995 – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

timespace coordinates: 18th century France (1730s – 1760s)

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is a 2006 German period psychological crime thriller film directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Ben Whishaw, Alan Rickman, Rachel Hurd-Wood, and Dustin Hoffman. Tykwer, with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, also composed the music. The screenplay by Tykwer, Andrew Birkin, and Bernd Eichinger is based on Patrick Süskind‘s 1985 novel Perfume. Set in 18th century France, the film tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille (Whishaw), an olfactory genius, and his homicidal quest for the perfect scent. (wiki)

During pre-production, Tom Tykwer, Director of Photography Frank Griebe, Production Designer Uli Hanisch, and Costume Designer Pierre-Yves Gayraud studied the complete works of Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Joseph Wright, in order to ensure the film’s aesthetic correctly captured eighteenth century France.

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Nirvana Scentless Apprentice

0992 – Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a 2018 American computer-animated superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Miles Morales / Spider-Man,

It is the first animated feature film in the Spider-Man franchise, and is set in a shared multiverse called the “Spider-Verse”, which has alternate universes. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman from a screenplay by Phil Lord and Rothman and a story by Lord. The film stars Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Lily Tomlin, Luna Lauren Velez, John Mulaney, Kimiko Glenn, Nicolas Cage, and Liev Schreiber. In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales becomes one of many Spider-Men as they team up to save New York City from Kingpin.

Lord and Miller wanted the film to feel like “you walked inside a comic book”, and were excited to tell the story in a way that the live-action films could not. Persichetti concurred, feeling that animation was the best medium with which to honor the style of the comics, allowing the production team to adapt 70-year-old techniques seen in comic artwork into the film’s visual language. Completing the animation for the film required up to 140 animators, the largest crew ever used by Sony Pictures Animation for a film to date.

The CGI animation for the film was combined with “line work and painting and dots and all sorts of comic book techniques” to make it look like it was created by hand, which was described as “a living painting”. This was achieved by artists taking rendered frames from the CGI animators and working on top of them in 2D, with the goal of making every frame of the film “look like a comic panel”. Lord described this style of animation as “totally revolutionary”, and explained that the design combines the in-house style of Sony Pictures Animation with the “flavor” of comic artists such as Sara Pichelli (who co-created Miles Morales) and Robbi Rodriguez. To make it feel more like a comic book, it was animated without motion blur, and rather than using animation principles like squash and stretch they came up with substitute versions of them; “so that in texture and feel it felt different, but it still achieved the same goal — to either feel weight or anticipation or impact or things like that”.

The film’s directors all felt that the film would be one of the few that audiences actually “need” to watch in 3D due to the immersive nature of the animated world created, and the way that the hand-drawn animation elements created specifically for the film create a unique experience; Persichetti described this experience as a combination of the effects of an old-fashioned hand-drawn multiplane camera and a modern virtual reality environment. (read more)

Sequel and spin-off

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0986 – Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

 timespace coordinates: 1927 Paris / London / New York City

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is a 2018 fantasy film directed by David Yates and written by J. K. Rowling. A joint British and American production, it is the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016). It is the second instalment in the Fantastic Beasts film series, and the tenth overall in the Wizarding World franchise, which began with the Harry Potter film series.

The film features an ensemble cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Zoë Kravitz, Callum Turner, Claudia Kim, William Nadylam, Kevin Guthrie, Jude Law, and Johnny Depp. The plot follows Newt Scamander and Albus Dumbledore as they attempt to take down the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald, while facing new threats in a more divided wizarding world.

Hogwarts exteriors, like some interiors, were shot in the historic Lacock Abbey, dating from 1229. This abbey, located in Wiltshire, England, had already been used for the same purpose for the first films of the Harry Potter saga .

As with the first film, animal making required months of graphic, pattern, and animation testing to determine the appearance, behavior, movements, attitude, and personality of each creature. J.K. Rowling was inspired, for many of them, by legendary creatures from different cultures, such as the Chinese Zouwu, the Scottish Kelpie and the French Matagot.

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The Art of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

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The interior of the basement where Newt Scamander keeps his beasts is stylized according to the lithograph “Relativity” by Maurits Cornelis Escher.

0966 – The Chronicles of Riddick

Pitch Black (2000)

timespace coordinates:  desert planet – distant future

Pitch Black (titled The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black on its DVD re-release) is a 2000 American science fiction action horror film co-written and directed by David Twohy. The film stars Vin Diesel, Radha Mitchell, Cole Hauser, and Keith David. Dangerous criminal Richard B. Riddick (Diesel) is being transported to prison in a spacecraft. When the spaceship is damaged by comet debris and makes an emergency crash landing on an empty desert planet, Riddick escapes. However, when predatory alien creatures begin attacking the survivors, Riddick joins forces with the surviving crew and other passengers to develop a plan to escape the planet.Pitch Black was shot on a modest budget of US$23 million. Despite mixed reviews from critics, it was a sleeper hit, grossing over $53 million worldwide and developing its own cult following, particularly around the antihero Riddick. (wiki)

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Pitch Black: Slam City (2000 Motion Comic)

(Prequel to Pitch Black) Slam City is in the form of an official, confidential prison record detailing Riddick’s arrival and escape from the Ursa Luna Slam city Facility in eleven hours twenty-two minutes. Notably, it shows Riddick undergoing the surgery that gives him “eyeshine” – the ability to see in the dark – and paying for this with a pack of Kool cigarettes as mentioned in Pitch Black. William J. Johns is seen at the end of the movie and is charged with capturing Riddick. (imdb)

(on youtube)

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (2004 video game)

timespace coordinates: inside Butcher Bay, a maximum-security prison – facility constructed on a barren planet

(Prequel to Pitch Black)The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is a first-person action and stealth video game developed by Starbreeze Studios and published by Vivendi Universal Games. Released for the Xbox and Windows in 2004, the game is a tie-in prequel to the futuristic science fiction film The Chronicles of Riddick. Actor Vin Diesel—who was involved in the game’s development—reprises his role as that film’s protagonist, Richard B. Riddick.

The game follows Riddick, the anti-hero of the two films Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick, as he attempts to escape from a maximum-security prison called Butcher Bay. Escape from Butcher Bay‘s designers focused on exploring Riddick’s character in a prison break setting to differentiate the game from the film. The game’s influences include the film Escape from Alcatraz, and video games such as Half-Life and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. (wiki)

(Game Movie) (Playthrough)

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (2009 video game)

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is a science fiction first-person action video game for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Mac OS X. The game is a sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, which was remade and included along with the Assault on Dark Athena campaign. (wiki)

(Game Movie) (walkthrough)

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The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury is a 2004 made-for-DVD adult animated science fiction film. It was directed by the Korean-American Æon Flux animator Peter Chung, and features Vin Diesel reprising his role of Richard B. Riddick. It acts as a bridgepoint between Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. (wiki)

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The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

timespace coordinates: 26th century Helion Prime, prison moon Crematoria

The Chronicles of Riddick is a 2004 American science fiction adventure film which follows the adventures of Richard B. Riddick as he attempts to elude capture after the events depicted in the 2000 film Pitch Black. It is written and directed by Pitch Black director David Twohy, with Vin Diesel reprising his role as Riddick and now also acting as producer. It is the first and so far only film in the franchise to be given a PG-13 rating.

Despite not doing especially well in theatres, the film has been successful on DVD and has gained a cult following. (wiki)

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Riddick: Blindsided (2013)

A new attempt on Lord Marshal Riddick’s life is made on the Necromongers’ ship. It’s time for Riddick to end the years long meandering through space and go back to his roots. (imdb)

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Riddick (2013)

Riddick is a 2013 American science fiction thriller film, the third installment in the Riddick film series. Produced by and starring Vin Diesel as the title character.

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Sequel

0959 – Todo sobre mi madre / All About My Mother (1999)

timespace coordinates: 1990’s Barcelona

All About My Mother (Spanish: Todo sobre mi madre) is a 1999 Spanish drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, and starring Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Antonia San Juan, Penélope Cruz and Candela Peña.

The plot originates in Almodóvar’s earlier film The Flower of My Secret (1995) which shows student doctors being trained in how to persuade grieving relatives to allow organs to be used for transplant, focusing on the mother of a teenager killed in a road accident. All About My Mother deals with complex issues such as AIDS, homosexuality, transsexualism, faith, and existentialism. (wiki)

ost

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imdb

0956 – Mortal Engines (2018)

timespace coordinates: Following a cataclysmic conflict known as the Sixty Minute War, the remnants of humanity regroup and form mobile “predator” cities. Under a philosophy known as “Municipal Darwinism”, larger cities hunt and absorb smaller settlements in the “Great Hunting Ground”, which includes Great Britain and Continental Europe. In opposition, settlements of the “Anti-Traction League” have developed an alternative civilization consisting of “static settlements” (traditional, non-mobile cities) in Asia led by Shan Guo (formerly China), protected by the “Shield Wall”.

“After the Ancients destroyed themselves in the Sixty Minute War, there were several thousand years in which nothing much happened. These were the Black Centuries. The great civilizations of the Screen Age had been utterly swept away, and humanity was reduced to a few scattered bands of savages’ ‘The Traction Codex’

Mortal Engines is a 2018 post-apocalyptic adventure film directed by Christian Rivers and with a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, based on the novel of the same name by Philip Reeve, and starring Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery, Leila George, Patrick Malahide, and Stephen Lang. An American–New Zealand co-production, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where entire cities have been mounted on wheels and motorised, and prey on one another. (wiki)

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953 – Saints Row IV (2013 video game)

Saints Row IV is an open world action-adventure video game with third-person shooter elements developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. It is the fourth title in the Saints Row series. In the game, the playable character is the leader of the 3rd Street Saints, a street gang that has become the world’s most powerful and popular organization, and must fend off an alien invasion after becoming President of the United States and receiving superpowers.

The player is free to explore their environment while completing main and side missions at their leisure. The game incorporates elements from science fiction video games and films, and continues the series’ reputation for over-the-top parody. It was released in August 2013 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and was later ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Linux in 2015.

The game is set in a nearly identical simulation of Steelport, the fictional city setting from Saints Row: The Third, though individual story missions have new, custom-designed levels. 

Saints Row IV‘s story parodies science fiction video games, especially Mass Effect 2, as well as films like The Matrix and Zero Dark Thirty, and other “nerd culture”. Some story missions are propelled by individual characters’ existential crises, as each Saint character is stuck in a personal simulation of their own hell, and must be rescued by the player. Other elements borrowed from video game culture include BioWare-style character romances games and a Metal Gear-style mission with an unhelpful partner.

Saints Row IV received several limited and summative edition releases, and was briefly banned in Australia.

System Requirements (Minimum) CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 | AMD Athlon II x3. / OS: Windows Vista (x86 or x64) / VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 260 | AMD Radeon HD 5800 series. / FREE DISK SPACE: 10 GB. / DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 896 MB.

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