Review: Looper

Any conversation dealing with time travel it can easily become an endless debate  about the technicalities, ethics, paradoxes and impossibilities of practicing time travel. Time travel is messy and because of this it is a bit of a cheat when used as a literary device. It can get the writers into very tricky situations when the impossibilities begin to pile up, or it can be used to completely wipe a slate and start anew. Few writers have ever gotten it right, but when they do it is usually beautiful. Rian Johnson’s Looper gets it right within its own world. Unlike most time travel stories, Looper embraces the paradoxes. But more surprisingly it wipes them away in a rather clever - and intense - conclusion.

Review: IN TIME

Value is a thing of faith. Cash is physically worth nothing but paper, ink, and in the case of coins, metal. Sometimes, as in the case of the penny the metal is worth more than the value attached to the object; the copper in a penny is worth 1.5 cents approximately, but most of the times it is the reverse; a $100 bill costs about 50 cents to make. I won’t claim to be an expert in economics, but I do understand why some people argue that we should go back to the gold standard (whatever that means), or just get rid of cash altogether and switch to digital points as if life were a video games. I'm pretty sure we are much closer to actually doing the latter than going back to metallic standards.


In Time, comes up with an intriguing proposal about using our lifetime as -basically- cash. A cup of coffee costs ninety minutes of your life, a taxi to midtown a year. In this world the rich are semi-immortal, with a million years to spend, and the poor live day by day; spending most of their daily wages on sleep just so they can rest in order to earn their hours the next day. 

Ad Classics: RIDLEY SCOTT, "1984" MACINTOSH

           We started posting these “ad classics” under the philosophy that a commercial is a movie told in thirty seconds (sometimes up to two minutes). And because today many movies, like Transformers or New Year’s, are so overwhelmed by product placement that they have essentially become two-hour ads. We have chosen to revive the ‘ad classics’ positing to collect a few more samples of good storytelling, even if they are for commercial ends.

            Ridley Scott is perhaps one of the greatest filmmakers working today. Right after working on Blade Runner, Scott was commissioned by Apple Computers to create the Super Bowl Spot for the release of the first Macintosh. At the time computers were regarded as objects from an Orwellian dystopia by most people. This was because the personal computer had not yet come into existence; the Macintosh was going to change that.

            Apple has always been known for great advertising. They gave us The Misfits Poem and Justin Long with their campaign “I Am A Mac”.  This is the ad that started it all. The  ad cost nearly 1 million dollars, an amount previously unheard of in advertising. Not only was it a marketing success (the ad was re-broadcasted in every subsequent talk show, generating millions in free advertising) but it also shows why we are all so excited for Ridley Scott return to Sci Fi with Prometheus. Enjoy:

The top image is from a "remastered" version where an iPod was added to the runner. George Lucas is not the only person who goes back to re-tweak masterpieces.