0593 – Batman Ninja (2018)

spacetime coordinates: Gotham City > feudal Japan

Batman Ninja (ニンジャバットマン Ninja Battoman) is a 2018 Japanese animated period martial arts superhero film directed by Junpei Mizusaki and produced by Warner Bros. Takashi Okazaki, the creator of Afro Samurai, is the character designer for the film.

IGN awarded Batman Ninja a score of 9.7 out of 10, saying “DC tried something new by bringing in visionary Japanese animators to offer a refreshing take on one of the company’s most beloved characters, and the finished product not only built upon the great adaptations that have come before, but surpassed them.”

imdb

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.

imdb

575 – Sweet Movie (1974)

“Don’t stay here. This boat is full of corpses.” // “It doesn’t matter. The whole world is full of corpses.”

Sweet Movie is a 1974 avant-garde comedy-drama film written and directed by Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev. An international co-production of companies from France, Canada, and West Germany, the film follows two women: a Canadian beauty queen, who represents a modern commodity culture, and a captain aboard a ship laden with candy and sugar, who is a failed communist revolutionary.

The film created a storm of controversy upon its release, with scenes of coprophilia, emetophilia, (a performance by Otto Muehl and his commune of Vienna Actionists) implied child molestation, and footage of remains of the Polish Katyn Massacre victims. The film was banned in many countries, including the United Kingdom – it is still banned in many countries to this day. Because of her role in the film, Anna Prucnal was exiled from her native Poland for 7 years.

Mühl later renounced the film in an interview as being “downright kitsch” :p

imdb

572 – Jazzpunk (2014 video game)

spacetime coordinates:  year 1959B Americasia: The “United Prefectures of Japanada”

Jazzpunk is a comedy Environmental Narrative Game set in an alternate reality Cold War World, plagued with corporate espionage, CyberCrime, and sentient martinis. Gameplay is inspired by spoof comedy films and cartoons of yesteryear, with a focus on weird gadgets, exotic locales, and open-world style exploration.

Now, we want you to take on the task of describing this electronic first-person game by the name of Jazzpunk. (read)

tons of references * fourth wall breaks * easter eggs * mini games within mini games

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows XP SP2 or higher // Processor: 1.80GHz Processor // Memory: 2 GB RAM // Graphics: Video card with 512MB of VRAM // Storage: 2 GB available space

http://store.steampowered.com/app/250260/Jazzpunk_Directors_Cut/

0566 – Les aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

spacetime coordinates: Paris, c. 1912

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (French: Les Aventures extraordinaires d’Adèle Blanc-Sec), released as Adèle: Rise of the Mummy in Malaysia and Singapore,  is a 2010 French fantasy adventure feature film written and directed by Luc Besson.

It is loosely based on the comic book series The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi and, as in the comic, follows the eponymous writer and a number of recurring side characters in a succession of far-fetched incidents in 1910s Paris and beyond, in this episode revolving around parapsychology and ultra-advanced Ancient Egyptian technology, which both pastiche and subvert adventure and speculative fiction of the period.

The film incorporates characters and events from several of the albums, in particular the first, “Adèle and the Beast”, first published in 1976, and the fourth, 1978’s “Mummies on Parade”.

wiki   imdb

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“In Cairo ten years ago, in the museum, I saw all the mummies, torn out of their tombs, stripped of their flowers and gods, and laid out in plain wood cases under glass with their blackened faces exposed; on the walls an American scientist had put his X-ray photos of their skeletons, and the urn containing the entrails of Queen Hapshetshut was split open and brightly illuminated.”  Dangerous Emotions Alphonso Lingis

541 – Zeno Clash (2009 video game)

Zeno Clash is a first-person fighting video game with elements of a first-person shooter set in a punk fantasy world. The game is played from a first person perspective and the combat is generally up close and brutal.  It is the debut game of developer ACE Team and uses the Source engine.  The developers stated that they have drawn a lot of inspiration from traditional fighting games—this includes “versus screens” sliding in before combat is initiated. Regarding the art style, they cited Hieronymus Bosch‘s paintings and John Blanche‘s “punk fantasy” illustrations as visual inspirations.

Experience a deep storyline set in a fantastic world. Play the role of Ghat, a man banished by his own brothers and forced to begin a desperate journey past the forbidden desert and to the end of the world.   Critics praised its strange yet robust setting and unique character designs. It was a finalist for Excellence in Visual Art at the 2009 Independent Games Festival, was named 2009’s Independent Game of the Year by PC Gamer, and PC Game of the Month by IGN in April 2009.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (minimum):  Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP / Vista / Vista64  // Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 3.0 GHz  //  Memory: 1 GB RAM  //  Hard Disk Space: At least 3 GB of free space  //  Video Card: 128 MB, Shader model 2.0, ATI 9600, NVidia 6600 or better  //  Sound Card: DirectX® 9.0c compatible sound card  //  DirectX® Version:  DirectX® 9.0c, DirectX® 10

Zeno Clash Walkthrough HD

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22200/Zeno_Clash/

0540 – Naked Lunch (1991)

spacetime coordinates: 1951 – ’53 New York City –  Interzone, a city somewhere in North Africa

Naked Lunch is a 1991 science fiction drama film co-written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider. It is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs‘ 1959 novel of the same name, and an international co-production of Canada, Britain and Japan.

The screenplay for Naked Lunch is based not only on Burroughs’ novel, but also on other fiction by him, and autobiographical accounts of his life. It can be seen as a metatextual adaptation, in that it depicts the writing of the novel itself. Several characters are loosely based on people that Burroughs knew: Hank and Martin are based on Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who assisted Burroughs in compiling the original novel), and Tom and Joan Frost on Paul and Jane Bowles whom Burroughs befriended in Tangier, Morocco.

The shooting of Joan Lee is based on the 1951 death of Joan Vollmer, Burroughs’ common-law wife.  Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of “William Tell” at a party in Mexico City. He would later flee to the United States. Burroughs was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which were suspended. Burroughs stated in the introduction to his book Queer that Joan’s death was the starting point of his literary career, saying: “I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan’s death”. (wiki)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102511/