This is genuinely what happens in the final scene of Zero Dark Thirty if you have subtitles on

 

I wonder if that was what it said in the script?

Saying no to summer

YOU'RE SO UNFAIR I HATE YOU

We need someone who's handy at video editing to create a feature-length We Need to Talk About Kevin mash-up so this important joke can be fully realised in time for Oscar season, but I've made a start below, so it wouldn't really be that much work.

I'm getting married tomorrow

Back to the Future turns 25

Not the first time this blog has pondered Back to the Future (notes on Doc Brown's inheritance here, and brief digression on the "we don't need roads" line with heated discussion in the comments here) - but last night was the first time I've ever seen the film in the cinema (it's currently on re-release to celebrate its 25th anniversary) - and a few fresh thoughts came to light.

- Marty's first line in the film - "Hey Doc? Doc? Hello? Anybody home?" - is a fun pre-echo of Biff's catchphrase ("Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Think, McFly, think.")

- Although the writers will doubtless be wrong about the everyday availability of hoverboards and miniature pizzas (you've got five years to abolish roads, Obama!), the fact that the time machine Mk.II runs on household waste does anticipate the rise of the recycling movement.

- PRO TIP: If you want to find out more about time and how it works, do a Google image search for Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer.

- On the big screen, you get a clearer sense of how many brands, signs and billboards there are jostling for attention (aside from, say, the Calvin Klein and Pepsi references within the script itself). The big JC Penney sign in the Twin Pines car park should feel like intrusive product placement, but it actually adds some colour to the scene - and its neon glow contrasts with Hill Valley's 1955 shops.

- I've always thought of BTTF as a perfectly plotted film, but in the cinema there are a few moments that are just too pat, and as a result, end up being unintentionally funny - for example, Doc pointing out that you can never predict when or where a bolt of lightning will strike is followed immediately by Marty's OH WAIT WHAT'S THIS FLYER I'M HOLDING? Despite clearly being fans, I sensed that my fellow cinema-goers also found it tricky to suspend their disbelief when Marty's family photo shows, um, his brother's head missing. ("Erased... from existence!")

- Doc's social ineptitude is wonderfully done - cf. his awkwardness when Lorraine turns up unannounced at the Brown residence, and as his hilarious description of the Enchantment Under the Sea ball as a "rhythmic ceremonial ritual".

- Just before departing for the future, Doc tells Marty: "I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five World Series." Is this a joke? He goes nuts when Marty tries to do something similar in the second film. (Brings us back to the question of where the Brown estate comes from.)

- Sarah and I are flying to India on our honeymoon exactly 25 years to the day after Marty and Doc's very first time travel experiment. October 26 is also the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox and the date the far side of the moon was first photographed.

- I enjoyed this analysis by Adam Smith (!) over on the Empire site (although he spelt 'Zemeckis' wrong):

Applying anything approaching rigorous criticism to Back To The Future would be like taking a jack-hammer to a perfectly risen souffle, but there are a number of intriguing readings to [Robert] Zemekis' movie, particularly since hostile critics of the directors' subsequent work, Forrest Gump and Contact, have detected in him a Capra-esque conservatism. You could make the case that BTTF is a manipulative critique of the 80s through the prism of an airbrushed version of the 50s that owes more to George Lucas' American Graffiti than the turmoil of the decade itself (the burning crosses and blacks dangling from trees are presumably "just out of shot").


Zemekis seems to be accusing the 80s of betraying the American Post War dream; Marty's frumpy, nervous, bullied family are not the way things were meant to turn out (next to them at the dinner table you wonder if Marty ever inquired whether he was adopted) in the same way that the grasping 80s are not the legitimate offspring of the "innocent" 50s. Of course this is all a bit speculative.

*takes jack-hammer to perfectly-risen souffle*

(Actually, as they watch George being bullied at school, Doc does murmur to Marty: "Maybe you were adopted.") Of course, when Marty returns to 1985 having put right what once went wrong, his family are a less "loser"-like version of themselves and seem to be living the '80s American dream. Which, on reflection, is why they seem a little bit like a bunch of badly-dressed yuppie assholes. Meanwhile, getting back home to the people he loves apparently isn't enough: Marty has to be rewarded with a big gas guzzler too.

- I wonder if this film has ever been shown in Libya.

Lessons learned from... Brüno

Cage-fighting is romantic.

Lessons learned from... Terminator Salvation

The future is Very Loud.

Lessons learned from... Let the Right One In

Let the right one in.

Kasper Hauser v Karl Pilkington

Watched Werner Herzog's rather excellent The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (aka Every Man for Himself and God Against All) last week, a telling of the true story of a young German man who, one day in 1828, was discovered standing in the street in Nuremberg, holding a letter and barely able to walk or talk.

It emerges that up until this moment, Kasper Hauser – for it is he – has been imprisoned in a cellar since birth; aside from a stranger who fed him, the villagers are the first human beings he has ever seen. He's played both movingly and clownishly by Kevin Eldon-lookalike Bruno S., who had also suffered from mental illness and - typical Herzog, this - had no acting experience at all.

Later in the film, when Kasper has been taken in by a kindly philanthropist and has learnt to speak, a self important professor turns up at the house to test his lateral thinking.

"In this village live people who tell only the truth," says the man, moving a sugar pot across the table. "Here is another village: the people who live here only tell lies."

He moves a tea cup to the other side of the table. "Two paths run from these villages to where you are standing, and you are at the crossroads. A man comes along and you want to know which village he comes from: the truthful village or the village of liars. Now, in order to solve this problem logically, there is only one question you can ask. What is that question?"

The maid, sitting between the two men, insists the problem is too difficult for Kasper, who remains silent. After some more pontificating, the professor gives the answer: "If you came from the other village, would you answer no if I were to ask you whether you came from the liar's village? By means of a double negative, the liar is forced to tell the truth… That's what I call logic via argument to truth," he concludes, with a flourish.

"Well I know another question," pipes up Kasper, emphasising each word as if it is an announcement all of its own. The professor indignantly denies that another question exists.

"I would ask the man if he was a tree frog," Kasper continues simply. "The man from the village of truth would say, "No, I'm not a tree frog," because he tells the truth. The man from the liars' village would say, "I am a tree frog," because they would lie. That's how I would know which village he was from."

Having been raised - if you can even call it that - outside society, Kaspar never fully grasps the rules - but this has also liberated from the rigid thought structures everyone is expected to adopt. He's a visionary, although, like Aguirre, Fitzcaraldo or Grizzly Man's Timothy Treadwell, one destined to be crushed by life's realities.

The nurse smiles. "What you've done is describe something, not deduce it," replies the professor angrily. "I cannot accept that question."

***

Interestingly, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant once posed a variation on this conundrum to that modern day idiot savant, Karl Pilkington. This alternative version had two identical angels, one truthful, guarding the door to heaven and one a liar, guarding the door to hell. What question would the bald-headed Manc ask to find his way to heaven?

After suggesting that one of the doors might be warmer because of the heat given off by hell, Karl wonders whether he might be able to take a look through one of the doors' keyholes. Gervais and Merchant disallow this.

Karl begins to get frustrated. "But would they be neighbours like this?" he says. "Would they be that close?"

After an explanation, which presumably goes right over his round, orange-shaped head, Karl concludes, "This is where you use your gut feeling, though, innit. I just think there's a lot of questions in life where you don't know the answer and you go, 'Do you know what? I don't like the look of him.'"

"They're identical," Gervais points out.

Says Karl: "Yeah, but still, with identical twins, you always get a little snidey one."


From the Goose archives
Film review: Rescue Dawn

Sendak + Jonze + Arcade Fire = happiness

Films of 2008

I came, I saw, I went home again. My 10 favourites of 2008 (and didn't philmz have quite a year?):

• Man on Wire
• There Will Be Blood
• Cloverfield
• Waltz With Bashir
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
• The Orphanage
• Juno
• The Dark Knight
• Gonzo
• No Country For Old Men

Films of 2007

And 2006...

Lesson learned from... Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

That Ralph Steadman was one crazy guy.

Lesson learned from... Gomorra

Scarlett Johansson is a bitch.

Lessons learned from... Man on Wire

Tightrope walking gets you chicks.

Taking the Michael

I'd forgotten what a good magazine Empire is. There's a good little interview with Michael "Mr Blonde" Madsen in this month's issue, this bit a particular highlight:

Who's the best James Bond?
Sean Connery, of course. I met Lazenby once. It was really bizarre. I was in an airport on my way to do Die Another Day and this old guy walks up and goes, "Hey Michael, how are you doing?" Shakes my hand. "Love your work!" I'm like, "Thanks very much." He just stood there staring at me. I felt very embarrassed because I thought, "This guy knows me and I don't know him." Then, five seconds later, it was like, "Holy shit! You're George Lazenby!" And he was like, "YES, I AM!" I said, "Wow! I'm on the way to do a Bond film right now!" He goes, "Put a word in for me, wouldja? I think I should be a Bond villain - don't you think I'd be a great Bond villain?" I said, "I'll mention that to Barbara [Broccoli]."

Did you?
No.

Lessons learned from... The Dark Knight

Batman needs some Lemsip.

Lessons learned from... Hancock

Two bottles of Jamaican rum does not cost $91.10.

Lessons learned from... Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Aliens are magnetic, or something.

Useless but intriguing fact of the day

Child actor Corey Feldman had his second marriage officiated by ordained minister MC Hammer.

Lessons learned from... The Orphanage

Beware falling girders.