1595 – Fallen Angels (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1995 urban, nighttime Hong Kong

Fallen Angels is a 1995 Hong Kong drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, and Karen Mok. As with the filmmaker’s other features, plot takes a back seat to mood.

Originally conceived by Wong as the third story for 1994’s Chungking Express, it was cut after he decided that it was complete without it. He instead decided to develop the story further into its own feature film and borrowed elements of Chungking Express, such as themes, locations and methods of filming. Wanting to also try to differentiate it from Chungking and to try something new, Wong decided along with cinematographer Christopher Doyle to shoot mainly at night and using extreme wide-angle lenses, keeping the camera as close to the talents as possible to give a detached effect from the world around them.

In an interview, Wong had this to say:

…To me, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long. I always think these two films should be seen together as a double bill. In fact, people asked me during an interview for Chungking Express: “You’ve made these two stories which have no relationship at all to each other, how can you connect them?” And I said, ‘The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong.” I see the films as inter-reversible, the character of Faye Wong could be the character of Takeshi in Fallen Angels; Brigitte Lin in Chungking could be Leon Lai in Fallen Angels. All of their characters are inter-reversible. Also, in Chungking we were shooting from a very long distance with long lenses, but the characters seem close to us.

In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote:

The acme of neo-new-wavism, the ultimate in MTV alienation, the most visually voluptuous flick of the fin de siècle, a pyrotechnical wonder about mystery, solitude, and the irrational love of movies that pushes Wong’s style to the brink of self-parody.

wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1587 – Nirvana (1997)

Nirvana is a 1997 Italian cyberpunk science fiction film directed by Gabriele Salvatores. The film stars Christopher Lambert, Diego Abatantuono, Sergio Rubini, and Stefania Rocca. (wiki)

The movie and the in-movie game are named after the Nirvana, a religious and philosophical concept used in religions of India (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.) to describe the peace of mind, body and soul one reaches after all desires  are extinguished. Many believe that this is accomplished through reincarnations, where every time you “come back” you get slightly more world-weary and closer to the Nirvana. This has some similarities to what happens to Solo in his game.

The blue woman with many hands, an image that features throughout the movie (and is supposedly the cover art for the game) is Kali, the Hindu goddess of power, time, change, destruction and death. (imdb)

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1585 – Cat Quest (2017 video game)

spacetime coordinates: post-apocalyptic/ medieval Felingard

Cat Quest is an action role-playing video game developed by Singapore based team The Gentlebros and published by PQube.

Cat Quest is an open world RPG set in the pawsome world of cats!
Leap into a grand adventure in purrsuit of the evil Drakoth and your catnapped sister! Explore Felingard’s huge overworld map, risk life and limb delving into dungeons for epic loot, and lend a paw to a furry cast of characters in a flurry of side quests.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 7 / Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 / Storage: 250 MB available space

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1581 – Project Power (2020)

spacetime coordinates: near-future New Orleans

Project Power is a 2020 American superhero film directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost. It stars Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback, alongside Colson Baker, Rodrigo Santoro, Amy Landecker and Allen Maldonado, and follows a drug dealer, a police officer, and a former soldier who team up to stop the distribution of a pill that gives the user superpowers for five minutes. (wiki)

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1580 – Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons: The Movie (2020)

Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons: The Movie is a 2020 American direct-to-video animated superhero film based on the CW Seed series Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and distributed by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

It was released digitally on August 4, 2020 and will be on Blu-ray on August 18, 2020. (wiki)

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1559 – Now Apocalypse (TV Series 2019)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s Los Angeles

Now Apocalypse is an American comedy television series that aired for one season of ten episodes from March 10 to May 12, 2019, on Starz. The series was written by Gregg Araki and Karley Sciortino. Araki also was director and executive producer alongside Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs. Starz canceled the series on July 26, 2019. Araki later stated that he was shopping the series to other networks.

Ulysses, his friends Carly and Ford, and Ford’s girlfriend Severine navigate love, sex, and fame in Los Angeles. Troubled by sinister, premonitory dreams, Ulysses wonders if the end of the world as we know it is coming, or if he is simply suffering some kind of marijuana-fueled delusions. (wiki)

This is all perfectly well-made, candy-coloured fun as well as being a bang up-to-date exploration of 21st-century sexual identities (co-written by Araki with sex columnist Karley Sciortino), albeit one in which everyone looks amazing all the time. Boyd Hilton / Empire Magazine / rottentomatoes

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