1433 – Monos (2019)

timespace coordinates: teenage soldiers in the Colombian conflict – the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes + jungle scenes (shot around the Samaná river, five hours from Medellín. Because of the conflict, the place was visited only by soldiers and illegal gold miners until recently, hence remaining mostly unspoiled by humans.)

Monos is a 2019 internationally co-produced war drama film directed by Alejandro Landes, written by Landes and Alexis Dos Santos and produced by Fernando Epstein, Santiago Zapata, Cristina Landes and Landes himself. It stars Julianne Nicholson, Sofia Buenaventura and Moisés Arias. The film follows a group of armed teenage guerillas assigned to watch over a hostage.

The film was loosely inspired by the novels Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Filmic influences included Come and See and Beau Travail. While “monos“, the title as well as the code name of the main squad in the film, superficially means “monkeys” in Spanish, it signifies the prefix mono- of Greek origin meaning “alone” or “one”. (wiki)

imdb   /   rt

1430 – Parasite (2019)

timespace coordinates: 2010’s South Korea

Parasite (Korean: 기생충; Hanja: 寄生蟲; RR: Gisaengchung) is a 2019 South Korean black comedy thriller film directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also wrote the film’s story and co-wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won. The film stars Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam, and follows the members of a poor household scheming to become the employees of a much wealthier family by posing as unrelated, highly qualified individuals. (wiki)

imdb   /   rt

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1426 – Seven Worlds, One Planet (Documentary | TV Series 2019– )

Seven Worlds, One Planet is a documentary series from the BBC Natural History Unit. The seven-part series, in which each episode focuses on one continent, debuted on 27 October 2019 and is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Over 1,500 people worked on the series, which was filmed over 1,794 days, with 92 shoots across 41 different countries. (wiki)

imdb

1423 – The Aeronauts (2019)

timespace coordinates: 1859 – 1862 London

The Aeronauts is a 2019 biographical adventure film directed by Tom Harper starring Felicity Jones, Eddie Redmayne, Himesh Patel and Tom Courtenay.

The film is based on an amalgam of the flights detailed in Richard Holmes‘ 2013 book Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air. The most significant balloon flight depicted in The Aeronauts is based on the 5 September, 1862, flight of British aeronauts James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell whose coal gas filled balloon broke the world flight altitude record, reaching 9,000 to 11,000 m (30,000 to 36,000 ft). However, while Glaisher appears in the film, Coxwell has been replaced by Amelia, a fictional character. (actual individuals who comprise Amelia’s character include: Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, who became a celebrated aeronaut following her husband’s death. Felicity Jones has stated that Blanchard was the inspiration for her character. / Margaret Graham, a British aeronaut and entertainer. Amelia’s relationship with husband Pierre is chiefly based on Sophie Blanchard’s flights with husband Jean-Pierre Blanchard, while Pierre’s death is inspired by that of Thomas Harris on 25 May, 1824.) – historical accuracy – (wiki)

imdb

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

1417 – Waste Tide (2013 novel)

For All Tomorrow’s Parties. 全为明日派对。

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timespace coordinates: The Waste Tide depicts a dystopian China in the post-2020 era. (2040’s -2050’s) In the Guiyu island, the large electronic recycle industries are in full control of local lineage associations. The laborers who undertake dangerous work for the profit of the Chinese and foreign businessmen who employ them are depicted not as humans, but cyborgs whose bodies and minds have been altered permanently through bio-engineering.

The Waste Tide is a science fiction novel by the Chinese writer Chen Qiufan.

The story takes place in the imaginary ”Silicon Isle”. The Chinese word ”硅屿” for Silicon Isle shares a similar pronunciation with Guiyu (Chinese: 贵屿) in Mandarin. In the real world, Guiyu is a town in the Shantou prefecture of Guangdong province in China. And it is Shantou where Chen Qiufan was born and grew up before he entered Peking University. Situated on the South China Sea coast, Guiyu got famous in the global environmentalist community for its reception of E-waste. The town held the record for being the largest E-waste site up to 2013. Though some residents got rich by electronic recycling, pollution became serious in the town. Talking about the background of writing the novel, Chen said: ”Choosing my hometown as background to write the story, is related to my thinking of China. To depict the pain of changing China, is just because I desire for she getting better gradually.’ (wiki)

goodreads

1407

Cloudpunk

steam

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The Last Night

steam