It follows a young man (Holland) who lives in a dystopian world without women, where all living creatures can hear each other’s thoughts in streams of images, words, and sounds called “Noise.” When a woman (Ridley) crash lands on the planet, he must help her escape danger. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: The Flying Train, Germany, 1902
timespace coordinates: A Trip Through New York City in 1911
timespace coordinates: A Trip Through Paris, France in late 1890s
timespace coordinates: San Francisco, a Trip down Market Street, April 14, 1906
timespace coordinates: A Trip Through the Streets of Amsterdam, 1922
timespace coordinates: Laborers in Victorian England, 1901
timespace coordinates: Views of Tokyo, Japan, 1913-1915
timespace coordinates: Moscow, Tverskaya Street in 1896
The oldest recorded video, timespace coordinates: “Roundhay Garden Scene”, England,1888
timespace coordinates: 1895 – France, Lyon, place des Cordeliers, – Factory outlet, France, Lyon, Monplaisir, chemin Saint-Victor (today rue du 1er Film) – The Landing of the photography congress in Lyon,
1896 – Launch of a ship, France, –Switzerland, Geneva, National Exhibition, Swiss Village, – Westminster Bridge, Great Britain, London, – France, Lyon: Quai de l’Archevêché, – Panorama of the Grand Canal taken from a boat, Italy, Venice, Grand Canal, – Arrival of a train in Perrache station, France, Lyon, – Broadway, United States, New York,
1897 – Jaffa Gate: east side, Jerusalem 1897 – The pyramids, Egypt, Giza – Panorama of the Golden Horn, Turkey, Istanbul – Camel caravan, Jerusalem, – France, Lyon, place du Pont – Japan, Kyoto,Honshu,
1899 – Biarritz: the beach and the sea, France, Biarritz, – Grande Plage, – Bad weather at the port, Italy,
1900 View from a whaling boat in motion, France, Hyères – Panorama taken from a sedan chair, January 25, 1900, French Indochina (now Vietnam), village of Namo, Annam
1902 Fort-de-France: market, Martinique, Fort-de-France, French Antilles
timespace coordinates: near-future Shanghai, China
directed: Teng Huatao
The movie was based on the Sci-fi novel from 2009 Once Upon A time in Shanghai by novelist Jiang Nan. From what I understand Jiang Nan was born in 1977 and although relatively unknown in the West (in comparison with Cixin Liu let’s say) has a huge reputation in China, and a huge following among teenagers. He wrote one sprawling feudal saga (completely unknown to me) – situated in the Novoland universe (where a series of kingdoms are situated respectively on the Eastern or Northern continent and named Xiantang kingdom, Li kingdom etc). Novoland forms a true Chinese media franchise (a Chinese response to the Lord of the Rings) that also includes his Novoland: Eagle Flag a successful Chinese TV series based on a fantasy book that used the province of Xinjiang (a place of uighur re-education/labor camps) as a set. He is also CEO of Beijing Smart Dragon Cultural Development Co, Ltd.
From the start I want to say that Shanghai Fortress is interesting for what it is not. After airing, it was heavily criticized by Chinese moviegoers and fans. So much so, that the film director had to publicly apologize online after so many found it so disappointing and gave it low cringy ratings. The phenomenon of powerful ‘entitled’ fandoms is not typical to the West nor new, altough it has gotten extreme of late. Fans have been actively involved in culture wars, disputes about ‘wokeness’ or targeting and hacking to pieces big-budget movies. Fandom won’t join the bandwagon all the time and movies that aim to rouse up feelings of nationalism or stand out as gung-ho patriotic are not without risks. Today there’s is more and more need to speak of related fandoms and inter-related media convergence phenomena m, even more so that in the 1990s cultural poachers era encapsulated by Henry Jenkin’s foundational text. Considering the fact that a lot of joint capitalist huge franchise products movies (Mulan comes to mind) as well as big brands (such as Dolce Gabbana racist adds) have been boycotted in China because of their cultural insensitivity and even neglect of local context one should always factor this when considering a sci-fi movie’s balancing act. Mulan & Gabanna have been accused of being openly racist and for promoting whitewashing & stereotypical media portrayals in a commercial context. Although the question still remains – if it is a case of users data (complaints) updating a multinational commercial monolith to their customer’s new sensibilities, buying power and valid cultural critiques. It seems like everybody involved in the production apologized for this film (including the author Jiang Nan) for being such a downer with fans, reflected in box office collapse and most online Chinese critics agreeing that is is mainly a bad melodrama love story between army officers with very few sci-fi (decorative) elements (compounded by bad FX that sometimes look as coming from another era).
It is sad indeed that the first movie to shift the – Alien Invasion – (probably inaugurated by Independence Day blockbuster) view from visible highlights of US (Washington, NY) towards other cosmopolitan vibrant cities of the Global South – especially the new sino-futuristic Mecca Shanghai with its newly recognizable skyline, has fared so bad. This is why a South African situated District 9 (2009) sci-fi is such a treat and why all the kaiju movies made Tokyo city into such an apocalyptic emblem. In this perspective even Moscow has fared better with Fyodor Bondarchuk introducing hood ‘sleeping quarter’ backdrops, with ‘othering’ narratives that are recognizably local (Chertanovo hood), taking anti-migrant violence or Russian transhumanism as starting material for his Invasion franchise. Shanghai is still being portrayed better in smaller productions and even gets a better chance apparently in Western US futuristic ones (Looper altough with Chinese backing and a hungry eye for the Chinese moviegoer market). I don’t want to trash the concept art and especially the SparkWarrgon work on HUD interfaces, system keyboards, the general’s seat, and control rooms that has lots of details and interesting aspects.
Already the term Fortress – Shanzhai– is historically charged, almost like a polity, a polis in itself, one that is autonomous, proud and even rebel. In the literary classic – Water Margin the Fortress (“Shanzhai”) in Shandong was the governmental double, a state within a state, the centrifugal force of the Chinese ‘haiduk’ marshland provincial resistance. The Fortress was harboring the discontented, the disgraced army members, the petty criminals, defrocked Buddhist monks etc all united by the distaste (not for the Son of Heaven mind you!) but for the corrupt officials, the leeching, profiteers at the Imperial court. Shanghai is not the sinofuturist smart model city, it is also the place of the 1st Congress of the Communist Party that traces its origins to a meeting in the Shikumen (typically Shanghaiese architecture style) building inside the French concession taking place during July-August 1921.
In the Shanghai Fortress- Scifi the city of Shanghai becomes the last resistance of the Earth against a rote – script of usually more technologically advanced and rapacious Aliens. And in China’s case “aliens” – and technologically advanced ones, have been mostly foreign European powers including the British Empire. ‘Alien powers’ that have humiliated China and who’s gunboat politics have remade China into an Opium addicted dragon, opening its ports to unequal trade and even making the Imperial government hand over several territories including concessions in Tianjin as well as the placid fisherman village of Hong Kong. Although it is important to track this anti-foreigner – xeno- alien- phobia in China’s history, these particular (US, British, French, German, Japanese etc) ‘foreign devils’ were the ones who forcefully opened and brutalized China, while bleeding it for resources.
Subsequently, they represented a threat to the power struggles following Mao’s demise and clashed with other shards of the petering Cultural Revolution – even before the winning faction finally taking over: the central reformist path of Deng that took the lead towards accelerationist economic policies. One can keep this background in mind when watching the movie if it makes it less boring and stiff that is.
That being said it is increasingly apparent that such Scifi movies – as Shanghai Fortress- may represent a visual cinematic exemplification of actual new concepts officially introduced by the CCP in order to challenge older notions of inter-departmental separation in previously loosely bound economic and defense spheres. It is a move away from the former centralized planned economy and defense and into a joint “military-civil fusion” (军民融合, jun-min ronghe) that is fast becoming the force behind economic planning as well as Chinese corporations. This is something not really well understood outside of China, and it is a shifting and evolving policy. During the recent talk of US-decoupling from the Chinese economy and trade wars – Huawei has been targeted as such a (nefarious as described by detractors in the US, Australia etc) high-tech long arm of the CCP & and infrastructural implementation in convergence with Chinese state security and incurring backdoors, security breaches etc being strategically planted. This of course tends to blandly paste over all the post- Snowden 2000s NSA reveals that show how much high tech (mainly Silicon Valley) Big tech is also being infiltrated (or in-grown by US state security apparatuses), invested in Chinese rare minerals/open markets or coopted by openly right-wing vested interests.
In this Scifi movie – the hightech military alliance is very important as preparation for any worst case scenario. There is a shield (a kind of Chinese Wall Dome that covers the city) but also under the city there are vast technological operations securing its energetic autonomy (via independent generators) and ability to last a long siege. The film also touches upon an important diplomatic fact – importantly in my view – it remains somehow doggedly international – it has this planetary stance (a bit like the Zion last Human city in Matrix) and makes efforts to portray its military brass as human(humanistic?) as possible, with romantic interests, coffee brakes etc and such and not too many enhancements.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is a six-part series that explores how modern society has arrived to the strange place it is today. The series traverses themes of love, power, money, the ghosts of empire, the history of China, opium and opioids, the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, and the history of Artificial Intelligence. Inspired by the 2016 apex of populism—the political ideology which presents The People as morally good, and The Elite as morally bad—the underlying aim of the series is to show why the critics of Donald Trump and Brexit were unable to offer an alternative vision for the future.
We are living through strange days. Across Britain, Europe, and America, societies have become split and polarised. There is anger at the inequality and the ever growing corruption—and a widespread distrust of the elites. Into this has come the pandemic that has brutally dramatised those divisions. But despite the chaos, there is a paralysis—a sense that no one knows how to escape from this. Can’t Get You Out of My Head tells how we got to this place. And why both those in power—and we—find it so difficult to move on. At its heart is the strange story of what happened when people’s inner feelings got mixed up with power in the age of individualism. How the hopes and dreams and uncertainties inside people’s minds met the decaying forces of old power in Britain, America, Russia, and China. What resulted was a block not just in the society, but also inside our own heads, that stops us imagining anything else than this.
This next part traverses the story of what tore the revolutions in the 1960s apart. Jiang Qing in China, Michael X in London, Afeni Shakur in New York believed that millions of people’s minds were haunted by the corruption and the violence of the past. They wanted to show people how to escape those ghosts. But they hadn’t reckoned with the fact that the old structures of power still haunted their minds too. They too had been scarred by the past, and some of them wanted violent revenge. While psychologists and neuroscientists were starting to discover what they said were hidden forces inside the human brain that really controlled what they did. But the people weren’t aware.
This is the story of how in the 1970s, those in power set out to create a world free of the dangerous big ideas of the past. They banished the grand dreams of changing the world. And replaced them with money. People would live from now on in their own heads—in their own dreams. And the banks would lend them the money to create those dreams. While China would supply a wave of cheap consumer goods on a scale never seen before in the world. But then money broke free across the world. And people started to get frightened that things were out of control. Not just money—but the world’s climate too seemed to be behaving in a strange, unpredictable way. The systems seemed to have a life of their own. Beyond the ability of anyone to shape and predict.
No one trusted politics or politicians any longer. Instead we were all one world of free individuals. And we could intervene to save other individuals around the world without bothering with old politics and power. And people became what they as individuals truly were—emotionally and sexually. But power was mutating and finding ways to work its way back into our heads. The politicians realised that they no longer had the support or the trust of the people. So they switched sides and gave up being our representatives who would challenge the powerful on our behalf. Instead they began to tell us what to do on behalf of the powerful. And they made new alliances—with the psychologists who said that human beings were irrational and needed to be managed. But we didn’t notice because we were too busy shopping.
It wasn’t just the Slave Trade: 150 years ago Britain had wrecked China by forcing opium on the country. It made Britain the richest and most powerful country in the world. But it enslaved the minds of millions of the Chinese and helped destroy the society. But then the British got frightened of what they had done and created a dream image of a Britain that had never existed, to hide from the fear. This film tells the story of how from the end of the 19th century a magical vision of Britain’s feudal past was created by artists and writers. How folk music and folk dancing was invented to create a kind of safe dream of the nation that could hide the violence and the horrors. The dream persisted under the surface of the 20th century. But as the fears and uncertainties and the chaos of the last few years rose up millions of people started to believe that dream: that it was real.
The final episode tells how the strange paralysis that grips us today was created. How all the different forces of our age—that started out as separate have come together to create what is a block against imagining another kind of future than this. How, money and debt, melancholy over the loss of empire, the strange roots of modern conspiracy theories, the history of China, opium and opioids, Artificial Intelligence, and love and power have all fed into creating the present time of anxiety and fearfulness about the future. And whether modern culture, despite its radicalism, is really also part of the rigid system—in the West and in Russia and China—where those in power have run out of all ideas. The film also lays out what are the different possible roads from here into the future, and the choices we will have to make about the very different futures we will have to choose very soon.
timespace coordinates: year 2092, Earth have become nearly uninhabitable.Fleeing the sick earth, UTS corporation builds a new orbiting Home for humanity. But only a chosen few can ascend.The plot follows the crew of the space junk collector ship The Victory‘s adventures.
Space Sweepers (Korean: 승리호; RR: Seungriho; lit. Spaceship Victory) is a 2021 South Korean space opera film directed by Jo Sung-hee, starring Song Joong-ki, Kim Tae-ri, Jin Seon-kyu and Yoo Hae-jin. Regarded as the first Korean space blockbuster, it was released on Netflix on February 5, 2021.
timespace coordinates: 2020 – ’21. Texas / first manned mission to Mars / the Cydonia region / Earth-orbiting World Space Station / Mars II rescue mission / REMO (“Resupply Module”) orbiting Mars
Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise, left), Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen, center) and Mars One Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle, right) watch an extraordinary living diorama of planetary history in Touchstone Pictures” adventure/drama, “Mission To Mars.” Photo credit: ILM Touchstone Pictures
All the ships were based on actual NASA aircraft and used materials from real aerospace companies. The filmmakers received NASA’s most up-to-date plans for a Mars mission when making the movie. Effects supervisor Hoyt Yeatman says this is a “hardware film.” Almost every location in the movie had to be created from scratch because it didn’t exist in the real world. The crew used over 14,000 gallons of paint to spray the soil “Mars red.” That dust is blown by 10 massive 350-horsepower wind machines. The crew reflected copper light onto the actors to mimic the orange atmosphere of the Martian sky.
The appearance of the “Face on Mars”, as well as the alien hologram, were modeled after the work of the famous Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi, especially his “Sleeping Muse”(1910).
The film stars Clooney, and follows a scientist who must venture through the Arctic Circle with a young girl to warn off a returning spaceship following a global catastrophe. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 