Great Scott! On this day in 1955 -- in the fiction of "Back to the Future" anyway -- Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) discovered the secret of time travel. In his own words: "I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porcelain was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the sink, and when I came to I had a revelation! A vision! A picture in my head! A picture of this!" This? What is this? It's THIS!
In honor of Dr. Brown's momentous discovery, we've decided to celebrate this day with a small image gallery. Click the image above to check out our flipbook, featuring images of the iconic DeLorean time machine and stars Lloyd, Michael J. Fox and Lea Thompson.
I'm torn by today's eBay Prop-Watch pick. It's suspicious: the seller is very up front about there being no certificate of authenticity. On the other hand, it's from "Back to the Future Part II." Perhaps not the best of the "Back to the Future" movies, but definitely the most imaginative of the three.
See, "Back to the Future Part II" jumps around in time far more than either of the other two. We see present-day 1980s, an alternate present in which Biff's possession of a sports almanac from the future leads to a "Mad Max"-like dystopia, the '50s, the Wild West and -- best of all -- the future. A future filled with flying cars and hoverboards, robot waiters and a one-cola world. Pepsi Perfect is apparently the choice of the next generation. Read more...
Last week’s sad death of Michael Jackson has all of us in the MTV newsroom working overtime these days, for obvious reasons. We already ran a story on MJ’s direct influence in movies and TV including “The Wiz” and “The Simpsons.” What’s even more impressive is the movies he inspired without even appearing in them.
Below are ten classic film moments that would not exist if Michael Jackson never moonwalked across our planet and into out hearts. What’s your favorite? Read more...
Word association time! I only have one, and here it is: DeLorean.
If you didn't respond with "Back to the Future" or some obvious derivation thereof -- Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, flux capacitor, hoverboards, time travel -- then we just don't speak the same language. In the wide world of pop culture, John DeLorean's stainless steel automobile -- the DMC-12 -- is primarily known for its starring role as the time machine in "Back to the Future."
The real story of DeLorean's car and the company that produced it is far more sordid. Enough that the creator will be the subject of a biopic to be produced by Time Inc. Studios and XYZ Films, according to a report in Variety. Read more...
Did “Terminator Salvation” thrill you, bore you or simply tick you off? No matter how you feel, you’ll definitely want to take a look at a feature we just took live over on the MTV Movies page, in which director McG answers some burning plot questions from you guys.
And thanks to the power of the Movies Blog, here are four more questions McG was eager to sink his teeth into. Think of them as bonus features, minus the DVD:
Q: In the earlier movies, Skynet is not aware of Kyle Reese. So, why are they aware of him now? Read more...
by John Constantine
Time travel is simultaneously the most useful and the most destructive tool in the storyteller’s arsenal. Need to bring someone recently and unexpectedly deceased back to the land of the living? Bam! Just go back and save them. Say it’s magic, say it’s a wormhole, say you have a time machine. It’s fantasy, man — you can do whatever you want.
Another classic example: you’re a human-hating artificial intelligence named Skynet and have been enjoying world domination for fifteen lovely post-apocalyptic years. The only problem is this dingus named John Connor. You can’t seem to get your army of robotic Terminators to kill him. Your solution? Send a robot into the past to kill his mom! Wait… that doesn’t make any sense at all. If you already have a time machine, why not just send back all kinds of Terminators to 1862 and have them take over then? That’s the problem with time travel: it never, ever makes any sense. The "Terminator" series, right up to this week's "Terminator Salvation," is one of the worst offenders in this category, creating an entirely new continuity with each new movie. Here are five others that warp the mind. Read more...
J.K. Rowling announced on Thursday (July 31) that "Tales of Beedle the Bard," her brief fictional stories about wizarding within her longer, fictional stories about wizarding, would finally go on sale this Christmas. Here at MTV there was, of course, much rejoicing at this news.
It also got us thinking. Turns out a lot of us here are suckers for the kind of meta-fiction "Tales of Beedle the Bard" represents, what with it being a pretend work getting a real release. But why stop there? We came up with a list of the top five fictional books we'd like to really read next.
"Old Custer" by Eli Cash ( "The Royal Tenenbaums" )
Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this revolutionary book presupposes is ... maybe he didn't? Brilliant. And, besides, book openings don't get better than this: "The crickets and the rust-beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. 'Vámonos, amigos,' he whispered, and threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock. And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight."
Read more...
