0429 – The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

spacetime coordinates: remote Cumbrian mountain village 1348 >> 1980s New Zealand

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey is a 1988 feature film, an official Australian-New Zealand co-production, directed by Vincent Ward.

Ward and his production team based the look of the film on extensive research into the Middle Ages, particularly the mining industry, although this was then rendered imaginatively.  The colours of the film are based on medieval art and, in particular, medieval and renaissance artists’ ideas about heaven and hell. The blues in many of the modern-day sequences are based on the inks in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, while the reds and oranges of the motorway lights and furnace fires evoke images of hell in the works of Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel and Matthias Grünewald.  Ward later said he had not achieved what he wanted to with the colour of the modern-day scenes due to the film’s short shooting schedule. Ironically, the colour in the medieval scenes, which were turned into black and white, was far better than that in the 20th century scenes. Some of the mining scenes were inspired by engravings from the German mining manual De re metallica, although it dates from two centuries after the time of those scenes. The angel of death seen flying across the moon at one point is based on a medieval engraving in Paris’ Père Lachaise Cemetery.

See also: Middle Ages in film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095709/

0425 – Centurion (2010)

spacetime coordinates:  117 AD Roman outpost of Pinnata Castra & Roman forts along the Glenblocker line and the Gask Ridge at the southern border of the Scottish Highlands. 

Centurion is a 2010 British historical action-war film directed by Neil Marshall,  loosely based on the disappearance of the Roman Empire’s Ninth Legion in Caledonia in the early second century AD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana#Map

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020558/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picts

403 – Crimson Peak (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1901 New York (state) // Cumbria

Crimson Peak is a 2015 American gothic romance film directed, co-produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, co-produced by Callum Greene, Jon Jashni and Thomas Tull and co-written by Matthew Robbins. It stars Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam and Jim Beaver.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2554274/

0402 – Drowning by Numbers (1988)

Drowning by Numbers is a 1988 British-Dutch film directed by Peter Greenaway.

The film’s plot centres on three married women — a grandmother, her daughter, and her niece — each named Cissie Colpitts. As the story progresses, each woman successively drowns her husband. The three Cissie Colpittses are played by Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson and Joely Richardson, while Bernard Hill plays the coroner, Madgett, who is cajoled into covering up the three crimes.

The structure, with similar stories repeated three times, is reminiscent of a fairy tale, most specifically ‘The Billy Goats Gruff‘, because Madgett is constantly promised greater rewards as he tries his luck with each of the Cissies in turn. The link to folklore is further established by Madgett’s son Smut, who recites the rules of various unusual games played by the characters as if they were ancient traditions. Many of these games are invented for the film, including:

• Bees in the Trees
• Dawn Card Castles
• Deadman’s Catch
• Flights of Fancy (or Reverse Strip Jump)
• The Great Death Game
• Hangman’s Cricket
• The Hare and Hounds
• Sheep and Tides

In Drowning by Numbers, number-counting, the rules of games and the repetitions of the plot are all devices which emphasise structure and symmetry. Through the course of the film each of the numbers 1 to 100 appear, the large majority in sequence, often seen in the background, sometimes spoken by the characters. 

The film is set and was shot in and around Southwold, Suffolk, England, with key landmarks such as the Victorian water tower, Southwold Lighthouse, and the estuary of the River Blyth clearly identifiable.

Music

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092929/

0377 – Their Finest (2016)

spacetime coordinates:  1940  London

Their Finest is a 2016 British war comedy-drama film directed by Lone Scherfig and written by Gaby Chiappe, based on the 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans. The film stars Gemma Arterton, Sam Claflin and  Bill Nighy and tells the story of a British Ministry of Information film team making a morale-boosting film about the Dunkirk evacuation during the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1661275/

0375 – The Foreigner (2017)

spacetime coordinates:  2010’s UK

The Foreigner is a 2017 British-Chinese action thriller film directed by Martin Campbell and written by David Marconi, based on the 1992 novel The Chinaman by Stephen Leather. The British-Chinese co-production stars Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan, Michael McElhatton, Liu Tao, Charlie Murphy, Orla Brady and Katie Leung, and follows a humble businessman with a buried past who seeks justice when his daughter is killed in an act of terrorism.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615160/

0371 – The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)

spacetime coordinates:  future London

The Girl with All the Gifts is a 2016 British post-apocalyptic zombie horror drama film directed by Colm McCarthy and written by M.R. Carey adapted from his novel of the same name. Starring Gemma Arterton, Paddy Considine, Glenn Close, and Sennia Nanua, the film depicts a dystopian future following a breakdown of society after most of humanity is wiped out by a fungal infection. The plot focuses on the struggle of a scientist, a teacher, and two soldiers who embark on a journey of survival with a special young girl named Melanie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547056/

the city: