Author Dennis Higgins
  • About the Author
  • Angels
  • The Nurses
  • Parallel Roads
  • Time Pilgrims Trilogy
  • Pennies From Across the Veil
  • The Vacant Lot
  • The Old Scrapbook
  • Blog
  • The Writer's Apprentice
  • Steampunk Alice
  • The Adventures of Black Lace
  • Katya and Cyrus
  • Almost Yesterday
  • Tomorrow's Borrowed Trouble
  • Confessions of an Internet Scammer
  • From Here to Eternity - Fan Club

Pleasantville – More Than Just a Time Travel Film

4/27/2015

5 Comments

 
Picture
Out of all the time-travel movies I’ve ever seen, Pleasantville, released in 1998 is the most unique. This movie is wonderfully crafted, both visually and conceptually. In my opinion it is a masterpiece of cinematic beauty.

Pleasantville was the brainchild of Gary Ross who wrote, directed and produced the film. It had an all-star cast including:

Tobey Maguire as David/Bud
Reese Witherspoon as Jennifer/Mary Sue
Jeff Daniels as Bill Johnson
Joan Allen as Betty Parker
Paul Walker as Skip Martin
Jane Kaczmarek as David and Jennifer's mother
Don Knotts as a TV repairman
William H. Macy as George Parker
J. T. Walsh as Big Bob

Picture
Reese Witherspoon and Tobey Maguire as Mary Sue and Bud.
The basic, surface plot was just this: David (Tobey Mcguire) is a nerdy teen who loves an old 1950s TV show called Pleasantville (a made-up show resembling any typical show of the era, such as Make Room for Daddy or Leave it to Beaver). He is set to watch a Pleasantville marathon on a cable network called TV Time. His promiscuous twin sister, Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) wants to watch a concert with her date, in hopes of having sex with him. The siblings fight over the TV remote and break it. Suddenly a TV repair man (Don Knotts) comes to the door and realizing that David is a Pleasantville expert, hands him a special remote, with what he says has a little more “Umph”. 

Picture
David and Jennifer once again physically fight over the remote, whisking them into the TV and putting them into Pleasantville, circa 1958. At this point David and Jennifer become Bud and Mary Sue Parker. Bud of course gets into his new role but Mary Sue doesn’t want any part of it, as she looks down at her black and white hands, stating, “Look at me, I’m pasty.” 

Picture
"Honey, I'm Home." - William H. Macy as George Parker.
Picture
Joan Allen as Betty Parker - William H. Macy as George Parker
Picture
PicturePaul Walker as Skip Martin
Mary Sue is still the promiscuous girl Jennifer always was, so she gets Skip Martin (Paul Walker) to take her to Lover’s Lane. After one night with her, small bits of color begin to pop up in Pleasantville. As Skip regales his classmates and team members of his night with Mary Sue, they all start to miss their hoops and eventually all the kids find themselves at Lover’s Lane. At first it is believed that sex is what's changing them into color, but Mary Sue, herself, remains black and white. It isn't until she discovers her true passion of reading books that she also turns to color. Passion is what was changing the town and the people to shades of real color.

Slowly, color starts working its way into the town, bit by bit.


Picture
Picture
But there are those in Pleasantville who don’t like the change and decide to make certain things illegal to try and maintain the town to the so-called utopia they believed it was.

Quote from Big Bob (J. T. Walsh): “People, people.... I think we all know what's going on here. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. It seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.”


Picture
Betty trying to hide the changes in herself.
That was the basic premise of the movie, but it is the deeper meaning behind the film that makes it a masterpiece in my eyes. First I will tell you the creator’s interpretation, then I will give you mine.

Gary Ross stated, "This movie is about the fact that personal repression gives rise to larger political oppression...That when we're afraid of certain things in ourselves or we're afraid of change, we project those fears on to other things, and a lot of very ugly social situations can develop."

Here is my take on the film. It was about America (or the world) in the 1950s. There was a status quo in the country and conservative values. But as the 1950s gave way to the turbulent 60s, changes started to take place. ("The times, they are a changin'." – Bob Dylan) With these inevitable changes brought passion as people began to live what was truly inside of them. Kids experimented and women found their independence. But with those changes, also came problems, growing pains which brought about riots, protests, and fights with those unwilling to let go of the past. 


As a child of the 60s myself, I identified with those wanting to change, but I also felt deeply for the ones who became afraid of these changes. Their whole world and existence was going away. I remember watching an episode of the sixties-based TV show, The Wonder Years. The daughter in the show was changing, quitting college, and moving in with her boyfriend. It was painful to watch the parents who didn't know how to handle the situation and had to just let it happen with great sadness. 

Picture
Picture
Pleasantville showed all these emotions, changes, and fears, sometime erupting in bigotry and violence.

This movie is chocked full of metaphors and it is fun to find them while watching. For instance, there is a strong element of the Civil Rights problem that occurred in the 1960s. 


Also, in one scene, Bud, who hasn't turned color yet, is being tempted by his girlfriend to partake in an apple which had turned red. 

Picture
Picture
The end is bittersweet. The entire town of Pleasantville has turned to color, people are living their passions but not everyone is happy. The film ends with the Parkers, now separated, asking the question, “So what's gonna happen now?” followed by the answer, “I don’t know.”

Pleasantville also had a great soundtrack with an original score by Randy Newman, who I felt came a long ways since Short People and Welcome Back Kotter.

Other songs included:

"Across the Universe" - Fiona Apple
"Dream Girl" - Robert & Johnny
"Be-Bop-A-Lula" - Gene Vincent
"Lawdy Miss Clawdy" - Larry Williams
"Sixty Minute Man" - Billy Ward and His Dominoes
"Take Five" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
"At Last" - Etta James
"(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" - Elvis Presley
"Rave On!" - Buddy Holly and the Crickets
"Please Send Me Someone to Love" - Fiona Apple
"So What" - Miles Davis
"Suite from Pleasantville" - Randy Newman

Picture
Picture
"Where am I going to see colors like that? Must be awfully lucky to see colors like that. I bet they don't even know how lucky they are." -  Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels) 

Pleasantville is a must-see time-travel film.

Picture
Click Here!
Picture
5 Comments

Timeline - Novel and Movie

4/20/2015

3 Comments

 
Picture
Timeline was Michael Crichton’s entry into the time travel genre. Crichton who had already given us such wonderful novels, such as The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Sphere, and Jurassic Park, published Timeline in 1999.

Picture
Timeline was about a group of history students and archeologists who discover an eye glass lens and a note in modern English at a dig in a French monastery. They both belonged to their teacher, Professor Johnson who had flown back to New Mexico to meet with their funder, an organization called ITC. When the students go back to ITC to find out what happened to their professor, they are told about a machine that will take them back to Medieval France, and are urged to go back to rescue Professor Johnson.

The machine takes the group back to 1357 in Dordogne, France on the eve of a great battle between the English and the French. 


Picture
Michael Crichton died in 2008 at the age of 66.
Crichton has a wonderful way of bringing true technology, history and action into his novels. (The idea of extracting DNA from prehistoric insects preserved in amber was actually being considered at the time he wrote Jurassic Park).

Picture
Timeline, the film was released in 2003 by Paramount Pictures. It cost $80 Million to make, but was considered a box office flop as it only brought in $43 Million. My new bride and I were among those first viewers. I’m not sure why this movie did so poorly. I liked it, but I have to admit, I like it even more after having just seen it for my fourth time. I believe the movie grows on you.

It had a wonderful cast including, the late, Paul Walker of Fast and Furious fame, Frances O'Connor from AI Artificial Intelligence, Mansfield Park and BBC’s, Mister Selfridge, and Billy Connolly, Scottish actor and folksinger who has been around since the 1970s. 


Picture
Frances O'Connor and Paul Walker in Timeline
I am in love with Australian actress, Frances O'Connor…her work and her looks. In this film, she is badass, climbing up walls and jumping from rooftops. I also like the British actress, Anna Friel who plays the French, Lady Clair.

But my wife loves this movie because she says it stars three major hunks.


Picture
Paul Walker
Picture
Gerard Butler
Picture
Billy Connolly
Timeline may have flopped at the box office, but it is a great film to watch on Blue Ray or Netflix. It has my elements for a good time travel flick, romance, a sense of awe of traveling in time, and great conflict and action.

Picture
Anna Friel as Lady Clair.
Picture
3 Comments

Worst Time Travel Movies (Top 10)

4/13/2015

15 Comments

 
I’ve been blogging about time travel movies that I really like. It’s time to post my top 10 worst list of these films. I won’t include books on this list. We authors have a hard enough time with reviews.

I will start with what I call the rip-off movies. These are so-called sequels to great movies. They use the title to get viewers, but they have nothing or little to do with the original films.

The first one is:

Time Cop 2 (The Berlin Decision)

I haven’t blogged about the original Time Cop yet, but that was a great movie. In contrast, Time Cop 2 was a real stinker. This 2003 needless sequel starred: Jason Scott Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith, and Mary Page Keller. Jason Scott Lee is a fine actor and was wonderful in Dragon, The Bruce Lee Story (1993). Because the original Time Cop starred martial arts actor, Jean-Claude Van Damme, this movie attempted to capitalize on this by casting Lee in this failure.

Picture
The second on this list is:

The Philadelphia Experiment II
Picture
This one tries to be a true sequel. It has the character of David Herdig from the first film, now played by Brad Johnson married to Allison (never shown). Click to see my ORIGINAL BLOG POST. He wakes up to a world in which the Nazis had won World War II. Where the original movie was based on true events, this one is pure hogwash. It came out in 1993.

Next is:

The Butterfly Effect 2
Picture
This direct to DVD movie was not as bad as the two I just reported about. But it was not nearly as good as the original, The Butterfly Effect. It starred: Eric Lively, Erica Durance, Dustin Milligan, and Gina Holden. It was much of the same as the original, but with less detail and special effects. Pointless! I understand there was also a The Butterfly Effect 3, but I haven’t seen it, nor do I care to.
Now for the stand-alone stinko time travel films:

Time Changer
Picture
This is a Christian film. Even though I like most faith based messages and I love time travel, the two did not come together well. This movie made me cringe all throughout the viewing. What was surprising is, this 2002 film had an amazing cast, including:  D. David Morin, Gavin MacLeod, Hal Linden, Jennifer O'Neill, and Paul Rodriguez.

Another Day
Picture
The story in this 2001 film wasn’t bad. What made it to my list was the main star, actress Shannen Doherty of Beverly Hills 90210 fame. Nuff Said!

Time Rider

Picture
I wanted to like this 1982 movie. It had a cool front cover and name about a biker riding through the old west. I used to look at it in the old video stores. When I finally got around to renting it, I just didn’t like it. It was silly and improbable. (Yes, there is probable time travel) It starred: Fred Ward.

Time Runner
Picture
With a few exceptions, such as 12 Monkeys and the Terminator movies, I don’t usually care for futuristic movies in which a time traveler comes back to our time. This 1993 film stars Mark Hamill of Luke Skywalker fame, who comes back from the future to stop aliens…bleck!

Planet of the Apes (2001)
Picture
I didn’t hate everything about this remake of the classic 1968 film, but I didn’t love it either. A friend recently pointed out that real apes can’t jump twenty or thirty feet in the air, so how is it, these evolved apes can? SPOILER ALERT: What made the original so good, is the fact the viewer thought it was another planet, yet it ended up being Earth in the future. The end of this one didn’t make any sense at all. Having said this, I absolutely loved the two newer CGI prequels. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014).

Now I’m going to ruffle a few feathers. The next two are considered cult classics and loved by a great many people. I am not among them. I will take your hate mail.
The first one is:

Time Bandits
Picture
Oh, the humanity! I should like this movie. It stars members of the Monty Python group. I love them. It was also co-produced by one of my idols and heroes, George Harrison of the Beatles, who also wrote music for the film. I saw it years ago and I was expecting true, serious time travel. I’m not sure why, I just was. I hated it. So I thought years later, I would try again, knowing that it was silly and to not go in with any other expectations. I guess I just take my time travel too seriously, I still hated it. Funny thing though, I liked Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Hot Tub Time Machine. I’m not sure why I can’t jump on the Time Bandits bandwagon (or sail on their pirate ship). It just bored me. This 1981 British fantasy film was co-written, produced, and directed by Terry Gilliam, and starred Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, David Warner, and Craig Warnock.

…and here’s another movie that people love:

Donnie Darko
Picture
Oh, no. He is not about to diss Donnie Darko! Okay, I have a love/hate relationship with this 2001 film. Awesome cast, including one of my favorite female actors of all time, Mary McDonnel (see my blog post on For All Time). It also had:

Jake Gyllenhaal
Jena Malone
Drew Barrymore
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Katharine Ross
Patrick Swayze
Noah Wyle
Seth Rogen

I loved the music, the story, and the concept. What I hated was the execution of this film. Donnie Darko seemed to go back to the 1980s horny teenager movies, like Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, only with much cruder language (Man, is he a prude). Maybe this was not an accident, as the movie was set in 1988. My favorite part of the movie was the unexpected ending, along with the cover of the Tears for Fears song Mad World by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules.

In some ways, perhaps Donnie Darko should not have made this list, so I add a bonus film which I also didn’t completely hate:

Project Almanac
Picture
This is the most recent time travel film to have made it to the big screen. It was released in January of 2015. At the time of this writing, it isn’t even out on Blue Ray yet. The story itself was good. It took a page from The Butterfly Effect, where small changes affect life in a big way. What I hated about the movie is that it was filmed with that shaky, hand-held camera technique, made popular by The Blair Witch Project (1999). I was literally nauseous, half way through the viewing.

Here is the complete list:

Time Cop 2
The Philadelphia Experiment II
The Butterfly Effect 2
Time Changer
Another Day
Time Rider
Time Runner
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Time Bandits
Donnie Darko
Project Almanac

The bottom line is that I viewed all these movies, because sometimes I prefer watching bad time travel to no time travel.


15 Comments

The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan – Second Sight

4/6/2015

11 Comments

 
Picture
The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan was once another one of those rare films to obtain. I searched for any version of it for years. When it could be found, it was on VHS from Ebay for lots of money. Not anymore. It was finally released on DVD in 2010 by MGM in a limited edition collection. So it’s still a little bit expensive.

Picture
Picture
This was the VHS version I had. It went for over $100.00 on Ebay.
The film was made as a made-for-TV movie and originally aired in 1979. It starred Lindsay Wagner, Alan Feinstein, Marc Singer, and Linda Gray.

Ironic note: Linda Gray was married to Lindsay Wagner’s uncle, Ed Thrasher. So at one time, Gray was Wagner’s aunt by marriage.

This film was made after Lindsay Wagner had become famous for her role in the spin-off series of The Six Million Dollar Man, called The Bionic Woman. But made before Linda Gray played her most famous roll as J.R. Ewing’s wife on Dallas.


Picture
Lindsay Wagner
Picture
Alan Feinstein (Her Husband, Michael Logan) and Lindsay Wagner as Jennie Logan.
Picture
Linda Gray as Elizabeth Harrington.
The movie was a screen adaptation of David William’s novel, Second Sight in which a married couple moves into a Victorian house where Jennie Logan finds a drawing of a period dress. (In the movie, she finds the dress itself) She has the dress made from the sketch and when she puts it on, she is transported to the past where she falls in love with David, the artist who lives in the house.

Picture
Picture
In the film, David is played by Canadian actor, Marc Singer. To add further irony to this story, Singer would later have a role on the TV show, Dallas with Linda Gray.

Picture
Picture
The story is a good time travel romance with a touch of mystery and suspense. Jennie Logan is caught between two times and the two men she loves. The novel is well loved and the movie has been sought after for years.

Picture
Picture
Picture
Dennis Higgins Time Travel books.
Picture
11 Comments

    Author

    Dennis Higgins
    Author of romantic, fun, time-travel stories.

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    May 2022
    March 2019
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.