Below is the Eastern State Penitentiary, where our crazed antihero is sent in 12 Monkeys. Built as a reformist prison by Quakers in the nineteenth century, it was supposed to "cure" people of criminality by isolating them in monk-like cells. Unfortunately, it just made people crazier. The peeling paint looks almost like rotting skin.

And here is the forbidding Alton Estate, used in book-burning dystopia Fahrenheit 451. Though these buildings were originally considered stately and regal, you can see why the filmmakers thought they might also look like the barracks-like housing of a fascist country.

Want to see a dozen more intriguing scifi film settings? Check out Oobject's gallery.

The dark secret of Quintet is that it's sort of a crappy game. Here Newman is, having lost his entire family to the postapocalyptic Rottweilers and stab-happy Quintet players, and he's finally killed his last opponent in the game. And it only now occurs to him to find out what the prize is. Which is, basically, bragging rights. You get to hang around the crappy parlor with the guy in the zany felt hat and talk about all the people you scragged. I would at least want a sticker, or maybe a slice of blueberry pie. With whipped cream.

"Game? This wasn't meant to be a game! Never!" Rollerball was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, with its Death Race-y dystopian take on the sports movie. I didn't even bother to see the recent remake, so I have no idea if it was as awful as I'd feared. When we finally get around to doing our listing of the top 10 dystopian skate movies, Rollerball will definitely be in the top five.

In Soul Code, an older woman backs up her memories. And then she restores the backup into the brain of a much younger woman. And we discover how that brain-swap affects both women's relationships. (Not well, judging from the hints Linsberger drops.) It's sort of Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom meets The Handmaid's Tale.

Linsberger says the idea came from an interview with Chobot that turned into a brainstorming session. The movie's special effects will be less about creating a startling virtual world, and more about representing the emotional states of the characters.

So why will this movie be such a downer? Linsberger is still worried that artificial intelligences could turn into an oppressive Master Control Program that will make us play frisbee for our lives. But he's also scared of the Singularity, the moment when AIs supposedly become more advanced than humans. He wants us to think about how to preserve our humanity in a world where consciousness can be simulated as well as recorded. Soul Code could be a throwback to beware-technology movies of the 1970s like Rollerball and Westworld instead of building on Tron, which arguably helped replace them. [SFSignal]