512 – Dishonored (2012 video game)

 spacetime coordinates: industrial city of Dunwall  modeled on London and Edinburgh between the late 1800s and the early 1900s

Dishonored is a 2012 stealth action-adventure video game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Set in the fictional, plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall, Dishonored follows the story of Corvo Attano, bodyguard to the Empress of the Isles. He is framed for her murder and forced to become an assassin, seeking revenge on those who conspired against him. Corvo is aided in his quest by the Loyalists—a resistance group fighting to reclaim Dunwall, and the Outsider—a powerful being who imbues Corvo with magical abilities. Several noted actors including Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Michael Madsen, Lena Headey and Chloë Grace Moretz provided voice work for the game.

The game is played from a first-person perspective and allows the player to undertake a series of assassination missions in a variety of ways, with an emphasis on player choice. Missions can be completed through stealth, combat, or a combination of both. Exploring each level opens new paths and alternatives for accomplishing mission goals, and it is possible to complete all missions, eliminating all of Corvo’s targets, in a non-lethal manner. The story and missions are changed in response to the player’s violent actions or lack thereof. Magical abilities and equipment are designed to be combined to create new and varied effects.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS MINIMUM: OS: Windows Vista / Windows 7 // Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core or better // Memory: 3 GB system RAM // Hard Disk Space: 9 GB // Video Card: DirectX 9 compatible with 512 MB video RAM or better (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 / ATI Radeon HD 5850) // Sound: Windows compatible sound card

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steam   wiki

“Dishonored”, HD walkthrough (Very Hard+Shadow+Ghost+All collectables)

505 – Downsizing (2017)

spacetime coordinates: near future Norway / NebraskaDownsizing is a 2017 american science fiction  / high-concept social satire / comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne, written by Payne and Jim Taylor and starring Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, and Kristen Wiig. It tells the story of a couple who decide to undertake a newly-invented procedure to shrink their bodies so they can start a new life in an experimental community.

Starting with Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, there exists a rich literature as well as many films dealing with mini-humans usually called dwarfs. The idea of shrinking human bodies in order to reduce the consumption of raw materials available on earth necessary for the life of mankind was presented for the first time in the novel Das Miniatom-Projekt (2006) by Richard M. Weiner. In the novel the miniaturization takes place at CERN by decreasing the sizes of atoms with the help of the world’s biggest particle accelerator, while in the Downsizing film the shrinkage is performed by bio-medical methods, by decreasing the sizes of cells.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/

501

Excerpt from Examined Life, 2008. (imdb)

Slavoj Zizek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

Slavoj Žižek on CBC radio

Political Correctness Is a More Dangerous Form of Totalitarianism

499 – Rirkrit Tiravanija

“THE DAYS OF THIS SOCIETY IS NUMBERED”

Rirkrit Tiravanija (Thai: ฤกษ์ฤทธิ์ ตีระวนิช, pronunciation: [rɯk-rit tira-wanit] or Tea-rah-vah-nit) is a contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiang Mai. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work. (wiki)

Tiravanija’s second feature film, Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours was released in 2011. The documentary features a retired farmer that lives in a tranquil village in Chiang Mai, far from the recent political turmoil in Bangkok. At a moment when many people are demanding equality, opportunity, and democracy, we see in Lung Neaw an existence marked by compassion for his environment and his fellow villagers. The film offers a contemplative look at one man’s humble dialogue with his surroundings.

“It is not what you see that is important but what takes place between people.”

498 – The Death of Stalin (2017)

spacetime coordinates:  1953 Moscow

The Death of Stalin is a 2017 political satire film directed and co-written by Armando Iannucci. Based on the French graphic novel La mort de Staline, it depicts the Soviet power struggles following the death of dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953.

A number of academics commented on the historical accuracy of The Death of Stalin. Historian Richard Overy noted in The Guardian that the film “is littered with historical errors”, which can be “viewed as cinematic licence“, but was most critical that the film did not appropriately honour Stalin’s victims. Director Iannucci stated that he “chose to tone down real-life absurdity” to make the work more believable.  Samuel Goff, at the Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge, cited several justifiable historical inaccuracies with the ranks and roles of Stalin’s inner circle, but thought the film missed the overall point and was unable to locate any of the inherent humour contained in Stalinism.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4686844/

0488 – In Time (2011)

spacetime coordinates: 2169 California

In Time is a 2011 American dystopian science fiction action thriller film written, directed, and produced by Andrew Niccol and starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy.

[first lines]
Will Salas: I don’t have time. I don’t have time to worry about how it happened. It is what it is. We’re genetically engineered to stop aging at 25. The trouble is, we live only one more year, unless we can get more time. Time is now the currency. We earn it and spend it. The rich can live forever. And the rest of us? I just want to wake up with more time on my hand than hours in the day.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

0479 – Human Flow (2017)

Human Flow is a 2017 German documentary film co-produced and directed by Ai Weiwei about the current global refugee crisis. Ai Weiwei also comes from a past of displacement; his entire family was exiled to an isolate village of Xinjiang in the Gobi desert due to his parents being writers in the midst of the Cultural Revolution in China.

Like Human Flow, Ai has created similar art installations such as the “Law of the Journey” that features a 200 foot inflatable boat carrying 258 refugee figures, “Laundromat” where he filled a New York City gallery with discarded clothing and personal notes left by refugees in a camp in Idomeni Greece, and the recreation of the captured image of Aylan Kurdi, the young Syrian who drowned off the coast of Turkey.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6573444/

https://www.humanflow.com/