1640 – Tales from the Loop (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: 1955 > early 1980s Mercer, Ohio. Mercer is home to the Mercer Center for Experimental Physics, an underground facility known as the Loop. It is there where researchers attempt to “make the impossible possible”.

Tales from the Loop is an American science fiction drama web television series based on the art book of the same name by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag (536). The series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on April 3, 2020. All eight episodes of the first season were released simultaneously. (wiki)

David Baird from the B.C. Catholic characterizes the series as “a set of loosely interrelated meditations upon ephemerality, the impact of technology, and human vulnerability infused with a mild science fiction savour” and considers it “a beguiling fusion of forward-looking nostalgia”.

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1631 – Star Trek: Picard (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: year 2399. various locations

Star Trek: Picard is an American web television series featuring the character Jean-Luc Picard, created for CBS All Access by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman. It is the eighth series in the Star Trek franchise, and was launched in 2020 as part of Kurtzman’s expansion of the franchise. Picard begins 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and sees a retired Picard deeply affected by the death of Data in that film as well as the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek (2009).

Patrick Stewart executive produces the series and stars as Picard, reprising his role from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as other Star Trek media. Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, and Harry Treadaway also star. The series was designed to be slower and more character-focused than previous series in the franchise. (wiki)

imdb   /  Tie-in media

1617 – Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)

A look at the final moments of a Las Vegas dive bar called ‘The Roaring 20s’. (fictional non-fiction)

Depicting the final day of a hangdog hangout called the Roaring 20’s, located well off of the plastic fantastic glitz of the Las Vegas strip, the film makes you wonder if gentrification is even the right term for whatever is going on here. Diving into this doco is a bit like hanging around in Star Wars’ Mos Eisley cantina long after Luke, Han and the gang have gone, leaving a slain bounty hunter and a severed arm behind them. (timeout)

“Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” might have been inspired by 2016, but it embodies 2020. (indiewire)

“The perfect distillation of bar life.” (spectrumculture)

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imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1596

Teenage bloodbath: the 2010s in review

by Sam Kriss

Reviewed:
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (film, JJ Abrams, 2019)
The Irishman (film, Martin Scorsese, 2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (film, Quentin Tarantino, 2019)
‘ok boomer’ (meme, the New York Times, 2019)
The death of Jeffrey Epstein (hyperobject, Bill and Hillary Clinton, 2019)
YA fiction (genre, JK Rowling et al., 1997)
The 2010s (decade, Time, 2010)
Industrial capitalism (mode of production, the World-Spirit, 1760)
The Earth (planet, God, 4,543,000,000 BC)
Myself (imbecile, God, 1990)

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“George Lucas was the Albert Speer of cinema. Everything he built had extraordinary ruin value; all those spaceships work far better as enormous wrecks than as active fantasies. They were destroyed from the very beginning.”

“Youth, in our era of exhaustion, is a phantom. It’s something dreamed up by old people; it belongs to them, and they’ll control it until they die; maybe afterwards.”

1593 – GET DUKED! / Boyz in the Wood (2019)

timespace coordinates: 2019 Scottish Highlands

Dean, Duncan and DJ Beatroot are teenage pals from Glasgow who embark on the character-building camping trip — based on a real-life program — known as the Duke of Edinburgh Award, where foraging, teamwork and orienteering are the order of the day. Eager to cut loose and smoke weed in the Scottish Highlands, the trio finds themselves paired with straight-laced Ian, a fellow camper determined to play by the rules. After veering off-path into remote farmland that’s worlds away from their urban comfort zone, the boys find themselves hunted down by a shadowy force hell-bent on extinguishing their futures. From writer-director Ninian Doff — making his feature debut after a slew of award-winning music videos and short films for artists including Run the Jewels, Miike Snow, Migos, and Mykki Blanco — comes an anarchic satire of generational politics, hip-hop loving farmers and hallucinogenic rabbit droppings that pits the youth of tomorrow against the status quo of yesterday. (rottentomatoes)

imdb   /   618 – Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

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Filmed in The Scottish Borders. In and around the Mennock Pass and Wanlockhead.

1591 – Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020)

timespace coordinates: == prehistory, 18th century, 1922, 1967, 2020, 2022, 2025, 2030, 2067, 28th century == San Dimas California, London, Vienna, China, New Orleans, Africa ==

Bill & Ted Face the Music is a 2020 American science fiction comedy film directed by Dean Parisot. It is the third film in the Bill & Ted series, and the sequel to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991). Alex Winter, Keanu Reeves, and William Sadler reprise their roles as Bill, Ted, and the Grim Reaper, respectively, while Kristen Schaal, Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Anthony Carrigan, Erinn Hayes, Jayma Mays, Holland Taylor, Kid Cudi, and Jillian Bell join the cast. In the film, Bill and Ted must write a song to unite humanity before time and space is destroyed. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1590 – Train to Busan 2 / Peninsula (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2020  South Korea /  Hong Kong

Peninsula (Korean: 반도; Hanja: 半島; RR: Bando; marketed in the United States as Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula) is a 2020 South Korean action horror film directed by Yeon Sang-ho.

It is a standalone sequel to the 2016 film Train to Busan and follows a soldier who is sent along with his team to retrieve a truck full of money from the wastelands of the Korean peninsula now inhabited by zombies, rogue militia and a nice family. (wiki)

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imdb