1384 – Freaks (2018)

Freaks is a 2018 American-Canadian science fiction thriller film directed, written and produced by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. It stars Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park, Amanda Crew, and Lexy Kolker, who was seven years old at the time of filming.

The film tells the story of a 7-year-old girl named Chloe (Kolker) who is locked in an abandoned house by her disturbed father (Hirsch). The mysterious Mr. Snowcone (Dern) convinces her to escape for his own suspicious reasons. (wiki)

A promotional poster for the film features a street sign with a one eye logo and a phone number to call to report “abnormal activity”. The number is 1-800-517-5890 and when called, a recorded message with a woman’s voice would say, “Thank you for calling the abnormal defense hotline, provided by the Department of Homeland Security.” The recorded message at first urged others to be on the lookout for “freaks” and it said that you can leave a message to report any abnormal activity from freaks. A few days later, the recorded message was changed to warn others to stay away from an upcoming San Diego Comic Con “free underground prescreening of Freaks” on July 18, 2019.

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imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1359 – Trover Saves the Universe (2019 video game)

From the co-creator of Rick and Morty comes Trover Saves the Universe.

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Your dogs have been dognapped by a beaked lunatic named Glorkon who stuffed them into his eye holes and is using their life essence to destroy the universe. You’re partnered with Trover, a little purple eye-hole monster who isn’t a huge fan of working or being put in the position of having to save the universe. He’s also not that big a fan of you quite frankly, and neither am I. (Jk, you’re great)

Only you and Trover can save everything in this bizarre comedy adventure, created by Justin Roiland!

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• A comedy adventure filled with combat, platforming, puzzles, and morally questionable choices. See how the best intentions can go horribly awry.
• You control Trover’s movements, but not his mouth. He’s got a lot to say about what’s going on in the game.
• Travel the cosmos to experience a variety of weird alien planets and bizarre characters with big personalities.
• Upgrade Trover AND YOURSELF with new abilities to (hopefully) defeat Glorkon while evading awkward situations.
• You’ll be immersed in weirdness, no matter which display you use — play on TV, monitor or VR headset displays.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM):  Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system / OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions) / Processor: Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better / Memory: 8 GB RAM / Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better / Storage: 25 GB available space

Trover Saves the Universe – Official Free DLC Trailer

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steam

1342 – The Divinity Student (1999 book by Michael Cisco)

“he is conscious of the Seminary expanding ancient and vast on all sides—the yawning cold hallways like caverns of stone, the dank subvestries and classrooms with bubbling peeling plaster walls and a mildewed smell, frosty choirs of icy wood polished to a dull luster by the chafing of nervous hands.”

“schooled exclusively in cold places, always rain and chill waiting outside the walls; he would anxiously look forward to the halfhearted springs and moist, wilted summers.”

“A flat manylegged object exhaling odorless blue smoke scuttles over his left foot; he’s not disgusted, he doesn’t flinch.”

“Although he can’t see, there are shapes around him, darker shadows looming against the dark like cliffs and frothings like sea foam.There are things that seem like panels of transparence, windows, lightless as everything else but looking as if he’s peering through something, from one dark to another.”

“the streets buck and shift like the deck of a doomed ship, the air rises in hot transparent coils so that the city distorts, as if viewed through a window of wrinkled glass. The outlines of the buildings around him billow like smoke, they hide enormous roaring engines, legions of enemies.”

“his great coat is so black and terrible it’s almost leaking darkness, it smudges the air around him like a pall of coal smoke.”

“Passing the cemetery, he sees huge pulsing trees burrowing into graves with their roots, their branches forking like capillaries into fleshy clouds.”

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Short but powerful, this neo-gothic novel, uses the crisp immediacy of the present tense to lead the reader on a hallucinatory journey from humanity to inhuman transcendence. After a miraculous recovery from near death, a young man known only as the Divinity Student is beset by strange dreams whose lingering effects further alienate him from his fellows. 

goodreads   /  weirdfictionreview   /  Michael Cisco

1335 – Extra Ordinary (2019)

timespace coordinates: 90’s (?) rural Ireland

Extra Ordinary is a 2019 Irish tea-cosy “Ghostbusters” horror comedy film written and directed by Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. The film stars Maeve Higgins, Barry Ward, Will Forte, Claudia O’Doherty, Jamie Beamish, Terri Chandler, Risteárd Cooper and Emma Coleman. (wiki)

A horror/rom-com hybrid that somehow manages to blend its ingredients without losing their flavor, Extra Ordinary more than lives up to its title. (rottentomatoes)

imdb

1330 – Ruiner (2017 video game)

timespace coordinates: cyber metropolis Rengkok / nightscapes and industrial jungles of a grit-tech 2091Ruiner is a brutal cyberpunk top-down shooter / isometric slasher video game developed by Polish indie game studio Reikon Games and published by Devolver Digital. The game was released for Linux, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One on 26 September 2017. Omri Pettite of PC Gamer stated that “Ruiner is gorgeous, a sensory feast inspired by the works of cyberpunk’s 1980s heyday, in which a silent, masked protagonist travels through the nightscapes and industrial jungles of a grit-tech 2091. Underneath, a thumping top-down action game delivers sword-sharp combat, the familiarity of its design offset by the constant urge to simply stand still and drink everything in.”

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system /  OS: Windows 7/8.1/10 x64 / Processor: Intel Core i5-760 (4 * 2800) or equivalent / AMD Athlon II X4 645 AM3 (4 * 3100) or equivalent / Memory: 4 GB RAM / Graphics: GeForce GTX 460 (1024 MB) / Radeon HD 6850 (1024 MB) / Storage: 10 GB available space

wiki   /   steam

1324 – Strange Days (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1999, turn of the century (near-future) Los Angeles (racial war zone / New Year’s Eve party) 

Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and produced by Cameron and Steven-Charles Jaffe. It stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore. Set in the last two days of 1999, the film follows the story of a black marketeer of SQUID discs, recordings that allow a user to experience the recorder’s memories and physical sensations, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the murder of a prostitute.

Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism, abuse of power, rape, and voyeurism. Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration after incidents such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict.

Strange Days was a commercial failure and almost derailed Bigelow’s career (…) Nevertheless, the film’s critical standing has improved over the years, with many fans feeling that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics.

The scene where the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century at the end of the film was shot at the corner of the 5th and Flower streets, between the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and the Los Angeles Public Library. Over 50 off-duty police officers were hired to control an assembled crowd of 10,000 people, who had to pay $10 in advance to attend the event. The film-makers also hired rave promoters Moss Jacobs and Philip Blaine to produce performances featuring Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite, as well as “all the cyber-techno bands they could garner”.

In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units to that of first-person shooters or cellphone videos on YouTube. He added that events such as Jeriko One’s murder and the subsequent coverup of the crime contribute to activist movements like Black Lives Matter, and that their media documentation amplifies their reception and consequences. (read more: Themes)

wiki   /   imdb

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