FILM 1911: BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH

FILM 1911: BLACK MIRROR: BANDERSNATCH

TRIVIA: A Black Mirror (2011) interactive film, in which the viewer chooses the plot direction multiple times. Although the listed running time is 90 minutes, this is approximate depending how long the viewer decides to keep watching. The total amount of footage included to make all of the film's possible variations work is 5 hours 12 minutes 13 seconds, as revealed by the film's BBFC classification.

The fax sounds you hear at the end of Bandersnatch on Stefan's headphone translates to a QR code. That leads you to a website where you will find one of the games that's being shown in the movie.

In Colin's apartment there is a poster for Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik': a sci-fi story that deals with themes of free will and death much like Bandersnatch.

A poster that reads "METL HEDD" with a dog-like figure can be seen, a reference to the Black Mirror episode Black Mirror: Metalhead (2017), in which a woman is chased by robotic dogs after the unexplained collapse of human society.

FILM 1681: FAULTS

TRIVIA: This movie is directed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead's husband.

FILM 1339: EX MACHINA

TRIVIA: Director Alex Garland has described the future presented in the film as 'ten minutes from now'. Meaning that 'if somebody like Google or Apple announced tomorrow that they had made Ava, we would all be surprised, but we wouldn't be that surprised'.

When Caleb sits down at Nathan's computer and begins coding, the code he types is for an algorithm called the Sieve of Eratosthenes an algorithm for finding prime numbers. However it also chooses primes that form an ISBN = 9780199226559. This ISBN is for the book "Embodiment and the Inner Life: Cognition and Consciousness in the Space of Possible Minds", a book about the history of Artificial Intelligence.

The title derives from the Latin phrase 'Deus Ex-Machina', meaning 'a god From the Machine', a phrase that originated in Greek tragedies. An actor playing a god would be lowered down via a platform (machine) and solve the characters issues, resulting in a happy ending for all.

Early in the movie, Caleb listens to the OMD song "Enola Gay" (1980). The Enola Gay was the airplane used to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Later, in talking to Nathan about how AI will transform the world, Caleb shares J. Robert Oppenheimer's quote from the Bhagavad Gita about the making of that atomic bomb ("I am become death, the destroyer of worlds").

Alex Garland's directorial debut.

Throughout the film, the colors red, blue, and green are prominently displayed in each scene (the green forest, the red brick hallway, the keypad's red and blue functions, etc.) This is a nod to the RGB color model, which is used to display images in electronic systems, such as computers. Ava, of course, being the main computer in the film.

BOOK 108: MR PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE: ROBIN SLOAN

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a 2012 novel by American writer Robin Sloan. It was chosen one of the best 100 books of 2012 by the San Francisco Chronicle, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, and was on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list[3] as well as the NPR Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List.[4] The US book cover, which glows in the dark, was done by Rodrigo Corral and chosen as one of the 25 best book covers for 2012 by BookPage.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore combines elements of fantasy, mystery, friendship and adventure as a way of looking at the modern conflict and transition between new technology (electronic) and old (print books). The main protagonist is a laid off Silicon Valley tech worker who begins working at a dusty bookstore with very few customers, only to start discovering one secret after another. The mysterious old books, along with the store's owner, lead to a 500-year-old secret society.