0991 – The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

timespace coordinates: 1955 Belgium > Morocco

The Adventures of Tintin (also known as The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn outside North America) is a 2011 3D computer-animated mystery adventure comedy film based on the comics series of the same name by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy and written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, the film is inspired by three of Hergé’s albums: The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941), The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) and Red Rackham’s Treasure (1944). Starring the voices of Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, the film features human characters animated primarily using live-action motion capture animation. (wiki)

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Sequels

0918 – The Drop (2014)

timespace coordinates: 2010s Brooklyn

The Drop is a 2014 American crime film directed by Michaël R. Roskam, from a screenplay written by Dennis Lehane. The film is based on Lehane’s 2009 short story “Animal Rescue”. Lehane also adapted the script into a 2014 novel of The Drop. The film stars Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini (in his final film role), with Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz and James Frecheville in supporting roles. (wiki)

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0905 – Under the Silver Lake (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2011 Los Angeles

Under the Silver Lake is a 2018 American neo-noir mystery film written, produced and directed by David Robert Mitchell. Set in Los Angeles, it stars Andrew Garfield as a young man who sets out on a quest to investigate the sudden disappearance of his neighbour (Riley Keough), only to stumble upon an elusive and dangerous large-scale conspiracy.

Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out gave the film a perfect five rating, calling it “Hypnotic, spiraling and deliriously high” and stating “the ambition of Under the Silver Lake is worth cherishing. It will either evaporate into nothingness or cohere into something you’ll want to hug for being so wonderfully weird.” Eric Kohn of IndieWire gave a positive review, calling it “a bizarre and outrageous drama grounded in the consistency of Garfield’s astonishment at every turn. […] Aided by cinematographer Mike Gioloukas’ sunny visuals and a searching Disasterpiece score, the movie becomes a bittersweet ode to wanting answers from an indifferent world overwhelmed by superficial distractions. The homage can be irritating and some of the transitions work better than others across an unwieldy running time — but even the flaws speak to the movie’s beguiling raison d’être. It’s fascinating to watch Mitchell grasp for a bigger picture with the wild ambition of his scruffy protagonist.” 

Owen Gleiberman of Variety gave a positive review, calling it “a down-the-rabbit-hole movie, at once gripping and baffling, fueled by erotic passion and dread but also by the code-fixated opacity of conspiracy theory. The movie is impeccably shot and staged, with an insanely lush soundtrack that’s like Bernard Herrmann-meets-Angelo-Badalamenti-on-opioids. When it’s over, though, you feel like you’ve seen a meta-mystery made by someone who spent too much time scrawling notes in the margins of his frayed copy of Infinite Jest. (wiki)

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0827 – Alpha (2018)

timespace coordinates:  Upper Paleolithic Europe, 20,000 years in the past

Alpha is a 2018 American historical adventure film directed by Albert Hughes and written by Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt, from a story by Hughes. The film stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as a young hunter who befriends an injured wolf during the last ice age, with Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson as his father. The wolf is played by Chuck, a five-year-old Czechoslovakian Wolfdog. (wiki)

The archaeological record shows the first undisputed dog remains buried beside humans 14,700 years ago, with disputed remains occurring 36,000 years ago.

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imdb

681 – Isle of Dogs (2018)

timespace coordinates: 2038 Japan

Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島 Hepburn: Inugashima) is a 2018 stop-motion animated film written, produced and directed by Wes Anderson. Set in a dystopian near-future Japan, the story follows a young boy searching for his dog after the species is banished to an island following the outbreak of a canine flu. The film’s ensemble voice cast includes Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Harvey Keitel, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Frank Wood, Kunichi Nomura and Yoko Ono.

Anderson said that the film was strongly influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions. (wiki)

https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/23-29-april-2018/erica-dorn-on-creating-graphics-for-wes-andersons-isle-of-dogs/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5104604/

618 – Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s New Zealand

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a 2016 New Zealand adventure comedy-drama film written and directed by Taika Waititi, whose screenplay was based on the book Wild Pork and Watercress by Barry Crump. Carthew Neal, Leanne Saunders, Matt Noonan, and Waititi produced the film. Sam Neill and Julian Dennison play “Uncle” Hector and Ricky Baker, a father figure and son who become the targets of a manhunt after fleeing into the New Zealand bush.

imdb

0615 – I Am Legend (2007)

spacetime coordinates: 2009 – 2012 New York City

I Am Legend is a 2007 American post-apocalyptic science fiction horror film based on the novel of the same name, directed by Francis Lawrence and starring Will Smith, who plays US Army virologist Robert Neville. The story is set in New York City after a virus, which was originally created to cure cancer, has wiped out most of mankind, leaving Neville as the last human in New York, other than nocturnal mutants.

“The film’s producers and sound people wanted the creatures in the movie to sound somewhat human, but not the standard”, so Mike Patton, lead singer of Faith No More, was engaged to provide the screams and howls of the infected.

In his vision of an empty New York, Lawrence cited John Ford as his influence: “We didn’t want to make an apocalyptic movie where the landscape felt apocalyptic. A lot of the movie takes place on a beautiful day. There’s something magical about the empty city as opposed to dark and scary that was the ideal that the cast and crew wanted.”

Director’s Cut ending

future   imdb