1312 – 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

timespace coordinates: early 1990s Tochigi (snow-filled Iwafune)/ 1999 Tanegashima/ 2008 Tokyo

5 Centimeters per Second (Japanese: 秒速5センチメートル Hepburn: Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru) is a 2007 Japanese animated coming-of-age romantic drama film produced, written and directed by Makoto Shinkai.

The film consists of three segments: “Cherry Blossom” (桜花抄 Ōkashō), “Cosmonaut” (コスモナウト Kosumonauto), and “5 Centimeters per Second” (秒速5センチメートル Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru), totaling about an hour of runtime.

As in Shinkai’s previous works, Tenmon composed this film’s soundtrack.

A novelization of 5 Centimeters per Second was released in November 2007, expanding on the film (Novel). In the July 2010 issue of the manga anthology Afternoon, a manga adaptation started serialization, illustrated by Seike Yukiko (Manga). (wiki)

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1263 – All Is True (2018)

timespace coordinates: After the Globe Theatre burns down in 1613 William Shakespeare returns home to Stratford with his wife, Anne Hathaway…

All Is True is a 2018 British film directed by Kenneth Branagh, written by Ben Elton. It stars Branagh as playwright William Shakespeare. (wiki)

 “…as if the fire that gutted the Globe also burned his brain.” Matthew Lickona – San Diego Reader 😛

imdb   /   rottentomatoes   /   634

1216 – Sanatorium pod Klepsydra / The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)

Among all the tales there is one, / which you haven’t heard / and which the night reclaimed long ago. / Have you enough patience to listen to it?

The Hourglass Sanatorium (Polish: Sanatorium pod klepsydrą) is a 1973 Polish film directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, starring Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Mieczysław Voit, Halina Kowalska and Gustaw Holoubek. The story follows a young Jewish man who visits his father in a mystical sanatorium where time does not behave normally. The film is an adaptation of Bruno Schulz‘s story collection Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. It won the Jury Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. (Release)

timespace coordinates: The time period of the film is a mixture of elements from the turn-of-the-century Galicia where Schulz grew up, and Has‘ own pre-World War II memories of the same region

Joseph (Jan Nowicki) travels through a dream-like world, taking a dilapidated train to visit his dying father, Jacob, in a sanatorium. When he arrives at the hospital, he finds the entire facility is going to ruin and no one seems to be in charge or even caring for the patients. Time appears to behave in unpredictable ways, reanimating the past in an elaborate artificial caprice.

Though Joseph is always shown as an adult, his behavior and the people around often depict him as a child. He befriends Rudolf, a young boy who owns a postage stamp album. The names of the stamps trigger a wealth of association and adventure in Joseph. Among the many occurrences in this visually potent phantasmagoria include Joseph re-entering childhood episodes with his wildly eccentric father (who lives with birds in an attic), being arrested by a mysterious unit of soldiers for having a dream that was severely criticized in high places, reflecting on a girl he fantasized about in his boyhood and commandeering a group of historic wax mannequins. Throughout his strange journey, an ominous blind train conductor reappears like a death figure.

Has also adds a series of reflections on the Holocaust that were not present in the original texts, reading Schulz’s prose through the prism of the author’s death during World War II and the demise of the world he described. (wiki)

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“There are things than cannot ever occur with any precision. They are too big and too magnificent to be contained in mere facts. They are merely trying to occur, they are checking whether the ground of reality can carry them. And they quickly withdraw, fearing to loose their integrity in the frailty of realization. ”  (Bruno Schulz)

1011 – The House That Jack Built (2018)

timespace coordinates:  1970s and 1980s  Washington.

!extreme violence!

The House That Jack Built is a 2018 psychological horror art film written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Matt Dillon in the title role of Jack. The story follows Jack, a serial killer, over the course of 12 years in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. state of Washington. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, marking von Trier’s return to the festival after more than six years. (wiki)

The shot of Jack and Verge standing in a boat strongly resembles the painting “La Barque de Dante” by Eugène Delacroix, which was in itself influenced by “The Raft of the Medusa” (Le Radeau de La Méduse) by Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault. (read more: trivia)

von Trier described the film as celebrating “the idea that life is evil and soulless”.

imdb   /   rottentomatoes

772 – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

timespace coordinates: 1900. girls’ private school, near the town of Woodend, Victoria, Australia

“What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream.”

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian mystery drama film which was produced by Hal and Jim McElroy, directed by Peter Weir, and starred Vivean Gray, Dominic Guard, Anne-Louise Lambert, Helen Morse, and Rachel Roberts. It was adapted by Cliff Green from the 1967 novel of the same name by Joan Lindsay, who was deliberately ambiguous about whether the events really took place, although the story is in fact entirely fictitious.

The plot involves the disappearance of several schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic at Hanging Rock, Victoria on Valentine’s Day in 1900, and the subsequent effect on the local community.

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read: 770

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Marion stares down at the Picnic Ground and says, “Whatever can those people be doing down there, like a lot of ants? A surprising number of human beings are without purpose though it is probable they are performing some function unknown to themselves.”

0742 – LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE / Ruang rak noi nid mahasan (2003)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Thailand

Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang directs the character-driven drama Last Life in the Universe, co-written by first-time screenwriter Prabda Yoon. Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a Japanese man living in Bangkok. He lives a tidy, silent lifestyle fueled by the detached desire to kill himself. Meanwhile, Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) is a pot-smoking call girl who lives in a  shabby beachside home outside the city. She tries to teach herself to speak Japanese with hopes of moving to Osaka. One day, Kenji walks into his apartment as his brother Yukio (Yutaka Matsushige) is involved in a gun fight with gangster (yakuza) Takashi (Riki Takeuchi). Then Kenji accidentally witnesses the death of Noi’s lovely sister, Nid (Laila Boonyasak), with whom he first became smitten at the library. Having nowhere to go, Kenji goes to live with Noi for a few days, leading to the development of a strange and sensitive relationship. With cinematography by Hong Kong-based photographer Christopher Doyle. Last Life in the Universe won an Upstream Prize at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. (rottentomatoes)

Last Life in the Universe OST – Untitled [Are you alone? Are you lonely?]

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403 – Crimson Peak (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1901 New York (state) // Cumbria

Crimson Peak is a 2015 American gothic romance film directed, co-produced and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, co-produced by Callum Greene, Jon Jashni and Thomas Tull and co-written by Matthew Robbins. It stars Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam and Jim Beaver.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2554274/