WHERE: In the living room of my apartment in Portland, ME and partially while pacing in front of the building in hopes that the cold would keep me awake

FORMAT: iTunes digital copy on an iPhone 4S

COMPANY: None

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Sleepy. Just watched the documentary Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and read some Wikipedia articles on Libya and the Arab Nationalist Movement.

Several months ago, friend-of-the-site and future Cinemanaut Adam recommended that I watch a movie called Reel Bad Arabs, which discusses the ways that Middle Eastern characters are portrayed in American films. Here is a link where you can purchase a DVD copy for the entirely reasonable price of $250, which I most definitely did instead of searching Google Videos.

Cue up “YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A HANDBAG.”

The documentary even briefly mentions Back to the Future, albeit with a corny line stating “this movie wasn’t about the future; it was the same old stereotyping from the past,” but nevertheless, it was a pretty enlightening look at common Arabic stereotypes going all the way back to Hollywood’s early days. Such as…

WHEN: 1:13 pm EST, November 23rd, 2013

WHERE: The living room of my apartment in Portland

FORMAT: Blu-Ray on a Vizio 32″ LED HDTV

COMPANY: None.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Spent the morning shopping, which was exhausting. Rewarding myself with some hot cocoa.

THOUGHTS:
With only a few weeks left to this experiment, I realized that there are some things that I still have managed to overlook discussing in The NeverEnding Story. This week, as  I was lamenting that there couldn’t possibly be anything else to see, I realized I hadn’t even talked about the AURYN.

Even fantasy worlds have bling.

This honking piece of jewelry is straight from the Childlike Empress and carries some major juju. The AURYN is a symbol of the Empress and has two incarnations; one in Michael Ende’s book and one in the film.

WHEN: 5:55 pm EST, November 20th, 2013

WHERE: In my apartment in Portland, ME

FORMAT:  DVD on a 19” AOC LED computer monitor/Digital Download on an iPhone 3

COMPANY: None.

MENTAL STATE: Rather tired. Full.

NOTHING NEW:

Literally, I have nothing new to say.

I feel as though I may have completely run out of comments on Jurassic Park. Having now seen it 47 times, I find myself staring at the screen, unable to pull even one new interesting tidbit out of my ass.

A dreadful torpor.

Hello, friends in time, and welcome to the final month of Time Out, a regular feature on Cinema 52 where I put my weekly viewing of Back to the Future on hold and watch another movie featuring time travel for comparison. I’ve seen a whole hell of a lot of time travel movies this year, but even watching one or two a week isn’t enough to knock ‘em all out. So, in the last month of 2013, I’m watching at least 31 movies and giving each one a quick paragraph on what I thought of it. How did these specific flicks end up on the bottom of the pile? By fitting at least one of the following criteria: 1) There’s time travel in them, but only in one or two scenes. 2) They were not favorably reviewed by critics and fell into obscurity. 3) They were made for TV, which I haven’t been counting until now. 4) Their legitimacy as time travel stories is questionable. 5) It’s my list and I’ve still seen more time travel movies than you, so ha. Anyway, here’s Week 1.

CONCEIVING ADA (1997)

What should have been a straightforward biopic about the inventor of the first computer algorithm is instead a schlocky sci-fi yarn that can’t see its own stupidity through a thick layer of arthouse pretentiousness. Tilda Swinton plays Ada Lovelace, who is contacted through time by Karen Black via the nineties’ understanding of the Internet, because when you’re honoring someone integral to the development of modern technology, you should definitely include a computer that’s more magical than the one from Weird Science. You won’t get too far in before you start to think of the two or three reasons whythere might be time travel in this story, and unfortunately, the least interesting one is the big “mind-blowing” ending. (Also, why is there more than one time travel movie featuring Lord Byron?) Try as they might, even titties, feminism, and a ranting holodeck Timothy Leary can’t save this shit.

Hello, friends in time, and welcome to a very special edition of Time Out. When I first set out to watch at least one time travel movie every week of 2013 to offset the effects of watching Back to the Future every week of 2013, most people responded appropriately by not having sex with me. A few, however, began to question what really counts as time travel (and still refrained from sex with me). Isn’t that Shrek movie where Shrek was never born time travel? Doesn’t The Matrix jump from the nineties to the year Techno Orgy A.D.? How about that movie where John Ritter gets sucked into the TV and he’s back on the set of Three’s Company?

1) You couldn’t at least go with Pleasantville? 2) Fuck you.

I’ve already covered sci-fi prophecies and cryogenic freezing, but there’s still one more honorable mention in the cinematic temporal manipulation canon: time-stopping. It’s the absolute last moment before you actually reverse time and it doesn’t do dick for traveling to the future, but you’d think it involves similar principles of bullshit quantum mechanics/magic. Of course, it’s really more of a “press this button to age super fast” scenario, but hey, let’s save the harsh criticisms for the movies themselves.

Oh, and no need for ground rules, because I only came up with five films. Possibly four. You’ll see.

WHEN: 7:50am EST, November 10th, 2013

WHERE: In my apartment in Portland, ME

FORMAT:  DVD on a 24” Philips CRT television/Digital Download on an iPhone 3

COMPANY: None.

MENTAL STATE: Very hungover.

UGH. NO.

Dammit, John Williams. Please turn off the score. It’s splitting my head open.

WHERE: In the living room of my apartment in Portland, ME

FORMAT: Blu-Ray on a Vizio 32″ LED HDTV

COMPANY: Cinemanaut Becca in and out.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Happy 50th anniversary, Doctor Who!

There’s more than one doc that travels through time with a much younger companion.

Look out!

Yes, I’m of course referring to the Doctor of Doctor Who fame, the face-changing alien in the blue box who treats the entirety of time and space like his own personal playground. The very first serial of Doctor Who, “An Unearthly Child,” debuted exactly fifty years prior to today’s date in 1963. What is it about this character that continues to appeal to audiences decades later? Comedian and television host Craig Ferguson famously sang a little ditty about the Doctor that praised his belief that intellect and romance always triumph over brute force and cynicism, and this idea has become particularly popular among Whovians for whom the show is akin to a philosophical way of life. But it got me thinking… is this the proper attitude for a time traveler to have? Well, seeing as it’s my duty to watch Back to the Future every week in the name of science, I put all four abstract nouns to the test within the film. Do Doc and Marty share these values, or does their universe… and ours… run on a different set of moral principles?

WHEN: 5:25pm EST, November 7th, 2013

WHERE: In my apartment in Portland, ME

FORMAT:  Blu-Ray on a Vizio 47″ LCD HDTV

COMPANY: None.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Tired from the gym. Eating dinner.

THE 45th TIME AROUND:

Having undertaken the bizarre task of watching Jurassic Park once every week for a year, the film has become fairly entrenched in my brain. After 10 months, though I still have a deep and abiding love for this dinosaur-filled fun-fest, a lot of the small things are starting to grate on me. Below are seven weird little chunks of Jurassic Park that, after 45 viewings, keep dragging their fingernails on the chalkboard of my brain.

1) HOW CAN HAMMOND SEE THE ISLAND?

You’ve got to love the moment when we first see Isla Nublar. The music swells. Richard Attenborough gets a gleam in his eye. Yet, given the direction the helicopter is moving, when Hammond “sights” the island, he’s looking out to sea.

“There it is!”

To be fair, he never says that it’s the island that he’s spotted. Maybe it was just a pelican.

Hello, friends in time, and welcome to a regular feature on Cinema 52 where I put my weekly viewing of Back to the Future on hold and watch another movie featuring time travel for comparison. It may not keep me sane, but it will probably always involve one guy shouting, “This doesn’t make any sense!” And that’s good enough for me.

A KID IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT (1995)

Responsible for a poster so terrifyingly nineties that I advise you not to look at it directly, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court is the story of Calvin Fuller (Thomas Ian Nicholas), an average baseball-hating high school baseball player that falls into a crack in the ground mid-game and finds himself in the court of King Arthur. This is apparently amazing, since, as the title suggests, there has literally never been a child there before. Movie, you so crazy!

Hello, friends in time, and welcome to a regular feature on Cinema 52 where I put my weekly viewing of Back to the Future on hold and watch another movie featuring time travel for comparison. It may not keep me sane, but it will probably always involve one guy shouting, “This doesn’t make any sense!” And that’s good enough for me.

UNIDENTIFIED FLYING ODDBALL (1979)

If you, like me, thought A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court needed a robot, then you, like me, are in luck, because Disney is way ahead of you. Unidentified Flying Oddball (a.k.a. The Spaceman and King Arthur, a.k.a. A Spaceman in King Arthur’s Court) is the story of Tom Trimble (Dennis Dugan), a loopy NASA scientist who’s ordered to build a convincingly human android astronaut and he goddamn does it. When his robo-clone Hermes (Dennis Dugan) is afraid to lift off, Tom climbs into the shuttle to comfort him and a lightning bolt accidentally launches them into space. Which also sends them back in time, holy shit, King Arthur.