time machine // database // travel guide
spacetime coordinates: 1930s South Korea / Japan
The Handmaiden (Hangul: 아가씨; RR: Agassi; lit. ”Lady”) is a 2016 South Korean erotic psychological thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook and starring Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-ri, Ha Jung-woo and Cho Jin-woong. It is inspired from the novel Fingersmith by Welsh writer Sarah Waters, with the setting changed from Victorian era Britain to Korea under Japanese colonial rule.
spacetime coordinates: 2012 Palau // Atlantis
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is a 2012 American science fiction comedy adventure film directed by Brad Peyton. It is the sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008). Following the first film, the sequel is based on another Jules Verne novel, this time The Mysterious Island. The film stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Michael Caine, Josh Hutcherson, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzmán, and Kristin Davis. (Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards 2013 Favorite Male Butt Kicker: Dwayne Johnson)
spacetime coordinates: 1915 small Armenian village of Sirun in the southeast part of the Ottoman Empire > Constantinople / Istanbul, Taurus mountains
The Promise is a 2016 American historical drama film directed by Terry George and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale, set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The entire budget for the film was donated by American businessman of Armenian origin Kirk Kerkorian.
Ara Sarafian, director of the Gomidas Institute in London and a leading historian of the Armenian Genocide, praised the film for its historical accuracy. “The key themes were historically accurate,” he said. “The producers did not take license to go beyond the historical material at hand yet they managed to capture much of the enormity of the Armenian genocide.” Sarafian also commended director Terry George for his “well balanced and creditworthy” sense of history.
spacetime coordinates: the Gallipoli Campaign // 1919 Australia > Ottoman Empire
The Water Diviner is a 2014 American-Australian historical fictional war drama film directed by and starring Russell Crowe in his directorial debut. The film is loosely based on the book of the same name, written by Andrew Anastasios and Dr Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios. The film centres around Joshua Connor, an Australian farmer and water diviner searching for traces of his three lost sons on the battlefield of Gallipoli (watch documentary here)
spacetime coordinates: 1889 Belgian Congo // London
The Legend of Tarzan is a 2016 American adventure film based on the fictional character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Directed by David Yates, with a screenplay by Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer, the film stars Alexander Skarsgård as the title character, with Samuel L. Jackson, Margot Robbie, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent and Christoph Waltz in supporting roles.
Making Africa seem authentic was especially important to the filmmakers, since the film was shot in England, except for six weeks in Gabon, filming background by helicopter without the cast. A working waterfall and a 100-foot-long collapsible pier were assembled at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden studios. Seven versions of the African jungle were constructed to show different scenery throughout the filming. Plants from Holland were mixed with trees sculpted by the art department. Kedleston Hall stood in for the Greystoke Manor, and a cedar tree on the grounds of Highclere Castle served as the setting for an early pivotal scene between Tarzan and Jane. (wiki)
spacetime coordinates: 17th-century. the kingdoms of Longtrellis / Highhills / Strongcliff
Tale of Tales (Italian: Il racconto dei racconti) is a 2015 European dark fantasy film, directed by Matteo Garrone, starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, and John C. Reilly. It is a screen adaptation based on collections of tales by Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile: Pentamerone ( a 17th-century collection of fairytales) or Lo cunto de li cunti (Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones), which contains the earliest versions of famous fables like Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
The Baroque stories manage to mix real and surreal with many metaphorical usages. The three tales are La Cerva Fatata (The Enchanted Doe), La Pulce (The Flea), La Vecchia Scorticata (The Flayed Old Lady), that have been freely adapted with elements of other tales by Giambattista Basile, as well as a touch of artistic license. All three stories are told in a mixed way, pieced in fragments through the whole film, with all three briefly joining for a royal funeral near the start and a royal coronation at the end.
spacetime coordinates: remote Cumbrian mountain village 1348 >> 1980s New Zealand
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey is a 1988 feature film, an official Australian-New Zealand co-production, directed by Vincent Ward.
Ward and his production team based the look of the film on extensive research into the Middle Ages, particularly the mining industry, although this was then rendered imaginatively. The colours of the film are based on medieval art and, in particular, medieval and renaissance artists’ ideas about heaven and hell. The blues in many of the modern-day sequences are based on the inks in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, while the reds and oranges of the motorway lights and furnace fires evoke images of hell in the works of Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel and Matthias Grünewald. Ward later said he had not achieved what he wanted to with the colour of the modern-day scenes due to the film’s short shooting schedule. Ironically, the colour in the medieval scenes, which were turned into black and white, was far better than that in the 20th century scenes. Some of the mining scenes were inspired by engravings from the German mining manual De re metallica, although it dates from two centuries after the time of those scenes. The angel of death seen flying across the moon at one point is based on a medieval engraving in Paris’ Père Lachaise Cemetery.
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