movies

0096 – Drive (2011)

spacetime coordinates: 2011 Los Angeles

Drive is a 2011 American neo-noir crime film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and written by Hossein Amini, based on the 2005 novel by James Sallis. It stars Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman, Oscar Isaac and Albert Brooks.

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Journalists and reviewers have called Drive a “classic Los Angeles heist-gone-wrong story”, a “tribute to the genre of car films” in the vein of movies like Bullitt (1968). As a character study, Drive examines themes of “loyalty, loneliness and the dark impulses that rise up even when we try our hardest to suppress them.” It combines comic gore, film noir and B-movie style and Hollywood spectacle, resulting in “a bizarre concoction…reminiscent of David Lynch‘s Mulholland DriveQuentin Tarantino‘s Pulp Fiction, and [with] angst-laden love scenes that would not be out of place in a Scandinavian drama”.  – read more about  Style and inspiration – 

the film contains abundant, evocative, intense images of Los Angeles. from the little seen back streets of downtown LA to the dry arid outposts on the peaks of the desert landscape surrounding it, LA is re-imagined all the way down to the rocky cliffs by the sea.

While Drive is set in the present day, it carries a heavy 1980s atmosphere that is cautiously set from beginning to end and is underlined not only by the vehicles or music and clothes, but also by its architecture. The parts of the city seen in the Valley and by downtown Los Angeles are cheap stucco and mirrored glass. Refn avoided certain areas to preserve the gloomy atmosphere often leaving out more contemporary buildings. Drab background settings include the Southern California commercial strip. As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, whenever gleaming buildings are shown, it is because they are being seen from a distance. Refn shot those scenes from a helicopter at night in Bunker Hill, Los Angeles.

imdb   /   wiki

animation, movies

0023 – Immortel (ad vitam) 2004

spacetime coordinate: New York City, 2095

Immortal (French: Immortel, ad vitam) is a 2004 English language French live-action and animated science fiction film co-written and directed by Enki Bilal and starring Linda Hardy, Thomas Kretschmann and Charlotte Rampling. It is loosely based upon Bilal’s comic book La Foire aux immortels (The Carnival of Immortals).

Immortal was one of the first major films (along with Casshern and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) to be shot entirely on a “digital backlot“, blending live actors with computer generated surroundings. The French video game studio Quantic Dream helped produce much of the cinematics.

The film takes place in New York City in the year 2095 where genetically altered humans live side by side with unaltered men and women, and where Central Park has been mysteriously encased in an “intrusion zone” where people who attempt to enter are instantly killed. A strange pyramid has appeared over the city; inside, the gods of ancient Egypt have judged Horus, one of their fellow gods, to cease his immortality.

In the city below, Jill, a young woman with blue hair is arrested…


imdb

movies, series

0018 – X-Men (film series)

The X-Men is an American superhero film series based on the superhero team of the same name, who originally appeared in a series of comic books created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and published by Marvel Comics.

timeline: http://xmenmovies.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline


X-Men: First Class (2011)

spacetime coordinate: 1944, in a German concentration camp in occupied Poland , 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis

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The story focuses on the relationship between Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr / Magneto, and the origin of their groups—the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, respectively, as they deal with the Hellfire Club led by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who is bent on world domination.


X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

spacetime coordinate: 1845 > Vietnam War >70’s Canada (Wolverine’s lumberjack period) > Three Mile Island, 1979

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The film is a prequel/spin-off focusing on the violent past of the mutant Wolverine and his relationship with his half-brother Victor Creed. The plot details Wolverine’s childhood as James Howlett (Troye Sivan), his early encounters with Major William Stryker, his time with Team X, a group of mutants including Agent Zero, Wade Wilson, John Wraith, Fred Dukes, and Chris Bradley. and the bonding of Wolverine’s skeleton with the indestructible metal adamantium during the Weapon X program.

Stryker activates Wade, now known as Weapon XI/Deadpool, a “mutant killer” with the powers of multiple mutants.


X-Men (2000)

spacetime coordinate: usa, 2000

X-MenThe film focuses on the mutants Wolverine and Rogue as they are brought into a conflict between two groups that have radically different approaches to bringing about the acceptance of mutant-kind


X2 (2003)

spacetime coordinate: usa, 2003

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inspired by the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, pits the X-Men and their enemies, the Brotherhood, against the genocidal Colonel William Stryker . He leads an assault on Professor Xavier’s school to build his own version of Xavier’s mutant-tracking computer Cerebro, in order to destroy every mutant on Earth and to save the human race from them.


X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

spacetime coordinate: USA, 2006

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The film’s script is loosely based on two X-Men comic book story arcs: “The Dark Phoenix Saga” by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, and “Gifted” by writer Joss Whedon and artist John Cassaday, with a plot that revolves around a “mutant cure” that causes serious repercussions among mutants and humans, and on the resurrection of Jean Grey.

hope serum
hope serum

The Wolverine (2013)

spacetime coordinate: japan, 2013

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based on the 1982 limited series Wolverine by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. In the film, which follows the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan travels to Japan, where he engages an old acquaintance in a struggle that has lasting consequences. Stripped of his healing factor, Wolverine must battle deadly samurai while struggling with guilt.


Deadpool (2016)

spacetime coordinate: USA, 2016

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antihero Deadpool hunts Ajax, the man who nearly destroyed his life while also trying to reunite with his lost love. featuring Angel Dust, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead

Deadpool 2 (2018)


X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

spacetime coordinate: 2023, China > 1973, USA

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The story, inspired by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men storyline “Days of Future Past” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, focuses on two time periods, with Wolverine traveling back in time to 1973 to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants.

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X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

spacetime coordinate: ancient Egypt,  1983 Cairo,  East Berlin, New York, Communist Poland

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The ancient mutant En Sabah Nur awakens in 1983 and plans to wipe out modern civilization and take over the world, leading the X-Men to try to stop him and defeat his team of renegade mutants.


Dark Phoenix (2019)

spacetime coordinates: 1992 New York

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the twelfth installment of the X-Men film series, and the sequel to 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse.

imdb   /   rottentomatoes   /   wiki


Logan (2017)

spacetime coordinate:  2029 Texas, the Mexican border, Oklahoma City, North Dakota

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It is the tenth installment in the X-Men film series, as well as the third and final Wolverine solo film following X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and The Wolverine (2013). The film, which takes inspiration from “Old Man Logan” by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, based in an alternate bleak future, follows an aged Wolverine and an extremely ill Professor X defending a young mutant named Laura from the villainous Reavers and Alkali-Transigen led by Donald Pierce and Zander Rice, respectively.

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The film takes visual, tonal and thematic inspiration from classic western and noir cinema, with director James Mangold having stated that Logan’s influences included “visual reference points” of cinema, citing Shane (1953), The Cowboys (1972), Paper Moon (1973), The Gauntlet (1977), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), and The Wrestler (2008).

Mangold spoke of cinematography-based framing, while noting that he does not necessarily think about the “comic-book” related sort, instead highlighting the variety of stylistic influences that went into Logan. These influences include film noir framings and classic Hollywood filmmaking styles, as well as the Germanic expressionist filmmaking style of the early part of the last century, which Mangold stated has a commonality with comic-book art. Mangold highlighted “Strong foregrounds, playing things in depth: you have to make an image say more within that one image.” Using the image of Logan at a funeral as an example of his stylistic logic, Mangold concluded by mentioning the aspects within modern filmmaking, primarily everything in close-up format. For Logan, his aim was to set frames that are descriptive, and evocative of comic-book panels and classical filmmaking

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On April 29, 2017, James Mangold announced via Twitter that a black-and-white version of the film entitled Logan Noir would have a limited theatrical run in U.S. theaters, an event set to begin on May 16, 2017. Mangold stated that it was shot as a color film, with awareness that it would play well as a black and white film. The film was re-graded and timed shot by shot for the Noir edition. This version of the film is included on the Digital HD release and also included in the DVD and Blu-ray Combo Pack. (wiki)

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