1618 – The Shivering Truth (TV Series 2018-)

The Shivering Truth is an American stop-motion animated surrealist sketch comedy television series created by Vernon Chatman and directed by Chatman and Cat Solen. The show is produced by Solen with PFFR and ShadowMachine, and features the voice talents of Janeane Garofalo, Chatman, Kevin Breznahan, Trey Parker, Miriam Tolan, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Starlee Kine, Richard Steven Horvitz, Zack Pearlman, Maria Bamford, Conner O’Malley, David Cross, Martha Plimpton, Peter Serafinowicz, and Jordan Peele. The Shivering Truth premiered at midnight on December 9, 2018 on Adult Swim, with the pilot episode having been released online on May 22, 2018 on the Adult Swim website.

When announced in a press release by Adult Swim in May 2017, The Shivering Truth was described as “a delicately crafted, darkly surreal anthology comedy, a miniature propulsive omnibus cluster bomb of painfully riotous daymares all dripping with the orange goo of dream logic. A series of loosely-linked emotional parables about stories within tales that crawled out of the deepest caverns of your unconscious mind and became lovingly animated in breath-slapping stop motion – in other words, it is the TRUTH”.

The characters in the show are 10-inch (250 mm) puppets with wire-based armatures, created with silicon, wool, polystyrene, and resin. Chatman has noted several inspirations for his work on the show, including Terry Gilliam‘s work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, stating that “I saw it when I was very young, so it scared me. I didn’t know when the animation was beginning or ending.” He also explained that “A lot of my influences are non-animated, primarily in short films, novels, even radio shows. A recent one is David Eagleman‘s books on the brain. He’s a neuroscientist and he gives you 40 different versions of the afterlife, and none of them can co-exist.” Solen has spoken on her inspirations as well, saying that “I loved the movie The Wizard of Speed and Time, which is a cautionary tale about making movies. Another film that I loved as a kid was Nicolas Roeg‘s [film] adaptation of Roald Dahl‘s The Witches, which featured both Anjelica Huston and Jim Henson‘s puppets. It scared me so much!” (wiki)

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imdb   /  adultswim.com/videos/the-shivering-truth

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There, very low down in the western sky, about a couple of yards, according to human measurement, above the bounding wall of the enclosure, was the coracle-like crystal shell of the crescent moon in her first quarter. 

There was nothing to which it could be compared! Unique, in all the universe of matter, if only by reason of the associations hung about it of twenty-five thousand years of human yearning, it floated there before her, daughter and darling of the dark terrestrial orb, elf-waif of the infinite night!

John Cowper Powys | A Glastonbury Romance

1465 – Lodge 49 (TV Series 2018-)

timespace coordinates: AMC describes the series as a “modern fable set in Long Beach, California about a disarmingly optimistic local ex-surfer, Dud (Wyatt Russell), who’s drifting after the death of his father and collapse of the family business.” In the first season, Dud joins a fraternal order known as the Order of the Lynx, hoping the Lodge can put him “on the path to recover the idyllic life he’s lost.”

Lodge 49 is an American comedy-drama television series created by Jim Gavin. It aired on the television network AMC in the United States from August 6, 2018, to October 14, 2019, spanning two seasons and 20 episodes.

The title alludes to the novella The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, which Gavin references as an inspiration. (wiki)

www.lynxlodge49.com

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1420

«The Romans stole the alphabeta system from the Greeks through war», explains Rammellzee. «Then, in medieval times, monks ornamented letters to hide their meaning from the people. Now, the letter is armored against further manipulation.»

New York graffiti artist and B-boy theoretician Rammellzee (the artist encases himself during gallery performances in Gasholeer, a 148-pound, gadgetry-encrusted exoskeleton inspired by an android he painted on a subway train in 1981. Four years in the making, Rammellzee’s exuberantly low-tech costume bristles with rocket launchers, nozzles that gush gouts of flame, and an all-important sound system.)

«From both wrists, I can shoot seven flames, nine flames from each sneaker’s heel, and colored flames from the throat. Two girl doll heads hanging from my waist and in front of my balls spit fire and vomit smoke… The sound system consists of a Computator, which is a system of screws with wires. These screws can be depressed when the keyboard gun is locked into it. The sound travels through the keyboard and screws, then through the Computator, then the belt, and on up to the four mid-range speakers (with tweeters). This is all balanced by a forward wheel from a jet fighter plane. I also use an echo chamber, Vocoder, and system of strobe lights. A coolant device keeps my head and chest at normal temperature. A 100-watt amp and batteries give me power.»

«slanguage» – a heavily encrypted hip-hop argot – is the linguistic equivalent of graffiti «tags» all over the mother tongue. In an essay on English as the imperial language of the Internet, the cultural critic McKenzie Wark argues for the willful, viral corruption of the lingua franca of global corporate monoculture as a political act.

Black to the Future: Afrofuturism 1.0

Mark Dery

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1419 – The Lighthouse (2019)

timespace coordinates: New England island in the 1890s

The Lighthouse is a 2019 psychological horror film directed and produced by Robert Eggers (the vvitch – 2015), who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Max Eggers. Shot in black-and-white with a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, the film stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two lighthouse keepers who start to lose their sanity when a storm strands them on the remote island where they are stationed.

The literature of Maine-based writer Sarah Orne Jewett served as a significant point of reference for the dialects used in The Lighthouse. Maritime and surrealistic elements from the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson also informed the writing of the film. According to Eggers, a 19th-century incident at Smalls Lighthouse in Wales involving two lighthouse keepers (both named Thomas, as in the film) was an additional source of inspiration. (wiki)

imdb

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The Lighthouse | The World | Official Featurette HD | A24

1414 – Togo (2019)

timespace coordinates: 1925 serum run to Nome – central and northern Alaska

Togo is a 2019 American drama film directed by Ericson Core about the 1925 serum run to Nome focusing on the sled dog Togo and his owner Leonhard Seppala (Willem Dafoe).

wiki   /   imdb   /   rt

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pkulper