0742 – LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE / Ruang rak noi nid mahasan (2003)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Thailand

Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang directs the character-driven drama Last Life in the Universe, co-written by first-time screenwriter Prabda Yoon. Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a Japanese man living in Bangkok. He lives a tidy, silent lifestyle fueled by the detached desire to kill himself. Meanwhile, Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) is a pot-smoking call girl who lives in a  shabby beachside home outside the city. She tries to teach herself to speak Japanese with hopes of moving to Osaka. One day, Kenji walks into his apartment as his brother Yukio (Yutaka Matsushige) is involved in a gun fight with gangster (yakuza) Takashi (Riki Takeuchi). Then Kenji accidentally witnesses the death of Noi’s lovely sister, Nid (Laila Boonyasak), with whom he first became smitten at the library. Having nowhere to go, Kenji goes to live with Noi for a few days, leading to the development of a strange and sensitive relationship. With cinematography by Hong Kong-based photographer Christopher Doyle. Last Life in the Universe won an Upstream Prize at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. (rottentomatoes)

Last Life in the Universe OST – Untitled [Are you alone? Are you lonely?]

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0740 – Mary Magdalene (2018)

timespace coordinates: Judea, 33 AD.

Mary Magdalene is a 2018 biblical drama film about the woman of the same name, written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett and directed by Garth Davis. It stars Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tahar Rahim. It is the last film score completed by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson before his death.

Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara as the titular character, sought to reverse the centuries-old portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, while also combating the conspiracy claims of her being Jesus’s wife or sexual partner. Instead, the film portrays her as Jesus’s closest disciple and the only one who truly understands his teachings. This portrayal is partially based on the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene. The film, which described as having a “strongly feminist bent”, was praised for its music score and cinematography, its surprising faithfulness to the Biblical narrative, and its acting, but was criticized as slow-moving, overwritten, and too solemn to be believable. 

imdb   /    liberation theology

0732 – The White King (2016)

The White King is a 2016 British sci-fi-drama film written and directed by Alex Helfrecht and Jörg Tittel. It is an adaptation of the 2008 Hungarian novel of the same name written by György Dragomán and follows Djata (Lorenzo Allchurch) growing up in an agrarian totalitarian state, without access to the rest of the world, while dealing with persecution against him and his parents (Agyness Deyn & Ross Partridge) by the government. (wiki)

György Dragomán’s story has been transposed to fictitious near-future dictatorship. Dragomán said this about the film: “In my original novel I wanted to show freedom in a society where freedom should not exist. In their movie Alex and Jörg were brave enough to take my communist childhood tale and adapt it into a modern story, showing us that the threat to freedom is as eternal as our fight for it.”

imdb

729

Too hot inside Too hot outside Lazy days when I said let’s go for a ride

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CocoRosie / insta / twitt /

freak folk / New Weird America

0724 – raining.fm

https://raining.fm/

720 – Into the Forest (2015)

timespace coordinates:  the near future, British Columbia – remotely located home in an old-growth forest during a massive, continent-wide power outage that appears to be part of an overall technological collapse.

Into the Forest is a 2015 Canadian drama/ end-of-the-world thriller written and directed by Patricia Rozema starring Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood. The film is based on the book written by Jean Hegland published in 1996.  *scored by Max Richter.

imdb

706 – Sacred Games (TV Series 2018– )

timespace coordinates: 70’s – 80’s – 90’s – 2010’s Mumbai

Sacred Games is an Indian web television series by Netflix based on Vikram Chandra‘s 2006 thriller novel of the same name. The series was produced in partnership with Phantom Films. The novel was adapted by Varun Grover, Smita Singh and Vasant Nath, and all eight, hour-long episodes were directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. All eight episodes were made available for streaming on 6 July 2018.

Sacred Games tells the story of Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan), a jaded police inspector living under the shadow of his deceased father and seeking validation from a police force he nevertheless loathes for its corruption. When Singh receives an anonymous tip-off regarding the whereabouts of Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a notorious crime lord who has been missing for 16 years, it initiates a chain of events that burrows deep into India’s dark underworld.

जन्नत तोह मैं हो

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The episode titles are inspired by Hindu mythology. The first episode titled “Aswatthama”, was based on the namesake character from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata. He was cursed with immortality by Krishna after the Kurukshetra war. In the series, Gaitonde calls himself immortal like Ashwatthama, but later commits suicide. “Halahala”, another episode, was named after a poison of the same name, which was retrieved from Samudra manthan. Aatapi and Vatapi were two demons who used to trick travellers with hospitality and kill them. Brahmahatya means killing of a Brahmin, which is a crime in Hinduism. In the episode, the Hindu Gaitonde agrees to try to attract Muslim votes for Hindu politician Bhosale. Sarama is referred to as a dog. Pretakalpa learns the rites of a Hindu to perform the cremations. In this episode, Katekar is killed and Sartaj cremates him. Rudra is the angered version of Shiva. Gaitonde’s wife Subhadra is killed in this episode; he takes revenge by murdering her killers. Yayati was king cursed with premature old age.

imdb