By all accounts, Peter Tchaikovsky was an emotionally troubled man. He suffered from nervous depression, which was heightened by the constant social presssure to hide his homosexuality. The composer had affairs with women and even married Antonina Miliukova -- with disastrous emotional effects to bot

Dark, Dramatic, Elegant, Grand, Lush, Psychological, Romantic music, Voluminous

The work of Philip K. Dick represents some of the most influential writing to come out of the 1950s and 1960s. His explorations into the tenuous nature of reality have influenced thinkers across disciplines and genres. Recognizing that reality is a construct -- he disturbingly called it a "consensual

Agitated, Cyberpunk fiction, Dark, Distorted, Dystopic, Fantastic, Layered, Machinistic, Noir / pulp fiction, Religious, Trippy

"Felliniesque" -- even if you have never watched a scrap of his film, this adjective summons up a world of oddity, magnificence, and pathos that testifies to Federico Fellini's creative genius. Initially part of the Italian Neorealist wave, he soon veered towards an idiosyncratic style all his own. F

Dark, Epic, Perverse, Polychromatic, Post-war italian film, Surreal

After Goebbels made him an offer he couldn't refuse without unpleasant repercussions, celebrated German director Fritz Lang fled the new Nazi regime rather than supervise National Socialist Party motion pictures. Lang, a member-in-good-standing of the German Gothic school of Expressionist cinema, cut

Dark, Dystopia and its discontents, Dystopic, Germans in hollywood, Machinistic, Mathematical, Urban