1333 -Nyócker! (2004)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Józsefváros – Budapest, Hungary

The District! (Hungarian: Nyócker!) is a 2004 Hungarian caricaturistic animated film directed by Áron Gauder. Its original title is a shortened colloquial form of nyolcadik kerület, the eighth district of Budapest, also known as Józsefváros, including an infamous neighbourhood where the film takes place. It is sometimes labelled as the Hungarian South Park.

The animated technique for this movie was rather innovative. The artists took 350 headshot pictures of each actor and used these photos for the expressing emotions and the animation of the heads. The bodies were hand drawn.

The film displays the Hungarian, Roma, Chinese and Arab dwellers and their alliances and conflicts in a humorous way, embedded into a fictive story of a few schoolchildren’s oil-making time-travel and a Romeo and Juliet-type love of a Roma guy towards a white girl. (wiki)

imdb

---

Animal Cannibals – Yozsefváros

---

1327 – In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

timespace coordinates: 1990’s New Hampshire

“reality isn’t what it used to be…”

In the Mouth of Madness is a 1994 American horror film directed and scored by John Carpenter and written by Michael De Luca. It stars Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow, David Warner and Charlton Heston. Informally, the film is the third installment in Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy, preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness.

The film pays tribute to the work of seminal horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, with many references to his stories and themes. Its title is a play on Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness, and insanity plays as great a role in the film as it does in Lovecraft’s fiction. The opening scene depicts Trent’s confinement to an asylum, with the bulk of the story told in flashback, a common technique of Lovecraft. Reference is made to Lovecraftian settings and details (such as a character that shares the name of Lovecraft’s Pickman family). Sutter Cane’s novels have similar titles to H.P. Lovecraft stories : The Whisperer of the Dark (The Whisperer in Darkness), The Thing in the Basement (The Thing on the Doorstep), Haunter out of Time (The Haunter of the Dark/The Shadow Out of Time), and The Hobbs End Horror (The Dunwich Horror), the latter also referencing Hobbs End underground station from Nigel Kneale‘s Quatermass and the Pit.

The film can also be seen as a reference to Stephen King, who, like Lovecraft, writes horror fiction set in New England hamlets. (wiki)

imdb

1324 – Strange Days (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1999, turn of the century (near-future) Los Angeles (racial war zone / New Year’s Eve party) 

Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore. Set in the last two days of 1999, the film follows the story of a black marketeer of SQUID discs, recordings that allow a user to experience the recorder’s memories and physical sensations, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the murder of a prostitute.

Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism, abuse of power, rape, and voyeurism. Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration after incidents such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict.

Strange Days was a commercial failure and almost derailed Bigelow’s career (…) Nevertheless, the film’s critical standing has improved over the years, with many fans feeling that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics.

The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library. Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event. The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as “all the cyber-techno bands they could garner”.

In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units to that of first-person shooters or cellphone videos on YouTube. He added that events such as Jeriko One’s murder and the subsequent coverup of the crime contribute to activist movements like Black Lives Matter, and that their media documentation amplifies their reception and consequences. (read more: Themes)

wiki   /   imdb

1322 – Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

timespace coordinates: East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later (Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.)

Good Bye Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany; the mother (Saß) is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the November revolution. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son (Brühl) attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism.

Ostalgie is a neologism for the nostalgia for a communist past which is a common theme in Good Bye, Lenin! (read more) 

---

wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes   /   Sandmann Lied (sandmännchen – kosmonaut)

1318 – Holes (2003)

timespace coordinates: Mid-1800s Latvia > 1890s – 1900s – 1990s (juvenile detention) Camp Green Lake, Texas Holes is a 2003 American adventure comedy-drama film directed by Andrew Davis, and based on the 1998 novel of the same name by Louis Sachar. Sachar also penned the screenplay for the film. The film stars Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson and Shia LaBeouf. (wiki)

imdb

 

1313

1312 – 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

timespace coordinates: early 1990s Tochigi (snow-filled Iwafune)/ 1999 Tanegashima/ 2008 Tokyo5 Centimeters per Second (Japanese: 秒速5センチメートル Hepburn: Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru) is a 2007 Japanese animated coming-of-age romantic drama film produced, written and directed by Makoto Shinkai.

The film consists of three segments: “Cherry Blossom” (桜花抄 Ōkashō), “Cosmonaut” (コスモナウト Kosumonauto), and “5 Centimeters per Second” (秒速5センチメートル Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru), totaling about an hour of runtime.

As in Shinkai’s previous works, Tenmon composed this film’s soundtrack.

A novelization of 5 Centimeters per Second was released in November 2007, expanding on the film (Novel). In the July 2010 issue of the manga anthology Afternoon, a manga adaptation started serialization, illustrated by Seike Yukiko (Manga). (wiki)

imdb