0752 – Hereditary (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Utah

Hereditary is a 2018 American horror film written and directed by Ari Aster, in his feature directorial debut. It stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne, and follows a family haunted after the death of their secretive grandmother. Ari was influenced by the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989).

During pre-production, writer-director Ari Aster often referred to the film not as a horror film but rather “a tragedy that curdles into a nightmare.” All interiors (including both versions of the treehouse) were built from scratch on a sound stage. Since each of the rooms was built on a stage, walls could be removed to shoot scenes at a much greater distance than a practical location would allow, creating the dollhouse aesthetic of the film.

imdb   rottentomatoes

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Paimon

0746 – The Island (2005)

timespace coordinates: 2019 Arizona > Los Angeles

The Island is a 2005 American science fiction thriller film directed and co-produced by Michael Bay. It stars Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Michael Clarke Duncan and Steve Buscemi.

In the story, Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) struggles to fit into the highly structured world he lives in, isolated in a compound, and the series of events that unfold when he questions how truthful that world is. After Lincoln learns the compound inhabitants are clones used for organ harvesting as well as surrogates for wealthy people in the outside world, he attempts to escape with Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) and expose the illegal cloning movement.

The Island has been described as a pastiche of “escape-from-dystopia” science fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Fahrenheit 451, THX 1138, Parts: The Clonus Horror, and Logan’s Run. (wiki)

imdb

0735 – Deadpool 2 (2018)

Deadpool 2 is a 2018 American black comedy superhero Self-reflexive vigilante time travel film based on the Marvel Comics character Deadpool, distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the eleventh installment in the X-Men film series, and a direct sequel to the 2016 film Deadpool. The film is directed by David Leitch from a script by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and Ryan Reynolds, with Reynolds starring in the title role alongside Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Brianna Hildebrand, and Jack Kesy. In the film, Deadpool forms the team X-Force to protect a young mutant from the time-traveling soldier Cable.

The first teaser poster, which pays homage to Norman Rockwell‘s 1943 painting Freedom from Want, was released that November. Justin Carter of Comic Book Resources found it “oddly appropriate for Deadpool 2 to co-opt [this] iconic work for a modern pop culture audience” as it is “true to Deadpool’s incredibly referential nature”.

The first footage from the film debuted at the end of a video where Reynolds (in-character as Deadpool) parodies Bob Ross and his television show The Joy of Painting.

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imdb   /   Céline Dion – Ashes

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018 – X-Men (film series)

618 – Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

723

The Carmilla Movie (2017) – adapted from the 1872 gothic novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu.

wiki / imdb / rottentomatoes

lgbtq+

0709 – The Fisherman (2015 Short)

timespace coordinates: 2015 Bays of Hong Kong

“The Fisherman” is a 20-minute Spanish live action short film by writer-director Alejandro Suárez Lozano made in Hong Kong featuring lead actor Andrew Ng.

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on youtube

imdb

706 – Sacred Games (TV Series 2018– )

timespace coordinates: 70’s – 80’s – 90’s – 2010’s Mumbai

Sacred Games is an Indian web television series by Netflix based on Vikram Chandra‘s 2006 thriller novel of the same name. The series was produced in partnership with Phantom Films. The novel was adapted by Varun Grover, Smita Singh and Vasant Nath, and all eight, hour-long episodes were directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. All eight episodes were made available for streaming on 6 July 2018.

Sacred Games tells the story of Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan), a jaded police inspector living under the shadow of his deceased father and seeking validation from a police force he nevertheless loathes for its corruption. When Singh receives an anonymous tip-off regarding the whereabouts of Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a notorious crime lord who has been missing for 16 years, it initiates a chain of events that burrows deep into India’s dark underworld.

जन्नत तोह मैं हो

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The episode titles are inspired by Hindu mythology. The first episode titled “Aswatthama”, was based on the namesake character from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. He was cursed with immortality by Krishna after the Kurukshetra war. In the series, Gaitonde calls himself immortal like Ashwatthama, but later commits suicide. “Halahala”, another episode, was named after a poison of the same name, which was retrieved from Samudra manthan. Aatapi and Vatapi were two demons who used to trick travellers with hospitality and kill them. Brahmahatya means killing of a Brahmin, which is a crime in Hinduism. In the episode, the Hindu Gaitonde agrees to try to attract Muslim votes for Hindu politician Bhosale. Sarama is referred to as a dog. Pretakalpa learns the rites of a Hindu to perform the cremations. In this episode, Katekar is killed and Sartaj cremates him. Rudra is the angered version of Shiva. Gaitonde’s wife Subhadra is killed in this episode; he takes revenge by murdering her killers. Yayati was king cursed with premature old age.

imdb

705

Do psychedelics give access to a universal, mystical experience of reality, or is that just a culture-bound illusion?

https://aeon.co/essays/is-psychedelics-research-closer-to-theology-than-to-science

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“Silicon Valley billionaires are putting their blockchain millions into funding psychedelics research, and corporates are preparing for a juicy new market. The counterculture has gone mainstream. Turn on, tune in, sell out. ”

“Perennialists tend to rank religions and mystical experiences hierarchically. All religions are one, but some are more one than others. Unitive non-dual experiences are more true, while dualist experiences (ie, personal encounters with God or a spirit) are less true. Accordingly, Buddhism, Hindu mysticism and Taoism are more true, while Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Shamanism are less true. The psychedelic research at Johns Hopkins follows this theological ranking. It uses the Hood Mysticism Scale to rate people’s psychedelic experiences – unitive experiences are scored as higher and more ‘complete’ than dualist experiences.”

“Western spiritual tourists can have a culturally naive idea that their experience of ayahuasca is the same as indigenous people’s experience, that everyone goes to the same Magic Kingdom where we all meet the same entity: Mama Ayahuasca.”