Category Archives: motion_pictures

turbo

Posted on by March 1, 2011
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TURBO is a high adrenaline short film in the tradition of the Karate Kid and Tron. It tells the story of Hugo Park (Justin Chon, Twilight) a troubled youth whose only outlet for angst is a 4D fighting videogame called “Super Turbo Arena”. When Pharaoh King (Jocko Sims, Crash the Series), the Michael Jordan of cyber-sports, announces a tournament to determine who will join his pro-team, Hugo’s sets his eyes on the prize. But, Hugo isn’t the only gamer who wants fame and glory. If Hugo wants to win he’s going to have to beat Shamus (David Lehre, Epic Movie), … Continue reading →

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la jetée

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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La jetée (English: The Jetty or The Pier) (1962) is a 28-minute black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is an absolute future noir cyberpunk masterpiece and sets its creator Chris Marker (aka Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, *1921) on par with Andrei Tarkovsky. Film-noir elements are abound, including e.g. the voice-over narrator. The decisive plot-twist is the same as in a short story by almost forgotten German writer Alexander Moritz Frey [in German]—in the collection ‘Dunkle Gänge’ [Dark Passages] (1913), … Continue reading →

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the cyberpunk educator

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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  Andrew J. Holden’s “↑The Cyberpunk Educator“ is “a documentary study of mainstream ‘cyberpunk’ films of the 1980’s- with a heavy focus on their literary, political, and cultural content. The film uses the structure of literary theorist Northrop Frye, and the cultural critiques of renowned anthropologist Michel Foucault to describe the common, repeating stories in Western culture, and their application to the political process. Though it’s an academic film, its also film about existentialist robots with guns, and it’s fun to watch.” … and it is free for download. … Continue reading →

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Favorite nemo’s gear

Posted on by October 11, 2012
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steampunk informed appropriation of mythical worlds and hardware ↑Captain Nemo‘s submarine “Nautilus” on the surface, getting entered by “cannibals”. The picture is for those, maybe a bit more traditionally oriented anthropologists, who dare to doubt that this vessel has anything to do with anthropology. It was clear as a scuttle—sometime around Christmas they would re-air “↑20,000 leagues under the sea,” the 1954 Disney rendition for the silver screen of ↑Jules Verne‘s ↑1870 novel. They always do, and so they did this time. Just having read ↑H. G. Wells‘ brilliant scientific romance “The first men in the moon” (1901), rewatching “Leagues” … Continue reading →

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monster at munich university

Posted on by October 4, 2012
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    ↑Monster is a manga by Naoki Urasawa which has been very faithfully adapted to a 74-episode anime series by Masayuki Kojima. The series aired from 2004 to 2005 in Japan. The story, a psychological thriller centred around the main protagonist Dr. Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese MD and brain surgeon, takes place in a Germany of the 1980s and 1990s. It is not a cyberpunk anime, but hardboiled for sure. Locations are several German cities, Munich among them, in particular my university here. The whole story is thrilling and filled with suspense—besides that, for the German audience it is … Continue reading →

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android orchestra

Posted on by October 1, 2012
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It is eerie like hell, in my humble opinion. On 06 December 2007 ↑Toyota revealed two new “Toyota Partner Robots”, one of them able to ↑play the violin. At the World Expo 2005 they already had a couple of robots playing trumpets and horns ↑doing the welcome ceremony—it was a spark of genius to have them play “When the Saints are marching in” while entering the arena. Astounding how the automata of the 19th Century are perfected. But yet another thing strikes me as eerie. Today everybody wonders and cheers at the androids’ abilities to play musical instruments, but nobody … Continue reading →

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