timespace coordinates: 1960s/70s China (during the Cultural Revolution)/ 1985 North Atlantic / present day United Kingdom
3 Body Problem is an American science fiction television series created by David Benioff, D. B. Weiss and Alexander Woo, loosely based on the Hugo Award winning Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It is the second live-action adaptation after the 2023 Chinese television series. It premiered on Netflix on March 21, 2024. (wiki)
They Shot the Piano Player (Spanish: Dispararon al pianista) is a 2023 adult animated docudrama film directed by Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. Centred around the real-life disappearance and presumed murder of Brazilian pianist Francisco Tenório Júnior in 1976, the film stars Jeff Goldblum as an American music journalist investigating Tenório’s case.
The film’s soundtrack includes music by João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vinicius de Moraes and Paulo Moura, with some of the musicians also appearing in the voice cast as themselves testifying about Tenório’s importance and influence as part of Goldblum’s investigation. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: Set in 1962, the series’ main setting is a parallel universe where the Axis powers of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan have won World War II in 1946 after Giuseppe Zangara successfully assassinates United States President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, creating a series of developments that include the Germans dropping an atomic bomb on Washington, D.C. (now renamed “District of Contamination”). The German Reich extends to Europe and Africa and the Empire of Japan comprises Asia, but most of the series is set in the former US and in Germany proper.
Western North America, now part of the “Japanese Pacific States”, is occupied by the technologically less-advanced Shōwa-period Empire of Japan, which has assimilated its formerly American citizens into Japanese culture, although high-class ethnic Japanese are extremely fascinated by pre-War American culture. Japan’s Trade and Science ministers work in the Pacific States’ capital, San Francisco. The Japanese rulers subject non-Japanese people to racial discrimination and grant them fewer rights.
Eastern and Midwestern North America is a colony controlled by the Greater Nazi Reich (GNR) under an aging Führer Adolf Hitler. The colony, headed by a “Reichsmarschall of North America”, is commonly referred to as “Nazi America” or “the American Reich” and its capital is New York City. The Nazis continue to hunt minorities and euthanize the physically and mentally sick. The superior technology of the Germans is highlighted by the use of video phones and Concorde-like “rockets” for intercontinental travel.
A Neutral Zone, which encompasses the Rocky Mountains, serves as a buffer zone between the Japanese Pacific States and Nazi America due to Cold War–like tensions between the German and Japanese blocs. Another buffer zone is present in the Urals.
Films collected by the eponymous “Man in the High Castle” show views of numerous other Earths, including some where the Allies were victorious, some featuring executed Allied leaders (such as Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin), and some where an American resistance is doing well.
The Man in the High Castle is an American dystopian alternate history television series created for streaming service Amazon Prime Video. It was created by Frank Spotnitz and produced by Amazon Studios, Ridley Scott‘s Scott Free Productions (with Scott serving as executive producer), Headline Pictures, Electric Shepherd Productions, and Big Light Productions. The series is based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1962 novel of the same name. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 1960s Massachusetts, the story trails the relationship between two women working at a juvenile detention facility
Eileen is a 2023 psychological thriller film directed by William Oldroyd, based on the 2015 novel of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Luke Goebel. It stars Thomasin McKenzie, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Owen Teague, and Anne Hathaway. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 1920’s Cambridge, Göttingen, Switzerland > 1930’s California, 1940’s Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1950’s Washington, D.C.
Oppenheimer (/ˈɒpənhaɪmər/ OP-ən-hy-mər) is a 2023 epic biographical thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist credited with being the “father of the atomic bomb” for his role in the Manhattan Project—the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons.
Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film chronicles the career of Oppenheimer, with the story predominantly focusing on his studies, his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II, and his eventual fall from grace due to his 1954 security hearing.
The film also stars Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife “Kitty”, Matt Damon as head of the Manhattan Project Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as U.S. Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss, and Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s communist lover Jean Tatlock. The ensemble supporting cast includes Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh.
accuracy and omissions // classifications and censorship
Oppenheimer’s simultaneous release with Warner Bros.’s Barbie led to the Barbenheimer cultural phenomenon, which encouraged audiences to see both films as a double feature. (wiki)
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: Original Timeline: 1955 US > 1987 Tokyo > 2013 Baltimore, Maryland > 2015 Chechnya, NY > 2016 Manhattan on the day of the Chinese New Year > 2017 (the M5-10 virus kills 7 billion people) > 2030’s Western VII Quarantine Zone / Spearhead > 2041 – 2043 Project Splinter // Alternate 2015 / 2043 // Third Timeline: 2016 <> 2044 // Fourth Timeline: 1925 – 1944 US – 1950’s NY / 1961 East Berlin / 2044 <> 1971 – 1975 US / 2044 <> 2016 / 2020 Spearhead / 2044 // Fifth Timeline: 1852 American frontier / 1891 London / 1917 – 1922 (fr) <> 2045 <> 1940 France / 1953 Hope Valley / 1989 US / 2046, 2047 / 2163 / 1491 /// Titan (a massive time-traveling industrial facility) __detailed timeline here__
12 Monkeys is an American television series on Syfy created by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett. It is a science fiction mystery drama with a time traveling plot loosely adapting the 1995 film of the same name, which was written by David and Janet Peoples and directed by Terry Gilliam, itself being inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 featurette La Jetée; the series credits Marker and both Peoples for their original works.
In the series, Aaron Stanford and Amanda Schull star as James Cole and Dr. Cassandra “Cassie” Railly, two strangers destiny brought together on a mission to use time travel to stop the destructive plans of the enigmatic organization “Army of the 12 Monkeys”. Kirk Acevedo, Noah Bean, Todd Stashwick, Emily Hampshire, Tom Noonan, Scottie Thompson, Alisen Down, Brooke Williams and Barbara Sukowa also star. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 