548 – The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2014 video game)

spacetime coordinates: 1970s Red Creek Valley

Experience, in non/linear fashion, a story that combines the pleasures of pulp, private eye, and horror fiction, all of it inspired by writers such as Raymond Chandler, Algernon Blackwood, Stefan Grabinski, and H. P. Lovecraft.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a 2014 horror adventure video game developed and published by The Astronauts for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a first-person story-driven mystery game that focuses entirely on exploration and discovery. Inspired by the weird fiction (and other tales of the macabre) from the early twentieth century, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter aims to significantly evolve immersive storytelling in games. While it features a private detective and quite a few mental challenges, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is not an especially puzzle-ridden game. Our focus is on atmosphere, mood, and the essential humanity of our characters.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windows 64-bit // Processor: Intel Core2 Duo or equivalent AMD // Memory: 6 GB RAM // Graphics: DirectX11 compliant card with 1GB of VRAM // DirectX: Version 11 // Storage: 9 GB available space // Sound Card: DirectX9c compliant

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Review

 http://store.steampowered.com/app/258520/The_Vanishing_of_Ethan_Carter/

0447 – Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

spacetime coordinates: 2000s Iceland

Journey to the Center of the Earth  is a 2008 American 3D science fantasy adventure film directed by Eric Brevig. It is not considered a sequel or a remake of the 1959 film  Journey to the Center of the Earth.

The film was the introduction for the special “4D” motion effects cinema in Seoul, South Korea, which feature tilting seats to convey motion, wind, sprays of water and sharp air, probe lights to mimic lightning, fog, scents, and other theatrical special effects. This format is known as 4DX.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373051/

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 Craig, Harrison 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

430 – The Swapper (2013 video game)

spacetime coordinates: abandoned space station Theseus  – remote outpost on uninhabitable desert planet Chori V

The Swapper is a puzzle-platform video game for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It was developed and published by Facepalm Games, a small independent company based in Helsinki, Finland.

The Swapper was a project made by two University of Helsinki students Otto Hantula and Olli Harjola in their spare time – backed by the Indie Fund, the 6th indie game title the fund has supported. Rather than digital textures, the game features handcrafted art assets and clay which forms the various game levels.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: OS:Windows XP SP3 or later, 64/32bit // Processor:Dual Core CPU (2.2+ GHz Dual Core CPU or better) // Memory:1 GB RAM // Graphics:GeForce® 8800 or Radeon® HD4800 series, 512 MB of memory, OpenGL 3.0 support required // Hard Drive:1 GB HD space

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/231160/The_Swapper/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swapper

The Swapper OST ♬ Complete Original Soundtrack

0429 – The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)

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

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 Bosch, Pieter 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/

112 – Voice from the Stone (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 1950s Tuscany, central Italy

Voice from the Stone is a 2017 American supernatural psychological thriller film directed by Eric D. Howell and written by Andrew Shaw, based on the novel of the same name by Silvio Raffo. The film stars Emilia Clarke, Marton Csokas, Caterina Murino, Remo Girone, Lisa Gastoni and Edward George Dring.

imdb