According to Helander, the 1982 American action film First Blood and the real-life Finnish military sniper Simo Häyhä, who fought against the Red Army, served as great inspirations for the film. (wiki)
NORCO is a text-based point & click adventure that immerses the player in the sinking suburbs and industrial swamplands of an increasingly surreal and distorted South Louisiana.
The game’s developer goes by a pseudonym, Yuts, derived from a nickname for his grandfather. Yuts spent his childhood and some of his later life in Norco. Growing up, Yuts was “frightened yet transfixed” by the landscape in and around Norco, which has been shaped by the petroleum industry and hosts a major Shell facility which has twice experienced catastrophic explosions.
The game grew out of a multimedia documentary work by Yuts and a friend, started in 2015.[3] The work incorporated writing, interviews, and audio-visual components, focused on the impact of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana and its landscape. In addition to Yuts, members of the development team, Geography of Robots, include Yuts’ sister, Aaron Gray, Jesse Jacobi, and pseudonymous musicians fmAura and Gewgawly I. Part of the multimedia project was a side-scrolling game in which a robot attempts to enter a refinery in Norco; this game became Norco, and the earliest version of the current game was created in 2016. Yuts and Geography of Robots designed the game in the pixel art style. Yuts relied on internet research to teach himself how to create the illustrations he contributed to the game.
Gewgawly I was Yuts’ original collaborator. Gewgawly I and fmAura worked to design the game’s soundtrack, attempting to “capture the… mood and ambience” of the River Parishes. The game incorporates field recordings by a friend of the development team, Matt Carney, taken around Baton Rouge.
X is a 2022 slasher film written, directed, produced and edited by Ti West. It stars Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow, Owen Campbell, Stephen Ure, and Scott Mescudi. The film’s plot follows a cast and crew who gather to make a pornographic film on an elderly couple’s rural Texas property, but find themselves threatened by an unlikely killer.
Nate Roscoe of Fangoria wrote in an essay on the film that X exemplifies a modern take on the psycho-biddy horror subgenre, in which aging or elderly women portray grotesque, violent characters. Roscoe also notes that the film’s primary theme revolves around aging, youth, and longing over the past. “Snatching its inspo from the shadiest recesses of art and exploitation, it is the relationship between beauty, aging and self-worth that creeps most conspicuously through the architecture of X.” He also notes that the film presents its antagonist—the murderous Pearl—in a manner that is sympathetic, writing that, at moments, “one can’t help but feel crushingly sorry for this tragic figure.”
West stated that he had pitched his idea of a new franchise to A24 and had been surprised when they green-lit his projects. The filmmaker stated that he intends each film to have its own distinct style and genre of horror. Describing his approach to each movie, he stated that X was heavily influenced by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise and by the works of Mario Bava, which explore how the rise of independent filmmaking affected society, while Pearl will be a melodrama meets the Technicolor style of Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz, made as a “demented Disney movie” and based on the works of Douglas Sirk, and will explore how Hollywood filmmaking has influenced people. West stated that he intends to continue this trend of exploring diverse styles and genres in future installments.
After the collapse of Earth’s ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her Father, must use her wits, strength, and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the future. (rottentomatoes)
spacetime coordinates: late 10th century Kievan Rus
Prince Vladimir (Russian: Кня́зь Влади́мир, Knyaz’ Vladimir) is a 2006 Russian traditionally-animated feature film. It is loosely based on the story of prince Vladimir the Fair Sun, who converted Kievan Rus’ (a predecessor state of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus) to Christianity in the late 10th century. The film tells a romanticized version of the story, adapted for children and filled with fantasy elements. (wiki)
Two New Orleans paramedics’ lives are ripped apart after they encounter a series of horrific deaths linked to a designer drug with bizarre, otherworldly effects.
TimeSpace Warps 