dystopian cinema

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)*
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)*
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)*
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)*
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)*
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)*
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)*
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan's Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

A few more, I saw only parts, or enough to know what they're about. I bolded fewer films than I expected I'd seen. I haven't even heard of most of the ones from this decade. I asterisked the ones I own.

I don't totally agree with the list, though. Some of them are only marginally dystopian, and some of them are so far into the future that they have only a slight connection to the present day.

I never knew this

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt were married on St. Patrick's Day in 1905 in New York City, with her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, giving the bride away. Due to her maiden name being Roosevelt, she is the only First Lady who did not change her name upon marriage. She is also the only First Lady to be the wife, as well as cousin (5th, once removed), of one U.S. President and the niece of another.

Also,

Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralysis was originally diagnosed to be paralytic poliomyelitis (polio). However, retrospective analysis favors the diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome. See Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralytic illness.

the symphony

We went to our first symphony of the season, which also happened to be the first symphony of the season (actually, the third show of the first weekend). We also happened to see the last symphony of last season. It was three and a half months ago. Our next show is in four and a half months. Kind of odd.

There were three pieces. The first was a modern piece by Samuel Barber, which I liked a lot. The second was Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 18. It required a piano soloist, so after the Barber piece, the stage crew had to bring the piano out. Since the house lights were not up, as this was not an intermission, they brought out a speaker. I don't think they'd ever done this before, and the speaker was rather... entertaining. Not all prim and proper like you'd expect to see at the symphony. He was the new principal cellist, and he spoke a bit about the soloist and about the music. He was all, you know, like, this, and like, that. Talking about Rocky 2 and Beethoven 5. He said about the end of the Rachmaninov piece ("the tooty part"), the orchestra goes wild, and then the pianist goes wild, and then the audience goes wild. And then the audience goes out into the lobby to check the score in the Packer game. Then he asked if there was a report on the game from the viola section. Just then, the principal violist walked back onstage to report "21-9, Packers." It was quite different.

The final piece of the afternoon was Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Opus 67. Like his Ninth, this is always an enjoyable piece. I wonder how many times I've seen them do it. Only once or twice, I guess. It occurred to me today, that I've seen the orchestra many times. I wish I knew how many times. More than seventy-five times. At least five shows a year for at least fifteen years. I wonder when I started going.

alternate covers

In 1999, Dream Theater released a concept album called Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. Two years later, after a tour, they released a live album called Live Scenes from New York. Take a look at the album cover.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dtlsfny.jpg

Notice the Twin Towers? Care to guess what the date was when that album was released? If you figure it out, it will be obvious why the album was recalled and the cover changed.

Here's the new cover:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Dream_theater_lsfny.jpg

It's the band's logo over the same background.



Yes, the record was originally released on September 11th, 2001.