Wide Angle Lenz [beta]

The last two nights I watched Back to the Future parts II and III with some friends. This sparked some good debate and discussion on the theory of time travel, pioneering filmmaking techniques and, of course, how badass the Delorean is.

I never knew before this week, but the technique of an actor performing two different characters in the same scene was pioneered in the Back to the Future trilogy. Having a majority of the times I’ve seen these films be while I was growing up, I didn’t know that. It was really cool to watch the films again having a bit more knowledge about filmmaking. Looking more closely now, I can see when a blue screen is used to get Michael J. Fox in the scene multiple times – slight differences in lighting.

By the way, I had no idea that Michael J. Fox played his future daughter in Back to the Future II. Growing up I never once questioned the character’s masculinity, but watching the film again I can totally see that it’s Fox trying to act feminine. It’s pretty funny.

The topic of how awesome Christopher Lloyd is came up, and that we wish we had the chance to see him on screen more often. I don’t think I’ve seen him in a role I didn’t enjoy watching – to a certain extent, his role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit scared the shit out of me as a kid. So not even two hours after talking about this with my friends I watch episode 14 of the West Wing’s sixth season and the guest star is Christopher Lloyd. His role is great too! He plays a very eloquent, intelligent professor and constitutional writer. It was great to see him throughout the episode, and made me wish even more that we had the chance to see him on the big screen more often. He’s obviously keeping busy with productions (as you can see on his IMDB profile) but I’d love to see him in some more mainstream projects.

We discussed the theory of time travel and where we would want to go too. It’s hard for me to decide where I would want to go; there are so many time periods that would be awesome to see. The Renaissance, Medieval and the Industrial Revolution eras are the first to come to mind. I can’t help but think about all the preparations that would have to be done in order to go though. You can’t risk catching a disease from those times, so do you take a bunch of antibiotics beforehand or bring a bunch with? Then there’s protecting yourself if people are hostile to you, and the dressing to fit. On top of all that there’s making sure you don’t screw up the whole space-time continuum thing – kind of a big deal.

If you could go anywhere in time where would you go?