677 – My Winnipeg (2007)

timespace coordinates: 20th century Snowy, Sleep-Walking Winnipeg

My Winnipeg is a 2007 film directed and written by Guy Maddin with dialogue by George Toles. Described by Maddin as a “docu-fantasia,” that melds “personal history, civic tragedy, and mystical hypothesizing,” the film is a surrealist mockumentary about Winnipeg, Maddin’s home town. A New York Times article described the film’s unconventional take on the documentary style by noting that it “skates along an icy edge between dreams and lucidity, fact and fiction, cinema and psychotherapy.”

Maddin also released a book titled My Winnipeg (Coach House Books, 2009). Maddin’s book contains the film’s narration as a main text surrounded by annotations, including outtakes, marginal notes and digressions, production stills, family photos, and miscellaneous material. The book contains a “Winnipeg Map” by artist Marcel Dzama featuring such fictional attractions as “The Giant Squid of the Red [River],” various poster designs for the film, and short articles about working with Maddin by Andy Smetanka, Darcy Fehr, and Caelum Vatnsdal. Maddin also includes an angry e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, collages and notebooks pages, and an X-ray of the dog Spanky from the film. The book also includes an interview with Maddin’s mother Herdis, conducted by Ann Savage, and an interview with Maddin conducted by Michael Ondaatje. Maddin’s publisher offers the book with or without a DVD of the film, distributed by Seville Pictures.

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675 – yesterday evening

 

668 – Ready Player One (2018)

spacetime coordinates: 2045 Columbus, Ohio

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cultural references

The film was noted to have significant differences from the book, with some critics calling the film’s plot an improvement over the source material. 🙂

658

0657 – Mind Game (2004)

Mind Game (マインド・ゲーム) is a 2004 Japanese animated feature film based on Robin Nishi’s manga of the same name. It was planned, produced and primarily animated by Studio 4°C and adapted and directed by Masaaki Yuasa in his directorial debut, with chief animation direction and model sheets by Yūichirō Sueyoshi, art direction by Tōru Hishiyama and groundwork and further animation direction by Masahiko Kubo.

It is unusual among features other than anthology films in using a series of disparate visual styles to tell one continuous story. As Yuasa commented in a Japan Times interview, “Instead of telling it serious and straight, I went for a look that was a bit wild and patchy. I think that Japanese animation fans today don’t necessarily demand something that’s so polished. You can throw different styles at them and they can still usually enjoy it.”

The film received a cult audience and was well received, winning multiple awards worldwide, and has been praised by directors Satoshi Kon and Bill Plympton. Allegedly, according to Tekkonkinkreet director Michael Arias, there was consideration for a release of the film on R1 DVD but it fell through. The film is now available to stream on Netflix in Australia as of 2016. GKIDS announced that they licensed the film, which will be streamed on VRV Select on December 29, 2017 followed by a limited theatrical run in February 2018 and a home video release in spring 2018. (wiki)

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0641 – La planète sauvage / Fantastic Planet (1973)

Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète sauvage, Czech: Divoká planeta, lit. The Wild Planet) is a 1973 animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux and written by Laloux and Roland Topor. Topor also completed the film’s production design and it was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague. The entire animation team was composed of women.

The film was an international co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia (The animation was started in Prague but had to be moved to Paris to avoid interference by the Communist authorities who were in power at the time).

The allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens (blue Draags) who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by French writer Stefan Wul. (wiki)   imdb   Interpretations

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640 – Rabbit (2005)

A modern mystery film of lost innocence, greed and nature. A dreamlike but dark story of lost innocence and the random justice of nature, told with curious images from a distant childhood. A selection of 1950s educational stickers, discovered in a provincial junkshop 20 years ago, provide the ingredients for this adult fairytale.  Once they were new, delivering a simple message to those also young. Like us, however, they have grown older and now present a more complex meaning. Rabbit tells a tale of lost innocence, greed and the random justice of nature. When a boy and girl find an idol in the stomach of a rabbit, its magical abilities lead to riches. But for how long?

BACKGROUND INFO

Run Wrake found an envelope in a secondhand shop in the 1980s that contained sheets of educational stickers illustrated by Geoffrey Higham and published by Philip & Tacey Limited in the 1950s. The image of the idol was the primary inspiration for Rabbit’s storyline.

https://runwrake.com/       imdb