primer

I don't know where you guys stand on Primer. I wanted to like it. I really did. Sundance liked it enough to award it the Grand Jury Prize in 2004. Made for under $10,000, the labyrinthine time travel story was a Cinderella success story. I was infuriated. To me, it seemed like an exercise in confusing the audience. I'm all for presenting a puzzle for your viewers to piece together, but intentionally dense obfuscation just makes me want to punch the movie in its face. In spite of all that, I respected it. And then it's wunderkind creator, Shane Carruth, vanished.

For years, there were whispers on various message boards about his new project. Carruth was secretive and had completely disappeared from the scene. Now, some six years later, we're starting to get some vague tidbits on his next project, 'A Topiary'.
While I'm a little wary to use a blogspot link as a source, The Playlist does have the most detailed description of the story I've found thus far. Essentially, some kids in a small town find a strange box they call a 'Maker'. It produces little discs they in turn use to build semi-sentient, mechanical beings. Weird.

Last month, the website went live, but there's really not much to it. I'm intrigued. Hopefully all the secrecy isn't masking some muddled, overly-ambitious sophomore slump. Yes, that's more than a bit cynical on my part, but after kicking ass at Sundance, did it really take this long to get made?

If you demanded to know my favorite science fiction sub-genre, the answer would be time travel (although I'm not sure why you're demanding...that's just rude). The Terminator. Lost. Back to the Future. It was my selfish actions that allowed Primer and Timecrimes to make our Best Science Fiction Films of the Decade list and District 9 to not. The concept of displacing yourself in another world that is just your own minus or plus a period of time is simply fascinating to me. However, every time travel movie made before was lacking one thing: HOT TUBS.

Now, this has been rectified. The trailer for the aptly-titled Hot Tub Time Machine has hit Yahoo and it looks pretty damn funny. Like how Primer and Timecrimes used time travel as an excuse to deliver high-concept thrillers, Hot Tub Time Machine uses time travel as an excuse to throw John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry into the 1980s for various ski resort hijinks. The how's of time travel take a definite back seat to a comedic romp through a world of bad fashion and synthesized music.

Word out there is that Hot Tub Time Machine is a very hard R and that this approved-for-all-audiences trailer doesn't even begin to do the film justice, but my interest is piqued. I was sold the moment the ever-hilarious Robinson stole the trailer by turning to the camera and telling us the film's title. SOLD.

Hot Tube Time Machine hits theaters March 19, 2010 and is directed by Steve Pink, who wrote the wonderful Grosse Pointe Blank and directed the tepid Accepted. If this can latch onto the Hangover audience, it could be a sleeper hit.

It's been ten years since we crossed into the seemingly futuristic "Year 2000." While we didn't get moon colonies or hovercars, we did get a collection of amazing science fiction films, both blockbusters and indies. The staff of Sci-Fi Squad has compiled their top ten (okay, eleven) favorite films of the decade, a list that will allow you to nod your head in agreement or spit venom at us in the comments. So now, in alphabetical order...

Children of Men (2006, Dir. Alfonso Cuarón)

The opening scenes of Children of Men plunge the viewer neck-deep into an icy future with an expiration date firmly set. The human race faces extinction because women all over the world have become infertile: no children have been born for a generation. The British government endeavors to stave off chaos by deporting all foreigners, but many of its citizens have already succumbed to hopelessness and despair. Theo Faron (Clive Owen) strides through this terrible new world with a cynical air of resignation until a glimmer of light -- the possibility of a future - turns his head. Adapting a novel by P.D. James, director Alfonso Cuarón and his collaborators (notably cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and production designers Geoffrey Kirkland and Jim Clay) meticulously create a nightmarish future in which the walls are closing in, and then proceed to smash through the limitations of imagination. Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clare-Hope Ashitey, and Julianne Moore bring varying shades of humanity to their ultimately haunted characters. (Peter Martin)