Genre Favorites Blogfest: Or, How Trying to Narrow Down to One Choice is Painful

Alex J. Cavanaugh launched a blogfest for today, Sept 17, for 'Favorite Genre' for Movies, Music & Books
and the additional category of 'guilty pleasure' for one of the others.

On the one hand, it takes very little prodding to get me to give my opinions. Two reasons for this:

1. I am a Human, and it's one of the things humans love most: blurt their opinions, ideas & beliefs, preferably flung wide and far.  This might annoy some people, probably because it tangles up their own efforts at doing the same, but when you think about it, where would our species be without it? Dragging our cars on flat runners because the first fellow to think of a round wheel kept his trap shut, that's where.

2.  It is just fun to share this kind of stuff.

But on the other hand, these kinds of questions are very hard to answer.. my favorite genre?
I only get one choice?

I'm not saying I have multiple personalities, but the various moods I tend to have have established their own borders, treaties and sometimes uneasy relations.

But I'll give it a try.

Movies: Favorite Genre

Oh I'm already regretting trying to find one answer. But I said I'd try so I won't even discuss the narrowing-down process, since really, that'd be cheating wouldn't it? Slipping in other answers under pretense and all.

OK: Science Fiction. I'll hold that up as favorite.

One reason: Seeing STAR WARS on the big screen when I was a kid was my first 'religious experience'.
The opening scene, with the fleeing blockade runner soon followed by the star destroyer which kept going, and going, I could almost feel the weight of it above my head.  That was it, that unparalleled moment seeded me as forever a Sci-Fi fan.

Science fiction scratches the itch for a lot of moods actually:
action: the majority of sci-fi movies.. some greats: the Alien line of movies, Pitch Black
history & political intrigue: movies like Dune
philosophical & contemplative: 2001, Moon, Solaris, Blade Runner

Music: Favorite Genre

Good Gods, this is even harder to narrow down than movies!  This is just cruel.  Music maybe more than any other media is very much about moods.  I add music so often here I even have 'Music Video' as a searchable label.
Well, I committed, so here goes.

Hmm.. I don't even have a 'proper' label for this genre.  Call it 'Ethereal'.
Maybe again because it is similar to a religious experience.  Maybe humans have a need for such feelings, and as someone who's not fond of the majority of religions outside of an anthropological and historical context, we scratch that itch how we can.

Ethereal is how I term bands like Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, Loreena McKinnett, Stellamara, Sky Cries Mary, Azam Ali...

Play the video at the bottom for one of my favorite songs: it helped keep my sanity through some really rough times.

Books: Favorite Genre

And just about as hard as the other two. Tough competition, though narrower field than the other two, but maybe not surprising, I'll again pick Science Fiction.

Broadly defined I think Science Fiction could include not just the obvious such as Asimov & Bradbury but even some of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Science Fiction does what I will likely never be able to do, but really really want to: explore other worlds.
I enjoy exploring this one, but I'm not content with it: I desperately want to go to other planets, find other life forms, be introduced to alien civilizations.  Oh it hurts fiercely that I can't. What a crummy century to be born into: just enough knowledge and tech that we're pretty well done finding most of the places on our world, with enough ability to find other worlds, but not even close to what we need to contact them or get there.

So Science Fiction it is.  Really, I live in this world everyday, so for 'story time' I prefer to 'visit' other worlds.

Though my girlfriend tells me, since I think about & spend most of the day with minis, no, I really don't live in this world ;) But close enough I still want more!

Guilty Pleasure 

A tough one.  Not sure I feel guilty about anything I enjoy. What? Someone else not liking what I like should embarrass or shame me?  Hardly.  Not my fault they have such bad taste that they don't share mine.

So, for what I enjoy within these that would likely cause many to think it should be a guilty pleasure,
(since it seems many people think anything 'dated' is something to look down on)
I will go with 'Epic 50's to 70's fantasy/historic/spectacle films, for the Movies genre of course.

Maybe these don't all fit in one category for most people, but they do for me.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island, Cleopatra, Lion of the Desert, Spartacus, Jason and the Argonauts, so many more.  I just love the 'big sweeping adventure' movies of this era.  Great fun.

Enjoy the song- a piece of perfection: