movies, music

286 – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1963, Rome // Berlin

The.Man.from.U.N.C.L.E.2015.posterThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a 2015 American action spy comedy film directed by Guy Ritchie and written by Ritchie and Lionel Wigram. It is based on the 1964 MGM television series of the same name, which was created by Ian FlemingNorman Felton and Sam Rolfe. The film stars Henry CavillArmie HammerAlicia VikanderElizabeth DebickiJared Harris and Hugh Grant.

#Possible_sequel

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1638355/

movies

0285 – Atomic Blonde (2017)

spacetime coordinates: (neo-)1989, Berlin

alternative_take_on_the_atomic_blonde_film_poster_by_butwin-dbd4qp5

Atomic Blonde is a 2017 American action spy thriller film directed by David Leitch, in his first solo directorial credit, and written by Kurt Johnstad. It is based on Antony Johnston and Sam Hart’s 2012 graphic novel The Coldest City, published by Oni Press, which revolves around a spy who has to find a list of double agents who are being smuggled into the West, on the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The film stars Charlize Theron and James McAvoy, with John GoodmanTil SchweigerEddie MarsanSofia Boutella, and Toby Jones in supporting roles.

atomic blonde

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2406566/

music, series

283 – Twin Peaks (TV Series 2017– )

Twin Peaks, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return or Twin Peaks: The Third Season, is an American mystery drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It is a continuation of the 1990–91 ABC series of the same name.

Twin-Peaks-gold

Set 25 years after the original Twin Peaks, the series focuses on a number of storylines, many of which are connected through association with FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan). It takes place in a variety of locations in addition to the fictional Washington town of Twin Peaks, including Las Vegas and South Dakota.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4093826/

movies, quotes

0280 – A Sound of Thunder (2005)

spacetime coordinates:  Chicago, 2055 > the cretaceous

A Sound of Thunder is a 2005 science fiction thriller film directed by Peter Hyams, and starring Edward BurnsCatherine McCormack and Ben Kingsley. It is a co-production film between the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318081/

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a classic example of “failed return” or “no return” cautionary tales is A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury published in 1952. on a personal level i love both the EC comic book adaptation with artwork by Al Williamson and the 2005 movie adaptation by Peter Hyams that was a box office flop and has receive mostly negative reviews by critics. the original story features one of the first instances of the butterfly effect, in particular as applied to time travel paradoxes and uncontrollable evolutionary/ political outcomes. this was way before it became a meteorologic mainstay of chaos theory after its use by Edward Lorenz to describe stormy ripple-like effects on nonlinear systems, seemingly very sensitive to minute initial conditions.

sound-of-thunder-ec-comics-1

the movie A Sound of Thunder features a time travel tourist agency from the year 2055. Time Safari Inc. is a chronocapitalist enterprise that organizes prehistoric retro-hunting expeditions to far-off epochs where dinosaurs roamed the earth. in order to do that, mankind is cheating on the big dinosaur mass extinction. long after humankind has killed most of the big game life on earth it tracks down other, more elusive and ferocious megafauna. the whole ‘hunting’ for the ultimate predator T-Rex (or an Allosaurus in the movie) turns out to be a very complex business. the paleo-poaching is based on hiding your acts under the cover of natural occurrences, trophy hunting pretending to be a mass extimction event. in order to fake the killing shot one must plan ahead every retro-killing move. practically Time Safari Inc. is cheating evolutionary history by trying to synchronize with ‘naturally’ occurring death events and extract entertainment value out of impossible inter-species encounters, normally separated by enormous gulfs of time. (…)

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geohistory becomes a perfect crime scene – where the time traveling expedition has to erase all traces – all influence that might otherwise impact the future with definite catastrophic (especially anthropic future) results. as often, humans are kind of role-playing hide and seek with natural selection. in this bizarre and strange inversion of the anthropocenic stratigraphic proof – masquerades as natural force, where a devious human causality is trying to hide behind a pre-human mass extinction event. it is almost the same principle guiding the climate denialist that pretends to hide behind previous catastrophic climate fluctuations.

sound of thunder

as one might expect, it’s a chronoclysm waiting to happen. all the clients of  Time Safari Inc. are prone to making mistakes, and not only do they leave marks (the absolute no 1 rule of time travel is non-intervention) but they also bring back something (the 2nd most important rule) basically invariably smuggling the prehuman past into the future. somehow a prehistoric dead butterfly makes it through the biofilter (a great example of what I would call New Wallace Lines) that is scanning every living reentry into the present, every possibility of warping the timelines. the alteration of the past produces a chronoclysm that manifests itself as a rhythmic, rapidly accelerating ‘time waves’ that transform the city and its denizens. more to the point in the Peter Hyams movie, the first divergence is a sudden appearance of teeming swarms of beetles and a gigantic strangler fig-like tree bursting through a Chicago high rise building, while the main characters Ryan and Rand make a narrow escape. it is by no means accidental that swarms and insect swarms in particular are associated with time waves. multiply proliferating and and highly distributed, swarms are chronoclysmic purveyors that help carry and suffer the radical effects of timeline distortion.

sound of thunder 3

there are reports of global increases in temperature and humidity and plant life seems to prosper, while this time warped climate change suddenly seems to be echoing sweltering hot pre-human conditions of long gone geological epochs and dead jungles. (…)

stefan tiron – Cosm/c Dr/ft & T3mporal D/vergence (2016)- EXIT THE PORTAL: The Strange Comeback to a Weird Earth