251 – Apocalypto (2006)

spacetime coordinates:  pre-Columbian Yucatan and Guatemala, 1502

Apocalypto is a 2006 American epic adventure film directed and produced by Mel Gibson and written by Gibson and Farhad Safinia.  Similar to Gibson’s earlier film The Passion of the Christ, all dialogue is in a modern approximation of the ancient language of the setting. Here, the Yucatec Maya language is used, with English and other language subtitles, which sometimes refer to the language as Mayan.

Themes

Historical Accuracy

imdb

 

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247 – The Road (2009)

The Road is a 2009 American post-apocalyptic drama film directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay written by Joe Penhall, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 novel of the same name by the American author Cormac McCarthy. Principal photography took place in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, West Virginia, and Oregon. The film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and his son in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Hillcoat preferred to shoot in real locations, saying “We didn’t want to go the CGI world.” Pennsylvania, where most of the filming took place, was chosen for its tax breaks and its abundance of locations that looked abandoned or decayed: coalfields, dunes, and run-down parts of Pittsburgh and neighboring boroughs. Filming was also done at the 1892 amusement resort (Conneaut Lake Park) after one of the park’s buildings (the Dreamland Ballroom) was destroyed in a fire in February 2008. The beaches of Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania were also used. Hillcoat also said of using Pittsburgh as a practical location, “It’s a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing, but in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal.” Filmmakers also shot scenes in parts of New Orleans that had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and on Mount St. Helens in Washington. The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike, a stretch of abandoned roadway between Hustontown and Breezewood, Pennsylvania, was used for much of the production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_(2009_film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/

224 – Small Soldiers (1998)

spacetime coordinates: 1998 Ohio 

Small Soldiers is a 1998 American science fiction action film directed by Joe Dante. The film revolves around two adolescents who get caught in the middle of a war between two factions of sentient action figures, the Gorgonites and the Commando Elite.

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

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122718/

200

spacetime coordinates:  80’s – 90’s  Brooklyn New York City // Las Vegas, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles

Notorious (2009)

Notorious is a 2009 American biographical drama film directed by George Tillman Jr. that follows the life and murder of Christopher Wallace, an American rapper better known by the stage name “The Notorious B.I.G.”. The film stars Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Derek Luke, and Anthony Mackie.

Criticism by Lil’ Kim

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472198/

All Eyez on Me (2017)

All Eyez on Me is a 2017 American biographical drama film about hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, directed by Benny Boom and written by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez and Steven Bagatourian. Titled after Shakur’s 1996 fourth studio album of the same name, the film stars Demetrius Shipp Jr. as Shakur with Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper and Danai Gurira in supporting roles.

Historical accuracy

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1666185/

151 – American Gods TV Series (2017– )

spacetime coordinates: the last ice age > 813 A.D > 1697 > … > 21th century America //  1721 Ireland > 1979 Tehran

American Gods is an American television series based on the novel of the same name, written by Neil Gaiman and originally published in 2001. The television series was developed by Bryan Fuller and Michael Green for the premium cable network Starz. Fuller and Green are the showrunners for the series.

The series focuses on Shadow Moon, who meets a strange man named Mr. Wednesday after being released from prison, and soon becomes embroiled in a large-scale conflict between the Old Gods and the New Gods, who grow stronger each day.

imdb

Chernobog,  Zorya, Jinn, Anansi, Ēostre

150

142 – The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015)

spacetime coordinates:  1630s New England

The Witch (stylized as The VVitch, subtitled A New-England Folktale) is a 2015 historical period supernatural horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his directorial debut and stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson. The film follows a Puritan family encountering forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm.

the film was inspired by many folktales, fairytales and written accounts of historical witchcraft, including journals, diaries and court records. much of the dialogue comes directly from the period sources. The production team worked extensively with British and American museums, as well as consulting experts on seventeenth-century British agriculture.

In order to give the film an authentic look, Eggers shot only “with natural light and indoors, the only lighting was candles.” Eggers also chose to stylize the film’s title as “The VVitch” in its title sequence and on posters, stating that he found this spelling in a Jacobean era pamphlet on witchcraft, along with other period texts.

In the Witch’s Coven scene, the chant is in Enochian which is an angelic language often used in magical rituals. It first recorded by the 16th century occultist John Dee and his partner Edward Kelley. In this particular scene, the witches are using The Eleventh Enochian Key is used to herald the coming of the dead and establish a sustenance beyond the grave. To bind to the earth. A funerary call.

In December 2013, costume designer Linda Muir joined the crew, and consulted 35 books in the Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England series to plan the costumes. The costumes were made with wool, linen, or hemp. Muir also lobbied for a larger costume budget.

A hare appears frequently in the film. In New England superstitions, hares were considered magical creatures in their own right, but were often associated with witches, either as a witch’s familiar (called a milk-hare), which stole or spoiled milk from the farm animals, or the witch themselves, who was thought able to turn into a hare in order to spy on and influence people.

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imdb, wikipedia