"dark city"

whoa!

this makes an excellent movie on a friday evening, for one to immerse in the strange mystery that unravels in a spiral drop into timeless space.

the spiral motifs continually drawn by the detective walenski who plays a cassandra-like role (sees the truth but is not believed by others), reminds dash of junji ito's uzumaki. and similar to uzumaki, the people in the city are unknowingly affected by the city and could never get out of the city!

other deja vu experiences: the clothing style of The Strangers is so similar to the Keenu Reeves' in The Matrix.

the buildings and their architecture reminds dash of fritz lang's metropolis.

and then only after the movie, did dash find out that metropolis did influence the set design for dark city. but it was dark city that shaped the uzumaki movie and The Matrix : ) This is a cult classic movie, this dark city! :O

dash later found out that the original ending was even darker than the final version - in the original version, The Strangers won the battle, and the dark experiment continues, presumably till The Strangers themselves die. there was no triumph of the humans eventually. well, just as realistic as the chances of experimental mice being able to subdue the human scientists. bleak. perhaps the more optimistic ending was what hollywood deems would be a crowd-drawer at the box office, and hence the executive decision was made to use a happier ending.

but but but *dash protests* ... of course the chances of the human triumph over the other is a logical possiblity and can occur, but the metaphysicists would ask which modality should we use to think about these possibilities! >: I