time machine // database // travel guide
spacetime coordinates: St. Louis > San Francisco (ten years have passed since a solar flare destroyed the ozone layer, increasing temperatures to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius) and turning the planet Earth into a largely-uninhabitable wasteland scorched by ultraviolet radiation, and subject to extreme weather events.)
Finch is a 2021 American post-apocalyptic science fiction drama film directed by Miguel Sapochnik. The film stars Tom Hanks and Caleb Landry Jones. (wiki)
Oats Studios is an independent film studio started in 2017 by Oscar-nominated South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp (District 9) – imdb.
The studio was created with the goal of distributing experimental short films via YouTube and Steam in order to gauge the community for interest and feedback as to which of them are viable for expansion into feature films.
Actors featured in the films include Sigourney Weaver, Carly Pope, Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Kellan Lutz, Michael Rogers, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Dakota Fanning. (wiki)
ORION science fiction art and literature zine was somehow my first true entry into science fiction when at the end of the 1980s, in the Romanian Southern city of Craiova at the local Lyrical Theatre and was really lavish in style (designed and layout by famous comic book artist and SF enthusiast Victor Pirligras). I could not wait to buy it at the local newsstand when I was visiting my grandparents in Ploiesti, back then it cost a small fortune yet affordable for everyone’s pocket money and I was completely blasted by its contents each time. Hard to describe the sentiment of reading – was keeping always article to read for later, to have the pleasure of discovering something new. The mutant hunter by V Pirligras was serialized and blew me apart with its labyrinthine and vast architectural assemblages. Many congrats to those who published it and those scanlaters who digitized it. This way I was able to include it in the Timpuri Noi: Xenogenze ale SF-ului show, especially the back cover of No 3 Orion with the headless, begging homeless robot drawn by V. Pirligras in 1983 and published in 1989.
Some technical details – it was made on a CoBra computer the only computer produced in the city of Brasov using a special ORION software coded by Liviu Cercelaru. It was made with the help of the Craiova-based Scifi club or cenaclu “Victor Anestin” (named after one of the pioneers of Romanian SF).
In two colors (black and red) it had a newspaper format and featured a lot of local comics book artist greats such as Victor Pirligras, Valentin Iordache and Marian Mirescu as well as for example the first (in my knowledge) serialization of Barbarella by J C Forrest. On 32 pages it had everything, including a lot of women authors (for those days), as well as SF criticism and SF studies by Dodo Niţă and V Pirligras – introductions to heroic fantasy, SF cinema etc Local SF greats as well as foreign names were present. A wide assortment from Asimov, J G Ballard to Gustav Meyrink, Richard Matheson, James Triptree Jr., Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Olga Larionova, Michel Jeury, Liuben Dilov, Gustav Wahl, Constantina Paligora, Serge Brussolo, Anne McCaffrey, as well as Mihai Gramescu, Victor Martin, Radu Honga, Dragos Vasilescu and many more.
We commissioned Cristian Dragan to make an extended video essay about the patchy history of Romanian science fiction cinema in the frame of the New TEMPOrealities: Xenogeneses of SF in the Scena 9 BRD Bucharest spanning from early examples to various shorts, unfinished or hard to find rarities. It is probably a first of its kind.
spacetime coordinates: 10191, ocean planet Caladan / desert planet Arrakis
Dune (titled onscreen as Dune: Part One) is a 2021 American epic science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve. It is the first of a planned two-part adaptation of the 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert, primarily covering the first half of the book. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 1960s and 1970s in Newark, New Jersey / 1967 riots
The Many Saints of Newark (marketed with the subtitle A Sopranos Story) is a 2021 American crime drama film directed by Alan Taylor. A prequel to Chase’s HBO crime drama series The Sopranos. The film follows a violent gang war from the perspectives of mobster Dickie Moltisanti and his teenage nephew, Tony Soprano. It stars Alessandro Nivola as Dickie and Michael Gandolfini, with Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Billy Magnussen, Michela De Rossi, John Magaro, Ray Liotta, and Vera Farmiga in supporting roles. (wiki)
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