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The Neon Demon is a 2016 psychological horror film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, co-written by Mary Laws, Polly Stenham, and Refn, and starring Elle Fanning.
The plot follows an aspiring model in Los Angeles whose beauty and youth generate intense fascination and jealousy within the industry. Supporting roles are played by Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee, Desmond Harrington, Christina Hendricks, and Keanu Reeves.
Drive is a 2011 American neo-noir crime film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and written by Hossein Amini, based on the 2005 novel by James Sallis. It stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Oscar Isaac and Albert Brooks.
Journalists and reviewers have called Drive a “classic Los Angeles heist-gone-wrong story”, a “tribute to the genre of car films” in the vein of movies like Bullitt (1968). As a character study, Drive examines themes of “loyalty, loneliness and the dark impulses that rise up even when we try our hardest to suppress them.” It combines comic gore, film noir and B-movie style and Hollywood spectacle, resulting in “a bizarre concoction…reminiscent of David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive…Quentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction, and [with] angst-laden love scenes that would not be out of place in a Scandinavian drama”. – read more about Style and inspiration –
the film contains abundant, evocative, intense images of Los Angeles. from the little seen back streets of downtown LA to the dry arid outposts on the peaks of the desert landscape surrounding it, LA is re-imagined all the way down to the rocky cliffs by the sea.
While Drive is set in the present day, it carries a heavy 1980s atmosphere that is cautiously set from beginning to end and is underlined not only by the vehicles or music and clothes, but also by its architecture. The parts of the city seen in the Valley and by downtown Los Angeles are cheap stucco and mirrored glass. Refn avoided certain areas to preserve the gloomy atmosphere often leaving out more contemporary buildings. Drab background settings include the Southern California commercial strip. As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, whenever gleaming buildings are shown, it is because they are being seen from a distance. Refn shot those scenes from a helicopter at night in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.
Scorpio Rising is a 1963 American experimental short film by Kenneth Anger, starring Bruce Byron as Scorpio. Themes central to the film include the occult, biker subculture and homosexuality. the film also explores the worship of rebel icons of the era, such as James Dean and Marlon Brando. Like many of Anger’s films, the film does not contain any dialogue; it instead features a prominent soundtrack consisting of 1960’s pop music. (Scorpio Rising is considered by some to be the first drama film to feature a rock & roll soundtrack.)
spacetime coordinates: Hawkins, Indiana in the 1980s
Stranger Things is an American science fiction-horror web television series created, written, directed and co-executive produced by the Duffer Brothers The Duffer Brothers developed the series as a mix of investigative drama alongside supernatural elements with childlike sensibilities, establishing its time frame in the 1980s and creating a homage to pop culture of that decade. Several themes and directorial aspects were inspired and aesthetically informed by the works of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Stephen King, among others.
The official poster for the series was created by Kyle Lambert. It was done in an art style inspired by acclaimed poster/album artwork artist Drew Struzan, who has created official posters for Star Wars (1977), “Indiana Jones,” Back to the Future (1985), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and several others.
demogorgon (phantom demon)
spacetime coordinates: 1985 > 1968 > 1932
the town of Nebelsbad / Lutz in the former Republic of Zubrowka (the farthest eastern boundary of the Europen continent)
The Grand Budapest Hotel is an 2014 comedy film written and directed by Wes Anderson, from a story by Anderson and Hugo Guinness, inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig. The narrative takes the form of a story within a story within a story.
TimeSpace Warps 