0389 – Clash of the Titans (2010)

Clash of the Titans is a 2010 British-American fantasy adventure film and remake of the 1981 film of the same name produced by MGM (the rights to which had been acquired by Warner Bros. in 1996). The story is very loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus. Directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes,

A sequel, Wrath of the Titans, was released in March 2012. A third film titled Revenge of the Titans was in development but later cancelled due to Wrath of the Titans’ disappointing box office performance.

Perseus and Andromeda *oil on canvas *180 x 150 cm *1611 *signed: JOACHIM WTEWAEL FECIT ANNO 1611 (S.D.MI.H.B.G.)

imdb: clash // wrath

0383

Beyond Skyline (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 2010 Los Angeles //  rural Laos in Southeast Asia

Beyond Skyline is an 2017 American science fiction action thriller film directed by Liam O’Donnell and stars Frank Grillo, Bojana Novakovic, Iko Uwais, Callan Mulvey, Yayan Ruhian, Betty Gabriel and Antonio Fargas. It is the direct sequel to the 2010’s Skyline.

“A tough-as-nails detective embarks on a relentless pursuit to free his son from a nightmarish alien warship.”

imdb

BEYOND SKYLINE Movie Teaser 

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Skylines (2020)

spacetime coordinates: mission to an extraterrestrial world to save what’s left of mankind. five years after the war against the aliens

Skylines (also known as Skyline 3 and stylized as SKYLIN3S) is a 2020 American science fiction action film written and directed by Liam O’Donnell. It is a sequel to Beyond Skyline (2017) and the final entry in the Skyline trilogy. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

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0382 – Skyline (2010)

Strange lights descend on the city of Los Angeles, drawing people outside like moths to a flame where an extraterrestrial force threatens to swallow the entire human population off the face of the Earth.

Skyline is a 2010 alien invasion science fiction thriller film produced and directed by Brothers Strause. The film stars Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, Crystal Reed, David Zayas and Donald Faison.

Skyline_movie_image

“Skyline, if not always successful, refashions the modern alien invasion motif as the hopeless siege that it should be.” Matthew Sorrento’s at Film Threat

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1564585/

345 – Pacific Rim (2013)

spacetime coordinates: 2020 – 2025 Alaska // Hong Kong // Manila // San Francisco // Pacific Ocean //  Tokyo

Pacific Rim is a 2013 American science fiction monster film directed by Guillermo del Toro and starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. The screenplay was written by Travis Beacham and del Toro from a story by Beacham.

The film is set in the future, when Earth is at war with the Kaiju,  colossal sea monsters which have emerged from an interdimensional portal on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. To combat the monsters, humanity unites to create the Jaegers,  gigantic humanoid mechas each controlled by at least two pilots, whose minds are joined by a mental link. Focusing on the war’s later days, the story follows Raleigh Becket, a washed-up Jaeger pilot called out of retirement and teamed with rookie pilot Mako Mori as part of a last-ditch effort to defeat the Kaiju.

Knifehead, the first Kaiju to appear in the film, is a tribute to the plodding kaiju of 1960s Japanese films, and is intended to look almost like a man in a rubber suit; its head was inspired by that of a goblin shark. Leatherback, the bouncer-like Kaiju which spews electro-magnetic charges, is a favorite of del Toro, who conceived it as a “brawler with this sort of beer belly”; the lumbering movements of gorillas were used as a reference.  The Kaiju Otachi homages the dragons of Chinese mythology. The director called it a “Swiss army knife of a Kaiju”; with almost 20 minutes of screen time, it was given numerous features so the audience would not tire of it. The creature moves like a Komodo dragon in water, sports multiple jaws and an acid-filled neck sack, and unfurls wings when necessary. It is also more intelligent than the other Kaiju, employing eagle-inspired strategies against the Jaegers.  Onibaba, the Kaiju that orphans Mako Mori, resembles a fusion of a Japanese temple and a crustacean. Slattern, the largest Kaiju, is distinguished by its extremely long neck and “half-horn, half-crown” head, which del Toro considered both demonic and majestic. 

Gipsy Danger, the American Jaeger, was based on the shape of New York City’s Art Deco buildings, such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, but infused with John Wayne‘s gunslinger gait and hip movements. Cherno Alpha, the Russian Jaeger, was based on the shape and paint patterns of a T-series Russian tank, combined with a giant containment silo to give the appearance of a walking nuclear power plant with a cooling tower on its head. Crimson Typhoon, the three-armed Chinese Jaeger, is piloted by triplets and resembles a “medieval little warrior”; its texture evokes Chinese lacquered wood with golden edges. Striker Eureka, the Australian Jaeger, is likened by del Toro to a Land Rover; the most elegant and masculine Jaeger, it has a jutting chest, a camouflage paint scheme recalling the Australian outback, and the bravado of its pilots.

Rather than popular culture, the director drew inspiration from works of art such as The Colossus and George Bellows‘s boxing paintings.

The classic Japanese woodblock print  The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai was a common motif in the ocean battles; Del Toro recalled, “I would say ‘Give me a Hokusai wave’… we use the waves and weather in the movie very operatically.”  The director asked that Knoll not necessarily match the lighting from shot to shot: “It’s pretty unorthodox to do that, but I think the results are really beautiful and very artistically free and powerful, not something you would associate with a big sci-fi action movie.” Del Toro considers the film’s digital water its most exciting visual effect: “The water dynamics in this movie are technically beautiful, but also artistically incredibly expressive. We agreed on making the water become almost another character. We would time the water very precisely. I’d say ‘Get out of the wave [on this frame].'”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Rim_(film)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663662/

0344 – Monsters (2010)

Monsters (IMDB) is a 2010 British science fiction monster film written and directed by Gareth Edwards in his feature film directorial debut. Edwards also served as the cinematographer, production designer, and visual effects artist. Monsters takes place years after a NASA probe crash in Mexico which led to the sudden appearance of giant tentacled monsters. It follows Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), an American photojournalist tasked with escorting his employer’s daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) back to the US by crossing through Mexico’s “Infected Zone” where the creatures reside.

 Monsters: Dark Continent, a sequel, was released in the UK on 1 May 2015.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935302/

0310 – Victor Vran (2015 video game)

Victor Vran is an action role-playing video game developed by the Bulgarian independent development studio Haemimont Games, creators of recent Tropico titles. Victor Vran is published on Steam by EuroVideo Medien.The setting of the game resembles Gothic-fantasy fairy tale where both magic and science have a place in the world.

Victor Vran Minimum System Requirements – OS: Windows Vista 32-bit. / CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E4400 2.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ 2.5GHz. / RAM: 4GB System Memory. / GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 420 or AMD Radeon HD 4650 or Intel HD 4000. / HDD: 4GB Free Hard Drive Space. / DX: DirectX 11.

Victor Vran Review   /   steam

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