0899 – Blindspotting (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Oakland California

Blindspotting is a 2018 American comedy-drama film written, produced by and starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. Carlos López Estrada directs while Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Wayne Knight also star. The plot follows a parolee with three days left on his sentence, only to have him witness a police shooting that threatens to ruin a lifelong friendship.

The screenplay for Blindspotting was written by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs over a period of nine years. Daveed, who grew up in Oakland, and Rafael, who grew up in bordering Berkeley, California, felt that cinematic portrayals of the San Francisco Bay Area have constantly “missed something”. They wanted to draw attention to the culture, community, and sense of “heightened reality” that shape life in Oakland. The film addresses issues of gentrification, police violence, and racism. (wiki)

blindspotting.movie / imdb

0894 – The Weird World of Blowfly (2010)

The Weird World of Blowfly is a 2010 documentary film about rapper and hip hop musician Clarence Reid, a/k/a Blowfly, directed by Jonathan Furmanski. In addition to Reid, the film features collaborators Tom Bowker and Otto von Schirach along with perspectives from Chuck D, Ice-T, and Die Ärzte. (wiki)

Clarence Reid is a musician who wrote and produced romantic and spiritual songs for some of the greatest Southern soul and R&B acts of the 1960s and ’70s. He is also the gonzo performer Blowfly, Clarence’s freaky alter ego and the original X-rated rapper. “The Weird World of Blowfly” explores both sides of this hilarious and controversial artist, providing a rare, inside peek at the infamous linguist’s daily life. Now 69-years-old, with a gold-spangled superhero costume and a catalog of the world’s raunchiest tunes, Blowfly tours the world, still struggling for success and recognition after 50 years of making music. The film highlights both Clarence’s and Blowfly’s unique contributions to music history, including Top-10 R&B hits and what might be the world’s first rap song, recorded in 1965. Shot over the course of two years, the film follows Clarence at home and around the world, featuring dozens of classic Blowfly songs as well as new hits. A revealing portrait of an unheralded man… (imdb)

887 – We the Animals (2018)

timespace coordinates: rural upstate New York during the 1980’s

We the Animals is a 2018 American drama film directed by Jeremiah Zagar and written by Zagar and Dan Kitrosser, based on the novel of the same name by Justin Torres. The film stars Evan Rosado, Raúl Castillo, Sheila Vand, Isaiah Kristian, and Josiah Gabriel.

“Dreamlike and haunting, We the Animals approaches the coming-of-age odyssey with a uniquely documentarian eye.” rottentomatoes.com

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imdb

175 – Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

0864 – BioShock 2 (2010 Video game)

timespace coordinates: city of Rapture 1968

BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games. A part of the Bioshock series, it is the sequel to the 2007 video game BioShock and was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360 on February 9, 2010. Feral Interactive released an OS X version of the game on March 30, 2012.  A remastered version of the game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 13, 2016, as part of BioShock: The Collection.

Set in the fictional underwater dystopian city of Rapture, the game’s story takes place eight years after BioShock. Assuming control of Subject Delta, a hulking Big Daddy, players are tasked with fighting through “splicers”, the psychotic human population of the city, using weapons and an array of genetic modifications. The game also introduces a story-driven multiplayer mode called Fall of Rapture, which takes place during Rapture’s 1959 civil war, before the events of the first game.

SONY DSC

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(Themes) In contrast to the first BioShock‘s focus on libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s philosophies, BioShock 2 focuses on collectivist ideals. Lamb’s philosophy of altruism is based on that of Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill. “Her motto is ‘Make the world your family’ meaning force your mind into becoming loyal to the world in a way usually reserved for your child, and that’s intellectually daunting,” said Thomas. In comparison to the first game’s questions of free will and destiny, Thomas said that the player character is “almost the ultimate individual” whom Lamb goads to fulfill her goals. 

Professor Ryan Lizardi draws parallels between BioShock 2‘s themes of community versus the individual and the issues of McCarthyism and the hippie movement that occurred around the time period of the game’s setting. “As this sequel is an extension of the first game’s storylines and characters, there are direct contrasts between the extreme politics of Andrew Ryan’s objectivism and the extreme religion/politics of Lamb’s collectivism,” he writes. “Bioshock 2 specifically asks players to question all sides of debates when extreme stances are taken, and asks players to weigh their decisions in an alternate and complex history. ” (wiki)

steam // www.bioshock2game.com

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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (remastered version) MINIMUM:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system/ OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1 64-bit. Platform Update for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1/ Processor: Intel E6750 Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz / AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHZ / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7770 / 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 / DirectX: Version 11 / Storage: 25 GB available space / Sound Card: DirectX Compatible Sound Device

0863 – Time Commando (1996 Computer game)

timespace coordinates: 2020 @ the Historical Tactical Center > Prehistoric > Roman Empire, Feudal Japan, Medieval, Conquistador, Wild West, Modern Wars (World War I and supposedly World War III), Future (Stanley’s era) > inside the main computer (Virus World)

Time Commando (originally released for the PC on 31 July 1996) is an action-adventure computer and video game developed by Adeline Software and published by Electronic Arts in Europe, Activision in America, and Virgin Interactive (PlayStation version) and Acclaim Entertainment (Sega Saturn version) in Japan. Time Commando was re-released for modern computer systems on 6 January 2012 by GOG.com. (wiki)

PSX Longplay

0856 – Sorstalanság / Fateless (2005)

timespace coordinates: World War II Hungary / Auschwitz / Buchenwald

Fateless (Hungarian: Sorstalanság) is a Hungarian film directed by Lajos Koltai, released in 2005. It is based on the semi-autobiographical novel Fatelessness by the Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész, who also wrote the screenplay. It tells the story of a teenage boy who is sent to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

The film’s music was composed by Ennio Morricone, and one of its songs was sung by Lisa Gerrard. The film is one of the most expensive movies ever produced in Hungary, with a cost of $12 million. (wiki)

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imdb

855 – The Secret of Kells (2009)

timespace coordinates: 9th century Ireland

The Secret of Kells is a 2009 French-Belgian-Irish animated fantasy film animated by Cartoon Saloon directed by Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey.

The film is based on the story of the origin of the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament located in Dublin, Ireland.

Circa 800 AD, A manuscript from the illuminated gospel known as the Book of Kells, thought to have been created by Irish monks from the scriptorium of the monastery on the Scottish island of Iona between the 7th and 9th centuries AD. The tome now the most precious manu (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

It also draws upon Celtic mythology; examples include its inclusion of Crom Cruach, a pre-Christian Irish deity and the reference to the poetic genre of Aislings, in which a poet is confronted by a dream or vision of a seeress, in the naming of the forest sprite encountered by Brendan. Wider mythological similarities have also been commented upon, such as parallels between Brendan’s metaphysical battle with Crom Cruach and Beowulf‘s underwater encounter with Grendel’s mother. 

The Secret of Kells began development in 1999, when Tomm Moore and several of his friends were inspired by Richard Williams’s The Thief and the Cobbler, Disney’s Mulan and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, which based their visual style on the respective traditional art of the cultures featured in each film. They decided to do something similar to Studio Ghibli‘s films but with Irish art. Tomm Moore explained that the visual style was inspired by Celtic and medieval art, being ‘flat, with false perspective and lots of colour’. Even the clean up was planned to ‘obtain the stained glass effect of thicker outer lines’. (wiki)

imdb