As if the endlessly proliferating images of Shia LaBeouf weren't enough to whomp up my enthusiasm for the Transformers flick, the high-larious arrival of Transformers-mania at McSweeney's does the trick. (Those in the know will note the uncanny resemblance of pet Shia to my partner Eric… which surely makes any mild mass-mediated crushlike enthusiasms on my part perfectly acceptable, right? right?)
If you forgive my Casper Van Dien crush...
ReplyDelete> If you forgive my Casper Van Dien crush...
ReplyDeleteHe was a hottie in _Troopers_, wasn't he?
But if you've got the hots for Shia LeBurf does that
make you a Shiite? :-0 :-0
BTW, if you want to see Casper in a beard, check out
the obscure SF movie _The Time Shifters_, a.k.a. _Thrill Seekers_.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000051S4P/
http://www.dvdmoviecentral.com/ReviewsText/thrill_seekers.htm
It's a time-travel story that's interesting in that it reverses the
usual assumption (as in Harlan Ellison's _Star Trek_ episode
"City on the Edge of Forever") that an inadvertent change to
the past needs to be "set right", even if that means people have
to die who might not otherwise have died. In this movie, the
implication seems to be that the "original" time line **deserves**
to go away, and we are rooting for a man who "shouldn't" be alive
(and whose death sinister time-travellers from the jeopardized future
are trying to reinstate). There was a particularly striking speech
in this movie in which the Van Dien character and his lady
friend are angsting to each other about whether or not it's
right try to prevent a disaster that will change the future, and
one of them tells the other, in effect, that there's no sense
in trying to guess which time-line will "ultimately" turn out
to be the "right" one -- that their moral choices should be guided
by the ordinary considerations -- trying to save lives and prevent
bad things from happening in the here and now.
Very sensible, I thought. Nevertheless, there's a shot
at the end, after the original Thrill Seekers future
has been wiped out, of the client of a time-tour outfit
with a new name and a new logo. Plus ca change.
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"I was impressed with the way that the two bad guys -- the ones who
worked for the illicit time-tour business and were trying to clean up
the mess -- actually had personalities and motivations. One was the
hardened woman, not completely evil but quite willing to do whatever
it took even before the time disruptions got out of hand and she
learned that her daughter had been unexisted; the other was the guy
who was getting more and more dubious and unmotivated about the whole
thing as things got worse and worse. I also liked the way the
effects of the changes to history were seen to be seeping into the
temporally hardened bunker that their boss (Martin Sheen) was
hunkered down in, with them noticing over their visual link that his
appearance had changed slightly."
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bigau0%246du%241%40panix2.panix.com
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Also, if you're a fan of John C. Wright's Golden Age trilogy
(which I am not -- too much Ayn Rand), he has a connection
with this movie:
"Heh-heh. That 'someone' who took the time to think out the
time travel aspects of the movie was yours truly, John C. Wright.
Even though my name does not appear in the credits, I am glad
someone noticed. Kurt Inderbitzen did an excellent job of writing
up my idea, and wrapped up the plot threads into a satisfying ending."
http://www.sff.net/people/john-c-wright/Misc_Thrillseekers.htm