1642 – Snowpiercer (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: 2021, seven years after the world becomes a frozen wasteland, the remnants of humanity inhabit a perpetually moving train consisting of 1001 carriages that circles the globe 2.7 revolutions per year (133 days to complete a revolution). Built by billionaire Wilford, the train is rigidly separated by class, with passengers caught up in a revolutionary struggle against the strictly imposed social hierarchy and unbalanced allocation of limited resources.

Snowpiercer is an American post-apocalyptic dystopian thriller television drama series that premiered on TNT on May 17, 2020. It is based on both the 2013 South Korean–Czech film of the same name, directed by Bong Joon-ho, and the 1982 French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, from which the film was adapted, by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette.

A reboot of the film’s continuity, the series questions class warfare, social injustice, and the politics of survival. Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly star alongside Mickey Sumner, Annalise Basso, Sasha Frolova, Alison Wright, Benjamin Haigh, Roberto Urbina, Katie McGuinness, Susan Park, Lena Hall, Sheila Vand, Sam Otto, Iddo Goldberg, and Jaylin Fletcher. (wiki)

imdb

1637 – Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)

timespace coordinates: South West England in the Middle Ages

Jack the Giant Slayer is a 2013 American fantasy adventure film directed and co-produced by Bryan Singer. The film, based on the British fairy tales “Jack the Giant Killer” and “Jack and the Beanstalk“, stars Nicholas Hoult, Eleanor Tomlinson, Stanley Tucci, Ian McShane, Bill Nighy, and Ewan McGregor.  (wiki)

imdb

1631 – Star Trek: Picard (TV Series 2020-)

timespace coordinates: year 2399. various locations

Star Trek: Picard is an American web television series featuring the character Jean-Luc Picard, created for CBS All Access by Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer, and Alex Kurtzman. It is the eighth series in the Star Trek franchise, and was launched in 2020 as part of Kurtzman’s expansion of the franchise. Picard begins 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and sees a retired Picard deeply affected by the death of Data in that film as well as the destruction of the planet Romulus in the film Star Trek (2009).

Patrick Stewart executive produces the series and stars as Picard, reprising his role from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation as well as other Star Trek media. Alison Pill, Isa Briones, Evan Evagora, Michelle Hurd, Santiago Cabrera, and Harry Treadaway also star. The series was designed to be slower and more character-focused than previous series in the franchise. (wiki)

imdb   /  Tie-in media

1627 – The Mandalorian (TV Series 2019-)

The Mandalorian, also known as Star Wars: The Mandalorian, is an American space Western web television series created by Jon Favreau and released on Disney+. It is the first live-action series in the Star Wars franchise.

Set five years after the events of Return of the Jedi, it follows the title character, a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Din Djarin, and his exploits beyond the reaches of the New Republic. (wiki)

Themes   /  Future   /  Tie-in media

imdb   /   rt

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)

---

imdb   /  adultswim.com/videos/the-shivering-truth

1617 – Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)

A look at the final moments of a Las Vegas dive bar called ‘The Roaring 20s’. (fictional non-fiction)

Depicting the final day of a hangdog hangout called the Roaring 20’s, located well off of the plastic fantastic glitz of the Las Vegas strip, the film makes you wonder if gentrification is even the right term for whatever is going on here. Diving into this doco is a bit like hanging around in Star Wars’ Mos Eisley cantina long after Luke, Han and the gang have gone, leaving a slain bounty hunter and a severed arm behind them. (timeout)

“Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” might have been inspired by 2016, but it embodies 2020. (indiewire)

“The perfect distillation of bar life.” (spectrumculture)

---

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

1608 – District 9 (2009)

timespace coordinates: The film is partially presented in a found footage format by featuring fictional interviews, news footage, and video from surveillance cameras. The story, which explores themes of humanity, xenophobia and social segregation, begins in an alternate 1982, when an alien spaceship appears over Johannesburg, South Africa. When a population of sick and malnourished insectoid aliens are discovered on the ship, the South African government confines them to an internment camp called District 9. Twenty years later, during the government’s relocation of the aliens to another camp, one of the confined aliens named Christopher Johnson, who is about to try to escape from Earth with his son and return home, crosses paths with a bureaucrat leading the relocation named Wikus van der Merwe. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events in Cape Town‘s District Six, during the apartheid era.

District 9 is a 2009 science fiction action film directed by Neill Blomkamp in his feature film debut. It is a co-production of New Zealand, the United States and South Africa. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James, and was adapted from Blomkamp’s 2006 short film Alive in Joburg. (wiki)

imdb  /   rt   /  Future   /  the-art-of-district-9

---

Alive in Joburg (2005)

timespace coordinates: In 1990, Johannesburg is home to a number of extraterrestrial refugees, whose large spaceships (estimated to be nearly one kilometre in length) can be seen hovering above the city. When the visitors first arrived, the human population was enamored with, among other aspects, the aliens’ advanced “bio-suits”, and welcomed them with open arms. However, the aliens later began moving into other areas of the city, committing crimes in order to survive and frequently clashing with police. Playing as a documentary, the film continues with interviews and footage taken from handheld cameras, which highlight the growing tension between Earth’s civilian population and the extraterrestrial visitors.

According to individuals “interviewed” in the film, the aliens were captive labour (slaves or indentured servants), forced to live in “conditions that were not good” and had escaped to Earth. Because the film takes place in 1990, while apartheid was still in effect in South Africa, the aliens were forced to live amongst the already-oppressed black population, causing conflict with them as well as the non-white and white populations.

All of the interview statements which do not explicitly mention extraterrestrials were taken from authentic interviews with many South Africans who had been asked their opinions of Zimbabwean refugees. (wiki)

imdb