movies

0436 – Looper (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 2044  Kansas City < 2074  Shanghai

Looper is a 2012 American science fiction thriller film written and directed by Rian Johnson, and produced by Ram Bergman and James D. Stern. It stars Bruce WillisJoseph Gordon-Levitt, and Emily Blunt. It revolves around criminal syndicates using contracted killers called “loopers” to kill victims sent through time travel.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/



James vs. His Future Self (2019)

spacetime coordinates: SudburyOntario, in 2018

James vs. His Future Self is a 2019 Canadian science fiction comedy film, directed by Jeremy Lalonde. The film stars Jonas Chernick as James, a scientist researching time travel whose life is turned upside down when his older self (Daniel Stern) arrives from 17 years in the future to demand that he stop. The cast also includes Cleopatra ColemanFrances ConroyTara Spencer-Nairn and Tommie-Amber Pirie. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

movies

431 – Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

spacetime coordinates:  1873 New Mexico Territory

Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 American western science fiction film directed by Jon Favreau and starring Daniel CraigHarrison Ford, and Olivia Wilde. The film is based on the 2006 graphic novel of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. The plot revolves around an amnesiac outlaw (Craig), a wealthy cattleman (Ford), and a mysterious traveler (Wilde) who must ally to save a group of townspeople abducted by aliens.

Favreau chose to film traditionally and in anamorphic format (widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film) to further a “classic movie feel” Measures were taken to maintain a serious Western element despite the film’s “inherently comic” title and premise.

Roger Guyett about the aliens: “They’re frontiersmen in a way: traveling to another place and having to deal with all the adversities of the climate. And in our case, we played up the fact that they weren’t comfortable in our world. There are flies all around them; they don’t like the light; and when they were wounded and exposed, a strange fungus grows around them.”

wiki   imdb

movies

0429 – The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

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

navigator_xlg

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 BoschPieter 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/

movies

0427 – The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

spacetime coordinates: unnamed war-torn European city in “The Age of Reason” (late 18th century, Wednesday)

munchausen silkscreen movie poster artist Jeff Soto

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a 1988 adventure fantasy film co-written and directed by Terry Gilliam, starring John NevilleSarah PolleyEric IdleJonathan PryceOliver Reed, and Uma Thurman.

The film is based on the tall tales about the 18th-century German nobleman Baron Munchausen and his wartime exploits against the Ottoman Empire.

Background

TheAdventuresOfBaronMunchausen_B1_Japan-1-1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096764/

movies

422 – Midnight Special (2016)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s  San Antonio Texas > Louisiana Florida midnight-special

Midnight Special is a 2016 American science fiction film written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and produced by Sarah Green and Brian Kavanaugh-Jones. The film stars Michael ShannonJoel EdgertonKirsten DunstAdam DriverJaeden Lieberher, and Sam Shepard.midnight_special_one_sheetThe story revolves around Roy Tomlin and his biological son, Alton Meyer, escaping from both the government and a cult, after discovering that Alton has special powers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2649554/

movies

0409 – First They Killed My Father (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 1975 – 1979  Cambodia

firt-killed-poster-large

First They Killed My Father (Khmer: មុនដំបូងខ្មែរក្រហមសម្លាប់ប៉ារបស់ខ្ញុំ Moun dambaung Khmer Krahm samleab ba robsa khnhom) is a 2017 biographical historical thriller film directed by Angelina Jolie and written by Jolie and Loung Ung, based on Ung’s memoir of the same name. Set in 1975, the film depicts 7-year-old Ung who is forced to be trained as a child soldier while her siblings are sent to labor camps during the Socialist Khmer Rouge regime.

Cambodian genocide   //   Khmer Rouge Killing Fields

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4882376/