2458 – Alice / Něco z Alenky (1988)

Alice is a 1988 surrealist dark fantasy film written and directed by Jan Švankmajer. Its original Czech title is Něco z Alenky, which means “Something from Alice”. It is a loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll‘s first Alice book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), about a girl who chases a white rabbit into a bizarre fantasy land. Alice is played by Kristýna Kohoutová. The film combines live-action with stop-motion animation, and is distinguished by its dark production design.

For Švankmajer, a prolific director of short films for more than two decades, Alice became his first venture into feature-length filmmaking. The director had been disappointed by other adaptations of Carroll’s book, which interpret it as a fairy tale. His aim was instead to make the story play out like an amoral dream.

Despite the film’s heavy usage of stop motion, and unlike most other traditional stop motion films, the film does not utilize any miniature sets to portray its special effects. (wiki)

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1817 – Metamorphosis (2020 video game)

timespace coordinates: 1920’s Prague

Metamorphosis is an adventure/puzzle video game with platforming elements, inspired by the imagination of Franz Kafka. The game was developed by Ovid Works and published by All in! Games on August 12, 2020. Metamorphosis is available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. (wiki)

What once seemed like mundane dwellings have become an expansive obstacle course, and now you’ll have to chart your path through the dingy nooks and crannies that exist within the cracks of civilization.

Use your wits to unravel the truth, and regain the life you once knew. (steam)

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SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 7, Processor: Intel Core i5 (2nd gen) or AMD FX 6350, Memory: 8 GB RAM, Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD R9 270X, Storage: 12 GB available space

1314 – The Order of Time (2017 book)

“Sooner or later
the exact measurement of our time
will resume—
and we’ll be on the ship that’s bound
for the bitterest shore. (II, 9)

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The Order of Time (Italian: L’ordine del tempo) is a book by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli. It is about time in physics.

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.

An audiobook, four hours and nineteen minutes long, was read by Benedict Cumberbatch. (wiki)

Carlo Rovelli on The Order of Time (youtube)

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“For centuries, as long as travel was on horseback, on foot, or in carriages, there was no reason to synchronize clocks between one place and another. There was good reason for not doing so. Midday is, by definition, when the sun is at its highest. Every city and village had a sundial that registered the moment the sun was at its midpoint, allowing the clock on the bell tower to be regulated with it, for all to see.
But the sun does not reach midday at the same moment in Lecce as it does in Venice, or in Florence, or in Turin, because the sun moves from east to west. and for centuries the clocks in Venice were a good half hour ahead of those in Turin. Every small village had its own peculiar “hour.” A train station in Paris kept its own hour, a little behind the rest of the city, as a kind of courtesy toward travelers running late.

goodreads   /   penguin

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Sadhguru on Yugas

1268 – Innerspace (1987)

timespace coordinates: 1980s San Francisco / San Francisco Bay Area

Innerspace is a 1987 American science-fiction comedy film directed by Joe Dante and produced by Michael Finnell. Steven Spielberg served as executive producer.

It was inspired by the 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage. It stars Dennis Quaid, Martin Short and Meg Ryan, with Robert Picardo and Kevin McCarthy, with music composed by Jerry Goldsmith. (wiki)

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