timespace coordinates: Australia’s Northern Territory frontier in the 1920’s
Sweet Country is a 2017 Australian film directed by Warwick Thornton. It is set in 1929 in the outback of the Northern Territory, Australia.
Month: July 2018
692 – The Happening (2008)
The Happening is a 2008 psychological horror-thriller film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and Betty Buckley. The film follows a man, his wife, his best friend and his friend’s daughter as they try to escape from an inexplicable natural disaster.
Shyamalan told the New York Daily News: “We’re making an excellent B movie, that’s our goal”. Some critics enjoyed it because of this. Glenn Whipp said, “Tamping down the self-seriousness in favor of some horrific silliness, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening plays as a genuinely enjoyable B-movie for anyone inclined (or able) to see it that way”.
Joseph J. Foy, professor of politics and popular culture, describes Shyamalan’s film as an expression of “post-environmentalism” in which traditional paradigmatic politics are replaced with a call for the world to “embrace a revolutionary reevaluation of wealth and prosperity not in terms of monetary net worth or material possessions, but in terms of overall well-being”. (wiki)
691 – The Wonder of Weeds (2011)
“…when something does get labeled alien, an entire industry will spring up dedicated to its destruction.”
Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins celebrates the humble and sometimes hated plants we call weeds. He discovers that there is no such thing as a weed, botanically speaking, and that in fact what we call a weed has changed again and again over the last three hundred years. Chris uncovers the story of our changing relationship with weeds – in reality, the story of the battle between wilderness and civilisation. He finds out how weeds have been seen as beautiful and useful in the past, and sees how their secrets are being unlocked today in order to transform our crops.
Finally, Chris asks whether, in our quest to eliminate Japanese Knotweed or Rhododendron Ponticum, we are really engaged in an arms race we can never win. We remove weeds from our fields and gardens at our peril.
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”
Inversnaid (1881)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
690
0689 – Furious aka Legend of Kolovrat (2017)
timespace coordinates: 13th century Russia
Furious, also known as Legend of Kolovrat (Russian: Легенда о Коловрате, translit. Legenda o Kolovrate), is a 2017 Russian historical fantasy film about the Ryazan knight Evpaty Kolovrat, It is directed by Dzhanik Fayziev & Ivan Shurkhovetskiy and stars newcomer Ilya Malakov, Polina Chernyshova, Aleksei Serebryakov, Aleksandr Ilyin Jr. and Yulia Khlynina in supporting roles.
Film is based on the period when Russia was under control of the Golden Horde. Ryazan knight Evpaty Kolovrat is the leader of the squad, which decides to fight back Batu Khan , who divided Russia.
The plot is based on The Tale of the Destruction of Riazan, a medieval military tale about the capture of the city of Ryazan by the Mongols in 1237 and is one of the best sources of the Mongol invasion of Russia. (wiki)
688 – IN DEFENSE OF PLANTS
TimeSpace Warps 