Tag: Earth
349 – The Russian Woodpecker (2015)
The Russian Woodpecker is a 2015 documentary film written, produced and directed by Chad Gracia following Fedor Alexandrovich’s investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. It is Gracia’s directorial debut feature.
The films focuses on Fedor Alexandrovich’s research into the cause of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine and its potential connection to a Soviet Cold War-era structure, the Duga over-the-horizon radio antenna. His investigation is interrupted and impacted by the 2014 Euromaidan uprising, which eventually led to the ousting of the president Viktor Yanukovych.
0347 – mother! (2017)
Mother! (stylized as mother!) is a 2017 American psychological horror film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer. Lawrence said that the film is an allegory: “It depicts the rape and torment of Mother Earth … I represent Mother Earth; Javier, whose character is a poet, represents a form of God, a creator; Michelle Pfeiffer is an Eve to Ed Harris’s Adam, there’s Cain and Abel and the setting sometimes resembles the Garden of Eden.
The film uses a dream-logic narrative, of which Aronofsky has noted, “if you try to unscrew it, it kind of falls apart,” and that “it’s a psychological freak-out. You shouldn’t over-explain it.”
345 – Pacific Rim (2013)
spacetime coordinates: 2020 – 2025 Alaska // Hong Kong // Manila // San Francisco // Pacific Ocean // Tokyo
Pacific Rim is a 2013 American science fiction monster film directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. The screenplay was written by Travis Beacham and del Toro from a story by Beacham.
The film is set in the future, when Earth is at war with the Kaiju, colossal sea monsters which have emerged from an interdimensional portal on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. To combat the monsters, humanity unites to create the Jaegers, gigantic humanoid mechas each controlled by at least two pilots, whose minds are joined by a mental link. Focusing on the war’s later days, the story follows Raleigh Becket, a washed-up Jaeger pilot called out of retirement and teamed with rookie pilot Mako Mori as part of a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kaiju.
Knifehead, the first Kaiju to appear in the film, is a tribute to the plodding kaiju of 1960s Japanese films, and is intended to look almost like a man in a rubber suit; its head was inspired by that of a goblin shark. Leatherback, the bouncer-like Kaiju which spews electro-magnetic charges, is a favorite of del Toro, who conceived it as a “brawler with this sort of beer belly”; the lumbering movements of gorillas were used as a reference. The Kaiju Otachi homages the dragons of Chinese mythology. The director called it a “Swiss army knife of a Kaiju”; with almost 20 minutes of screen time, it was given numerous features so the audience would not tire of it. The creature moves like a Komodo dragon in water, sports multiple jaws and an acid-filled neck sack, and unfurls wings when necessary. It is also more intelligent than the other Kaiju, employing eagle-inspired strategies against the Jaegers. Onibaba, the Kaiju that orphans Mako Mori, resembles a fusion of a Japanese temple and a crustacean. Slattern, the largest Kaiju, is distinguished by its extremely long neck and “half-horn, half-crown” head, which del Toro considered both demonic and majestic.
Gipsy Danger, the American Jaeger, was based on the shape of New York City’s Art Deco buildings, such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, but infused with John Wayne‘s gunslinger gait and hip movements. Cherno Alpha, the Russian Jaeger, was based on the shape and paint patterns of a T-series Russian tank, combined with a giant containment silo to give the appearance of a walking nuclear power plant with a cooling tower on its head. Crimson Typhoon, the three-armed Chinese Jaeger, is piloted by triplets and resembles a “medieval little warrior”; its texture evokes Chinese lacquered wood with golden edges. Striker Eureka, the Australian Jaeger, is likened by del Toro to a Land Rover; the most elegant and masculine Jaeger, it has a jutting chest, a camouflage paint scheme recalling the Australian outback, and the bravado of its pilots.
Rather than popular culture, the director drew inspiration from works of art such as The Colossus and George Bellows‘s boxing paintings.
The classic Japanese woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai was a common motif in the ocean battles; Del Toro recalled, “I would say ‘Give me a Hokusai wave’… we use the waves and weather in the movie very operatically.” The director asked that Knoll not necessarily match the lighting from shot to shot: “It’s pretty unorthodox to do that, but I think the results are really beautiful and very artistically free and powerful, not something you would associate with a big sci-fi action movie.” Del Toro considers the film’s digital water its most exciting visual effect: “The water dynamics in this movie are technically beautiful, but also artistically incredibly expressive. We agreed on making the water become almost another character. We would time the water very precisely. I’d say ‘Get out of the wave [on this frame].'”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Rim_(film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/
337
“The ancillary promise is that, through green consumerism, we can reconcile perpetual growth with planetary survival. But a series of research papers reveal there is no significant difference between the ecological footprints of people who care and people who don’t. One recent article, published in the journal Environment and Behaviour, says those who identify themselves as conscious consumers use more energy and carbon than those who do not.” Too right it’s Black Friday: our relentless consumption is trashing the planet – George Monbiot
0331 – War of the Worlds (2005)
spacetime coordinates: 2000s New Jersey // New York // Boston
War of the Worlds is an 2005 American science fiction thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, loosely based on the novel of the same title by H. G. Wells. It stars Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Justin Chatwin, Miranda Otto and Tim Robbins, with narration by Morgan Freeman. In the film, an American dock worker is forced to look after his children, from whom he lives separately, as he struggles to protect them and reunite them with their mother when extraterrestrials invade the Earth and devastate cities with towering war machines.
0330 – Arrival (2016)
spacetime coordinates: 2010s Montana
Arrival is a 2016 American science fiction drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Heisserer, based on the 1998 short story “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. It stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker, and follows linguist Louise Banks, who is enlisted by the U.S. Army to help translate communications from one of several extraterrestrial craft that have appeared across the world. She must find out why they have arrived on Earth before tensions lead into war.
The film received widespread critical acclaim, including praise for Adams’s performance, Villeneuve’s direction, and its exploration of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence.
TimeSpace Warps 