time machine // database // travel guide
A typical night for a group of war veterans at the local VFW turns into an all-out battle for survival when a teenage girl runs into the bar with a bag of stolen drugs. Suddenly under attack from a gang of punk mutants looking to get back what’s theirs — at any cost — the vets use every weapon they can put together to protect the girl, and their VFW, in the biggest fight of their lives. (rottentomatoes)
timespace coordinates: 1980’s New Jersey
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, often shortened to Buckaroo Banzai, is a 1984 American science fiction action/adventure film produced and directed by W. D. Richter and written by Earl Mac Rauch. The premise centers upon the efforts of the polymath Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and musician, to save the world by defeating a band of inter-dimensional aliens called Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The film is a cross between the action/adventure and science fiction film genres and also includes elements of comedy and romance.
Buckaroo Banzai has been adapted for books, comics, and a video game and has attracted a loyal cult following. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: AMC describes the series as a “modern fable set in Long Beach, California about a disarmingly optimistic local ex-surfer, Dud (Wyatt Russell), who’s drifting after the death of his father and collapse of the family business.” In the first season, Dud joins a fraternal order known as the Order of the Lynx, hoping the Lodge can put him “on the path to recover the idyllic life he’s lost.”
Lodge 49 is an American comedy-drama television series created by Jim Gavin. It aired on the television network AMC in the United States from August 6, 2018, to October 14, 2019, spanning two seasons and 20 episodes.
The title alludes to the novella The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which Gavin references as an inspiration. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: New York City in 1957
Motherless Brooklyn is a 2019 American neo-noir crime film written, produced and directed by Edward Norton, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem. Set in 1950s New York, the film follows a private investigator with Tourette syndrome, who is determined to solve the murder of his mentor. Along with Norton, the film also stars Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe.
A passion project of Norton’s ever since he read Lethem’s novel in 1999, the film took nearly 20 years to go into production. Although the book is set in contemporary times, Norton felt the plot and dialogue lent themselves more to a noir setting — moving it to the 1950s, with many added plot points inspired by The Power Broker. (wiki)
In Welcome to the Greenhouse, award-winning editor Gordon Van Gelder has brought together sixteen speculative [climate fiction (cli-fi)] stories by some of the most imaginative writers of our time. Terrorists, godlike terraformers, and humans both manipulative and hapless populate these pages. The variety of stories reflects the possibilities of our future: grim, hopeful, fantastic and absurd.
Included is new work by Brian W. Aldiss, Jeff Carlson, Judith Moffett, Matthew Hughes, Gregory Benford, Michael Alexander, Bruce Sterling, Joseph Green, Pat MacEwen, Alan Dean Foster, David Prill, George Guthridge, Paul Di Filippo, Chris Lawson, Ray Vukcevich and M. J. Locke.
Greener Grass is an 2019 American comedy film, written and directed by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe in their feature directorial debuts, based on the 2015 short film of the same name (YOUTUBE). It stars DeBoer, Luebbe, Beck Bennett, Neil Casey, Mary Holland and D’Arcy Carden. (wiki)
DeBoer and Luebbe explained that the films of David Lynch, John Waters and 1960s and 1970s landscape photography was an influence. Visually the film is reminiscent of 80’s-music-video aesthetic / fashion aesthetics / 90’s infomercials.
Seven Worlds, One Planet is a documentary series from the BBC Natural History Unit. The seven-part series, in which each episode focuses on one continent, debuted on 27 October 2019 and is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Over 1,500 people worked on the series, which was filmed over 1,794 days, with 92 shoots across 41 different countries. (wiki)
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