Recommend me some mind expanding thought provoking existence questioning films/tv/books!

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Hi everyone

Quite a wide ranging brief here.

My nephew has reached the grand old age of 17 and has started to question everything around him and the nature of existence etc., as you do at that age (well I did anyway :p).

He's latched onto Lady Gaga as his source of inspiration and spent several animated minutes the other day trying to explain away her choice of clothing and how most of her music was written while she was on drugs.

In that respect I only see a very well oiled and effective PR machine rolling along.

So...I want to give him some ideas to really get his brain around and do some deep thinking on and wondered what you would recommend.

He's very interested in theoretical physics but only from what he has seen on Star Trek and heard a bit about, worm holes, time travel etc.

He's also a big sci-fi buff and some of the best concepts are tackled in sci-fi.

I probably haven't explained what I mean very well but it's hours past my bedtime and I'm off to sleep before I see pixies dancing across the top of my monitor...it's such a ridiculous concept, my monitor isn't wide enough for dancing on.

Anyway...things I've thought of so far:

Books:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
2001 A Space Odyssey et al
K-Pax
Death From The Skies [factual]
Stephen Hawking books [factual]
Kubla Khan [poem]

TV:
Dark Skies
Battlestar Galactica
X-Files
The Second Coming

Films
The Matrix
Donnie Darko
Dark City

Comics:
Marvel Ultimate Galactus
Watchmen
V for Vendetta

Music (more to drift away to)
The Doors - Riders on the Storm
Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven


I'm can't think of anything else off the top of my head and would gladly welcome any suggestions!

Thanks! :)
 
If you've watched Dark City make sure you watch The Thirteenth Floor as well.

I'm afraid you need to approach these things in a progressive manner tho and you can't force a horse to drink and all that, until you've caught onto some of the concepts and started taking onboard the significance a lot of the depth of other aspects will be lost.
 
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Films that spring to mind: Pi, Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Sunshine

Music: The first The Mars Volta album is pretty sci-fi, maybe some Joker or Starkey if you need something that sounds like the Blade Runner soundtrack with some nice sub-bass. Beans, Anti-Pop Consortium and Deltron 3030 = awesome sci-fi hip-hip.
 
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Book-wise
Anything by William Gibson, especially Neuromancer!

Television
X-Files pretty much nails it.

Music
Mind.In.A.Box - That's very sci-fi orientated, throughout 3 albums its telling a story. Whoever listens to them needs to be open minded because its definitely not mainstream.

Films
Ghost in the Shell
Immortal - 2004
Johnny Mnemonic
 
Books:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
1984 by George Orwell

Films:

Lost in Translation
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
American Beauty

I'll post more as I think of them.
 
Music
Tool - Lateralus
Tool - 10,000 Days

Films
Mulholland Drive
Pontypool

Books
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Diceman - Luke Rhinehart
 
Many of the obvious ones have been suggested but Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is well worth a read, some reckon it to be better than 1984 and while I'm not among them it is a great book.

I'd also recommend The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - I can't recommend his writings on religion as I've never read anything other than excerpts but in terms of biology he's great.

The books by Richard Feynman such as Surely, You're Joking! Mr Feynmann are also entertaining, your nephew may get no great insights into the World from them but how he thought about things and got involved was interesting.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, fantastic stuff! :D

I shall gather what I can and pass it on. As Rroff says I can't force anything, but considering he watched the full seven seasons of Star Trek TNG that I lent him over half term in a week :eek: I think he'll be keen!

Anyone else any thoughts?
 
semi-pro waster said:
I'd also recommend The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins - I can't recommend his writings on religion as I've never read anything other than excerpts but in terms of biology he's great.
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This reminded me of the recent Adam Curtis series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, which touched on this.
So include the works of Adam Curtis. The first time I watched The Way of All Flesh it blew my mind.

JBod said:
Easy answer this: Dune -Frank Herbert.

/thread
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Book, absolutely. Film is a car crash.
 
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