Miles, his friend Andy, and I caught a rather clean, but brooding, 35MM print of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) at the Library of Congress, Packard Campus in Culpeper, VA last night. I got to thinking that Empire is very much inline with aesthetic of other tech noirs at the time. It got me thinking a potential theme for next semester’s ds106 might be tech noir hosted by Dr. Oblivion. Here are the films I was thinking about including:
- Alien (1979)
- Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- Escape from New York (1981)
- Blade Runner (1982)
- Videodrome (1983)
- The Terminator (1984)
Admittedly, it’s a bit 1980s guy teenager heavy. So help me out here, what am I missing? Or is this way too lopsided? If it’s possible, I was thinking about turning the class into an irregular movie event at the ITCC, and use the building with Oblivion to have some fun 🙂
Weird Science (1985)
Absolutely, Akira and Ghost in the Shell would draw in a whole community at UMW. Also, I like the idea of a teenage screwball comedy in there, D’Arcy. So good
The other one I love is Minority Report, and I left it off here. That might have to come back on. Also, Metropolis might be necessary 🙂
if you go down that rabbit hole, Eraserhead (1977)…
Yeah, but I promised myself I’d never watch that again after the chicken scene, the crazy baby, and that woman behind the radiator. That shit is too hardcore.
Akira (1988) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(film)
Ghost in the Shell (1995) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell … not 80’s but would fit well in techo-dystopian collection
Would be fun to rotoscope those class video/hangouts using a cam filter – you could call them “Through a Webcam Darkly” … use something like http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckYdbGHVg3E
Repo Man
Absolutely, good freaking call. Repo Man is a layup here.