Fun Stuff > ENJOY
Recommendations!
Skibas_clavicle:
I'm sure plenty of people have seen this movie, but I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch last night with a couple friends and that movie is phenomenal! It's a lot of fun and generally hilarious. My friends and I were talking and now I am going to try really hard to get it screened at this local theatre so it can be like a Rocky Horror Picture Show type event, where people would sing along to the songs and stuff. It just seems like that would be an incredibly fun thing to do! Highly, highly recommended.
The_Bartender:
Alright, I read through most of this thread; my apologies for any that have already been promoted multiple times:
Books:
Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. A review or blurb I read at some point called Gaiman a "modern fantasy writer" in that he writes fantasy in modern settings. Good summary. Neverwhere is a great introduction to his works. What if fairies and trolls and witches and such did exist, but the mundanes never noticed them because they were too busy with their normal lives? Good story, a number of plot twists and a couple of points to make you think.
Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. If you haven't read even a shred of this, you're missing out on one of the best comedy sci-fi adventures ever. The series is one continous riot of non-sequitors, dry British humor, outrageous situations and a lot of surprisingly complex obvious and underlying moral and social topics. SKip the rather chopped up movie, go for the books or the BBC radio broadcast tapes.
Movies:
Lots have already been mentioned, but one of my favorite "niche" movies is OUTLAND. Sean Connery plays a "space marshal" come to one of Staurns moons to take over the local law enforcement. However, it's not a bright shiny sci-fi future, this is wroking class industrail sci-fi, more in the Blade Runner tone. Plus, no one in the movie is the perfect hero OR villain. All the characters have flaws, and the science part of the sci-fi is pretty accurate. The story line is a fairly basic crime drama, but it's well played and well cast.
Trauco:
Strings (2004)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374248/
A movie made with marionettes, and the story of the movie builds around this concept, it's beautiful, i wish i was 10 when i saw it, in fact, i'm buying it in dvd so when i have children i can see it with them.
The "acting" is better than most of what you see on the big screen these days, and they are friggin wood carved dolls, see it and you wont believe it. In fact, when i rented it, i was convinced that i was up for a CG fest, but oh boy i was wrong, and the good kind of wrong.
Harun:
I bet hardly any of y'all read sports fiction, so here is something different that I encourage anyone to read:
The Rider, by Tim Krabbe
--- Quote from: Amazon cuz I'm lazy ---I'm not a cyclist by any stretch of the imagination, and am only a moderate fan of the sport in general. But Krabbé's novella, originally published in the Netherlands 25 years ago, has got to best one of the best fictional treatments of any sport. The book follows an competitive amateur rider through a half-day, 150 kilometer race over the very real Mont Aigoual in France. Krabbé is himself an avid amateur cyclist, and his ability to capture both the mental and physical aspects of the sport is uncanny. Although I've never raced a bike, I did run cross-country competitively, and many of the elements carry over-mainly the twin battle each individual faces with their brain and their body (There's one excellent moment when the rider wills his bike to get a flat so he can withdraw with honor.).
The stripped-down prose style (common to all Krabbé's work), works especially well in the context of a race where the long distances can lead to almost a trance-like state. The mind wanders all over the place, and that is captured brilliantly in the rider's musings-for example, one part describes how he tries to invent words to keep himself amused during long, boring training rides. At the same time, the race itself is very tense, and Krabbé does quite well at describing the various tactical gambits employed along the way. The main competitors emerge as distinct figures-allies and foes in both a psychological and physical sense (I especially liked the unknown in the blue Cycles Goff jersey). Interwoven with it all are tidbits of cycling history, which are intermittently interesting to the non-racer.
It's not a reach to call this a masterpiece of sports literature. The story does a remarkable job at conveying the tension and flow of a race to the outsider. At the same time, the insights into the psychology of the athlete are so acute as to be universally recognizable across cultures and sports.
--- End quote ---
Llewellian:
Currently reading: ISBN 1591026997 - Cyberabad Days by Ian McDonald.
Boohyaaah. Wow. Ian McDonald is getting more and more my favourite SciFi Writer. I was amazed by his Book "Desolation Road", but Cyberabad Days just outmatches that by far. Thats how SciFi has to be. He starts where William Gibson ended. The future, in the streets. Among normal, mortal men. In the dirt and rain, under Smog and swirling dust. Gibson showed us the West. Ian McDonald shows us the East. The future among the river Ganges. Mingles Artificial Intelligence a la Neuromancer with Safran-Roti and a hint of curry. Stories spawning from the Mountains of Himalaya down to the coasts of Kerala. Shows the problems of "Everyday People" caught between eon old culture and the glittering towers of light in the Cyberspace.
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