movies

0138 – The Time Machine (2002)

spacetime coordinates: New York City 1899 – 2030 – 2037 – 802,701 – 635,427,810

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The Time Machine is a 2002 American science fiction film loosely adapted from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells and the screenplay of the 1960 film of the same name by David Duncan. Arnold Leibovit served as executive producer and Simon Wells served as director, the great-grandson of the original author. The film stars Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Jones, Samantha Mumba, Mark Addy, Sienna Guillory and Phyllida Law, and includes a cameo by Alan Young, who also appeared in the 1960 film adaptation. The film is set in New York City instead of London, and contains new story elements not present in the original novel, including a romantic backstory, a new scenario about how civilization was destroyed, and several new characters, such as an artificially intelligent hologram played by Orlando Jones, and a Morlock leader played by Jeremy Irons. The film’s recreation of New York at the turn of the century won it some praise.

time machine model

Many of the time traveling scenes were entirely computer generated, including a 33-second shot in the workshop where the time machine is located. The camera pulls out, traveling through New York City and then into space, past the ISS, and ends with a space plane landing at the moon to reveal earth’s future lunar colonies. Plants and buildings are shown springing up and then being replaced by new growth in a constant cycle. In later shots, the effects team used an erosion algorithm to digitally simulate the Earth’s landscape changing through the centuries.

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movies, quotes

135 – Life (2017)

spacetime coordinates: 2017 International Space Station (ISS)  low Earth orbit

Life-illustrated-poster-600x900

Life is a 2017 American science fiction film (inspired by Alien  1979) directed by Daniel Espinosa, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds. The film follows a six-member crew of the International Space Station that uncovers what initially seems to be the first evidence of life on Mars.

Space policy experts positively noted the film’s warning about extraterrestrial contact. – http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3240/1

In March 2017, it was noted that stock footage of a crowd reacting to Spider-Man catching Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man 3s B-roll was used in Life.  This announcement led to theories that Life was secretly an origin story for the symbiote featured in Spider-Man 3, a theory made more popular by the announcement of a Venom film for 2018 the day after the story broke, and that Lifes screenwriters, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, had previously written a Venom script.

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Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon. Goodnight light. And the red balloon. Goodnight nobody.   Goodnight_Moon

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movies

123 – Moon (2009)

spacetime coordinates: 2035, Sarang Station, automated lunar facility 

Moon is a 2009 British science fiction drama film co-written and directed by Duncan Jones. The film follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon. It was the feature debut of director Duncan Jones. Kevin Spacey voices Sam’s robot companion, GERTY.

Jones described the intent: “[We] wanted to create something which felt comfortable within that canon of those science fiction films from the sort of late seventies to early eighties.” The director spoke of his interest in the lunar setting: “for me, the Moon has this weird mythic nature to it…. There is still a mystery to it. As a location, it bridges the gap between science-fiction and science fact. We (humankind) have been there. It is something so close and so plausible and yet at the same time, we really don’t know that much about it.”

The director described the lack of romance in the Moon as a location, citing images from the Japanese lunar orbiter SELENE: “It’s the desolation and emptiness of it…it looks like some strange ball of clay in blackness…. Look at photos and you’ll think that they’re monochrome. In fact, they’re not. There simply are no primary colours.” Jones made reference to the photography book Full Moon by Michael Light in designing the look of the film.

Jones is planning a follow-up film, titled Mute, which will serve as an epilogue to Moon. “Sam has agreed to do a little cameo in the next film”, said Jones, who ultimately hopes to complete a trilogy of films set in the same fictional universe.

reception from the scientific community

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1182345/

movies

0098 – Elysium (2013)

spacetime coordinates: 2154. the ruins of Los AngelesElysium

Elysium is a 2013 American science fiction film produced, written and directed by Neill Blomkamp. It stars Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Alice Braga, and Sharlto Copley. The film takes place on both a ravaged Earth, and a luxurious space habitat (Stanford torus design) called Elysium.

The film itself offers deliberate social commentary which explores political and sociological themes such as immigration, overpopulation, health care, worker exploitation, the justice system, and social class issues. Blomkamp has stated that it is a comment on the contemporary human condition.”Everybody wants to ask me lately about my predictions for the future,” the director has said, “No, no, no. This isn’t science fiction. This is today. This is now.” (The film’s Earth-bound scenes were shot in a dump in the poor Iztapalapa district on the outskirts of Mexico City, while the scenes for Elysium were shot in Vancouver and the wealthy Huixquilucan-Interlomas suburbs of Mexico City.)

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elysium

director Neil Blomkamp expressed some regrets regarding Elysium, commenting: “I feel like I fucked it up, I feel like ultimately the story is not the right story.. I still think the satirical idea of a ring, filled with rich people, hovering above the impoverished Earth, is an awesome idea. I love it so much, I almost want to go back and do it correctly. But I just think the script wasn’t… I just didn’t make a good enough film is ultimately what it is. I feel like I executed all of the stuff that could be executed, like costume and set design and special effects very well. But, ultimately, it was all resting on a somewhat not totally formed skeletal system, so the script just wasn’t there; the story wasn’t fully there.”


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animation

090 – Avril et le monde truqué (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1941 Paris, Fort-la-LatteFrench Empire

avril_et_le_monde_truque-poster

April and the Extraordinary World is a 2015 French-Belgian-Canadian animated science fiction adventure film co-directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, co-written by Ekinci and Benjamin Legrand, and starring Marion Cotillard. It depicts an alternate steampunk world with a visual style based on the work of French comics artist Jacques Tardi often credited solely as Tardi.

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movies

0086 – Poll (2010)

spacetime coordinates: 1914 Estonia

The Poll Diaries (German: Poll) is a 2010 German drama film directed by Chris Kraus  loose adaptation of the diaries written by poetess Oda Schaefer combining a coming-of-age story about a precocious 14 year-old girl with the apocalyptic end of an era.

In the summer of 1914, fourteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea.


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