Beyond The Time Barrier: A 1960 movie about ten years from now

By Jack Brummet, 1960's Ed.

click to enlarge

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The University of Movies

This is a concatenation of three different "internet files," with a few of my own lines thrown in. Authorship of the originals is totally unknown. I found several people claiming authorship of parts of it...so who really knows?   These are files I gophered, FTP'd, etc., around ten years ago.  These tidbits of wisdom may be even more applicable now than they were then...

 

• During all police investigations it is necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
• Dogs can survive natural and man-made disasters that wipe out entire human populations. 
•  If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing Chinese New Year parade -- any day of the year.  
• All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets which reach up to the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
•  All grocery shopping bags contain at least one loaf of French Bread and celery.
•  Anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
•  Once applied, lipstick will never rub off -- even while scuba diving.
•  The ventilation system of any building is the perfect hiding place. Nobody will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building you want without difficulty.
• If you need to reload your gun, more ammo will always appear...
• You're very likely to survive any battle in any war--unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home. 
• Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it is not necessary to speak the language. An approximate German accents works fine.  
• If your town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster, serial killer, or beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade. 
• The Eiffel Tower is visible from every window in Paris. 
• A man shows no pain while taking a ferocious beating but winces when a woman tries to clean his wounds. 
• If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it in the next few minutes. 
• The Chief of Police is always black. 
• When paying for a taxi, don't look at your wallet as you take out a bill -- it will always be the exact fare. 
• Interbreeding is possible with any creature from elsewhere in the universe. 
• Kitchens don't have light switches at night -- you should open the refrigerator door and use that light instead. 
• If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate strange noises in their most revealing underwear. 
• Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning. 
• Cars that crash always burst into flames. 
• A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a stadium. 
• Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
• Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of our visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.
• Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant. 
• It is not necessary to say hello or goodbye when beginning or ending phone conversations. 
• Even when driving down a straight road it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments. 
• All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off. 
•  It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting, especially in New York and L.A. 
• Many detectives can only solve a case once they have been suspended from duty.
•  If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone around you will know all the steps.
•  Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communication systems of any invading alien civilization.
• It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts -- your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one-by-one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
• When a person is knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, they never suffer a concussion or brain damage. 
• Nobody involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion will ever go into shock -- if they do, they will die within five minutes.
• Police Departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their exact opposite.
• When they are alone, foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
•  You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.
• Any lock can be picked by a credit card or a paper clip in seconds unless it's the door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.
• Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at that precise moment

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War of the Worlds: In 1938, Orson Welles scared the bejesus out of your grandparents.

Five years ago on all this is that.  we published an article on War of the Worlds, with a link to the broadcast...and since it's Halloween, the link still works, and mostly because it's some of the best radio Eve, here is an ATIT retread.

The restrictions on this collection expired in 1986, and the Library of Congress

believes this image is in the public domain.  The photograph is by Carl Van Vechten.

Jump to the link below to download an MP3/Podcast of the entire War of the Worlds broadcast by Mercury Theatre.  This is the piece that propelled Orson Welles to fame, Listen to it and celebrate that great actor, writer, director, and Madison Avenue pitchman, who spooked a large part of America 72 years ago, on October 30, 1938.  And it's plenty spooky, in honor of the day.

http://www.mercurytheatre.info/

The image was distributed as a promotional photograph in the U.S. in 1941 for use

by the general media, satisfying the definition of "publication." There is no evidence

that it was distributed with copyright notice, as then required for copyright protection.

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A Mighty Wind -- an underrated Christopher Guest film

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Four years ago today: Del Brummet's trailers for his short "Taracotra"

Del Brummet created three trailers for his short Taracotra four years ago... This was one of his earliest movies. He later created the award winning "Unplugged."

Click here to link to the trailers.
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Del Brummet short "Unplugged" appears in another festival

A film by Del Brummet and two other youth is now appearing in a Korean film festival. The film has already snagged numerous awards and has appeared in several film festivals.

"Unplugged, a short film by Ballard High School video production students Diana Federighi ('08), Kaelan Gilman ('10) & Del Brummet ('10), was recently named an Official Selection by the 11th Annual Seoul International Youth Film Festival. SIYFF is one of the largest and most prestigious youth film festivals in Asia. The event spans the week of July 9 - 15 and includes an international youth filmmaking camp. This year, 821 films were submitted from 44 different countries. Only 36 films were selected for the festival through a highly competitive process. For more information, visit the festival website. "

Unplugged is the story of a teen whose connection to music deepens after the loss of his iPod. The short had not originally been entered in SIYFF, but the festival committee saw the film on the Images of Youth Video Festival website and then contacted Ballard High School to request that the short be submitted. Unplugged had won awards for Special Recognition for Overall Excellence in Media and Peer Achievement from the Images of Youth Video Festival in 2008. Unplugged was also named an Official Selection of the National Film Festival for Talented Youth this year.


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A new list: My favorite Criterion movies.

These are my favorite (not the best. . .necessarily) movies from The Criterion Collection. Of course, they have hundreds of other great films too; I just haven't seen them (yet).

Grand Illusion - Jean Renoir (one of the great great movies...one notch under [or over] Citizen Kane)
Seven Samurai - Kurosawa (a three hour long epic film)
The 400 Blows - Francois Truffaut
This Is Spinal Tap - Rob Reiner (one of my top five knucklehead movies)
The Long Good Friday - John McKenzie
M - Fritz Lang - an awesome thriller
Nanook of the North - killer early documentary. Sorry, Frank Zappa didn't invent Nanook.
Time Bandits - Terry Gilliam (esp. if you're a Gilliam fan)
Henry V - Laurence Olivier (one of the best Shakespeare movies ever)
Fishing with John - John Lurie (a very funny and strange sort of travelogue, with Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, and Willem DaFoe)
Brazil - Terry Gilliam (This movie is one of a kind)
The Harder They Come - Perry Henzell (and dark, and very cool plunge into Shantytown, Reggae, and Rasta, with a great soundtrack)
The Blob - The classic spooky movie
Do the Right Thing - Spike Lee (his best movie, I think)
Playtime - Jacque Tati (I wonder if I would still like Tati movies?)
8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
Monterey Pop Festival (Hendrix, Joplin, Otis Redding and others broke out)
3 Women - Robert Altman
Slacker - Richard Linklater (an Austin movie--people seem to love it or hate it; the second time I saw it, everyone in the room fell asleep)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou - Wes Anderson (my favorite Wes movie)
Murmur of the heart - Louis Malle
Dazes and Confused - Richard Linklater
Stranger than paradise - jim jarmusch
Traffic - Jacques Tati
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - Luis Buñuel
Spartacus- Stanley Kubrick
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[see, also, A List of Lists on All This Is That]

George Lucas calls Spiderman 3 "silly"

According to Fox News: George Lucas described Spiderman 3: "It's silly. It's a silly movie," he said. "There just isn't much there. Once you take it all apart, there's not much story, is there?" Lucas then described how he would be making a couple more Star Wars movies, with characters others than the Skywalker family.

I'm not a particular fan of the series, but I saw the last couple (which are considered among the first couple...huh?), and they were silly. He should have let it rest, but it looks like he's determined to run what's left of his franchise right into the ground. . .
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