760 – Detention (2011)

timespace coordinates:  2011 – 1992 California

An apocalyptic fantasy, horror, science fiction, action- thriller, body swapping, time-traveling teen romantic comedy starring Josh Hutcherson, Dane Cook, Shanley Caswell and  Spencer Locke. Detention follows the local students of Grizzly Lake as they survive their final year of high school. Bringing even more angst to student life, a slasher killer has chosen their high school as his new home of slaughter. It becomes a race against time to stop the killer, which will in turn save the world – if only they can get out of detention. (rt)

“Insane, Hyperkinetic, Next Level Filmmaking.”

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“(…) for pop-culture pilgrims intent on discovering an underground prize, look no further.”

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“Smart, funny, and equally full of splatstick violence and heart, Detention isn’t just next-level horror–it’s next level everything, a senses-altering reaffirmation of cinema.“

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“a shockingly meaningful, potent film about the nature of meaninglessness and its damning effects on the younger generation”

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“manic throwback horror comedy for the Twitter generation.”

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“time traveling teen pop culture comedy Detention is a runaway freight train of frenetic energy!”

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“is Scream meets Scott Pilgrim with a dash or two of Kaboom, it makes for one wild cocktail.”

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Post-irony

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imdb

758 – Wake in Fright (1971)

timespace coordinates: 1970’s mining town of Bundanyabba – known by the locals as “The Yabba” – outback Australia

Wake in Fright (initially released as Outback outside Australia) is a 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Evan Jones and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay and Jack Thompson. Based on Kenneth Cook‘s 1961 novel of the same name, the film follows a young schoolteacher from Sydney who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.

Filmed on location in Broken Hill and Sydney, Wake in Fright was an Australian-American co-production between NLT Productions and Westinghouse Broadcasting. Alongside Walkabout, it was one of two Australian films to be nominated for the Grand Prix du Festival at the 24th Cannes Film Festival. Despite attracting positive reviews, the film was a commercial failure in Australia, in part due to minimal promotion by United Artists, as well as audiences being uncomfortable with its portrayal of outback life, including a controversial hunting scene involving real kangaroos being shot.

By the 1990s, Wake in Fright had developed a cult reputation as Australia’s great “lost film” because its master negative had gone missing, resulting in censored prints of degraded quality being used for its few television broadcasts and VHS releases. After the original film and sound elements were rescued by editor Anthony Buckley in 2004, the film was digitally remastered and given a 2009 re-release at Cannes and in Australian theatres to widespread acclaim; it was issued commercially on DVD and Blu-ray later that year. Praised by critics for its direction and performances, Wake in Fright is now considered a pivotal film of the Australian New Wave and has earned a rare 100% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

A televised miniseries remake of Wake in Fright premiered in 2017. (wiki)

imdb

0726 – The Book of Henry (2017)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s suburban town in the Hudson Valley

The Book of Henry is a 2017 American drama film directed by Colin Trevorrow and written by Gregg Hurwitz. The film stars Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Lee Pace, Maddie Ziegler, and Dean Norris. The story concerns a plan hatched by a young genius to save the girl next door from abuse.

“Violence isn’t the worst thing in the world. What is then? Apathy.”

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imdb   www.gravillisinc.com

0725 – Låt den rätte komma in / Let the Right One In (2008)

timespace coordinates:  western Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1981

Let the Right One In (Swedish: Låt den rätte komma in) is a 2008 Swedish romantic horror film directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the 2004 novel of the same title by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also wrote the screenplay.

The film tells the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a vampire child in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in the early 1980s. Alfredson, unconcerned with the horror and vampire conventions, decided to tone down many elements of the novel and focus primarily on the relationship between the two main characters. Selecting the lead actors involved a year-long process with open castings held all over Sweden. In the end, the 11-year-olds Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson were chosen for the leading roles. They were subsequently commended by both Alfredson and film reviewers for their performances.

(Spoilers) The novel presents Eli as an androgynous boy, castrated centuries before by a sadistic vampire nobleman. The film handles the issue of Eli’s gender more ambiguously: a brief scene in which Eli changes into a dress offers a glimpse of a suggestive scar but no explicit elaboration.  When Oskar asks Eli to become his girlfriend, Eli tries to tell Oskar “I’m not a girl”. An actress plays Eli’s character, but her voice was considered to be too high pitched, so it was dubbed by voice actress Elif Ceylan. According to an interview with the director, as the film was originally conceived, flashbacks explained this aspect in more detail, but these scenes were eventually cut. (wiki)

imdb

Let Me In (2010 american version)

timespace coordinates: Los Alamos, New Mexico, 1983

imdb

665 – The Botany of Desire (2009 documentary )

The Botany of Desire is a two-hour program broadcast by PBS based on The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.

The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.

imdb

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Michael Pollan on twitter 

664 – The Kingdom: How Fungi Made Our World (2018 Documentary)

Hidden from sight is a kingdom that rules life on land. It’s an alien world with the largest and oldest organisms alive today. It is the 5th Kingdom of fungi.   (cbc)

“When we think about the evolution of life on earth, what allowed plants to move out of the sea and to have roots for the first time is fungi. And it’s fungi that services those roots as plants crept from that edge into what we now think of as that normal place that we all live.” Rob Dunn

imdb   intro (youtube)

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mushrooms-can-create-their-own-air-currents

forestfloornarrative

ome scientists believe that fungi might provide the answers to surviving climate change.

fungus hyphe web growing that stays mostly hidden (we only see the fruiting bodies) and live unlike plants consuming tissues

mushroom grow on every continent including Anatarctica

Dr. Anne Madden’s research has led to patent pending brewing technology, a newly discovered species, novel antibiotics, and a better understanding of the microorganisms in our world.

Helicon fungus growing on a twig

661 – West of Loathing (2017 video game)

spacetime coordinates: 1890’s   wild west

West of Loathing is a comedy adventure role-playing video game developed by Asymmetric Publications and released on 10 August 2017.

The game takes place in the universe of Asymmetric’s Kingdom of Loathing, in a Weird Western themed frontier setting. The player character leaves the family farm and heads west to seek their fortune on a trek to the city of Frisco. (wiki)

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM) – OS: Windows XP SP2+ / Processor: 2.8 GHz Intel® Core™2 Duo or better / Memory: 2 GB RAM / Graphics: 512 MB / Storage: 4 GB available space

steam