spacetime coordinates: 1962 – 1965 Boston
Boston Strangler is a 2023 American historical crime drama film written and directed by Matt Ruskin. It is based on the true story of the Boston Strangler, who in the 1960s killed 13 women in Boston. The film stars Keira Knightley as Loretta McLaughlin, the reporter who broke the story for the Boston Record American. Carrie Coon, Alessandro Nivola, Chris Cooper, David Dastmalchian, and Morgan Spector co-star. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2010, unnamed, isolated Mennonite colony
Women Talking is a 2022 American drama film written and directed by Sarah Polley. It is based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Miriam Toews, and inspired by real-life events that occurred at the Manitoba Colony, a remote and isolated Mennonite community in Bolivia. The film stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, and Frances McDormand, who is also a producer on the film. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2020’s remote cabin in rural Pennsylvania
Knock at the Cabin is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological horror film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. It is based on the 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay, the first adaptation of one of his works. The film stars Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, and Rupert Grint. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2021, Beijing / Newark, New Jersey (society is driven by a virtual Internet, which has created a degenerate effect called “nerve attenuation syndrome” or NAS. Megacorporations control much of the world, intensifying the class hostility already created by NAS.)
Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 cyberpunk film directed by Robert Longo in his directorial debut. Based on the 1981 story of the same name by William Gibson, it stars Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Takeshi Kitano, Henry Rollins, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier and Dolph Lundgren. Reeves plays the title character, a man with an overloaded, cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. The film portrays Gibson’s dystopian, prophetic view of 2021 with the world wracked by a tech-induced plague, awash with conspiracies, and dominated by megacorporations, with strong East Asian influences.
Shot on location in Canada, with Toronto and Montreal filling in for the Newark and Beijing settings, a number of local sites, including Toronto’s Union Station and Montreal’s skyline and Jacques Cartier Bridge, are prominently featured.
Gibson said that the film was “taken away and re-cut by the American distributor”. He described the original film as “a very funny, very alternative piece of work”, and said it was “very unsuccessfully chopped and cut into something more mainstream”. Gibson compared this to editing Blue Velvet into a mainstream thriller lacking any irony. Prior to its release, critic Amy Harmon identified the film as an epochal moment when cyberpunk counterculture would enter the mainstream.
In 2022, a black-and-white edition of the film, titled Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White, was released. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2032 North Carolina / 2102 London
The Peripheral is an American science fiction drama television series created by Scott B. Smith. Produced by Amazon, it is loosely based on the 2014 book of the same name, written by William Gibson. Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serve as executive producers, along with Athena Wickham, Steve Hoban, and Vincenzo Natali. Set roughly a decade in the future, with new technology that has changed society in subtle ways, a VR gamer is delivered a connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own.
In February 2023, the series was renewed for a second season. (wiki)
“The director films the street where he lives in St. Petersburg, for a whole year, documenting the changes caused by the celebration of its 300th anniversary.”
I have discovered the work of Russian director Viktor Kosakovskiy and hope to see many of his other features. This one was recommended a while ago by a friend in Germany and never managed to watch it till now. He is indeed one of the most accomplished documentarists alive. It is also based on the writings of E T A Hoffman who is credited on the imdb page. He made an elemental journey Aquarela into the world of high seas, of stormy oceans, huge immense city-sized icebergs crashing or the delicate and intimate lives of countryside animals such as pigs and chickens in Gunda.
“Scientific and technological advances have enabled us to zoom into the biological world. We can get down to the biomolecular scale, a domain where quantum phenomena can take place and therefore cannot be neglected.”
I think that whoever said photosynthesis is all known, been there done that, does not have a clue about how recent our understanding of such an important biological process has gained from zooming in and peering into happenings at smaller and smaller (picosecond, femtosecond) intervals. Suffice it to say that processes happening on this scale have to be scaled up or slowed down in order for us to even be able to acknowledge they exist since they completely overstep our own sensation of a specious present. It is highly ironic that some of the most efficient and most ancient energy uses happen on levels that are just now being explored or approached. It is this clean energy and high efficiency that escapes us and we are very far from trying to mimic it in a lab environment. Harnessing each moment the energy from our nearest star is much more complicated than we think even if it appears all-natural, all happening at once and without much thought. This molecular (and quantum) complexity is mind-boggling and also merits the effort of listening attentively because it comes from somebody trying hard to take us on a trip riding on a photon.
TimeSpace Warps 