616 – Django Unchained (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 1858 – 1859 Texas – Tennessee – Mississippi (Candyland plantation)

Django Unchained is a 2012 American revisionist Western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, and Don Johnson in supporting roles. Set in the Old West and Antebellum South, it is a highly stylized tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, in particular the 1966 Italian film Django by Sergio Corbucci, whose star Franco Nero has a cameo appearance.

comic book adaptation

controversies   imdb

612 – Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, Alison Dundy – The falling sky – words of a Yanomami shaman

The Falling Sky is a remarkable first-person account of the life story and cosmo-ecological thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon. Representing a people whose very existence is in jeopardy, Davi Kopenawa paints an unforgettable picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rainforest–a world where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic traditions cope with the global geopolitics of an insatiable natural resources extraction industry.

In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation and experience as a shaman, as well as his first encounters with outsiders: government officials, missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers, and gold prospectors. He vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths resulting from epidemics and violence. To counter these threats, Davi Kopenawa became a global ambassador for his endangered people. The Falling Sky follows him from his native village in the Northern Amazon to Brazilian cities and finally on transatlantic flights bound for European and American capitals. These travels constitute a shamanic critique of Western industrial society, whose endless material greed, mass violence, and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami cultural values.

Bruce Albert, a close friend since the 1970s, superbly captures Kopenawa’s intense, poetic voice. This collaborative work provides a unique reading experience that is at the same time a coming-of-age story, a historical account, and a shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest. (amazon)

“When I come back from a trip among the white people, the dizziness leaves my eyes after a while and my thought be-comes clear again. I no longer hear cars, machines, or airplanes. I only lend an ear to the tooro toads and krouma frogs that call the rain in the forest. I only hear the rustling of the leaves in the wind and the rumbling of the thunders in the sky. The ignorant words of the city politicians gradually vanish in the quiet of my sleep. I become calm again by going to hunt and making my spirits dance.

The forest is very beautiful to see. It is cool and aromatic. When you move through it to hunt or travel, you feel joyful and your mind is slow-paced. You listen to the chirping of the cicadas in the distance, or the cries of the curassows and the agami herons, and the clamor of the spider monkeys in the trees. Your worries are eased. Your thoughts can then follow one another without getting obscured.”

0607 – Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018)

spacetime coordinates: 2035  Shanghai Tokyo Los Angeles Sydney / Siberia

Pacific Rim Uprising is a 2018 American science fiction film directed by Steven S. DeKnight (in his feature-film directorial debut), with a screenplay by DeKnight, Emily Carmichael, Kira Snyder, and T.S. Nowlin, from a story by DeKnight and Nowlin. It is the sequel to the 2013 film Pacific Rim, with Guillermo del Toro, the director of the original, serving as a producer. The sequel stars John Boyega (also making his producer debut), as well as Scott Eastwood, Cailee Spaeny, Jing Tian, Adria Arjona, and Zhang Jin, with Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, and Burn Gorman returning from the original film.

Pacific Rim Uprising is a springboard for a cinematic universe, where DeKnight revealed “If enough people show up to this, we’ve already talked about the plot of the third movie, and how the end of the third movie would expand the universe to a Star Wars/Star Trek-style [franchise or series] where you can go in many, many different directions… You can go main canon, you can go spin-offs, you can go one-offs. Yeah, that’s the plan.”  DeKnight also talked about the possibility of a crossover with the MonsterVerse,  as co-writer T.S. Nowlin is a member of its writers room.

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0601 – Mountain (2017 documentary)

Mountain is a 2017 Australian documentary film, co-written, co-produced and directed by Jennifer Peedom. Afer her critically acclaimed film, Sherpa, Peedom resumes her work with American mountaineer and photographer Renan Ozturk. He is responsible for most of the images in the film. American actor Willem Dafoe narrates the film and reads passages from Robert Macfarlane‘ book, “Mountains of the Mind”.

mountain   sherpa

589

0588 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a 2005 British-American science fiction comedy film directed by Garth Jennings, based upon previous works in the media franchise of the same name, created by Douglas Adams. It stars Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel and the voices of Stephen Fry and Alan Rickman. This is the ninth version of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide”. It has previously appeared as a radio series, two record albums, novels, a television series (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981)), a computer game, a stage show, a comic book, a video game (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1984)) and a towel. (The game version is not, in fact, a video game, but was an Infocom “interactive fiction” {text only} game, plotted/scripted by Douglas Adams, programmed by Steve Meretzky, which has been available to play free on the BBC Radio 4 website since 2005.)

Flyer for the 1979 stage production at the ICA of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

The producers have stated that this film is not a literal translation of the books (just as the books were not a literal translation of the original radio show), but all of the new ideas and characters came from Douglas Adams himself. The hired writer simply came aboard to improve structure and make the screenplay more coherent.

Easter Egg: The DVD includes an “Improbability Drive” item on every menu. Clicking this leads to a random point in one of the bonus features. Used several times leads to a strange cartoon, which is the same one Deep Thought watches.

The Hitchiker’s Guide is a parody of “The Encyclopedia Galactica” from Isaac Asimov‘s Foundation novels.

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