movies

1151 – Captive State (2019)

timespace coordinates: 2019 / 2028 Chicago

captive_state_xlgCaptive State is a 2019 American science fiction thriller film directed by Rupert Wyatt and co-written by Wyatt and Erica Beeney. The film stars John GoodmanAshton SandersJonathan MajorsMachine Gun Kelly, and Vera Farmiga, and follows a young man who participates in a conspiracy to rebel against an alien race that has invaded Earth, and enforced strict martial law on all humans. (wiki)

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Chicago is the real star of the surprisingly powerful Captive State  – For those of us who love the city, more than just the plot is familiar in this sly takedown of gentrification and authoritarianism.  review by Dmitry Samarov

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(Trivia) In one of the early shots of the Chicago skyline the Ryugyong Hotel was added. The Ryugyong Hotel isn’t in Chicago, it’s in Pyongyang, North Korea. It was started in 1987 and still sits unfinished. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records as the tallest unused building.

animation, series

1149 – LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (TV series 2019– )

Love, Death & Robots (stylized as LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS) is an American adult animated anthology web television series on Netflix.  The 18-episode first season was released on March 15, 2019. The series is produced by Joshua DonenDavid Fincher, Jennifer Miller, and Tim Miller. Each episode was animated by different crews from a range of countries. The series is a re-imagining of Fincher and Miller’s long in-development reboot of the 1981 animated science fiction film Heavy Metal. 

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The cast includes Mary Elizabeth WinsteadTopher GraceGary ColeSamira Wiley and Stefan Kapičić, with Grace and Winstead appearing in live-action roles, rather than animated.

In March 2019, Netflix revealed that it was experimenting with a new approach by including a different order of episodes to different users.  (*four unique episode orders, released to users at random.) (wiki)

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documentary, Uncategorized

1146 – Baraka (1992)

Baraka is a 1992 non-narrative documentary film directed by Ron Fricke. The film is often compared to Koyaanisqatsi, the first of the Qatsi films by Godfrey Reggio for which Fricke served as the cinematographer. It is also the most recent film to be photographed in the 70mm Todd-AO format, and the first film ever to be restored and scanned at 8K resolution. (wiki)

Named after a Sufi word that translates roughly as “breath of life” or “blessing,” Baraka is Ron Fricke‘s impressive follow-up to Godfrey Reggio‘s non-verbal documentary film Koyaanisqatsi. Fricke was cinematographer and collaborator on Reggio’s film, and for Baraka he struck out on his own to polish and expand the photographic techniques used on Koyaanisqatsi. The result is a tour-de-force in 70mm: a cinematic “guided meditation” (Fricke’s own description) shot in 24 countries on six continents over a 14-month period that unites religious ritual, the phenomena of nature, and man’s own destructive powers into a web of moving images. Fricke’s camera ranges, in meditative slow motion or bewildering time-lapse, over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Ryoan-Ji temple in Kyoto, Lake Natron in Tanzania, burning oil fields in Kuwait, the smoldering precipice of an active volcano, a busy subway terminal, tribal celebrations of the Maasai in Kenya, chanting monks in the Dip Tse Chok Ling monastery…and on and on, through locales across the globe. To execute the film’s time-lapse sequences, Fricke had a special camera built that combined time-lapse photography with perfectly controlled movements of the camera. In one evening sequence a desert sky turns black, and the stars roll by, as the camera moves slowly forward under the trees. The feeling is like that of viewing the universe through a powerful telescope: that we are indeed on a tiny orb hurtling through a star-filled void. The film is complemented by the hybrid world-music of Michael Stearns. ~ Anthony Reed, Rovi (rottentomatoes)

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movies

1141 – Attack the Block (2011)

timespace coordinates: 2011 South London

MV5BMjAzNjc1MjgzOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzE3Njk5NQ@@._V1_Attack the Block is a 2011 British science fiction comedy horror film written and directed by Joe Cornish and starring John BoyegaJodie Whittaker, and Nick Frost. It was the film debut of Cornish, Boyega, and composer Steven Price.

The film centres on a teenage street gang who have to defend themselves from predatory alien invaders on a council estate in South London on Guy Fawkes Night. (wiki)

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movies

1126 – Black Hawk Down (2001)

timespace coordinates: 1993  Mogadishu amid the civil war in Somalia

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

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Black Hawk Down is a 2001 war film produced and directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Ken Nolan. It is based on the 1999 non-fiction book of the same name by journalist Mark Bowden. As an embedded journalist, he covered the 1993 raid in Mogadishu by the U.S. military, aimed at capturing faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The ensuing firefight became known as the Battle of Mogadishu. The film features a large ensemble cast, including Josh HartnettEwan McGregorEric BanaTom SizemoreWilliam Fichtner, and Sam Shepard. (wiki)

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movies, Uncategorized

1123 – Twelve Monkeys (1995)

timespace coordinates:  2035,  subterranean compound / ruins of Philadelphia (after a deadly virus released in 1996 wipes out almost all of humanity, forcing survivors to live underground) > 1990 / 1996  Baltimore + battlefield during ww1

15065_12-MONKEYSVHSCover12 Monkeys, also known as Twelve Monkeys, is a 1995 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Terry Gilliam, inspired by Chris Marker‘s 1962 short film La Jetée, and starring Bruce WillisMadeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt, with Christopher Plummer and David Morse in supporting roles.

References to time, time travel, and monkeys are scattered throughout the film, including the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Time Tunnel” playing on the TV in a hotel room, the Marx Brothers film Monkey Business (1931) on TV in the asylum, and the subplots involving monkeys (drug testing, news stories and animal rights). The film is also intended to be a study of people’s declining ability to communicate in modern civilization due to the interference of technology. (Memory,_time,_and_technology)

12 Monkeys is inspired by the French short film La Jetée (1962); as in La Jetée, characters are haunted by the images of their own deaths. Like La Jetée12 Monkeys contains references to Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo (1958). Toward the end of the film, Cole and Railly hide in a theater showing a 24-hour Hitchcock marathon and watch a scene from Vertigo. Railly then transforms herself with a blonde wig, as Judy (Kim Novak) transforms herself into blonde Madeleine in Vertigo; Cole sees her emerge within a red light, as Scottie (James Stewart) saw Judy emerge within a green light. Brief notes of Bernard Herrmann‘s film score can also be heard. Railly also wears the same coat Novak wore in the first part of Vertigo. The scene at Muir Woods National Monument, where Judy (as Madeleine) looks at the growth rings of a felled redwood and traces back events in her past life, resonates with larger themes in 12 Monkeys. Cole and Railly later have a similar conversation while the same music from Vertigo is repeated. The Muir Woods scene in Vertigo is also reenacted in La Jetée. In a previous scene in the film, Cole wakes up in a hospital bed with the scientists talking to him in chorus. This is a direct homage to the “Dry Bones” scene in Dennis Potter‘s The Singing DetectiveJames Cole is a notable Christ figure in film. The film is significant in the genre of science-fiction film noir, and it alludes to various “canonical noir” films.

12-Monkeys-Movie-1995-Tech-Noir-PosterAfter the release of The Zero Theorem in 2013, claims were made that Gilliam had meant it as part of a trilogy. A 2013 review for The Guardian newspaper said, “Calling it [The Zero Theorem] the third part of a trilogy formed by earlier dystopian satires Brazil and Twelve Monkeys [sic]”; but in an interview with Alex Suskind for Indiewire in late 2014, Gilliam said, “Well, it’s funny, this trilogy was never something I ever said, but it’s been repeated so often it’s clearly true [laughs]. I don’t know who started it but once it started it never stopped”(wiki)

imdb   /  12 Monkeys (TV series)

movies

1121

Bad Boys for Life (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2020 Miami

Bad Boys for Life is a 2020 American action comedy film directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. The sequel to Bad Boys II (2003), it is the third installment in the Bad Boys franchise.

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The Other Guys (2010)

timespace coordinates: late 2000’s New York City

The Other Guys is a 2010 American buddy cop action comedy film directed by Adam McKay. It stars Will FerrellMark WahlbergMichael KeatonEva MendesSteve CooganRay StevensonSamuel L. Jackson, and Dwayne Johnson.

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War on Everyone (2016)

timespace coordinates: 1990’s (?) Albuquerque, New Mexico / Iceland

War on Everyone is a 2016 British black comedy buddy cop film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. The film stars Alexander SkarsgårdMichael Peña, and Theo James. (wiki)


The philosopher Thomas Hobbes foretold a future “war of all against all” in his book “Leviathan“.

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