same device. And finally, judging by the “special effects” used in the early movies, the director wanted to create a feeling of a movie actually made in 1920s. The dialogs, on the other hand, are quite contemporary. The electric guitar theme helps to establish this connection of time. The movie is extremely slow - a technique used by masters like Andrei Tarkovski to make viewers focus on one aspect of a scene. Like Tarkovski’s movies, Dead Man if full of metaphor and symbolism. At the same time, subtle actions of characters or something they say, even if a single word, tell a story of their own - very thoughtful movie. The story grasps you and never lets go. The film won Palm d’Or at 1995 Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography in 1996.

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"It is preferable not to travel with a dead man" - Henri Michaux

The Machine Girl (2008)

Kataude mashin gâru

There are revenge flicks, and there are revenge flicks. It's an old formula, and it still works beautifully. Person has happy life, person's happy life gets fucked up, person seeks vengeance on the bastards (usually organized crime) who did the deed. The formula works especially well if the protagonist is a woman, and for several years now this tiny sub-genre has done pretty well. Raquel Welch did okay with Robert Culp's and Christopher Lee's help in Hannie Caulder; some rapist punks got their comeuppance just fine in the deadly-serious I Spit On Your Grave, to name two examples. When Tarantino did Kill Bill, we thought that maybe we'd seen the ultimate expression of the idea. At least, not in an ultra-cool, pop-culture-suffused, Japanese-themed way, despite Quentin's hard work. The title for all-time greatest chick-revenge flick now goes to a recently-released (on DVD) gem called Kataude mashin gâru, or Machine Girl. Machine Girl takes the best, wildest, and most visually-charged elements of Asian movies - mostly Japanese samurai and yakuza flicks, but also the more popular Hong Kong action fare - and blends them all into a super-satisfying treat for viewers. The violence is so over-the-top that it become cartoonish; the characters are outlandish, comic-booky - and that's meant in a good way. The young women are all gorgeous, the villains are truly villainous, the heroes are usually heroic (usually), and nobody, but nobody, gets to die peacefully in their sleep. More likely, they get a katana blade stabbed straight down through the tops of their heads, their blood spurting out in a soft red fountain.

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The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Bronyenosyets Potyomkin sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin film, but also used it to test his theories of ", is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatised version of the Battleship Potemkin uprising that occurred in 1905 when the crew of a Russian battleship rebelled against their oppressive officers of the Tsarist regime. Potemkin has been called one of the most influential films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. Eisenstein wrote the film as a revolutionary propagandamontage". The revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov school of filmmaking were experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin and hatred for their cruel overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they should sympathize.

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A wide shot of the massacre on the "Odessa Steps".

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