1605 – The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s/2010’s San Francisco ( Bayview-Hunters Point, Fillmore District)

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a 2019 American drama film. Its plot centers on the efforts of a young Black man to reclaim his childhood home, a now-expensive Victorian house in a gentrified neighborhood of San Francisco.

The film is the feature debut of director and producer Joe Talbot. Talbot wrote the screenplay with Rob Richert and the story with Jimmie Fails, on whose life the film is partly based. The movie stars Fails, Jonathan Majors, Tichina Arnold, Rob Morgan, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock, and Danny Glover.  (wiki)

Kickstarter-funded, feat Michael Nyman OST.

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1602

There, very low down in the western sky, about a couple of yards, according to human measurement, above the bounding wall of the enclosure, was the coracle-like crystal shell of the crescent moon in her first quarter. 

There was nothing to which it could be compared! Unique, in all the universe of matter, if only by reason of the associations hung about it of twenty-five thousand years of human yearning, it floated there before her, daughter and darling of the dark terrestrial orb, elf-waif of the infinite night!

John Cowper Powys | A Glastonbury Romance

1595 – Fallen Angels (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1995 urban, nighttime Hong Kong

Fallen Angels is a 1995 Hong Kong drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, and Karen Mok. As with the filmmaker’s other features, plot takes a back seat to mood.

Originally conceived by Wong as the third story for 1994’s Chungking Express, it was cut after he decided that it was complete without it. He instead decided to develop the story further into its own feature film and borrowed elements of Chungking Express, such as themes, locations and methods of filming. Wanting to also try to differentiate it from Chungking and to try something new, Wong decided along with cinematographer Christopher Doyle to shoot mainly at night and using extreme wide-angle lenses, keeping the camera as close to the talents as possible to give a detached effect from the world around them.

In an interview, Wong had this to say:

…To me, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long. I always think these two films should be seen together as a double bill. In fact, people asked me during an interview for Chungking Express: “You’ve made these two stories which have no relationship at all to each other, how can you connect them?” And I said, ‘The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong.” I see the films as inter-reversible, the character of Faye Wong could be the character of Takeshi in Fallen Angels; Brigitte Lin in Chungking could be Leon Lai in Fallen Angels. All of their characters are inter-reversible. Also, in Chungking we were shooting from a very long distance with long lenses, but the characters seem close to us.

In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote:

The acme of neo-new-wavism, the ultimate in MTV alienation, the most visually voluptuous flick of the fin de siècle, a pyrotechnical wonder about mystery, solitude, and the irrational love of movies that pushes Wong’s style to the brink of self-parody.

wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1572 – Waiting for the Barbarians (2019)

spacetime coordinates: 19th century, unnamed Asian frontier desert outpost

Waiting for the Barbarians is a 2020 Italian-American drama film directed by Ciro Guerra (El abrazo de la serpiente) in his English-language directorial debut. The film is based on the novel of the same name by J. M. Coetzee (adaptation written by author). It stars Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Gana Bayarsaikhan, and Greta Scacchi. (wiki)

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1567 – Archive (2020)

spacetime coordinates: 2038.  halfway up a snow-capped mountain near Kyoto at a secret facility codenamed ‘The Garden’

Archive is a 2020 British science fiction film written and directed by Gavin Rothery, in his directorial debut. It stars Theo James, Stacy Martin, Rhona Mitra, Peter Ferdinando and Toby Jones. Set in the dystopian future of 2038, the film follows a scientist who is trying to advance artificial intelligence a step further than human-beings all while bringing his wife back from the dead. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1559 – Now Apocalypse (TV Series 2019)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s Los Angeles

Now Apocalypse is an American comedy television series that aired for one season of ten episodes from March 10 to May 12, 2019, on Starz. The series was written by Gregg Araki and Karley Sciortino. Araki also was director and executive producer alongside Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs. Starz canceled the series on July 26, 2019. Araki later stated that he was shopping the series to other networks.

Ulysses, his friends Carly and Ford, and Ford’s girlfriend Severine navigate love, sex, and fame in Los Angeles. Troubled by sinister, premonitory dreams, Ulysses wonders if the end of the world as we know it is coming, or if he is simply suffering some kind of marijuana-fueled delusions. (wiki)

This is all perfectly well-made, candy-coloured fun as well as being a bang up-to-date exploration of 21st-century sexual identities (co-written by Araki with sex columnist Karley Sciortino), albeit one in which everyone looks amazing all the time. Boyd Hilton / Empire Magazine / rottentomatoes

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1557 – Dredd (2012)

spacetime coordinates:  2134. United States – dystopic irradiated wasteland known as the Cursed Earth. / Mega-City One (running from Boston to Washington DC), a violent metropolis with 800 million residents and 17,000 serious crimes reported daily. / Peach Trees, a 200-storey slum tower block /

Dredd is a 2012 British / South African science fiction action film directed by Pete Travis and written and produced by Alex Garland. It is based on the 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd and its eponymous character created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

Karl Urban stars as Judge Dredd, a law enforcer given the power of judge, jury and executioner in a vast, dystopic metropolis called Mega-City One that lies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Dredd and his apprentice partner, Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), are forced to bring order to a 200-storey high-rise block of flats and deal with its resident drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey). *unrelated to the 1995 film Judge Dredd. (wiki)

Future

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