Back to the future, I met my parents before they met each other

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Back to the future, I met my parents before they met each other

29 October 2010

Twenty-five years on and people are still asking questions about 1985’s Back To The Future. One that consistently crops up regards the apparent inability of George and Lorraine, Marty McFly’s parents, to remember him, and the part he had in bringing them together, many years earlier.

And to a degree the question makes sense. It would certainly be easy to forget a person you knew only briefly — like for a week — from thirty years earlier. But surely you’d remember anyone who played a big, and very active, part in bringing you together with your future spouse.

The conundrum is this: you tend to remember the people who brought you together in life. You’d certainly remember the person who played Johnny B Goode in such dramatic fashion at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance. And, given that Lorraine had such a crush on Marty in 1955, she’s unlikely to have forgotten him altogether.

What can change over time though are individual perceptions and memories of a person. While I doubt George and Lorraine had forgotten Marty (aka Calvin Klein) all together, they would have forgotten exactly what he looked like after a while. Twenty to thirty years is a long time to remember something like that, more so when you don’t have a photo either.

Even so though, who in their right mind is going think their child, born years after the event, could possibly have had anything to do with their meeting? Can we get back now to simply enjoying repeat screenings of this classic, without the excess analysis?

Originally published Friday 29 October 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

We made it back to the future, but in a parallel universe

9 July 2010

If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Back to the Future fan I hope you weren’t taken in by the claim that last Monday, 5 July, was “Future Day”. That being the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrived in the future when they travelled forward in time during 1989’s Back to the Future Part II.

The arrival of the time travellers from 1985 last Monday may not have been all bad though, had it have happened. In the twenty-five years since the release of Back to the Future, and only five years out from 2015 — the setting for much of Back to the Future Part II — we still have ground to make up in terms of matching some of the advances in technology seen in the movie trilogy.

So far we’re still lagging in the development of:

Flying cars (actually they exist, but are far from in everyday use)
Hoverboards
Time travel

We have however made advances in other areas, with the advent of:

The World Wide Web
Smart phones
High Definition TV (if that’s much of innovation really, considering we’ve had low-def TVs for years)

There’s still another five years to go though, perhaps by then we’ll at least have hoverboards that are able to match what we can do with skateboards today.

Originally published Friday 9 July 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

The Time Traveler’s Wife, a film by Robert Schwentke, with Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams

19 November 2009

The Time Traveler’s Wife, trailer, based on the 2003 novel of the same name, by Audrey Niffenegger.

Said by some to depict “realistic” time travel. Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) has — thanks to a rare genetic disorder — an unfortunate disposition of jaunting off to another time and place, often leaving his wife Clare (Rachel McAdams), and others, all too literally in the lurch.

Time travel is time travel, and while DeTamble’s mode may be realistic, it is probably the least convenient form I’ve seen so far.

Originally published Thursday 19 November 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

You can travel no further back in time than 1955

18 August 2009

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the latest in a long line of time travel themed movies, and according to physicist Dave Goldberg, makes for a more realistic representation of time travel than most of the (fiction) served to date.

But this is interesting, time travel is (theoretically) only possible to points in time where a time machine already exists, according to Goldberg.

In other words, for Marty McFly to travel from 1985 to back to 1955, as he did in Back to the Future, a DeLorean like time machine would already need to have been in existence in 1955…

According to Einstein’s picture of the universe, space and time are curved and very closely related to each other. This means that traveling through time would be much like traveling through a tunnel in space — in which case you’d need both an entrance and an exit. As a time traveler, you can’t visit an era unless there’s already a time machine when you get there — an off-ramp. This helps explain why we’re not visited by time-traveling tourists from our own future. Futuristic humans don’t drop in for dinner because we haven’t yet invented time travel.

Of course the concept of time travel — in the form of the Flux Capacitor — did exist in 1955, it simply hadn’t taken physical form… does that count?

Originally published Tuesday 18 August 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

You can travel no further back in time than 1955

18 August 2009

The Time Traveler’s Wife, directed by Robert Schwentke, and based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger, is the latest in a long line of time travel themed movies.

According to physicist Dave Goldberg, Niffenegger’s story makes for a more realistic representation of time travel than most of the (fiction) served to date.

But this is interesting, time travel is (theoretically) only possible to points in time where a time machine already exists. In other words for Marty McFly to travel from 1985 to 1955, as he did in Back to the Future, a DeLorean like time machine would already need to have been in existence in 1955…

According to Einstein’s picture of the universe, space and time are curved and very closely related to each other. This means that traveling through time would be much like traveling through a tunnel in space — in which case you’d need both an entrance and an exit. As a time traveler, you can’t visit an era unless there’s already a time machine when you get there — an off-ramp. This helps explain why we’re not visited by time-traveling tourists from our own future. Futuristic humans don’t drop in for dinner because we haven’t yet invented time travel.

Of course the concept of time travel — in the form of the Flux Capacitor — did exist in 1955, it simply hadn’t taken physical form… does that count?

Originally published Tuesday 18 August 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Tastemakers to get a bite of Star Trek at Sydney Opera House

26 March 2009

The Sydney Opera House will host the world premiere of the new Star Trek movie, on Tuesday 7 April 2009, before an audience of 1600 tastemakers (Internet Archive link):

Director JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek movie will have its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House next month, presented by Aussie star Eric Bana. Abrams, Bana and co-stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban will present the blockbuster to 1,600 tastemakers in art, design, entertainment, fashion, media and politics on April 7. It is only the third time a film has debuted at the Sydney Opera House, and the first time a premiere has been held in the concert hall.

I wonder what it takes to become a Star Trek tastemaker then?

Originally published Thursday 26 March 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Arthur C Clarke’s Newspad RSS news aggregator

30 May 2008

Author and futurist Arthur C Clarke is credited with predicting the emergence of a number of technologies, including a tablet-like device called a “Newspad”, which could serve the latest news stories from electronic versions of newspapers.

So far more has been said about comparing the Newspad to PDAs or Tablet PCs, but the Newpad also worked in a very similar way to today’s news aggregators, or RSS feed readers.

In the novelised version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, (chapter title “Moon Shuttle”, pg 66-67) Dr Heywood Floyd, chairman of the US National Council of Astronautics, spends time reading on his Newspad, while traveling to the Moon.

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word “newspaper,” of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the ever-changing flow of information from the news satellites.

Not only did Arthur C. Clarke predict PDAs and Tablet PCs, he also foresaw the emergence of news aggregators, and RSS technology.

Originally published Friday 30 May 2008.

Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, speak at 2001: A Space Odyssey screening, Sydney, Australia

1 October 2006

Anyone who has even once watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, could be forgiven for thinking the two lead actors, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, who portray astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole respectively, mightn’t exactly be the life of the party, were they ever to meet them.

After all, nary a snigger, let alone the merest of smiles, is ever forth coming during their ill-fated deep-space voyage towards Jupiter. Aside from the BBC 12 interview that is, but such theatrics are referred to as spin in today’s post-2001 world.

Were you however to meet Dullea and Lockwood in person, you’d be forgiven for believing they were part of a comedy act. A latter day version of Laurel and Hardy, god help us, piloting humanity one-way through the final frontier. “It’s full of Aussies,” quipped Lockwood, to much amusement, as the actors walked on to the stage at the Orpheum theatre, in the Sydney suburb of Cremorne.

The actors were speaking at a special 2001 event held on the evening of Wednesday 27 September, 2006. The event also included a screening of the seventy millimetre version of the movie. “A very good print, actually,” Dullea told us.

And he was right, not only was the film visually stunning (as always), but the soundtrack really hit the audience in the face also. Never before has the Moon monolith’s electronic scream seemed so shrill, so high pitched, so prolonged.

The pair spoke with Australian film critic David Stratton, and for the most part talked candidly about almost, well everything. The conversation was laced with anecdotes about working with director Stanley Kubrick, and the movie itself.

There were plenty of asides, including discussion on the “science of acting”, with Lockwood insisting improvisation is not an acting method per se. Lockwood also told stories about meetings with people such as Orson Wells, John Lennon, and Neil Armstrong, over the years.

There was little doubt that the pair’s participation in 2001 was a highlight of both their acting careers. And how couldn’t taking part in the greatest movie of all time, not be? Greatest movie of all time?

Lockwood related once meeting someone — possibly not a fan of the film — who told him 2001 was ranked as the thirty-fourth greatest movie ever. “Oh yeah?” Lockwood had retorted, “well, name the thirty-three movies that come before 2001 then.”

If that’s not the greatest comeback of all time, what is?

Originally published Sunday 1 October 2006.

Revenge of the nerds: on naming Star Wars movies

28 July 2004

After much speculation — and discussion, heated at times, among fans — the official title of the next instalment in the Star Wars™ saga has been announced: Revenge of the Sith.

But the first question that comes to my mind is: revenge for what? Since when were the Sith so hard done by that they felt the need to extract revenge? So far everything has gone their way. Their clandestine plan to take control of the galaxy has all but succeeded.

Unless of course we are referring to their (almost) complete annihilation centuries ago. Even then revenge seems to somewhat understate what they are trying to achieve now. The other factor being no original Sith remain from that time anyway.

So it’s not as if the latter day Sith are avenging the demise of any contemporaries. Their comrades have been dead a thousand years (or whatever). If revenge is indeed what the Sith are seeking, it is certainly a dish served cold. Very cold.

I’d have thought a title like Rise of the Sith, or Rise of the Empire, would have been more appropriate. Well I just could be right (if I may say so). One or other of those titles were apparently being considered, but a change was required.

Why? Because Star War’s secrets are among the worst kept in the galaxy. It can’t be much fun for series creator George Lucas when fans keep figuring out the title of one of the most anticipated movies of all time.

But why announce the title now? After all, the movie is not due for release until May 2005. I’m guessing as just about all possible names had already been guessed, it was better to go ahead and make the name official, lest it leak later on.

There’s also of course that most basic tenet of marketing to factor into the mix as well: all publicity is good publicity.

Originally published Wednesday 28 July 2004.

Hal, of 2001: A Space Odyssey fame, inducted into Robot Hall of Fame

16 November 2003

I didn’t realise that Hal, AKA HAL 9000, the supercomputer in Stanley Kurbick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was regarded as a robot, but apparently he is. That’s why Hal was, recently, inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame.

There he joins other illustrious bots and ‘droids, including R2D2 from, of course, Star Wars. This hall of renown, brought to us by Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, is not restricted to fictional robots though, as the Mars Sojourner Rover is also honoured with a place.

Originally published Sunday 16 November 2003, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

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