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timespace coordinates: 1999, 12 hour shift at an Arkansas hospital
12 Hour Shift is a 2020 American black comedy thriller film written and directed by Brea Grant and starring Angela Bettis, Kit Williamson, and David Arquette. Bettis plays Mandy, a drug-addicted nurse involved in a black market organ-trading scheme. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: The film is partially presented in a found footage format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of humanity, xenophobia and social segregation, begins in an alternate 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens are discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government’s relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat leading the relocation named Wikus van der Merwe. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events in Cape Town‘s District Six, during the apartheid era.
District 9 is a 2009 science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut. It is a co-production of New Zealand, the United States and South Africa. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James, and was adapted from Blomkamp’s 2006 short film Alive in Joburg. (wiki)
imdb / rt / Future / the-art-of-district-9
timespace coordinates: In 1990, Johannesburg is home to a number of extraterrestrial refugees, whose large spaceships (estimated to be nearly one kilometre in length) can be seen hovering above the city. When the visitors first arrived, the human population was enamored with, among other aspects, the aliens’ advanced “bio-suits”, and welcomed them with open arms. However, the aliens later began moving into other areas of the city, committing crimes in order to survive and frequently clashing with police. Playing as a documentary, the film continues with interviews and footage taken from handheld cameras, which highlight the growing tension between Earth’s civilian population and the extraterrestrial visitors.
According to individuals “interviewed” in the film, the aliens were captive labour (slaves or indentured servants), forced to live in “conditions that were not good” and had escaped to Earth. Because the film takes place in 1990, while apartheid was still in effect in South Africa, the aliens were forced to live amongst the already-oppressed black population, causing conflict with them as well as the non-white and white populations.
All of the interview statements which do not explicitly mention extraterrestrials were taken from authentic interviews with many South Africans who had been asked their opinions of Zimbabwean refugees. (wiki)
timespace coordinates: 2000’s/2010’s San Francisco ( Bayview-Hunters Point, Fillmore District)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a 2019 American drama film. Its plot centers on the efforts of a young Black man to reclaim his childhood home, a now-expensive Victorian house in a gentrified neighborhood of San Francisco.
The film is the feature debut of director and producer Joe Talbot. Talbot wrote the screenplay with Rob Richert and the story with Jimmie Fails, on whose life the film is partly based. The movie stars Fails, Jonathan Majors, Tichina Arnold, Rob Morgan, Mike Epps, Finn Wittrock, and Danny Glover. (wiki)
Kickstarter-funded, feat Michael Nyman OST.
timespace coordinates: 1945, 1950, 1957, 1965 rural southern Ohio and West Virginia
The Devil All the Time is a 2020 American psychological thriller film based on the novel of the same name by Donald Ray Pollock, who also voiced the narration in the film. Directed and co-written by Antonio Campos and produced by Jake Gyllenhaal and Randall Poster, the film stars an ensemble cast comprising Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Sebastian Stan, Haley Bennett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska and Robert Pattinson. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 19th century, unnamed Asian frontier desert outpost
Waiting for the Barbarians is a 2020 Italian-American drama film directed by Ciro Guerra (El abrazo de la serpiente) in his English-language directorial debut. The film is based on the novel of the same name by J. M. Coetzee (adaptation written by author). It stars Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Gana Bayarsaikhan, and Greta Scacchi. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: Schlupsk, Eastern Europe 1919 > present-day Brooklyn
An American Pickle is a 2020 American comedy-drama film directed by Brandon Trost (in his solo directorial debut) and written by Simon Rich, based on his 2013 short story “Sell Out”. The film stars Seth Rogen as an Ashkenazi Jew in the 1920s who gets preserved in a vat of pickles and wakes up in modern-day New York City, and attempts to fit in with the assistance of his last remaining descendant (also played by Rogen). Sarah Snook, Jorma Taccone, and Maya Erskine also star. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 2010’s Los Angeles
Now Apocalypse is an American comedy television series that aired for one season of ten episodes from March 10 to May 12, 2019, on Starz. The series was written by Gregg Araki and Karley Sciortino. Araki also was director and executive producer alongside Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs. Starz canceled the series on July 26, 2019. Araki later stated that he was shopping the series to other networks.
Ulysses, his friends Carly and Ford, and Ford’s girlfriend Severine navigate love, sex, and fame in Los Angeles. Troubled by sinister, premonitory dreams, Ulysses wonders if the end of the world as we know it is coming, or if he is simply suffering some kind of marijuana-fueled delusions. (wiki)
This is all perfectly well-made, candy-coloured fun as well as being a bang up-to-date exploration of 21st-century sexual identities (co-written by Araki with sex columnist Karley Sciortino), albeit one in which everyone looks amazing all the time. Boyd Hilton / Empire Magazine / rottentomatoes
TimeSpace Warps 