1641 – Caravaggio (1986)

Malta, Siracuse, Messina, Naples,
Porto Ercole. 18th July 1610.

Four years on the run,
so many labels on the luggage…

and hardly a friendly face, always on the
move, running under the poisonous blue sea

running under the July sun.
Adrift…

Caravaggio is a 1986 British historical drama film directed by Derek Jarman. The film is a fictionalised re-telling of the life of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is the film debut of Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean.

Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) (Italian, Milan or Caravaggio 1571–1610 Porto Ercole) The Musicians, ca. 1595 Oil on canvas; 36 1/4 x 46 5/8 in. (92.1 x 118.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1952 (52.81) http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/435844

In keeping with Caravaggio’s use of contemporary dress for his Biblical figures, Jarman intentionally includes several anachronisms in the film that do not fit with Caravaggio’s life in the 16th century. In one scene, Caravaggio is in a bar lit with electric lights. Another character is seen using an electronic calculator. Car horns are heard honking outside Caravaggio’s studio etc. (wiki)

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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

1636 – Love and Monsters (2020)

timespace coordinates: California, 7 years after the Monsterpocalypse

“A daffily lightweight throwback to the teen action-adventures of the ’80s and ’90s.” (variety)

“There’s a kicky spirit to the whole production and the effects are first-rate.” (Mercury News)

Love and Monsters is a 2020 American post-apocalyptic adventure comedy directed by Michael Matthews, with Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen serving as producers. The film stars Dylan O’Brien, Michael Rooker, Ariana Greenblatt and Jessica Henwick. It was released by Paramount Pictures under its Paramount Players and MTV Films labels via video on demand on October 16, 2020. (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

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

1595 – Fallen Angels (1995)

timespace coordinates: 1995 urban, nighttime Hong Kong

Fallen Angels is a 1995 Hong Kong drama film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leon Lai, Michelle Reis, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Charlie Yeung, and Karen Mok. As with the filmmaker’s other features, plot takes a back seat to mood.

Originally conceived by Wong as the third story for 1994’s Chungking Express, it was cut after he decided that it was complete without it. He instead decided to develop the story further into its own feature film and borrowed elements of Chungking Express, such as themes, locations and methods of filming. Wanting to also try to differentiate it from Chungking and to try something new, Wong decided along with cinematographer Christopher Doyle to shoot mainly at night and using extreme wide-angle lenses, keeping the camera as close to the talents as possible to give a detached effect from the world around them.

In an interview, Wong had this to say:

…To me, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are one film that should be three hours long. I always think these two films should be seen together as a double bill. In fact, people asked me during an interview for Chungking Express: “You’ve made these two stories which have no relationship at all to each other, how can you connect them?” And I said, ‘The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong.” I see the films as inter-reversible, the character of Faye Wong could be the character of Takeshi in Fallen Angels; Brigitte Lin in Chungking could be Leon Lai in Fallen Angels. All of their characters are inter-reversible. Also, in Chungking we were shooting from a very long distance with long lenses, but the characters seem close to us.

In the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote:

The acme of neo-new-wavism, the ultimate in MTV alienation, the most visually voluptuous flick of the fin de siècle, a pyrotechnical wonder about mystery, solitude, and the irrational love of movies that pushes Wong’s style to the brink of self-parody.

wiki   /   imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1574 – OutDrive (2016 video game)

Retrowave vibe with an endless driving mechanic
Based on music and works as a music shop where you can find New Retowawe/Synthwawe composers.

steam

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MINIMUM): OS: Windiws XP / Processor: i3 / Memory: 1 GB RAM / Graphics: GTX560 / DirectX: Version 9.0 / Storage: 1 GB available space / Additional Notes: It is likelihood that the game could be launched on Spectrum ZX processor.

1559 – Now Apocalypse (TV Series 2019)

spacetime coordinates: 2010’s Los Angeles

Now Apocalypse is an American comedy television series that aired for one season of ten episodes from March 10 to May 12, 2019, on Starz. The series was written by Gregg Araki and Karley Sciortino. Araki also was director and executive producer alongside Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs. Starz canceled the series on July 26, 2019. Araki later stated that he was shopping the series to other networks.

Ulysses, his friends Carly and Ford, and Ford’s girlfriend Severine navigate love, sex, and fame in Los Angeles. Troubled by sinister, premonitory dreams, Ulysses wonders if the end of the world as we know it is coming, or if he is simply suffering some kind of marijuana-fueled delusions. (wiki)

This is all perfectly well-made, candy-coloured fun as well as being a bang up-to-date exploration of 21st-century sexual identities (co-written by Araki with sex columnist Karley Sciortino), albeit one in which everyone looks amazing all the time. Boyd Hilton / Empire Magazine / rottentomatoes

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