1360 -Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made (2017 Book by Jason Schreier)

Developing video games—hero’s journey or fool’s errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today’s hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it’s nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it’s RPG studio Bioware‘s challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone‘s single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man’s vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable. (goodreads)

1351 – In Fabric (2018)

… coordinates: “kaleidoscopic montage of ‘70s department store imagery, set to synths in the warm, ethereal vein of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop” b

In Fabric is a 2018 British horror comedy film, written and directed by Peter Strickland. It stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, Leo Bill, and Gwendoline Christie. (wiki)

In Fabric‘s gauzy giallo allure weaves a surreal spell, blending stylish horror and dark comedy to offer audiences a captivating treat. (rottentomatoes)

“In this oneiric oddity, consumerism is everything, ultimately devouring even the consumer – while the real horror is the exploitative means of production, carefully kept underground beyond the sight of bourgeois shoppers above.” Anton Bitel

“In Fabric is a haunting ghost story set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a department store and follows the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences..” (imdb)

1349 – Aniara (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2038 (+) Aniara, a luxurious spaceship carrying settlers from Earth to Mars

Aniara is a 2018 Swedish-Danish co-production co-directed by Pella Kagerman and Hugo Lilja. The film is an adaptation of the 1956 Swedish epic poem of the same name by Harry Martinson.

The film is set in a dystopian future where climate change has left Earth ravaged, forcing people to resettle from Earth to Mars. When such a routine trip veers off course the passengers struggle to cope with their new lives. (wiki)

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Director Pella Kagerman & Hugo Lilja on the end of the world in Aniara

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1340

1339

All Your History – Video Game Crash of 1983 (YouTube)

1333 -Nyócker! (2004)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Józsefváros – Budapest, Hungary

The District! (Hungarian: Nyócker!) is a 2004 Hungarian caricaturistic animated film directed by Áron Gauder. Its original title is a shortened colloquial form of nyolcadik kerület, the eighth district of Budapest, also known as Józsefváros, including an infamous neighbourhood where the film takes place. It is sometimes labelled as the Hungarian South Park.

The animated technique for this movie was rather innovative. The artists took 350 headshot pictures of each actor and used these photos for the expressing emotions and the animation of the heads. The bodies were hand drawn.

The film displays the Hungarian, Roma, Chinese and Arab dwellers and their alliances and conflicts in a humorous way, embedded into a fictive story of a few schoolchildren’s oil-making time-travel and a Romeo and Juliet-type love of a Roma guy towards a white girl. (wiki)

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Animal Cannibals – Yozsefváros

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1322 – Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

timespace coordinates: East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later (Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.)

Good Bye Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany; the mother (Saß) is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the November revolution. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son (Brühl) attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism.

Ostalgie is a neologism for the nostalgia for a communist past which is a common theme in Good Bye, Lenin! (read more) 

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wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes   /   Sandmann Lied (sandmännchen – kosmonaut)