spacetime coordinates: 1988 London Japan / Soviet Union
Tetris is a 2023 biographical thriller film directed by Jon S. Baird starring Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov, Sofia Lebedeva, Anthony Boyle, Toby Jones and Roger Allam. It is based on true events around the race to license and patent the video game Tetris in the late 1980s during the Cold War. (wiki)
Marvel’s Hit-Monkey, or simply Hit-Monkey, is an American adult animated streaming television series created by Will Speck and Josh Gordon for the streaming service Hulu, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. The series is produced by Marvel Television, with Gordon and Speck serving as showrunners.
The series stars Ally Maki, Olivia Munn, Nobi Nakanishi, Fred Tatasciore, George Takei, and Jason Sudeikis. Hit-Monkey was announced and ordered at Hulu in February 2019, as part of a group of series based on Marvel characters that were intended to lead to a crossover special titled The Offenders, with it being produced by Marvel Television. Oversight of the series was moved to Marvel Studios in December 2019 when Marvel Television was folded into that company. in May 2022, Variety reported Hit-Monkey was not expected to be renewed. (wiki)
Hit-Monkey is inspired by agent 47 from the Hitman games.
spacetime coordinates: 2020’s bullet train running between Tokyo and Kyoto
Bullet Train is a 2022 American action comedy film directed by David Leitch from a screenplay by Zak Olkewicz, and produced by Antoine Fuqua, who initially conceived the film. It is based on the 2010 novel Maria Beetle (titled Bullet Train in its UK and US edition) by Kōtarō Isaka.
The film stars Brad Pitt as a begrudging assassin who must battle fellow killers while riding a fictionalized version of the Tokaido Shinkansen. In addition to Pitt, the film stars an ensemble cast which also includes Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Shannon, Bad Bunny, and Sandra Bullock. (wiki)
by Lisa Kogawa
spacetime coordinates: 1983 Japan / Agartha
Children Who Chase Lost Voices (星を追う子ども, Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, lit. “Children Who Chase Stars”), also known as Journey to Agartha, is a 2011 Japanese anime film created and directed by Makoto Shinkai, following his previous work 5 Centimeters per Second.
This film is his longest animation film to date and is described as a “lively” animated film with adventure, action, and romance centered on a cheerful and spirited girl on a journey to say “farewell”. (wiki)
On March 10, 2022, GKIDS announced that they have licensed Children Who Chase Lost Voices, along with three other works by Makoto Shinkai, and will re-release the film on home video in 2022.
spacetime coordinates: far future in the depths of the planet a new ecosystem has sprung up
Junk Head is a 2021 Japanese stop motionscience fiction animated film written and directed by Takehide Hori, based on his 2013 short film Junk Head 1.The film comprises some 140,000 stop-motion shots, and runs for 101 minutes. The story is set in a distant future world where humans have received longevity but lost their fertility, and are nearly extinct by population decline. (wiki)
Just wanted to post these (and I will come back to add some more juice). This is one of the most incredible animations (or SF materials in general) I have experienced recently (thx to Tomaso Mainardi for suggesting it!). The perfect embodiment of “キモカワ Kimo–Kawa” or Gurokawa (グロカワ) uncomfortable cloying and creepy-cute aesthetics. It is also a good occasion to discuss its biological aspects, since it is a sort of biopunk stop motion animation. The ‘what if’ of Junk Head extrapolates from current demographic fears and panics about fertility and a decline in libido, especially prevalent in Japan with its low birth rate and 2006~ “grass-eating men” talk, actually a good development about men who shun sex, don’t spend money and have long walks. It is a pleasure to discuss some of the details and what an impact it left. For now just suck on these (even if they do not convey the sense of space and labyrinthine happenings):
spacetime coordinates: centuries in the future after robots of Panga gained self-awareness laid down their tools, and wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.
read here an article about hopepunk and the works of Becky Chambers in Wired from 2021
There should always be room for works that inspire a glimmer of hope in dark times and also philosophical works that work out an important distance from the usual collapsology that radically compresses everything into an endless present.
That said, there is nothing more obnoxious than the constant appeals to some overrated kind of ‘hope’ as a panacea for all the world’s troublesor the on the thing that saves the day. The recent Star Wars movies have been constantly bombarding everything with ‘keeping up the hope’ and keeping hopeful no matter what. The inverse of suffering under this imposed hopefulness (Laurent Berlant’s ‘cruel optimism’) is also allowing the thought that things might go awfully wrong. Being hopeless is almost like a double blow – it stigmatizes and blames those that do not jump or do not give full support in the name of cause (any cause) plus they get labeled as hopeless themselves. Your no hope is responsible for your own ensuing failures – according to a logic that also blames the poor for being poor. Relentless and required hope animates much of ‘positive thinking’ mind over matter dualism in the US. Initially, a very important movement of the 19th and 20th century that was associated with many other good ideas actionist, a motivational credo (without the toxic baggage of today) is meant self-improvment, self-determination, the example, propaganda of the deed, women’s rights, the self-education of workers clubs into the new natural sciences and a new body and new health consciousness and imminent liberation. Some of these visions also came pre-packaged with fears of a ‘degenerationist’ Western imaginary that somehow railed under the ills of civilisation and the fear of assertive others, mostly of non-white, non-European, formerly subjugated or colonial. This belief in a hopeful, more humane world was not reserved or limited to the Western world in any sense. The voluntaristic strain of the 20th c took many forms and we could even include the mid- century Maoist momentum during the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution. A history that is not over. Even if some of the Maoist excess took the form of a so-called war on nature – with disastrous effects, while it persecuted and killed many and while have horrific experiences – even in its failures it mediated a a re-calibrated China, it was historically shaped its aversions, debates and future gradual te ‘opening’ towards.
It is essential that many important critics and theoreticians of capital – such as Ernst Bloch have carefully elaborated all their lives around concepts of utopia, of the not-yet-here, of the unfinished, the still-to-be-achieved emancipatory reality. This is because in some fundamental way – in the major works of Marx and Engels there is no detailed description (other than classless society). Some of the most important theoreticians of science fiction (Frederic Jameson and Darko Suvin) always returned to Utopia in their theorizations of this genre, and how that is bound to a liveable and better world. Others have taken other paths (such a as Guy Lardreau which I am currently reading).
One should consider Becky Chamber and the hopepunk subgenre as an interesting and important addition to this continuing dialogue that builds on an already existing utopian corpus, one that is not just about technophile visions and ‘rapture of the nerds‘ (as Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross put it). At the same time as good friend Otaku Bogdan told me – there is Kogonada’s film After Yang (adapted from a story by A Weinstein) about technobeings and cloning, and and its subtle way of embedding ‘beauty’ everywhere and even a hint of techno-fascism. In complete contrast with how Terminator movies imagined our future, the fact is that today’s techno-capitalism does not show its horrific face but is bending, mutating oppression with a streamlined smooth ‘smart’ wireless coating. At the same time – in spite of this eternal present IKEA anti-utopia (it can never get better than this), one should understand that every age and every culture on the planet had its dreams of a better world, and that includes the world of plenty in Neolithic peasant utopias, or the religious schismatic and urban philosophical utopias and eventually the social utopias. So it is no wonder Becky Chamber dwelves with great care into the Zen tradition and particularly the highly developed and ritualized tea ceremony as this also speaks to a certain way about today’s cracked and fragile world (she is also a lover of all sorts of teas from what I understand and this is reflected in her books). I also appreciate the fact that she published her work with no DRM restrictions.
Avalon (Japanese: アヴァロン, Hepburn: Avaron), also known as Gate to Avalon, is a 2001 Polish-language Japanese science fiction drama film directed by Mamoru Oshii and written by Kazunori Itō.
The film stars Małgorzata Foremniak as Ash, a player in an illegal virtual reality video game whose sense of reality is challenged as she attempts to unravel the true nature and purpose of the game. Avalon was filmed in Wrocław, Nowa Huta, the Modlin Fortress and Warsaw. The 2009 film Assault Girls that was written and directed by Oshii, is a stand-alone sequel set in the same fictional universe as Avalon.
Players wear headsets which immerse their senses in the game world. The design of the headset and chair installation are influenced by the cult French science fiction short film La jetée. The headless statues also appear in this 1962 film.
The scene with Ash in the tramway is a live action recreation of a similar scene appearing in the 1999 anime feature film Jin-Roh, which Oshii wrote but did not direct. This scene is based on Oshii’s own teenage experience, when he used to spend entire days spinning in loop in the Yamanote Line. (wiki)
TimeSpace Warps 