0528 – The Aviator (2004)

spacetime coordinates: 1927–1947 California / Connecticut

The Aviator is a 2004 American epic biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by John Logan. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, and Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. Based on the 1993 non-fiction book Howard Hughes: The Secret Life by Charles Higham, the film depicts the life of Howard Hughes, an aviation pioneer and director of Hell’s Angels. The film portrays his life from 1927–1947 during which time Hughes became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).

In an article for the American Cinematographer, John Pavlus wrote: “The film boasts an ambitious fusion of period lighting techniques, extensive effects sequences and a digital re-creation of two extinct cinema color processes: two-color and three-strip Technicolor.” For the first 52 minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan blue; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to Scorsese, to emulate the look of early bipack color films, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned, emulating the available technology of the era. Similarly, many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and incorporated into the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/

0510 – Rocks in My Pockets (2014)

Rocks in My Pockets (Latvian: Akmeņi manās kabatās) is a 2014  2D / 3D animated film written, produced, directed and animated by Signe Baumane. It was originally created in English and a Latvian version was thereafter translated and produced. The film is based on true events about five women of the filmmaker’s family, including herself, and their battles with depression and suicide. For the entire film, approximately 30,000 drawings were created.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2961890/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks_in_My_Pockets

491

“In 1925,in ‘The Artist Now’, Kracauer notes that it is artists’task to represent the emptied world, the external life that appears, and that has no face and no content. Film,as thin strips of light and shadow play, is the perfect rendition of this surface of reality. It peels off the substance-less surface. It represents ‘the world of appearance’, and especially in terms of glamour and distraction. For Kracauer, the hope is that such stark and excessive representation may make the surface so shiny, so polished, that it flips into something else, so shiny that it is made available for reflection. But this is a gamble.”

365 – Magnolia (1999)

spacetime coordinates: 1999 San Fernando Valley

Magnolia is a 1999 American ensemble drama film written, co-produced and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.  The film is a mosaic of interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.

Themes

The film has an underlying theme of unexplained events, taken from the 1920s and 1930s works of Charles Fort. Fortean author Loren Coleman‘s 2001 book “Mysterious America: The Revised Edition” includes a chapter entitled “The Teleporting Animals and Magnolia“, addressing the film. The chapter discusses how one of Fort’s books is visible on the table in the library and the film’s end credit thanking Charles Fort.

Further information: Raining animals

wiki       imdb

294 – Maximum Overdrive (1986)

spacetime coordinates: June 1987. at the Dixie Boy Truck Stop just outside Wilmington, North Carolina. as the Earth crosses the tail of a comet, previously inanimate machines suddenly spring to life.

Maximum Overdrive is a 1986 American comedy horror film written and directed by Stephen King. The film stars Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, Laura Harrington, and Yeardley Smith. The screenplay was inspired by and loosely based on King’s short story “Trucks“, which was included in the author’s first collection of short stories, Night Shift.

Maximum Overdrive is King’s only directorial effort, though dozens of films have been based on his novels or short stories. The film contained black humor elements and a generally campy tone, which contrasts with King’s sombre subject matter in books. The film has a mid-1980s hard rock soundtrack composed entirely by the group AC/DC, King’s favorite band. AC/DC’s album Who Made Who was released as the Maximum Overdrive soundtrack. (wiki)

imdb

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1922 (2017)

spacetime coordinates:  1922  Hemingford Home, Nebraska

1922 is a 2017 American horror-drama film written and directed by Zak Hilditch and based on Stephen King‘s novella of the same name.

imdb

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Cell (2016)

spacetime coordinates: 2010s New England 

Cell is a 2016 American science fiction horror film based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The film is directed by Tod Williams, produced by John Cusack, with a screenplay by King and Adam Alleca. The film stars Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, and Isabelle Fuhrman.

imdb

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*ALL SK’s BOOKS TIE TOGETHER AND JOIN ANOTHER UNIVERSE, RUN BY AN ARCH ENEMY, NAMED Randall Flagg. Or other names

186 – The Artist (2011)

spacetime coordinates:  Hollywood, between 1927 and 1932

The Artist is a 2011 French romantic comedy-drama in the style of a black-and-white silent film.  written, directed, and co-edited by Michel Hazanavicius, produced by Thomas Langmann, and stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo.

Hazanavicius : The Artist was made as a love letter to cinema, and grew out of my (and all of my cast and crew’s) admiration and respect for movies throughout history. It was inspired by the work of Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Lubitsch, Murnau and Wilder.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1655442/

152 – The Lost City of Z (2016)

spacetime coordinates: Ireland 1905 > England 1924  //  uncharted eastern Bolivia 1906, uncharted Amazonia 1912, 1925 // Battle of the Somme, France 1916

The Lost City of Z is a 2016 American biographical adventure drama film written and directed by James Gray, based on the 2009 book of the same name by David Grann. It describes real events surrounding British explorer Percy Fawcett who was sent to Bolivia and later made several attempts to find an ancient lost city in the Amazon and disappeared in 1925 along with his son on an expedition.

imdb.com     wikipedia

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On 21 March 2004, the British newspaper The Observer reported that television director Misha Williams, who had studied Fawcett’s private papers, believed that Fawcett had not intended to return to Britain but rather meant to found a commune in the jungle based on theosophical principles and the worship of his son Jack.  –  (wikipedia)

James Gray’s tremendous The Lost City Of Z finds meaning in the unknown: “an operatic drama, an adventure saga, an anti-colonialist critique, a veiled artistic self-portrait, and, yes, even a revisionist grail legend. “