series

1631 – Star Trek: Picard (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: year 2399. various locations

Star Trek: Picard is an American web television series featuring the character Jean-Luc Picard, created for CBS All Access by Akiva GoldsmanMichael ChabonKirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman. It is the eighth series in the Star Trek franchise, and was launched in 2020 as part of Kurtzman’s expansion of the franchise. Picard begins 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and sees a retired Picard deeply affected by the death of Data in that film as well as the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek (2009).

Patrick Stewart executive produces the series and stars as Picard, reprising his role from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as other Star Trek media. Alison PillIsa BrionesEvan EvagoraMichelle HurdSantiago Cabrera, and Harry Treadaway also star. The series was designed to be slower and more character-focused than previous series in the franchise. (wiki)

imdb   /  Tie-in media

series, Uncategorized

1623 – Raised by Wolves (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: 22nd century. two androids — Father and Mother — are tasked with raising human children on Kepler-22b after the Earth was destroyed by a great war.

Raised_by_Wolves_TV_Series-773997417-largeRaised by Wolves is an American science fiction drama television series created by Aaron Guzikowski that premiered on HBO Max on September 3, 2020. The first two episodes were directed by Ridley Scott, who also serves as an executive producer for the show. In September 2020, the series was renewed for a second season. (wiki)

Scott responded to a question about the link between Alien and Raised By Wolves during a Reddit Ask Me Anything: “Interesting question but, no, the first Alien story feels like it may be some time before Raised By Wolves, in that the Nostromo was probably financed by an organized global economy. Wolves is about post-global war chaos.” (newsweek)

raisedbywolves-travis-po-cmyk-tunein1-1598365846998

imdb   /   Podcast

animation, documentary, series, Uncategorized

1618 – The Shivering Truth (TV Series 2018-)

The Shivering Truth is an American stop-motion animated surrealist sketch comedy television series created by Vernon Chatman and directed by Chatman and Cat Solen. The show is produced by Solen with PFFR and ShadowMachine, and features the voice talents of Janeane Garofalo, Chatman, Kevin Breznahan, Trey Parker, Miriam Tolan, Michael CeraJonah HillStarlee KineRichard Steven HorvitzZack PearlmanMaria BamfordConner O’MalleyDavid CrossMartha Plimpton, Peter Serafinowicz, and Jordan PeeleThe Shivering Truth premiered at midnight on December 9, 2018 on Adult Swim, with the pilot episode having been released online on May 22, 2018 on the Adult Swim website.

When announced in a press release by Adult Swim in May 2017, The Shivering Truth was described as “a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion – in other words, it is the TRUTH”.

The characters in the show are 10-inch (250 mm) puppets with wire-based armatures, created with silicon, wool, polystyrene, and resin. Chatman has noted several inspirations for his work on the show, including Terry Gilliam‘s work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, stating that “I saw it when I was very young, so it scared me. I didn’t know when the animation was beginning or ending.” He also explained that “A lot of my influences are non-animated, primarily in short films, novels, even radio shows. A recent one is David Eagleman‘s books on the brain. He’s a neuroscientist and he gives you 40 different versions of the afterlife, and none of them can co-exist.” Solen has spoken on her inspirations as well, saying that “I loved the movie The Wizard of Speed and Time, which is a cautionary tale about making movies. Another film that I loved as a kid was Nicolas Roeg‘s [film] adaptation of Roald Dahl‘s The Witches, which featured both Anjelica Huston and Jim Henson‘s puppets. It scared me so much!” (wiki)


imdb   /  adultswim.com/videos/the-shivering-truth

books, movies, Uncategorized

1608 – District 9 (2009)

timespace coordinates: The film is partially presented in a found footage format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of humanityxenophobia and social segregation, begins in an alternate 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens are discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government’s relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat leading the relocation named Wikus van der Merwe. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events in Cape Town‘s District Six, during the apartheid era.

District 9_6District 9 is a 2009 science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut. It is a co-production of New Zealand, the United States and South Africa. The film stars Sharlto CopleyJason Cope, and David James, and was adapted from Blomkamp’s 2006 short film Alive in Joburg. (wiki)

DISTRICT_9_CLUBS_thedarkinker

imdb  /   rt   /  Future   /  the-art-of-district-9


Alive in Joburg (2005)

timespace coordinates: In 1990, Johannesburg is home to a number of extraterrestrial refugees, whose large spaceships (estimated to be nearly one kilometre in length) can be seen hovering above the city. When the visitors first arrived, the human population was enamored with, among other aspects, the aliens’ advanced “bio-suits”, and welcomed them with open arms. However, the aliens later began moving into other areas of the city, committing crimes in order to survive and frequently clashing with police. Playing as a documentary, the film continues with interviews and footage taken from handheld cameras, which highlight the growing tension between Earth’s civilian population and the extraterrestrial visitors.

According to individuals “interviewed” in the film, the aliens were captive labour (slaves or indentured servants), forced to live in “conditions that were not good” and had escaped to Earth. Because the film takes place in 1990, while apartheid was still in effect in South Africa, the aliens were forced to live amongst the already-oppressed black population, causing conflict with them as well as the non-white and white populations.

All of the interview statements which do not explicitly mention extraterrestrials were taken from authentic interviews with many South Africans who had been asked their opinions of Zimbabwean refugees. (wiki)

imdb

movies

1600 – Alone in Berlin (2016)

timespace coordinates:  World War II-era Berlin (September 1940 – April 1943)

Alone in Berlin is a 2016 war drama film directed by Vincent Pérez, based on the 1947 non-fiction book Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. The novel’s characters Otto and Anna Quangel are based on Otto and Elise Hampel.

When their son dies in France, the couple start writing postcards to urge people to protest against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. The film stars Emma ThompsonBrendan GleesonDaniel Brühl, and Mikael Persbrandt.

 The Irish Times wrote: “the film offers a fascinating and timely blueprint for political dissent, a methodology that connects with pamphleteering, graffiti, and memes.” (wiki)

imdb

movies

1599 – The Devil All the Time (2020)

timespace coordinates: 1945, 1950, 1957, 1965 rural southern Ohio and West Virginia

The Devil All the Time is a 2020 American psychological thriller film based on the novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock, who also voiced the narration in the film. Directed and co-written by Antonio Campos and produced by Jake Gyllenhaal and Randall Poster, the film stars an ensemble cast comprising Tom HollandBill SkarsgårdRiley KeoughJason ClarkeSebastian StanHaley BennettEliza ScanlenMia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson.  (wiki)

imdb

quotes, theory, Uncategorized

1596

Teenage bloodbath: the 2010s in review

by Sam Kriss

Reviewed:
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (film, JJ Abrams, 2019)
The Irishman (film, Martin Scorsese, 2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (film, Quentin Tarantino, 2019)
‘ok boomer’ (meme, the New York Times, 2019)
The death of Jeffrey Epstein (hyperobject, Bill and Hillary Clinton, 2019)
YA fiction (genre, JK Rowling et al., 1997)
The 2010s (decade, Time, 2010)
Industrial capitalism (mode of production, the World-Spirit, 1760)
The Earth (planet, God, 4,543,000,000 BC)
Myself (imbecile, God, 1990)


“George Lucas was the Albert Speer of cinema. Everything he built had extraordinary ruin value; all those spaceships work far better as enormous wrecks than as active fantasies. They were destroyed from the very beginning.”

“Youth, in our era of exhaustion, is a phantom. It’s something dreamed up by old people; it belongs to them, and they’ll control it until they die; maybe afterwards.”