329 – Contact (1997)

spacetime coordinates: 1990s New Mexico // Florida //  Puerto Rico // Washington, D.C. // Wisconsin // Hokkaido

Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis. It is a film adaptation of Carl Sagan‘s 1985 novel of the same name; Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote the story outline for the film.

Jodie Foster portrays the film’s protagonist, Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds strong evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact.

imdb        wiki

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What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

As America has turned away from searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, China has built the world’s largest radio dish for precisely that purpose. (read more)

“No civilization should ever announce its presence to the cosmos. Any other civilization that learns of its existence will perceive it as a threat to expand—as all civilizations do, eliminating their competitors until they encounter one with superior technology and are themselves eliminated. This grim cosmic outlook is called “dark-forest theory,” because it conceives of every civilization in the universe as a hunter hiding in a moonless woodland, listening for the first rustlings of a rival.”

0324 – Gummo (1997)

spacetime coordinates:   summer of 1996  Xenia, Ohio

Gummo is a 1997 American dystopian art film written and directed by Harmony Korine, starring Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, and Chloë Sevigny. The film is set in Xenia, Ohio, a small, poor Midwestern American town that had been previously struck by a devastating tornado. The loose narrative follows several main characters who find odd and destructive ways to pass time, interrupted by vignettes depicting other inhabitants of the town. Instead of using standard movie lights, the production was lit with fluorescent lights to give the movie a haunting, yellowish look. “Gummo” is considered to be a cult film.

Trailer

Themes

The Diary of Anne Frank II

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119237/

0322 – Málmhaus (2013)

spacetime coordinates:  1992 rural Iceland

Metalhead (Icelandic: Málmhaus) is a 2013 Icelandic drama film written and directed by Ragnar Bragason.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2374902/

303

Brigsby Bear

0302 – Sicario (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 2010  Chandler, Arizona // El Paso, Texas // Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Sicario (Spanish: “Hitman”) is a 2015 American crime-thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Taylor Sheridan and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin and Victor Garber. The film follows a principled FBI agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel.

A sequel, Soldado, began shooting in November 2016 and will be released in June 2018.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/

0301 – Hell or High Water (2016)

spacetime coordinates: 2010s West Texas

Hell or High Water is a 2016 American neo-Western crime thriller film directed by David Mackenzie and written by Taylor Sheridan, whose script was on the 2012 Black List. The film follows two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who carry out a series of bank robberies to save their family ranch, while being pursued by two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2582782/

0300 – Wind River (2017)

Wind River is a 2017 American neo-western murder mystery thriller film written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker and an FBI agent, respectively, who try to solve a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. According to Sheridan, the opening “inspired by true events” card was a reference to the “thousands of actual stories just like it” involving sexual assault of women on reservations, his primary motivation for writing the film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5362988/