For the last few years, there is a Film Festival in the Prater during July.  Older films are featured here and many of them are black and white. This year’s theme is science fiction and they’re showing everything from The Forbidden Planet to Star Wars on the big screen.

I caught two films while I was here: the first was Alphaville which was French with German subtitles. I had a little trouble following this one even though I got the basic gist of it. The fact that the main character was an American portraying many of the accustomed stereotypes was quite amusing.

Tonight I saw Westworld, which was written and directed by Michael Crichton. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Westworld is part of an amusement park where people can pay top dollar to spend a few weeks in the Old West. It is populated by highly sophisticated and life-like robots that have all the functions of a normal human beings. Patrons can even go so far as to shoot and “kill” these robots in realistic gunfights without fear of harm.  Everything is going fine until the robots start acting strangely…cue sinister music.

Both nights were perfect for outdoor movie watching under the Riesenrad.