February | 2013 | the m0vie blog

About Time: Time Travel Logic, Paradoxes and Looper…

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

I watched Looper again at the weekend. It’s still a pretty great movie, well-constructed and thoughtful. Of course, it still doesn’t feel like a proper “time travel” movie, because the time travel element doesn’t logically gel as easily as it otherwise would. After all, the original time line sees young!Joe kill old!Joe as soon as he appears. Therefore, old!Joe can’t logically kill Sara. If old!Joe doesn’t kill Sara, then why does Cyd become the Rainmaker? After all, we’re told (or it’s heavily implied) that young!Joe killing himself (and old!Joe) prevented Cyd from becoming the Rainmaker. So if this never happened in the time line where young!Joe grows into old!Joe, how did the Rainmaker come to be?

Oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed.

This is the thing with time travel movies, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about. How important is internal consistency to a time travel movie? How necessary is it for a time travel movie to flow relatively logically from its own premise? At what point do we just stop trying to apply rules of logic and just enjoy the movie for what it is?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: 12 Monkeys, bruce willis, Joe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Looper, Physics, Rainmaker, Recreation, Relativity, Rian Johnson, Sara, time, time travel, Time travel in fiction, Travel | 2 Comments »

Watch! An Extensive… errr… Extended Look at Iron Man 3!

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

You gotta love the Superbowl! Not because of the sports mind you, but because they get all the best adverts. We did The Fast & The Furious 6 earlier, so it’s worth a look at the extended peak at the upcoming Iron Man 3, which I am actually getting quite excited about. Reteaming Robert Downey Jr and Shane Black is reason enough, but an adaptation of Warren Ellis’ Extremis and a fantastic cast are just icing on the cake. Anyway, take a look below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: ben kingsley, Gwyneth Paltrow, iron man, iron man 2, robert downey, Shane Black, Super Bowl, Video game | Leave a comment »

Watch! Behind the Scenes at the Hardy Bucks Movie!

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

Universal Pictures just sent over this behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming Hardy Bucks Movie. It’s released on February 21st, but it’s hosting its premiere as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, in case you’re interested. Anyway, take a look below.

You can check out our recommended highlights of the festival here.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Dark Knight Rises, Film festival, Hardy Bucks Movie, jameson dublin international film festival, Movie, tom hardy, United States | Leave a comment »

Watch! Fast & Furious 6 Trailer!

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

I’ll confess that I actually quite enjoyed Fast Five, the fifth instalment in The Fast & The Furious franchise. Not to the extent that I’m salivating at the release of the next instalment, but enough that I’m cautiously optimistic. The series hasn’t been the most consistent from film to film, but when it is good it is very solid popcorn entertainment. Anyway, check out the Superbowl trailer below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Dwayne Johnson, fast & furious, Fast Five, Jordana Brewster, Justin Lin, Michelle Rodriguez, Super Bowl, Vin Diesel | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Unquiet Dead (Review)

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the longest-running science-fiction show in the world, I’ll be taking weekly looks at some of my own personal favourite stories and arcs, from the old and new series, with a view to encapsulating the sublime, the clever and the fiendishly odd of the BBC’s Doctor Who.

The Unquiet Dead originally aired in 2005.

What the Shakespeare is going on?

– Charles Dickens

It feels appropriate that Mark Gatiss should script the first episode of the revived Doctor Who not written by Russell T. Davies himself. Davies wrote the bulk of the first season’s thirteen episodes, and you could argue that he occasionally spread himself a bit too thin. However, I would argue that the first year of the revived show also had the strongest string of secondary writers on the bench, including Rob Shearman writing Dalek, Steven Moffat writing The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, Paul Cornell writing Father’s Day and Gatiss writing The Unquiet Dead.

Gatiss and Moffat are two of the most prolific writers for the new series, with Moffat even succeeding Davies as showrunner. It’s also worth noting that both Gatiss and Moffat are fans of the classic show with considerable writing experience in television. It’s very clear that Davies isn’t just recruiting fans of the classic show, even those who may have written material while it was off the air (Gatiss wrote spin-off novels, Moffat wrote The Curse of Fatal Death), but recruiting those with practical experience about how television today works.

And that was a very shrewd decision.

Ghosts of Cardiff…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: arts, bbc, Charles Dickens, Davies, Dickens, doctor, DoctorWho, literature, Philip Hinchcliffe, rose, rose tyler, russell t. davies, shakespeare, tardis, Unquiet Dead | Leave a comment »

House of Cards (US, 2013): Chapter 1 (Review)

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Darren

House of Cards is a classic piece of BBC television, the story of a Chief Whip in the House of Parliament who is so slighted by the incoming Prime Minister’s refusal to promote him that he decides to bring the whole Conservative Party crashing down around him. If you’re at all interested in political drama, British wit or even great television, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Still, I suppose that an American adaptation was inevitable. And, to be fair, you couldn’t have asked for greater talent. Kevin Spacey stars as Francis Underwood, the Majority Whip in the House of Representatives. David Fincher is producing and directing the two first episodes. It’s written by Beau Willimon, who wrote both The Ides of March and the stage play Farragut North, upon which it was based. That’s a very talented bunch of people.

And yet, one episode in, it feels a little uneven. It’s not so much the sense that the new House of Cards seems to have a bit of bother figuring out what made the original so great, nor is it the fact that changes have to be made in translating the story from London to Washington. It’s more a sense that show is really trying to figure out what it wants to be.

Let’s be Frank…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: bbc, business, Congress, david fincher, Francis Urquhart, Frank Underwood, House of Cards, kevin spacey, Satan, Underwood, United States, United States Congress, Washington | Leave a comment »

Doctor Who: The Talons of Weng-Chiang (Review)

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Darren

The Talons of Weng-Chiang originally aired in 1977.

Ah! Eureka! Do you know what that is?

You ask me so that you can tell me.

That’s right. It’s a trionic lattice, an integral part of a time cabinet. It’s impossible to open it without it.

You mean it’s a key.

Yes. He’s not only a scientific fool, he’s an absent-minded one.

Perhaps he has another eureka.

No, eureka’s Greek for “this bath is too hot.”

– the Doctor and Leela

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is generally agreed to be one of the (if not the) greatest Doctor Who adventures ever produced. It tends to hover around the top of various official polls, with only Caves of Androzani and City of Death coming close to it in public opinion. As such, I feel a little bit guilty when I confess that it doesn’t rank as one of my absolute favourite adventures. I like it a great deal, I think it embodies a great deal of what works about the Philip Hinchcliffe era of the show. However, if I’m looking for a dark pseudo-historical adventure, I am more likely to pick either The Pyramids of Mars or The Horror of Fang Rock.

I can see why a lot of people respond to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and it has a lot to recommend it, but there are a number of minor problems that hold the serial back from the cusp of perfection, in my opinion.