1168 – Starship Troopers

timespace coordinates: the 23rd century,  Buenos Aires / Terran Federation > Klendathu, the “Bugs’” home planet / Planet “P”/ remote outpost on a planet inhabited by Arachnids / agricultural planet Roku San / classified planet OM-1 /

Starship Troopers (1997)

Starship Troopers is a 1997 American satirical military science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier. It originally came from an unrelated script called Bug Hunt at Outpost Nine, but eventually licensed the name Starship Troopers from a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. The story follows a young soldier named Johnny Rico and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit. Rico’s military career progresses from recruit to non-commissioned officer and finally to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an insectoid species known as “Arachnids”.

(Relationship to novel) Because the film originated from an unrelated script, with names and superficial details from the novel being added retroactively, there are many differences between the two. While the novel has been accused of promoting militarism, fascism, and military rule, the film satirizes these concepts by featuring bombastic displays of nationalism as well as news reports that are intensely fascistic, xenophobic, and propagandistic.  Verhoeven stated in 1997 that the first scene of the film—an advertisement for the Mobile Infantry—was adapted shot-for-shot from a scene in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), specifically an outdoor rally for the Reichsarbeitsdienst. Other references to Nazism in the movie include the Wehrmacht-inspired uniforms and insignia of field grade officers, M.I. working uniforms reminiscent of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Albert Speer‘s style of architecture, and its propagandistic dialogue (“Violence is the supreme authority!”). 

In a 2014 interview on The Adam Carolla Show, the actor Michael Ironside, who read the novel as a youth, said that he asked Verhoeven, who grew up in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, “Why are you doing a right-wing fascist movie?” Verhoeven replied, “If I tell the world that a right-wing, fascist way of doing things doesn’t work, no one will listen to me. So I’m going to make a perfect fascist world: everyone is beautiful, everything is shiny, everything has big guns and fancy ships, but it’s only good for killing fucking Bugs!” 

(Themes) … In his DVD commentary, Verhoeven stated his intentions clearly: the film’s message is that “War makes fascists of us all”. He evoked Nazi Germany’s fashion, iconography, and propaganda because he saw it as a natural evolution of the United States after World War II, and especially after the Korean War. “I’ve heard this film nicknamed All Quiet on the Final Frontier“, he said, “which is actually not far from the truth.” Edward Neumeier (who had previously worked with Verhoeven on RoboCop) broadly concurs, although he sees a satire on human history rather than solely the United States. Verhoeven says his satirical use of irony and hyperbole is “playing with fascism or fascist imagery to point out certain aspects of American society… of course, the movie is about ‘Let’s all go to war and let’s all die.'” (wiki)

imdb

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Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004)

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation is a 2004 military science-fiction action television film directed by Phil Tippett and starring Richard Burgi, Lawrence Monoson, and Colleen Porch. It is a sequel to Starship Troopers (1997) and the second installment of the Starship Troopers film series. (wiki)

Made for 5% of the cost of Starship Troopers (1997). (imdb)

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Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008)

1146
01:33:47,715 –> 01:33:51,617
I got religion, Dix. I got it bad.

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder is a 2008 American military science fiction film written and directed by Edward Neumeier and starring Casper Van Dien who returned as Johnny Rico from the original film, along with Jolene Blalock and Boris Kodjoe. It is a sequel to Starship Troopers (1997) and Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2004) (which were both written by Neumeier) and the third installment of the Starship Troopers film series. The film was released directly to DVD in the U.S. on August 5, 2008. (wiki)

Joe Leydon of Variety stated:

“Die-hard fans of Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven’s notorious 1997 cult-fave sci-fi spectacle, will be pleased to note that its second made-for-vid sequel gamely attempts to replicate the original pic’s over-the-top style and self-satirical tone. (…) the latest episode reprises Verhoeven’s love-it-or-hate-it mix of gruesome mayhem, overstated melodrama, peek-a-boo nudity and tongue-in-cheek fascist aesthetics.”

imdb

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Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012)

Starship Troopers: Invasion –imdb– (スターシップ・トゥルーパーズ インベイジョン) is a Japanese-American 2012 computer-animated military science fiction film directed by Shinji Aramaki. It is the fourth installment of the Starship Troopers film series.

The film was followed by

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Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017) 

imdb

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Starship Troopers (video game) 

Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy 

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Future

1152 – Samsara (2011 documentary)

Samsara is a 2011 American non-narrative documentary film of international imagery directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson. Samsara was filmed over a period of five years in 25 different countries around the world.

The official website describes the film, “Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of humanity’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation.” (wiki)

imdb   /   fantasy_coffins   /   819 – Olivier de Sagazan

1147 – Captain Fantastic (2016)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s Washington wildernes / New Mexico

Captain Fantastic is a 2016 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Matt Ross and starring Viggo Mortensen. The story centers on a family that is forced by circumstances to reintegrate into society after living in isolation for a decade.

[plot] Ben Cash and his wife Leslie and their six children live in the Washington wilderness. Ben and Leslie are former anarchist activists disillusioned with capitalism and American life, and chose to instill survivalist skills, left wing politics, and philosophy in their children – educating them to think critically, training them to be self-reliant, physically fit and athletic, guiding them without technology, demonstrating the beauty of coexisting with nature and celebrating Noam Chomsky‘s birthday instead of Christmas… (read more – wiki)

imdb

1119 – Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

timespace coordinates: dystopian 1984. war-torn London ruled by Oceania, a totalitarian superstate

“Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you and you sold me”

Nineteen Eighty-Four, also known as 1984, is a 1984 British dystopian science fiction film written and directed by Michael Radford, based upon George Orwell‘s novel of the same name (published in June 1949). Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, and Cyril Cusack,

the film follows the life of Winston Smith, a low-ranking civil servant in a war-torn London ruled by Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. Smith (Hurt) struggles to maintain his sanity and his grip on reality as the regime’s overwhelming power and influence persecutes individualism and individual thinking on both a political and personal level. The film, which features Burton’s last screen appearance, is dedicated to him. (wiki)

imdb   /   Newspeak

1110 – Iron Sky

timespace coordinates: 2018 – 2038 New York City, Washington, D.C.,  the far side of the Moon, Antarctica

Iron Sky (imdb) is a 2012 Finnish-German-Australian comic-science-fiction action film directed by Timo Vuorensola and written by Johanna Sinisalo and Michael Kalesniko. It tells the story of a group of Nazi Germans who, having been defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon, where they built a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth. (wiki)

As The Hollywood Reporter noted, “the score by Laibach adds character, mixing pastiche pop with symphonic elements“. (www.laibach.org/iron-sky-soundtrack)

Spin-offs

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Iron Sky: The Coming Race (imdb) is a Finnish-German comic science fiction action film directed by Timo Vuorensola, released on 16 January 2019 in Finland. It is the sequel to Vuorensola’s 2012 film Iron Sky. The film was crowdfunded through Indiegogo.

Like its predecessor, the movie refers to several motifs of post-war Esoteric Nazism, such as the Hollow Earth theory. The movie’s title is most likely a reference to Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s novel The Coming Race (1871) that is commonly regarded as the origin of the so-called Vril myth. The film teaser features the Vril symbol that was designed by the Tempelhofgesellschaft in the 1990s. (wiki)

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Götterdämmerung   /  Fourth Reich   /  helium-3   /  Reptilians   /   Agartha   /   Nuclear holocaust   /  Moon Nazis   /   Jobists   /   ironsky.net

1108

Sepultura – Arise [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

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Helloween “-Walls Of Jericho” full album   /   judas   /   guardians

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Obituary – The End Complete

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Megadeth – Train of Consequences

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Paradise Lost – Shades Of God (Full Album)

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Manowar – Battle Hymn

Holy War

The Crown and the Ring / Kingdom Come

Mountains

Guyana (Cult Of The Damned)

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“Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts” is the longest (28 minutes and 38 seconds) and most complex Manowar song, and probably an anticipation of a concept album that was never accomplished. Because of its Homeric content, “Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts” has recently attracted the attention of a group of scholars at Bologna University in Italy. Mrs. Eleonora Cavallini, Professor in Classics, has written about this song:

“Joey DeMaio’s lyrics imply a careful and scrupulous reading of the Iliad. The songwriter has focused his attention essentially on the crucial fight between Hector and Achilles, has paraphrased some passages of the poem adapting them to the melodic structure with a certain fluency and partly reinterpreting them, but never altering or upsetting Homer’s storyline. The purpose of the lyrics (and of the music as well) is to evoke some characteristic Homeric sceneries: the raging storm of the battle, the barbaric, ferocious exultance of the winner, the grief and anguish of the warrior who feels death impending over him. The whole action hinges upon Hector and Achilles, who are represented as specular characters, divided by an irreducible hatred and yet destined to share a similar destiny. Both are caught in the moment of the greatest exaltation, as they savagely rejoice for the blood of their killed enemies, but also in the one of the extreme pain, when the daemon of war finally pounces on them. Furthermore, differently than in the irreverent and iconoclastic movie Troy, in “Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts”, the divine is a constant and ineluctable presence, determining human destinies with inscrutable and steely will, and, despite the generic reference to ‘the gods’, the real master of human lives is Zeus, the only God to whom both Hector and Achilles address their prayers

Spirit – Horse of The Cherokee   /   Master of the Wind

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Full Length

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1057 – The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

timespace coordinates: South Africa / Botswana 1980 –  the Kalahari Desert

The Gods Must Be Crazy is a 1980 South African comedy film written and directed by Jamie Uys. Financed only from local sources, it is the most commercially successful release in the history of South Africa’s film industry. Originally released in 1980, the film is the first in The Gods Must Be Crazy series. It is followed by one official sequel, The Gods Must Be Crazy II, released by Columbia Pictures.

Set in Botswana, it follows the story of Xi, a San of the Kalahari Desert (played by Namibian San farmer Nǃxau ǂToma) whose tribe has no knowledge of the world beyond, Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers), a biologist who analyzes manure samples for his PhD dissertation, and Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo), a newly hired village school teacher.

The final scene was filmed at God’s Window, a site located at the edge of the escarpment between the Highveld and Lowveld, in the province of Mpumalanga, South Africa.

imdb   /   rt