Yul Brynner & Photographs

Because I've been recovering, I wasn't able to get up to much adventurous gutsiness today. I mostly spent the day helping my parents hang photographs up in our house that had been languishing far too long. Good news: Our walls are covered with photos! Really great ones, too. Trust me.

However, I did get up to one "new" thing today, and that's a film!

First of all, can we all agree that Yul Brynner might be close to--if not definitely--the epitome of awesome?

If you agreed with the above statement, go rent Michael Crichton's WestWorld.

Yes, I did just say Michael Crichton, Mr. Jurassic Park himself. Before all of that, he wrote and directed WestWorld, which is uncannily similar to Jurassic Park in a lot of ways but also strangely prophetic (it being made in the 70's). Where Jurassic Park has something to say about humans wanting to play God, WestWorld deals more with our assumption that technology can be adequately controlled. Think I, Robot or even Minority Report.

Basic plot: There's a $1000 per day adult amusement park split into three different "worlds": MedievalWorld, RomanWorld, and WestWorld. In these places there are androids that are programmed to give tourists the illusion of being in these eras, but are designed not to hurt the tourists in any way. Just give them a thrill. However, the guests are perfectly allowed to kill the robots, have sex with them, start fights with them, whatever. It's an airtight system, *almost* glitch-free, and it's all in good fun, right? What could go wrong?

Well, because Michael "Oh-my-gosh-a-Tyrannosaurus-is-chasing-us-in-this-perfectly-safe- dinosaur-amusement-park" Crichton is writing it, plenty can--and does--go wrong.

Though the plot sounds a little cliched, now, the funny part is that this is the movie that STARTED the cliche. Before "computer viruses" were even thought of, this movie was already talking about glitches spreading through technology like a disease. Pretty amazing.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Yul Brynner plays the uber-creepy Gunslinger robot who stalks our protagonists through WestWorld. Kind of Terminator-esque, the whole unstoppable robot thing. Pretty cool, too.

Anyway, it was a fun film. I suggest you go out and give it a try, if you're into old scifi. And Yul Brynner. Doy.

-The GLS