1135 – Us (2019)

timespace coordinates: 1986 – 2019 Santa Cruz, California

Us is a 2019 American psychological horror thriller film written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring  Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The film follows a family who are confronted by murderous doppelgangers known as “the Tethered”.

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themes and interpretations

Critic Jim Vejvoda related the Tethered to “urban legends” and “xenophobic paranoia about the Other”, (…) Journalist Noel Ransome viewed the film as being about “the effects of classism and marginalization”, writing “the Tethered are effigies of this same situational classism. They’re trapped—mentally and physically—and ignored”. Joel Meares of Rotten Tomatoes also noted that the Tethered, referencing the “we’re Americans” line, are representatives of the duality of American society, how some citizens can afford to live on top of the class system, while others are stuck in illiterate poverty. He also noted the title Us could mean “U.S.”, or United States.

The Tethered’s red jump suits and single glove were an allusion to Michael Jackson along with the “Thriller” shirt seen on young Adelaide, and Peele has stated that Jackson was “the patron saint of duality”. Peele referenced many other instances of 1980s culture, including allusions to The Lost Boys and Hands Across America, stating “Everything in this movie was deliberate, that is one thing I can guarantee you. Unless you didn’t like something and that was a complete accident”.

The film contains numerous references to Jeremiah 11:11, which reads: “Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them'” (NIV). Critic Rosie Fletcher commented on the context, with Jeremiah warning Jerusalem was facing destruction due to false idols, and expressed the opinion that the film’s characters also “worshiped the wrong things”…  (wiki)

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

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LUNIZ — I GOT 5 ON IT

1120

The Professor and the Madman (2019)

timespace coordinates: England, 1871 – 1910

The Professor and the Madman is a 2019 Irish biographical drama film, directed by Farhad Safinia (under the pseudonym PB Shemran), from a screenplay by Safinia, and Todd Komarnicki, based on the 1998 book The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester. It stars Mel Gibson, Sean Penn, Natalie Dormer, Eddie Marsan, Jennifer Ehle, Jeremy Irvine, David O’Hara, Ioan Gruffudd, Stephen Dillane, and Steve Coogan. The film is about the famous professor, Sir James Murray, who in 1857 began compiling the Oxford English Dictionary and led the overseeing committee and W. C. Minor, a doctor who submitted over 10,000 entries while he was undergoing treatment at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. (wiki)

imdb

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Fatman (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2020’s US > Christmas present shop on a farm near the town of North Peak, Alaska.

Fatman is a 2020 American action film written and directed by Eshom & Ian Nelms and starring Mel Gibson, Walton Goggins and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. The plot follows an unorthodox Santa Claus who must fight off an assassin sent by a vengeful naughty kid. (wiki)

imdb

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1119 – Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

timespace coordinates: dystopian 1984. war-torn London ruled by Oceania, a totalitarian superstate

“Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you and you sold me”

Nineteen Eighty-Four, also known as 1984, is a 1984 British dystopian science fiction film written and directed by Michael Radford, based upon George Orwell‘s novel of the same name (published in June 1949). Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, and Cyril Cusack,

the film follows the life of Winston Smith, a low-ranking civil servant in a war-torn London ruled by Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. Smith (Hurt) struggles to maintain his sanity and his grip on reality as the regime’s overwhelming power and influence persecutes individualism and individual thinking on both a political and personal level. The film, which features Burton’s last screen appearance, is dedicated to him. (wiki)

imdb   /   Newspeak

1118 – Hardware (1990)

timespace coordinates: Christmastime in New York City  (21st century, a nuclear war has transformed the Earth into a radioactive wasteland where the sea has dried up leaving it as a post-apocalyptic desert.)

See these mighty buildings. It all shall
be thrown down and shattered to splinters.
The earth will shake, rattle and roll. The
masses will go hungry, their bellies bloat.
These are the birth pains.
No flesh shall be spared. MARK-13 (Read more)

Hardware is a 1990 British science fiction horror film starring Dylan McDermott and Stacey Travis. The film, which was written and directed by Richard Stanley, also features cameos from Iggy Pop and Lemmy. Since its release, it has become a cult film. The film is about a self-repairing robot that goes on a rampage in a post-apocalyptic slum. Fleetway Comics sued the film-makers over the screenplay because it plagiarised a short story entitled “SHOK!” that appeared in 1980 in the Judge Dredd Annual 1981, a spin-off publication of the popular British weekly anthology comic 2000 AD. (wiki)

imdb

1114 – Cube (1997)

Cube is a 1997 Canadian science-fiction horror film directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali. A product of the Canadian Film Centre’s First Feature Project, the film follows a group of people as they cross industrialized cube-shaped rooms, some rigged with various traps designed to kill.

Cube has gained notoriety and a cult following, for its surreal atmosphere and Kafkaesque setting and concept of industrial, cube-shaped rooms. The film received generally positive reviews, and was followed by two sequels. A remake is in development at Lionsgate. (wiki)

imdb

1110 – Iron Sky

timespace coordinates: 2018 – 2038 New York City, Washington, D.C.,  the far side of the Moon, Antarctica

Iron Sky (imdb) is a 2012 Finnish-German-Australian comic-science-fiction action film directed by Timo Vuorensola and written by Johanna Sinisalo and Michael Kalesniko. It tells the story of a group of Nazi Germans who, having been defeated in 1945, fled to the Moon, where they built a space fleet to return in 2018 and conquer Earth. (wiki)

As The Hollywood Reporter noted, “the score by Laibach adds character, mixing pastiche pop with symphonic elements“. (www.laibach.org/iron-sky-soundtrack)

Spin-offs

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Iron Sky: The Coming Race (imdb) is a Finnish-German comic science fiction action film directed by Timo Vuorensola, released on 16 January 2019 in Finland. It is the sequel to Vuorensola’s 2012 film Iron Sky. The film was crowdfunded through Indiegogo.

Like its predecessor, the movie refers to several motifs of post-war Esoteric Nazism, such as the Hollow Earth theory. The movie’s title is most likely a reference to Edward Bulwer-Lytton‘s novel The Coming Race (1871) that is commonly regarded as the origin of the so-called Vril myth. The film teaser features the Vril symbol that was designed by the Tempelhofgesellschaft in the 1990s. (wiki)

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Götterdämmerung   /  Fourth Reich   /  helium-3   /  Reptilians   /   Agartha   /   Nuclear holocaust   /  Moon Nazis   /   Jobists   /   ironsky.net

1093

“Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful)” by Marc Ribot (feat. Tom Waits) from the album ‘Songs Of Resistance 1942 – 2018,’

“Bella ciao“ (“Goodbye beautiful”) is an Italian folk song that was adopted as an anthem of the anti-fascist resistance. It was used by the Italian partisans between 1943 and 1945 during the Italian Resistance, or the resistance of Italian partisans against the Nazi German forces occupying Italy, and during the Italian Civil War, or the Italian partisan struggle against the fascist Italian Social Republic and its Nazi German allies. “Bella ciao” is used worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance. The song has much older origins though in the hardships of the mondina women, the paddy field workers in the late 19th century who sang it as a protest against harsh working conditions in the paddy fields in North Italy. (wiki)

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Tom Waits – “God’s Away On Business”