1221 – Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)
time machine // database // travel guide
Among all the tales there is one, / which you haven’t heard / and which the night reclaimed long ago. / Have you enough patience to listen to it?
The Hourglass Sanatorium (Polish: Sanatorium pod klepsydrą) is a 1973 Polish film directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, starring Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Mieczysław Voit, Halina Kowalska and Gustaw Holoubek. The story follows a young Jewish man who visits his father in a mystical sanatorium where time does not behave normally. The film is an adaptation of Bruno Schulz‘s story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. It won the Jury Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. (Release)
timespace coordinates: The time period of the film is a mixture of elements from the turn-of-the-century Galicia where Schulz grew up, and Has‘ own pre-World War II memories of the same region
Joseph (Jan Nowicki) travels through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father, Jacob, in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborate artificial caprice.
Though Joseph is always shown as an adult, his behavior and the people around often depict him as a child. He befriends Rudolf, a young boy who owns a postage stamp album. The names of the stamps trigger a wealth of association and adventure in Joseph. Among the many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria include Joseph re-entering childhood episodes with his wildly eccentric father (who lives with birds in an attic), being arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers for having a dream that was severely criticized in high places, reflecting on a girl he fantasized about in his boyhood and commandeering a group of historic wax mannequins. Throughout his strange journey, an ominous blind train conductor reappears like a death figure.
Has also adds a series of reflections on the Holocaust that were not present in the original texts, reading Schulz’s prose through the prism of the author’s death during World War II and the demise of the world he described. (wiki)
“There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization. ” (Bruno Schulz)
timespace coordinates: 2010’s Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan)
The Boy and the Beast (Japanese: バケモノの子 Hepburn: Bakemono no Ko, literally “The bakemono‘s child”) is a 2015 Japanese animated action-adventure fantasy film written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda. It won Animation of the Year at the 37th Japan Academy Prizes. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: It’s 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and summer’s heating up. School’s out, there’s a brand new mall in town, and the Hawkins crew are on the cusp of adulthood.. (premise)
The third season of the American science fiction-horror web television series Stranger Things, titled onscreen as Stranger Things 3, premiered on Netflix‘s web streaming service starting on July 4, 2019. The series was created by the Duffer Brothers, who are also executive producers along with Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen and Iain Paterson
timespace coordinates: equatorial South America – Iron City – 2563, 300 years after Earth is devastated by a catastrophic interplanetary war known as “The Fall”
Alita: Battle Angel is a 2019 American cyberpunk science fiction action film based on the 1990s Japanese manga series Gunnm (known as Battle Angel Alita in the English translation) by Yukito Kishiro. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, the film is co-produced by James Cameron and written by Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. Rosa Salazar stars as the titular heroine Alita, an amnesiac cyborg girl who sets out to learn about her destiny after she awakens in a new body with no past memory of who she is. Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson also star in supporting roles. \scored by Junkie XL\ (wiki)
The post-apocalyptic architecture in sci-fi blockbuster Alita: Battle Angel is a diverse fusion of Panama’s vibrant ruins and Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City, say its creators. (dezeen)
timespace coordinates: 2010’s Dayton, Ohio / Earth
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child. When I became an adult, I put away childish things”. Colonel Vosch
The 5th Wave is a 2016 American science fiction action film directed by J Blakeson, with a screenplay by Susannah Grant, Akiva Goldsman, and Jeff Pinkner, based on Rick Yancey’s 2013 novel of the same name. The film stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Nick Robinson, Ron Livingston, Maggie Siff, Alex Roe, Maria Bello, Maika Monroe, and Liev Schreiber. (wiki)
The 5th Wave novel is the first in The 5th Wave trilogy, followed by The Infinite Sea (narration shifts to Ringer’s point of view) and The Last Star.