203 – The Tree of Life (2011)

spacetime coordinates: Waco, Texas in 1956

The Tree of Life is a 2011 American experimental epic drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick and featuring a cast of Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Jessica Chastain, and Tye Sheridan in his debut feature film role.

The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man’s childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the known universe and the inception of life on Earth.

imdb     wikipedia

200

spacetime coordinates:  80’s – 90’s  Brooklyn New York City // Las Vegas, Baltimore, San Francisco, Los Angeles

Notorious (2009)

Notorious is a 2009 American biographical drama film directed by George Tillman Jr. that follows the life and murder of Christopher Wallace, an American rapper better known by the stage name “The Notorious B.I.G.”. The film stars Jamal Woolard, Angela Bassett, Derek Luke, and Anthony Mackie.

Criticism by Lil’ Kim

imdb

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All Eyez on Me (2017)

All Eyez on Me is a 2017 American biographical drama film about hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur, directed by Benny Boom and written by Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez and Steven Bagatourian. Titled after Shakur’s 1996 fourth studio album of the same name, the film stars Demetrius Shipp Jr. as Shakur with Kat Graham, Lauren Cohan, Hill Harper and Danai Gurira in supporting roles.

Historical accuracy

imdb

167 – Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)

Brand Upon the Brain! A Remembrance in 12 Chapters  is an avant-garde silent film directed by Guy Maddin and shot in Seattle with local actors.

Guy reluctantly returns to his childhood home, an abandoned Canadian island, where his parents ran an orphanage. As Guy fulfils his dying mother’s request to paint the lighthouse which served as the orphanage, memories of strange events there overpower him. An undercover investigation by child author/detective Wendy & a revolt by the repressed children, blew open a cover-up by Guy’s parents. Wendy disguised herself as her brother Chance and discovered that Guy’s inventor father performed outré scientific experiments on the orphans.

imdb     wikipedia

0159 – The Blue Notebooks

The Blue Notebooks is the second album by British producer/composer Max Richter, released on 26 February 2004 on 130701, an imprint of FatCat Records.

Richter composed The Blue Notebooks in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has described it as ‘a protest album about Iraq, a mediation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict.’ The album was recorded about a week after mass protests against the war.

The album features readings from Franz Kafka‘s The Blue Octavo Notebooks and Czesław Miłosz‘s Hymn of the Pearl and Unattainable Earth. Both readings are by the British actress Tilda Swinton.

wiki

0138 – The Time Machine (2002)

spacetime coordinates: New York City 1899 – 2030 – 2037 – 802,701 – 635,427,810

The Time Machine is a 2002 American science fiction film loosely adapted from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells and the screenplay of the 1960 film of the same name by David Duncan. Arnold Leibovit served as executive producer and Simon Wells served as director, the great-grandson of the original author. The film stars Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Mark Addy, Sienna Guillory and Phyllida Law, and includes a cameo by Alan Young, who also appeared in the 1960 film adaptation. The film is set in New York City instead of London, and contains new story elements not present in the original novel, including a romantic backstory, a new scenario about how civilization was destroyed, and several new characters, such as an artificially intelligent hologram played by Orlando Jones, and a Morlock leader played by Jeremy Irons. The film’s recreation of New York at the turn of the century won it some praise.

Many of the time traveling scenes were entirely computer generated, including a 33-second shot in the workshop where the time machine is located. The camera pulls out, traveling through New York City and then into space, past the ISS, and ends with a space plane landing at the moon to reveal earth’s future lunar colonies. Plants and buildings are shown springing up and then being replaced by new growth in a constant cycle. In later shots, the effects team used an erosion algorithm to digitally simulate the Earth’s landscape changing through the centuries.

imdb   wikipedia

134 – The Way Back (2010)

spacetime coordinates: 1940 Siberia, Soviet Union  Lake Baikal,  Mongolia, Gobi Desert, the Himalayas

 

the Way Back is a 2010 survival drama film directed by Peter Weir, from a screenplay by Weir and Keith Clarke. The film is inspired by The Long Walk (1956), the memoir by former Polish prisoner of war Sławomir Rawicz, who claimed to have escaped from a Soviet Gulag and walked 4,000 miles to freedom in World War II. The film stars Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, and Saoirse Ronan, with Alexandru Potocean, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Gustaf Skarsgård, Dragoş Bucur and Mark Strong.

Regardless of whether or not this particular “long walk” really took place, during World War II other Poles undertook difficult journeys attempting to leave the Soviet Union. Accounts of their escapes can be found in the archives of the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, and in the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, in California. Also, several relatively verifiable and believable escapee autobiographies have been published in English, e.g., Michael Krupa’s Shallow Graves in Siberia.

Many of the events that happen in the gulag scenes come from Varlam Shalamov’s The Kolyma Tales. (read/download PDF here)

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1023114/

133 – Capote (2005)

spacetime coordinates: 1959 > 1965  Kansas

Capote is a 2005 biographical film about Truman Capote, following the events during the writing of Capote’s non-fiction book In Cold Blood. Philip Seymour Hoffman won several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his critically acclaimed portrayal of the title character. The film was based on Gerald Clarke‘s biography Capote and was directed by Bennett Miller.

Perry Smith

Richard Hickock

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379725/

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“The viIIage of HoIcomb stands on the high wheat pIains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.
UntiI one morning in mid-November, 1959 few Americans, in fact, few Kansans, had ever heard of Holcomb.
Like the waters of the Arkansas River, Iike the motorists on the highway, exceptionaI happenings never stopped there. Perry Smith’s voice
was both gentIe and prim. A voice that, though soft, manufactured each sound exactIy, ejected it Iike a smoke ring issuing from a parson’s mouth.
The four coffins, which quite fiIIed the smaII, flower-crowded parlor, were to be sealed at the funeral services, very understandabIy,
for the effect was disquieting. Nancy wore her dress of cherry-red veIvet, her brother a bright pIaid shirt. The parents were more sedateIy attired,
Mr. Clutter in navy-blue flannel, his wife in navy-bIue crepe. And it was this especiaIIy that lent the scene an awful aura,
the head of each was compIeteIy encased in cotton. A swollen cocoon twice the size of an ordinary bIown-up baIIoon.
And the cotton, because it had been sprayed with a gIossy substance, twinkled like Christmas tree snow.
One Tuesday at dawn, a carload of strangers, ignorant of the IocaI disaster, were startIed by what they saw as they crossed the prairies
and passed through HoIcomb. Windows ablaze.
AImost every window in aImost every house, and in the brightIy-Iit rooms, fuIIy-cIothed peopIe, even entire families, who had sat the whoIe night wide awake,
watchfuI, Iistening. Of what were they frightened? It might happen again.”