0471 – Coraline (2009)

spacetime coordinates: 2000’s Ashland, Oregon

Coraline is a 2009 American 3D stop-motion dark fantasy horror film based on Neil Gaiman‘s 2002 novel of the same name. It was the first feature film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. The film depicts an adventurous girl finding an idealized parallel world behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that the alternate world contains a dark and sinister secret. Written and directed by Henry Selick, the film was made with Gaiman’s approval and co-operation.

Coraline was staged in a 140,000-square-foot (13,000 m²) warehouse in Hillsboro, Oregon. The stage was divided into 50 lots, which played host to nearly 150 sets. Among the sets were three miniature Victorian mansions, a 42-foot (12.8 m) apple orchard, and a model of Ashland, Oregon, including tiny details such as banners for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. More than 28 animators worked at a time on rehearsing or shooting scenes, producing 90–100 seconds of finished animation each week. To add the stereoscopy for the 3D release, the animators shot each frame from two slightly apart camera positions.

Every object on screen was made for the film. The crew used three 3D printing systems from Objet in the development and production of the film. Thousands of high-quality 3D models, ranging from facial expressions to doorknobs, were printed in 3D using the Polyjet matrix systems, which enable the fast transformation of CAD (computer-aided design) drawings into high-quality 3D models. The puppets had separate parts for the upper and lower parts of the head that could be exchanged for different facial expressions. The characters of Coraline could potentially exhibit over 208,000 facial expressions. Computer artists composited separately-shot elements together, or added elements of their own which had to look handcrafted instead of computer-generated – for instance, the flames were done with traditional animation and painted digitally, and the fog was dry ice.

At its peak, the film involved the efforts of 450 people, including from 30  to 35 animators and digital designers in the Digital Design Group (DDG) directed by Dan Casey and more than 250 technicians and designers. One crew member, Althea Crome, was hired specifically to knit miniature sweaters and other clothing for the puppet characters, sometimes using knitting needles as thin as human hair. The clothes would also simulate wear using paint and a file. Several students from The Art Institute of Portland were also involved in making the film.

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

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327597/

http://www.coraline.com/

0458 – Dellamorte Dellamore (1994)

spacetime coordinates: 1990’s Buffalora, little town in the north of Italy

Cemetery Man (Italian: Dellamorte Dellamore) is a 1994 comedy horror film directed by Michele Soavi and starring Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro and Anna Falchi. It was written and produced by Gianni Romoli and Michele Soavi and based on a 1991 novel by Tiziano Sclavi. Sclavi is also the author of the comic Dylan Dog, which covers similar themes and whose protagonist is a Rupert Everett lookalike. Everett plays a beleaguered caretaker of a small Italian cemetery, who searches for love while defending himself from dead people who keep rising again. It is an international co-production between Italy, France, and Germany.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109592/

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ignis fatuus  (will-o’-the-wisp ) Medieval Latin for “foolish fire”) is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes. It resembles a flickering lamp and is said to recede if approached, drawing travellers from the safe paths. The phenomenon is known by a variety of names, including jack-o’-lantern, friar’s lantern, hinkypunk, and hobby lantern in English folk belief, and is well attested in English folklore and in much of European folklore. (read more)

0455

spacetime coordinates: 19th-century England, Yorkshire >  the Amazon and its tributaries > the Andes of Peru and Ecuador

Richard Spruce and the Trials of Victorian Bryology

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“Pushing against its scientific reputation as downright boring, moss in particular served to create some botanical, aesthetic sense of a setting that allowed for illicit sexual encounters and for primal yearnings. The reasons for this strange dual identity of bryophytes as both mundane and as primal are relatively clear: realistically, moss provided a soft bed for sexual romps that had to take place outside of stuffy Victorian homes. Serving, perhaps predictably, as a slang term for pubic hair, moss was understood to be consistently moist and jewel-like, glittering like emerald colonies under light. (…) Although tropes of sexual encounters occurring in gardens and forests far predated the nineteenth century, both realistically and literarily, these hidden moss grottoes conjured up an image of something semi-religious, some secret refuge from the trials of urban — and overwhelming imperial tropical — life.”

0448 – Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012)

spacetime coordinates: 2012 Palau //  Atlantis

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a 2012 American science fiction comedy adventure film directed by Brad Peyton. It is the sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008). Following the first film, the sequel is based on another Jules Verne novel, this time The Mysterious Island. The film stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzmán, and Kristin Davis. (Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards 2013 Favorite Male Butt Kicker: Dwayne Johnson)

Possible sequels

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1397514/

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/

0435 – The Eagle (2011)

spacetime coordinates: AD 140  Roman Britain > estate near Calleva (modern Silchester) in southern Britain > territory of the Picts north of Hadrian’s Wall

The Eagle is a 2011 epic historical drama film set in Roman Britain directed by Kevin Macdonald, and starring Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell and Donald Sutherland. Adapted by Jeremy Brock from Rosemary Sutcliff‘s historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth(1954), the film tells the story of a young Roman officer attempting to recover the lost Roman eagle standard of his father’s legion in Scotland. The story is based on the Ninth Spanish Legion‘s supposed disappearance in Britain.

The film was an Anglo-American co-production. It may be considered a sequel to the film Centurion, written and directed by Neil Marshall, because Channing Tatum’s character in The Eagle is Marcus Flavius Aquila, the son of Titus Flavius Virilus who led the Ninth Legion that was lost in the far north of Britannia, and who was therefore the same person as Dominic West‘s character Titus Flavius Virilus in Centurion. Historically, the purported disappearance of the Ninth Legion in Northern Britain is a subject of debate and dispute

Macdonald intended the film to be historically authentic, but as little is certain about the tribes that the Romans encountered—they were generally Celtic peoples, though some may have been Picts—he made concessions. For example, the tribespeople spoke Gaelic, even though the language probably did not enter widespread use in the region until the 5th century AD;  Pictish is the more likely language to have been spoken at the time. “It’s the best we can do,” Macdonald said. “All you can do is build on a few clues and trust your own instincts. That way, no one can tell you you were wrong.”

Macdonald described his view of the Seal people: “They were a more indigenous folk than the Celts, who were from farther south … They were probably small and dark, like the Inouit [sic], living off seals and dressed in sealskins. We are going to create a culture about which no one knows much, but which we will make as convincing as possible. We are basing it on clues gained from places like Skara Brae and the Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney, so that we will have them worshipping pagan symbols, like the seal and the eagle. The reason they have seized the emblem of the Roman eagle from the legion is because to them it [was] a sacred symbol.” (wiki)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034389/

0434 – The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

spacetime coordinates:  1889 Belgian Congo // London

The Legend of Tarzan is a 2016 American adventure film based on the fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Directed by David Yates, with a screenplay by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, the film stars Alexander Skarsgård as the title character, with Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent and Christoph Waltz in supporting roles.

Making Africa seem authentic was especially important to the filmmakers, since the film was shot in England, except for six weeks in Gabon, filming background by helicopter without the cast. A working waterfall and a 100-foot-long collapsible pier were assembled at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden studios. Seven versions of the African jungle were constructed to show different scenery throughout the filming. Plants from Holland were mixed with trees sculpted by the art department. Kedleston Hall stood in for the Greystoke Manor, and a cedar tree on the grounds of Highclere Castle served as the setting for an early pivotal scene between Tarzan and Jane. (wiki)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0918940/