timespace coodinates: Bakersfield, Ca / Old Dale 1997
An unusual piece of foil with potential alien origin causes a rift between two former best friends camping in the California desert. (imdb)
Tag Archives: desert
2446 – The Last Stop in Yuma County (2023)
timespace coodinates: 1980s rural Arizona rest stop
The Last Stop in Yuma County is a 2023 American crime thriller film written and directed by Francis Galluppi and starring Jim Cummings, Jocelin Donahue, Richard Brake, Faizon Love and Michael Abbott Jr. It is Galluppi’s feature directorial debut. (wiki)
2443 – Parallax (2023)
A young artist wakes up to a life she doesn’t recognize, haunted by nightmares of drowning in a void, and she begins to question her sanity. (imdb)
2440 – Fallout (TV Series 2024 -)
timespace coodinates: The series depicts the aftermath of the Great War of 2077, an apocalyptic nuclear exchange in an alternate history of Earth where advances in nuclear technology after WWII led to the emergence of a retrofuturistic society and a subsequent resource war. Many survivors took refuge in fallout bunkers known as Vaults. More than 200 years later in 2296, a young woman named Lucy leaves behind her home in Vault 33 to venture out into the dangerously unforgiving wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles to look for her father, who had been kidnapped. Along the way, she meets a Brotherhood of Steel squire and a ghoul bounty hunter, each has their own mysterious pasts and agendas to settle.
Fallout is an American post-apocalyptic drama television series created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet for Amazon Prime Video. Based on the role-playing video game franchise created by Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky the series stars Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones, and Walton Goggins. (wiki)
2413 – Halo (TV Series 2022 -)
timespace coordinates: 26th-century war between the United Nations Space Command and the Covenant, a theocratic-military alliance of several alien races determined to eradicate humanity
Halo is an American military science fiction television series produced by Showtime in association with 343 Industries and Amblin Television for Paramount+. Based on the video game franchise of the same name,
Pablo Schreiber and Jen Taylor star as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and Cortana; the latter reprises her voice role from the video game series, Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha, an Insurrectionist teenager from the Outer Colony planet of Madrigal and daughter of Jin Ha and Natascha McElhone as Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, a scientist for the UNSC, the creator of the SPARTAN-II program.
The first season of Halo premiered on March 24, 2022, and ran until May 19. It was met with mostly positive reviews from critics, with praise given for its action scenes, cast, and visual effects but criticism for its derivative writing and alterations from the source material. A second season premiered on February 8, 2024, and ran for eight episodes until March 21. It was met with positive reviews from critics, who declared it to be an improvement over the previous season.(wiki)
2407 – Earth Abides (1949 novel)
timespace coordinates: The novel tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and the emergence of a new culture with simpler tools. Set in the 1940s in Berkeley, California, the story is told by Isherwood Williams, who emerges from isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead.
Earth Abides is a 1949 American post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by George R. Stewart.
In November 1950, the book was adapted for the CBS radio program Escape as a two-part drama starring John Dehner. In early 2024 it was announced that a television adaptation was underway at Amazon MGM Studios.
“Apparently the processes behind the production of electricity must be almost completely automatic. In the hydro-electric plants the flow of water was still keeping the generators in motion. Moreover, when things had started to go to pieces, someone must have ordered that the street-lights be left turned on.
Now he saw beneath him all the intricate pattern of the lights in the East Bay cities, and beyond that the yellow chains of lights on the Bay Bridge, and still farther through the faint evening mist, the glow of the San Francisco lights and the fainter chains on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Even the traffic-lights were still working, changing from green to red. High upon the bridge-towers the flashes silently sent their warnings to airplanes which would no longer ever be flying.
Even the advertising signs, some of them at least, had been left burning. Pathetically, they flashed out their call to buy, though no longer were there any customers left or any salesmen. One great sign in particular, its lower part hidden behind a near-by building, still sent out its message Drink although he could not see what he was thus commanded to drink.
she watched it, half-fascinated. Drink—blackness. Drink—blackness. Drink. “Well, why not?”“
2366 – Murder at the End of the World (2023 miniseries)
timespace coordinates: somewhere in the near future in a high tech billionaire Arctic retreat in Iceland.
Created by Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij
Suffice it to say after Netflix killed “The OA” everyone must have eagerly waiting for news any news regarding any new production from the Brit Marling & Batmanglij duo – IMHO one of the most ambitious, consistent, and surprising actors/screenwriters/director collaborations in the Anglophone world.
In an era where franchises driven by algorithms churn more of the same, Brit and Batmanglij single-handedly introduced memorable “high-concept” SFs thrillers into the cinema world of the early 21st century. What I enjoy is that they never dispense with the emotional valences – even if they’re intelectual provocateurs (especially considering the formats). We on Timespacewarps are fans of their work and have been following it from early on (even on our previous blog entries – Planetneukoln for those who know). Starting with the startling Sound of My Voice (2011)– two documentary investigators go under cover for their scopp but instead get their certitudes checked by a charismatic cult leader (played by Brit Marling herself) allegedly coming from the future. The same intensity and emotional palette colors the doppelgänger encounters of Another Earth (2011) . Contemporary entanglements and a continuing preoccupation with under cover reporting, activism, violent action vs non-violent civil disobedience, dirty deals of corporate crime, private agencies – abound in the slick espionage SF drama The East (2013) that I totally recommend as an appetizer for the rest of their work. I think the Brit-Batmanjlij collaboration and involvement with The OA has produced so many threads, so much speculation & online debates that is makes it impossible to sum up. There is even a caricature version – where one expects non-sequiturs and portals, speaking octopuses at every step. Yes, Murder At the End of the World does not deliver in that sense, because it is a more subtle and muted beast. All that makes it impossible for me here to summarize or discuss the cult following they have garnered over the yearsbut you get the idea.
Murder at the End of the World is certainly a flawed product, but hey the had to play it safe after what happened to the OA I guess. I could go on criticizing the somehow worn-out premise (rich obnoxious guy inviting or challenging his competitors in a remote mansion), disjointed often filler storylines, masked assassins (think Ghostface but with anti-face recognition mask), claustrophobic situations, and an out-of-ordinary cast (of somehow unnerving) misfits and entrepreneurs.
It’s also a show about how technology permeates the everyday life of the super-rich – rich kids play with VR or AR environments largely outside of the purview of their parents, rings function as personal keys and insect robots are digging more underground retreats or special extreme weather suits. From the beginning, the non-linear plot moves from the present readings of a book with events about past to the past events themselves, or between a subplot in the US desert where murder after murder brings us closer to the serial killer – a cis-romance sleuthing of two young charismatic (Gen Z) hacker and a sexy artist-activist that will get famous, split up and be invited in the future by the rich tech billionaire. If this whodunit murder drama in the Arctic retreat of white expanses and majestic almost lifeless landscapes attracts you in any way, then feel free to watch.
You can also watch it just for the visual and emotional kicks this might deliver because the stark surroundings and deadly nature end up being the perfect background for various murders and medical situations (including immortality dreams of the rich). The series is not so much about conclusions, or solving the murders, but about certain obsessions, and a generalized contemporary vulnerability, of being both strong and very weak at the same time. Of being technically adept and not being able to prevent crimes from unfolding. The ending is not about the impending End of the World, but about places at the end of the world that are being colonized by the rich in their wish to decouple and insulate themselves from the troubles of a sacrificed majority. Such modulations of (climate) and emotional changes provoke strange encounters and bizarre romantic relationships (think Elon Musk and Grime), strange bedfellows compounded by omnipresent affordances, of the grid ecological terrorists (that nevertheless turn out to not be very effective). Ok, there under constant surveillance under ‘surveillance capitalism’ but watching the repetitive loops and pans of surveillance cameras is mind-numbingly boring. Murder At the End of the World makes it clear how our world is being drenched by audiovisual recording and playback technologies.
The hacker sub-genre has a certain revival with Mr. Robot, and Murder At the End of the World does put an effort to bring gender balance into the mainly manly hacker geek den. It does this credibly and excitingly in my opinion, although one would prefer more from the main hacktivist played by Marling.
If there’s also real (full automation) and productivity out there, it’s not very sure how it will benefit the rest of humanity meaning lots of mining by robot swarms up North (the new warming climate is actually profitable for the super-rich). It’s also one of the few media productions that depicts activists in a sympathetic way. Scientists turned activists in a positive light and not straight away as eco terrorists or renegades or Luddytes or anarcho primtivists.
Disappearing or not leaving digital traces is either a rich man’s ability or the ability of a hacker to delete or blur oneself and skip recordings times or hack into heavily AI-assisted environments, even if this in the end brings us no agency or no real way to change the past. Solving murders seems to be a collective procedural thing – also crowd-sourcing sleuthing to former victims or a growing online community of serial killer hunters.
I am not so convinced about the detective genre in general in the 21st century, but if murder mystery drama thriller is your thing, go for it.
This miniseries leaves more questions than it answers. I also get the sense that it is a vehicle for the major issues of today (the exterminist capitalist tendencies and the villainous libertarian billionaire ‘geniuses’ building luxury bunkers in remote areas outside of any accountability), US/CN competition over technological hegemony, fears over AI black-boxing, etc In a way it all goes against deductive reasoning in a way. It is Agatha Christie and it isn’t at the same time, because it rejects the usual sense-making mechanisms of this modernist genre – all the big mysteries seem solved, identifying and recognizing does quite work and in the end, it is a new ‘kind’ of culprit altogether (collective guilt?). And maybe transforming it into a personal family drama of a rich asshole is the best way to get people’s attention, who knows?
Feeling we are more dependable than ever on the benevolence of the rich entrepreneurs, and the unwanted tech Web3 “free” gifts, blockchain-specific technologies (DAOs, DeFi, NFTs) and uberization they are raining on top of us, while processes and algos that most of us do not understand or harness have free-range – is the larger theme here. Maybe a crime story is just the surface icy layer (everything is quite icy despite the high emotions) and maybe the drama leads us somewhere beyond the sleuthing whodunit of murdered activists. What is the most major crime story of our times? Well, we could well argue the actual murder case is the ever-worsening climate emergency. But that is eminently no mystery. No sleuthing to be done, no uncertainties, no whodunit from the future to the past, because we now know that since 1979 experts at Exxon Mobile were already warning about the warming greenhouse effect of the planet. So, nothing there to uncover in the snow. We know before long who the culprits and the denialists were.
imdb // wiki // rottentomatoes
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