From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Nov 29 1999 - 08:04:18 MST
EvMick@aol.com writes:
> I just this minute finished watching "Thirteenth Floor". If anyone hasn't
> seen it yet I strongly advise that you do so.
>
> It "out-matrixs" ...Matrix.
Yes, it is a very nice movie. I love when a film dealing with
ontological trickery actually manages to remain *consistent* (even if
it needs some slightly odd boundary conditions). The only other film I
can remember with the same level of trickery and consistency (but a
very different mood) was _Army of the Twelve Monkeys_.
We saw "Thirteenth Floor" at the Halloween meeting here in Stockholm,
and had some fun discussions about it, sf films in general and the
world described. A few interesting thughts: the description of
technology was, unlike the Matrix and I guess ExistenZ, neutral or
even positive. This kind of ontological movies have gone from
irrational explanations (dreams/madness/drugs) to rational ones
(VR/uploading/nanotech) where the shift between "realities" is done in
a replicable way. Did the movie end with a murder, and was it a crime?
Another fun movie (slightly related) is the french _Nirvana_, a good
implementation of cyberpunk a few years too late with some buddhist
imagery, which gave me the idea for the Snowflake Cult in my game - by
erasing AI, we can bring them to Nirvana.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:05:53 MST