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 Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 7:35 pm
Okay... we've covered philosophy in fiction and music... how about movies?? There are enough thought provoking movies that this could be a very very long thread. So, any movie that puts your head in a spin. Pictures are always, nice, too. biggrin My first suggestion is "Naked Lunch" which is actually based on a book by William S. Burroughs... this movie is far out there. To me, the movie is about how absorbed people become in their own lives. What they think is going on or what is important may not even register on anyone else's radar. Naked Lunch is the story of a writer who, I believe, has completely lost his mind. He's convinced there are aliens that sucrete a drug that humanity is addicted to. His typewriter comes alive frequently in the resemblence of a large insect... and at one point in the movie, he is so freaked out by his typewriter that he borrows another writers typewriter. What happens? Well, his typewriter comes alive and attacks the other one!! The whole time he is writing his friends letters telling them about these crazy happenings in his life - and the book is supposed to be a compilation of these letters.  Typewriter BugThe movie is a little psychedelic, but I think it's so original in it's story and ideas that it's sure to make you think... if not just scratch your head and wonder "Why?" (my favorite question) Wikipedia entry for "Naked Lunch" the movie
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:15 pm
Hmm...
I would have to say that Butterfly effect and Donny Darko have done that to me.
Butterfly Effect: The reason is that it's the question of changing something in an attempt to make it better. Now... watching it, I was shocked at all the things that would go wrong when things almost seemed to become right.
Then... the ending I saw shocked me even more. It's like... the only way things could be perfect is if the person just avoided the thing that would cause all of it to happen.
Donny Darko: Actually, it's like the third Harry Potter... but this is much more interesting.
It begins when someone "avoids death", and sees things no one should ever be able to see. Things end up getting almost out of control... then everything resets. (Spoiler)At the start, his room was crushed by a plane engine. At the end... a rip in reality has occured, and loops back to that point in time. The plane that his family was in gets sucked in... and the engine was ripped off, and happens to fall on his room. (Again?) Anyway, the second time (in the movie...), he is waiting for it, since everything seemed to reset, and he lets it kill him. Things become right... but if the plane never goes in, then where would the engine come from?(End Spoiler)
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Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:51 pm
Well my favorite is "What the Bleep do We Know?" which is a story/documentary on quantum mechanics and it's application in philosophy, resulting in what I like to call Quantum Philosophy. I'm still not sure what all goes into quantum philosophy, but I'm getting there. It has primarily to do with accepting complete resposibility for everything in your life, and then changing it all for the better. It opperates on the principles of rewritting who you are on the spur of the moment, and that all things are one, and that god is in everything. It's a real trip.
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Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:33 am
Ha ha... Donnie Darko was going to be my next post! Great movie. It touches on many different philosophical issues that include time travel, parallel universes and the existence of God. But I think the main theme of the movie is the whole "free will" debate. Within the movie, Donnie dodges death... and by doing so, he causes the whole universe to collapse upon itself. Ah, but there's a twist at the end of course. It reminded me a lot of the anime "Serial Experiments Lain."
And Butterfly Effect had an even greater impact on me than Donnie Darko. I'm STILL rolling over the events in that movie... as you always imagine "what would my life be like if the bad things in my past were made better." This movie shows that fixing things in the past can ruin the present... as you never think of the other events or consequences resulting from a different choice. Kinda reminded me of Back to the Future II when Biff screws everything up.
I LOVE time travel & parallel universe movies.
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Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 9:42 am
Dead Poets Society is a movie that I think embraces the essence of Existentialism by provoking Catholic school boys to be themselves in an environment that pressures for conformity. Sartre's "suicidal question" is pondered by one of the boys who decides that life is indeed not worth living. It's also interesting how eccentric Robin Williams acts as a teacher in the movie.
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Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2005 10:02 am
CONSTANTINE is religiously ingenious in its ideas of heaven, god, lucifer, and wether we are completely oblivious to whats around us. If you open your eyes to everything, you may want them closed.
AMODEUS Is another one that i enjoyed for the pure fact that its about Mozart. I still can't wrap my mind around his ingenious.
GINGER SNAPS was captivating to me. the mere fact that it deals with werewolves is enough for me to love it. it shows what true insanity can do to a mind and the way that people are warped by sutch small things. (transformation into lycanthrope in that movy was not true. the human does not turn into a dog. The human merely takes on a slightly different appearence. ie. bushy eyebrows, fangs, claw-like fingernails, hair length/hair color differences...)
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Posted: Fri Jul 22, 2005 12:03 pm
Amodeus WAS a great movie! Thanks for reminding me of that one. I might have to go rent it again. Anytime I'm coming up with a new song I think of several phrases that were said in that movie. He truly was like a rockstar of his time.
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Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2005 8:16 pm
I had a good one... but it's gone now. If I remember, I'll post it.
Edit: Ok, I don't know if this is the one I was thinking about, but it's a good one none the less. Office Space. The idea behind the philisophical part is that you give up everything and become so care free that the world no longer has a hold on you. Now, it starts out in an extremist way that doesn't do anyone much good, but the idea that one should relinquish their material and 'socially acceptable' lives is not a bad you.
But anyway; I had some thoughts on TV shows as well. Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis to a lesser extent and Andromeda are all good examples of enlightenment philosophy in the media. The Stargates focus on the idea of ascention through deeds and sense of self, and evoloution of man beyond his finite shell.
Andromeda on the other hand focuses more on what to do on the mortal coil. It opperates around the ideas of nobility and justice and actual freedoms. But more over it puts across the message that there is alway a chance in the 'fight against evil'.
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Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 9:21 am
I am not sure if it quite counts... but Wizards was an excelent movie, and it talks about how war effects things at the very start. I think it also mentions that only one that has something to fight for will inevitably succeed. The summary of the movie Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, this fantasy adventure follows the story of Avatar, the kindly, eccentric sorcerer-ruler of Montagar, a rainbow paradise inhabited by elves and fairies. Avatar's evil brother, Blackwolf, dominates Scortch, a bleak land of goblins and wraiths. When the power-hungry Blackwolf attacks Montagar, Avatar, accompanied only by a spirited young woman and a courageous elf, must enter the darkness of Scortch to save his world. WIZARDS is a thought-provoking, kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes that will enthrall animation fans and film lovers of all ages. It seems to be a movie about good and evil, but there is alot more to it than that. It has the swastika that the Nazis used... and seems to be a Nazi Germany setting on the evil side as well. I guess it's not only a movie, but sort of a warning of what may come (us destroying ourselves and such I mean). I don't know... it's probably because it's so old, but no one seems to have ever seen or heard of this movie. It's honestly really good, done by Ralph Bakshi "wizard of animation".
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Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:00 pm
Requiem for a Dream
The kind of level of degradation that people can suffer for a single purpose: they're own selfishness...
Das Experiment
Just to observe one of the many faces inside the human race. Strong movie, but still.
My Life without Me
What would you do if you find out that U got 2 months of life left... a story about hopes and sadness, which remind us of how inmanent humans are.
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2005 1:27 pm
The movie I Heart Huckabees pushed me into a hard depression, becuase it tells about dismatling your day to day reality. It tells a lot about The universe, the big one, and infinity. It tells that everything is connected, and everything has a purpose.
By dismantling your day to day reality, you can see the blanket truth about everything. Because we are all connected, we are all the same.
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Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2005 9:44 pm
Hmm, the only one I can think of right now is War of the Worlds. I didn't find it all that great of a movie, nor is it very philosophical. But I like the way the movie shows how humans behave in situations of despair, and how fragile the human mind can really be.
It's scary to think about what the mind comes to when it loses all the sense of morals, right/wrong, etc., for the sake of survival.
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 9:03 am
MightyHikaru Hmm, the only one I can think of right now is War of the Worlds. I didn't find it all that great of a movie, nor is it very philosophical. But I like the way the movie shows how humans behave in situations of despair, and how fragile the human mind can really be. It's scary to think about what the mind comes to when it loses all the sense of morals, right/wrong, etc., for the sake of survival. I would hope that my morals would hold... I couldn't list them, but I think one of them is to make sure others make it, not just me alone. Then again, there is no way to know for sure until something happens. Funny how that is true for many things though...
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Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 6:41 pm
I'm almost surprised no one's mentioned The Matrix Trilogy yet. It's very quantum.
And Star Wars too. I mean, talk about philosophy and religion in movies, it's all right there.
And finally, Peter Pan. I prefer the book to how the movie bastardized the story, but most of the ideas are still the same throughout.
Note: I heart quantum philosophy and everything that has anything to do with it.
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Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:48 am
The Matrix. They borrowed from Descartez. Instead of being "spirits being imprisoned by a genie and reality is just an illusion" it's robots instead of an evil genie. Look into what's being said, especially later on, I picked out a lot of things that Nietzsche said in there myself.
Sideways is another. It's an existential comedy. You're laughing but at the same time you feel this emptiness about it. It especially focuses on the meaninglessness of life in general, and how in the end nothing much really has value. Even at the end, it's a happy ending by the plot, but you still feel that nihilistic existential type emptiness about it.
Fight Club is another philisophical movie. It's about breaking out of the herd and the normal everyday routine that is our daily lives.
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