Sperhauk found Timecrimes, or Los Cronocrímenes as it's known in Spain, on NetFlix and took a chance. It's a time travel film from 2007 by first time director Nacho Vigalondo. He also plays the science guy that has a time machine. He's actually not allowed to use it but that doesn't stop him from repeatedly sending Hector back in time about an hour. Hector is the main protagonist. He comes home with a table for his wife. She puts it together and takes it into their new home which is being painted and fixed up. Nice place, interesting looking and isolated in the country side. The wife leaves to go get groceries and Hector, plunked down in a lawn chair, is watching the woods with his binoculars when he sees a woman remove her top. Curious he heads for the woods where he finds the woman naked and unconcious. He's attacked and stabbed by the bandaged guy on the poster. He runs away, breaks into a house, and gets a message from a walkie talkie. It tells him he needs to go up the hill where he'll be safe. There Nacho sends him into the past about an hour. Hector 2 sees himself and gets all bugged that his wife is over there with "that thing". This is one of the many things that annoys me about Hector. "That thing" is him. WTF is he thinking. The science guy tells him he has to follow the previous timeline or things will go bad for Hector. He takes the white car from the lab and pauses on the road. He's hit by a red car and the white car falls off the road into a tree. He's pretty screwed up and his head is bleeding. He puts on a bandage and it turns out he's the pink headed man in the poster. He stabs himself, because it's happened already, which causes a time paradox. There's no reason to stab himself except it's already happened. By the time this was going we were chatting and complaining about the movie and Hector. He creates another paradox when he orchestrates the death of the young girl who removed her top in the first part of the movie. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia illustrating the problem better than I can. You can read the whole entry by clicking on the link in the movie's title above.
- The paradox of "self-causality". If every result is defined to have a preceding cause, there are extremely few, if any, known events in the universe that can be caused by nothing. Self-causality—or causation from nothing—is impossible, according to the conservation laws of physics. (Arguably weird things like the "big bang" or "quantum foam" --the random creation and extinguishing of sub-atomic particles—might someday be proven to be self-caused.) Without allowing for time travel, every cause precedes the resulting event in time. With time travel allowed, results can occur before their causes. In the film, Hector #1 sees the girl only because Hector #2 placed her into view and caused him to flee, enter the time machine and became Hector #2. Hence the event of Hector #1 seeing the girl was caused by that same event—a cause and effect loop—or impossible self causation. Similarly Hector #2 was tricked into killing the girl by Hector #3, which caused Hector #2 to re-enter the time machine and become Hector #3. Hence the event of the girl dying was ultimately caused by itself.
Compared to the elegant time travel segment in Harry Potter and the Prisioner of Azkaban this is an annoying mess. It's a plodding science fiction thriller about a guy who isn't a likeable character at all. He takes, and wrecks, all the vehicles in the area around his house and he causes the death of a poor girl who was just riding by on her bike. I'm in the minority here, people on the IMDb seem to be dazzled by the three Hectors and gave it a mindboggling 7.2, but I found it unrewarding. I wouldn't bother to see it again.
Joe brought How To Train Your Dragon and I enjoyed it. I was curious. I had seen the trailer. Jay Baruchel voices our hero Hiccup. He's a fish out of water in his own Viking village. That's him in the middle of the other Dragon Slayer trainees. Hiccup has a bit of a crush on Astrid. That's her in the red spiked skirt. She's not too into our Hiccup. The village is a pretty place, nestled in a little bay, snug in it's cozy harbour, but for one thing. The steady stream of dragon attacks. These are fire breathing dragons who can light up the village with such massive explosions that you'd think you're in a Michael Bay movie. Hiccup wants to be a dragon slayer but he's a bit on the weak side. He's a thinker who can make things. Not a skill much revered in his village. His dragon catching net launcher captures a highly dangerous night fury. He can't kill the dragon and lets it go. The dragon's tail is damaged and he can't fly. Hiccup befriends the dragon and helps him regain his flying ability by building a false tail. It needs to be remotely controlled by a human. Their team work helps Hiccup learn about the dragons and that eventually leads the village to a new age. It's a pretty movie with lots of dragons flying about.
There are lots of vertical surfaces in the movie and big spires of rock. It looks cool. Some of the movie is downright beautiful. There's lots of action and comedy. The characters are kind of cute, especially the dragons. Like Hagrid, I'm a sucker for some dragons. There are a plethora of them. This is a dvd that I'll be looking for when the price drops.
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