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The Tsar of Love and Techno
The Tsar of Love and Techno
Anthony Marra | 2017 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"In a politically fractious America in which “bearing witness” has been attacked as a motive for art in recent years, emerging writers have nonetheless written boldly across divides of class, ethnic identity, and gender. Outstanding among these has been Anthony Marra, a young American author whose first two books are set mainly in Russia and the former Soviet Union. In A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marra’s debut novel, three survivors of the Second Chechen War band together in an abandoned hospital. In 2015’s The Tsar of Love and Techno, linked short stories follow various characters’ dreams and dashed hopes from the 1930s to the present, and then beyond."

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Eagle Eye (2008)
Eagle Eye (2008)
2008 | Drama, Mystery
5
6.3 (7 Ratings)
Movie Rating
2008 conspiracy techno-thriller starring Shia LaBeouf (remember him?) and Michelle Monaghan, as two strangers who get pulled into a high-tech plot by a female voice in the other end of the phone.

This might sound a bit strange, but remember The Matrix?

The bit where Neo is receiving instructions from Morpheus on how to escape from his office workplace?

That's the type of thing going on here: do this. Do that. Jump now. Get on this train. Drive at speed straight ahead (with all the lights turning green). And so forth and so on...

Maybe also a touch of Skynet about it all...
  
Streets of Rage II
Streets of Rage II
Action/Adventure, Fighting
Great graphics (1 more)
Amazing soundtrack!
Epic Beat 'em up
This is a brilliant follow-up game to the first Streets of Rage title. It has improved on the original in every way. The graphics are great, bright and colourful. The characters are quite large on screen and have even more moves. The bosses are even better and varied. There are quite a lot of references to Streefighter 2 in terms of some of the moves and character design.
The soundtrack is awesome, even today it's probably considered one of the best games for its music. A great mix of dance, techno. Widely considered as one of the best beat 'em up games ever made. It runs Final Fight very close. Still available on the next gen consoles as a Sega classic game.
  
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Erika Kehlet (21 KP) rated Micro in Books

Feb 21, 2018  
Micro
Micro
2
6.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I really wanted to like this book, but the dialog was so painful I almost didn't finish it. The descriptions and action scenes felt too choppy. There were more continuity issues and contradictions than I can count (for one, thing, if you are out of visual range of something, you can't look back in the next sentence and see what said something was doing!) and by the time we're 90% into the book I KNOW who Karen is and there is no reason to refer to her or any other character by their full names anymore, at least not so frequently.

The basic idea was good - and it had the potential to be an entertaining, if far-fetched, techno-thriller, but I couldn't recommend this even to die-hard Michael Crichton fans.
  
PL
Pirate Latitudes
4
4.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Michael Crichton's last full work, and in a move unusual for an author best known for techno-thrillers, this novel is actually a historical adventure.

Although it is not the first time he has dabbled in the genre (see also The Great Train Robbery and Eaters of the Dead), I felt that his relative lack of experience of said genre showed: one needs only compare this to a work by Bernard Cornwell, for instance.

I suppose It is possible that the novel was finished but not completed, if you know what I mean, and I also got the feeling that he was trying to jump on the Pirates of the Caribbean (albeit without the magic!) bandwagon with this novel, also set in the Caribbean during the time of Charles II
  
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Miguel Covarrubias (143 KP) rated Maniac in TV

Apr 23, 2019  
Maniac
Maniac
2018 | Comedy, Drama
Comedic timing is brilliant, cast is fantastic, visuals aren't distracting, great concept dealing with coping, Fun (0 more)
the wierdness almost becomes detracting (0 more)
The Techno-Thriller-Comedy that Nobody knew we needed
We unexpectedly loved maniac. It had a lot to say about fantasy vs. reality. The beautiful modern take (extremely loosely) on Don Quixote had a lot to say to the current era that we find ourselves in. A near future almost hopeless setting shines a lot on how we currently attempt to cope with our reality by escaping into our virtual realities. It's especially difficult on millennials who are trying to overcome the arrested development that we've been placed in. We had too much of a good thing, technology, and haven't quite figured out how to balance virtual with analog reality. 9/10 well worth your time!
  
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Chino Moreno recommended Black Noise by Pantha Du Prince in Music (curated)

 
Black Noise by Pantha Du Prince
Black Noise by Pantha Du Prince
2010 | Techno
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"If I had to pick my favourite record of this year it'd be Black Noise, I've certainly listened to it the most this year. It's another of those records that I can listen to whatever I'm doing - it's borderline background music if you know what I mean, but sometimes if you just put it on really loud it's totally hypnotic. I never thought I'd like techno music, but this really brought me in. Normally when I hear 4.4 beats I just put it in one category, but the sonics of this are amazing - bits of it sound like little pieces of metal, there are all these organic, earthy sounds. It's programmed noise. There's a dark edge to it, but not too dark. Also I love the artwork, it really pairs with the music, really made me listen to it in greater depth."

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Aurora recommended track Rez by Underworld in Dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld in Music (curated)

 
Dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld
Dubnobasswithmyheadman by Underworld
1994 | Techno
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

Rez by Underworld

(0 Ratings)

Track

"I discovered this song and this band a year ago, quite randomly. I love going to rave parties alone and of course I don’t drink, because I don’t want to be vulnerable to an attack and get into any trouble. I don’t drink, but I stay safe and I just dance. “I just really love to dance. It’s kind of like a workout for me, because I’m very energetic on stage. I was at a rave party in France on a boat and I heard this song and I had to ask someone ‘What song is this?’ and I found it later. “Now I listen to it sometimes when I cook - everything techno is my cooking song. The last meal I was cooking and listening to it with was waffles I think. I have a new waffle maker and it can cook two waffles at a time."

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Unfaithfully Yours (1984)
Unfaithfully Yours (1984)
1984 | Comedy, Romance
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"As narrated in his highly entertaining autobiography, over the course of his life Preston Sturges had a long string of failed schemes, inventions, films, and affairs. And it seems like he had the great fortune to find it all funny. The climax of Unfaithfully Yours, when every possible minor physical thing goes wrong in Rex Harrison’s murder plot, isn’t just perfect circus-like slapstick. It’s a downright celebration of the ways that record players, telephones, wicker chairs, and gloves are these ridiculous, weird contraptions we can barely use competently. We aren’t the masters of the physical world; it’s really a wonder we survive out there. This is the huge insight Unfaithfully Yours has over a film like Modern Times or any other techno-dystopia. Like, sure, sometimes machines crush the souls of humans into their perfectly calibrated gears. But most of the time, it’s a miracle if they fucking work."

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Relic (Pendergast, #1)
Relic (Pendergast, #1)
8
8.6 (7 Ratings)
Book Rating
I think I first read this back in the early to mid 90's, after the success of <i>Jurassic Park</i> (novel and film), but before <i>The Lost World</i>.

I remember thinking at the time how it would make a good movie due to the way it is written (very 'Michael Crichton'ish); it was later converted into such. Unfortunately, that film completely veered off the track from the novel, sharing only the title and a few key characters and settings - it would have worked so much better had they stayed truer to the source.

The novel is set primarily in and around New York's Museum of Natural History, leading up to (and in) the grand opening of a major new exhibition on superstition. There are rumors of a 'museum beast' in the museum, and I think I'm giving nothing away when I say that these prove to be more than rumors ...

As already stated, this is very like Michael Crichton's blend of techno-thriller so, if you like that, you should also like this.