547 – Cosmopolis (2012)

spacetime coordinates:  near future Manhattan 

“There’s pain enough for everybody now,”Cosmopolis is a 2012 drama-thriller film written, produced, and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Robert Pattinson in the lead with Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel and Kevin Durand.

“A VAMPIRE CAPITALIST haunts New York in David Cronenberg’s film adaptation of Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo’s sci-finance novel that focuses on a Wall Street billionaire named Eric Packer who trades, converses, theorizes, kills and screws his way through New York in a single day.” (read more: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/cosmopolis-cronenberg-delillo/)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1480656/

---

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko_Chapel

Movie Poster Design

0506 – Saul fia / Son of Saul (2015)

spacetime coordinates:  Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, Poland  6 – 7 October 1944

Son of Saul (Hungarian: Saul fia) is a 2015 Hungarian drama film directed by László Nemes and co-written by Nemes and Clara Royer. It is set in the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, and follows a day-and-a-half in the life of Saul Ausländer (played by Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando. The film’s many historical sources included the personal accounts of Schlomo Venezia and Filip Müller, the records of Miklos Nyiszli, a Romanian-Jewish doctor who was forced to work in the crematoria, and Claude Lanzmann‘s Shoah (1985).

During the preparation, director László Nemes, cinematographer Mátyás Erdély and production designer László Rajk made a pledge to stick to certain rules, or a “dogma”, which included: The film cannot look beautiful. // The film cannot look appealing. // We cannot make a horror film. // Staying with Saul means not going beyond his own field of vision, hearing, or presence. // The camera is his companion, it stays with him throughout this hell.

The film took five months of sound design, where human voices in eight languages were recorded and attached to the original recording of the production. Sound designer Tamás Zányi described the sound in the film “as a sort of acoustic counterpoint to the intentionally narrowed imagery”. The music score by László Melis is intentionally kept so subtle that viewers won’t even notice it. (read more: imdb, wiki)

The film follows the same stylistic approach as László Nemes’ first and most successful short film Türelem (2007). In the short, the camera follows a woman proceed with her daily work routine with a very narrow focus and vision, until she walks up to a window and sees a group of Jewish prisoners stripped down by Sonderkommando prisoners and SS officers. The short is available online HERE.

0497 – Radio Free Albemuth (2010)

spacetime coordinates:  1985  Los Angeles

Radio Free Albemuth is a 2010 American film adaptation of the dystopian novel Radio Free Albemuth by author Philip K. Dick, which was written in 1976 and published posthumously in 1985. The film is written, directed, and produced by John Alan Simon and stars Jonathan Scarfe and Shea Whigham.

The story is set in an alternate reality 1980’s America under the authoritarian control of President Fremont. It makes liberal references to the collected works of Philip K. Dick.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1129396/

0477 – Gwoemul / The Host (2006)

spacetime coordinates:  2000 – 2006 Seoul

The Host (Hangul: 괴물; RR: Gwoemul; lit. “Monster”) is a 2006 South Korean monster film directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Song Kang-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona and Go Ah-sung. The film concerns a monster kidnapping a man’s daughter, and his attempts to rescue her. According to the director, his inspiration came from a local article about a deformed fish with an S-shaped spine caught in the Han River.

Political background

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468492/

475

 spacetime coordinates: Los Angeles 2022, 2036,  2048.

Blade Runner Black Out 2022 is a neo-noir cyberpunk anime short film directed by Shinichiro Watanabe. The short is one of three short films, alongside 2036: Nexus Dawn and 2048: Nowhere to Run, that serve as prequels to the live-action film Blade Runner 2049.

0468 – Metallica Through the Never (2013)

Metallica: Through the Never is a 2013 American thriller concert film (directed by Nimród Antal) featuring the American heavy metal band Metallica. Its title is derived from the song “Through the Never” off the band’s self-titled 1991 album. It follows a young roadie, Trip’s (Dane DeHaan) surreal misadventures intercut with concert footage shot in Vancouver and Edmonton in August 2012. It uses a unique premise of no dialogue or narration in the film’s entirety with the exception of Trip’s supervisor and the band.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2172935/

_____________the leather bag belonged to Cliff Burton on the Master of Puppets tour.

0464 – Altered Carbon (TV Series 2018– )

spacetime coordinates:  Bay City, year 2384 // “The Protectorate”

Altered Carbon is an American science fiction television series created by Laeta Kalogridis and based on the 2002 novel of the same title by English author Richard K. Morgan.

In the future, a person’s memories have been decanted into “cortical stacks”, storage devices of alien design which have been reverse engineered, duplicated en masse, and surgically inserted into the vertebrae at the back of the neck. Physical bodies are called “sleeves,” disposable vessels that can accept any “stack”. Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), a political operative with mercenary skills, wakes up 250 years after his sleeve is terminated, and he is given the choice to either spend the rest of time in prison for his crimes, or to help solve the murder of one of the wealthiest men in the settled worlds (James Purefoy). 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2261227/

---

“When everyone lies, telling the truth isn’t just rebellion.
It’s an act of revolution. So think carefully when you speak it,
because the truth is a weapon.”