“Marty! I didn’t invent the time machine for financial gain. The intent here is to gain a clearer perception of humanity – where we’re going, where we’ve been, the pitfalls and the possibilities, the perils and the promise. Perhaps even an answer to that universal question: ‘Why?’”
- Dr. Emmett L. Brown, Back To The Future II, 2015
This is the film we showed at the Time Travel Opportunists night at QUAD earlier this week, where we filled an evening with TIME STUFF to compliment the Tuesday evening showing of Time Traveller’s Wife. A big thankyou to Ted Chung, who kindly gave us permission to show it. A hearty pat on the back for him n’all for making such a gorgeous film in only 24 hours:
I love that. Deceptively simple yet with layers of complexity from a story, screenplay, and photographic point of view. Pick a point of view and watch it a few times over, and you’ll learn something…if not about the film itself, then maybe time, or even something more personal…
While I’m here talking TIME and FILM in the same post, I might as well say that I thought The Time Traveler’s Wife was very very good. I expected to be disspointed or at least underwhelmed…but I wasn’t. In fact, I’d say I came out pretty satisfied. Not blown away, but satisfied. The flick handled Henry’s chrono-impairment really quite subtly…never overdoing it in a “Whoah check Henry out he’s TRAVELING IN FUCKING TIME” or anything. Wasn’t too sure about the doom-laden ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ though. A heavy handed choice of song in films at the best of times, Broken Social Scene’s version just didn’t sit right…
Anyway, whether it be a short or a full blockbuster feature, generally film + time and/or travelling through it is a winner. Yes, even in Timecop.
Update: If you watch On Time with the sound down while listening to ‘Mutual Slump’ by DJ Shadow, the film becomes another thing entirely…like something Jonathan Glazer would make…all desaturated greens and oddly placed subtitles.
Tonight, QUAD are showing The Time Traveler’s Wife. They contacted us lot at Time Travel Opportunists to put on a night of words to follow a literary adaptation (of which there are a few kicking about at the moment). Now, The Time Traveler’s Wife is looking like it might disappoint a bit, but it’s still about TIME innit, so we’re putting on a night all about time to follow the film that should either extend the enjoyment (if the film is as good as the book that it’s based on) or flood it out (if it’s not) with time themed wonders from the worlds of short films, fiction, and music.
Here’s what the evening is looking like:
WORDS:-
Time Travel Opportunists – me, Nathan Good and Emma Lannie, reading our original fiction.
Dr. Paul Hammond OBE – local actor, entrepreneur and savant shares his theories of time…
MOMO – We’ll be reading selections from Michael Ende’s classic throughout the evening.
FILM:-
‘On Time’ by Ted Chung – an incredible short film made in 24 hours at the 2008 Berlinale Talent Campus.
‘Back To The Future The Musical’ – one-man, one-theme tune. That’s all that needs saying.
‘Chronos’ by Ron Fricke – a visual journey through time (we’ll be playing this ambiently throughout the night)
MUSIC:-
Time themed musical journeys will be spun throughout this merry evening by DJ Emmett L. Brown. Great Scott!
All this is FREE as well. Seeing the film isn’t (it’s the usual price of about five or six quid), but the whole night afterwards is. We’ll start at 8:30pm, after the 6:10pm showing of The Time Traveler’s Wife. Join us. JOIN US.
Right in so many ways, in case it’s not immediately obvious (and it might not be at this scale, so click on the image to see a bigger version), this is a beautiful visualisation of all travelling in time done in film and television. Pay close attention to the legend when looking at certain trilogies though…we ended up discussing/arguing whether the Doc, at the end of Back To The Future II when he gets struck by lightning in the DeLorean, travelled temporally by Time Machine or by Force Of Nature. After about 25 minutes we realised that David McCandless had made the right choice in declaring the answer ‘Unknown’. Or should it be ‘Unknowable’?
There’s a couple of blog posts here that throw some light on the process, and also put questions like “What about Primer?” to bed. As well as it being about Time Travel, it floats my boat in other ways though…as David says:
“What I really love about this image, though, is the idea that this information has never been seen before. Despite the fact that it exists, in some way,somewhere, wrapped in various plots, it’s never been given form.”
I’ve e-mailed David to see if I can buy a print or print-res file of this from him. Apart from wanting it in my house, I think it’d make a perfect visual centre-piece for the Time-themed night (which I really need to write about soon as it’s next week).
“Time, alas, will make us sell it short. What is it I hold, while there is still time?”
The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick, 1962
