spacetime coordinates: >> 2010’s Wellington New Zealand
What We Do in the Shadows is a 2014 New Zealand mockumentaryhorror comedy film about a group of vampires who live together in Wellington, that is written, directed by, and starring Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi.
spacetime coordinates: 1990’s Australia // Hollywood Los Angeles, California
Reckless
Kelly is a 1993 Australian screwball comedy film produced, written, directed and starringYahoo Serious. It co-stars Melora Hardin, Alexei Sayle and Hugo Weaving. The story is a satirical take on a modern-dayNed Kelly, a famous Australian outlaw.
_____________”We lived in this wild pub. It was so old that no one was sure if it was actually built or just somehow grew out of the ground. Over the years, it has become home to every kind of wildlife you can imagine.”
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a 2017 black comedy crime film written, produced, and directed by Martin McDonagh. It stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes and Peter Dinklage. The film follows a mother who, when the police in her town fail to find a suspect in her daughter’s murder, purchases three billboards to call public attention to the unsolved crime, polarizing the community. (soundtrack by Carter Burwell)
Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway.
The film’s plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.
The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically ‘The Billy Goats Gruff‘, because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett’s son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:
Bees in the Trees
Dawn Card Castles
Deadman’s Catch
Flights of Fancy (or Reverse Strip Jump)
The Great Death Game
Hangman’s Cricket
The Hare and Hounds
Sheep and Tides
In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure and symmetry. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters.