Just caught this 30-minute short on Amazon Prime, listed as from 2012 on IMDB and 2017 on Amazon Prime. Well, it is about time travel.Speaking of which - this has to be about the worst title for a time travel movie - short or long - I've ever come across. What happened, the producers got tired?
But otherwise, it's pretty good. The scenario of two old friends in a conversation - not old chronologically but rather old in length of friendship - is a natural for time travel. In fact, although there's a bit of action in this story, the flavor of Time Travelers is a lot like Primer, a now classic time-travel movie in which talk was the main medium (other than the time travel itself).
And the story has some good meta elements, with mentions of not only of time travel but H. G Wells and other writers of the human condition who didn't deal with time travel per se. That's because (at least) one of the two friends is a writer, a science fiction writer, in fact, and the two discuss the thorny issue of plagiarism - thorny, that is, in its largest philosophical context, which is whether anything is really ever truly original.
Names of known and lesser-known works of science fiction are thrown into the conversion. I was happy to hear "Loose Ends" at least half a dozen times - ok, it was just "loose ends," without the caps - since "Loose Ends" was a triple-nominated 1997 novella of mine (for Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Awards), later expanded into a four-part novel.
And there's jealousy not only of writing but love, with one of the two sleeping with the other's wife, which provides a handy motive for murder. But, ok, I've said enough. See the short, try to forget about the title, and enjoy. There's good acting, by the way, by Elliot V. Kotek and Gabe Bettio.
I somehow caught the pilot of The Crossing - a new time-travel series starting in April on ABC - on Hulu, and I came back to file this little report.
A thoroughly satisfying Timeless 2.3 tonight, which featured, among other good things: Orson Welles (or, at least Citizen Kane), Hedy Lamarr, Lucy singing "You Made Me Love You," Lucy and Wyatt finally together, Flynn out of prison via an inter-temporal gambit, and a surprise ending I won't mention until the end in case you don't like spoilers (which, by the way, were mentioned, literally, in this fine episode - as was, come to think it, "
There was a lot of 24 in this episode of Homeland - 7.7, just finished on Showtime tonight - not surprising, given Howard Gordon's role as Executive Producer for both masterful series.
With all the killings these days of expatriate Russians in London - presumably on Putin's orders but what do I know - the doings in Counterpart, and its facsimile to Cold War East and West Berlin, seem ever closer to our own reality.
