There's Sometimes a Buggy

  In our second holiday 'cast, we look at a couple of movies influenced by the classic tales/tellings of last year's episode. First, SCROOGED (1988) gives a Reagan-era spin to the Dickens standard, and also prepares Bill Murray for GROUNDHOG DAY (a great time-travel comedy that we've already 'casted about). Then, THE FAMILY MAN (2000) stars a shockingly subdued Nicholas Cage in a movie that nods t...

Elise and Dave consider a narratively complex alternate reality extravaganza, MR. NOBODY (2009), and a time travel movie with a complex, A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP (2011). Each film offers a different answer to the question: are we doomed by our radical freedom of choice or our radical lack of it? Elise gets out the knives. Dave soft-pedals frantically. In the feedback section, we take David O. Selzni...

Elise and Dave look at two late-90s, low-budget, little-known indies, the high- concept/single-gag (depending on your point of view) MAN OF THE CENTURY (1999) and the ahead-of-its time (linearly speaking) THE STICKY FINGERS OF TIME (1997). Frank Gorshin's presence in the former film occasions autobiographical digressions about your hosts' abortive adventures in screenwriting. Dave inexplicably neg...

Dave and Elise are assigned to guide you through the "bloody-minded impenetrability" (in the words of THE SCI-FI FREAK SITE) of obscure, no-budget British TV cult show SAPPHIRE AND STEEL (1979-82), about the strangest time police possibly in the history of the concept. In "Assignment 1," sometimes known as "Escape Through a Crack in Time," a cozy, isolated bourgeois household is invaded by the hor...

Dave and Elise concentrate on one movie, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014), in this episode, in order to leave time for grappling with mixed feelings about the cinematic legacy of superhero comics. We even went back to the original texts (Uncanny X-Men #141 and #142), just to get into the proper spirit of this thing. Then it's on to Bryan Singer's opus. Is Peter Dinklage's performance as Bolivar T...

In this “sampler” 'cast we consider three classic-series TWILIGHT ZONE episodes, “Walking Distance,” “A Stop at Willoughby,” and “The Trouble with Templeton,” which cover a range of narrative possibilities for time-travel scenarios of longing for the personal or cultural past. But what does it have to do with Freud's death drive? Or Leslie Fiedler's interpretation of American masculinity in LOVE A...

David and Elise nearly expire on a ludicrously hot Labour Day in order to record our labour of love and bring you our discussion of two spec-fic curiosities from Hollywood's classical era that confirm last episode's Lynchapalooza as central to our topic. We propose DANGEROUS CORNER (1934), based on a play by "time-slip" dramatist and theorist J. B. Priestley, as the missing link between Henry Jame...

A very special extravaganza in which Dave and Elise return to themes of temporal strangeness, alternate universes, transdimensional beings, and doubling in David Lynch. We contemplate how Laura Dern in INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is like Scott Bakula in QUANTUM LEAP, and how the final section of MULHOLLAND DR (2001) might be like the alternate universe in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. If you are a person who ca...

In this episode of the podcast, Dave and Elise contemplate two movies about time travel and the military, one of which takes us from WWII to the 80s (THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT, 1984) and the other in the opposite direction (THE FINAL COUNTDOWN, 1980). We contemplate Nancy Allen's power to soothe Dave and Martin Sheen's weird second-hand Stockholm effect on Elise, and prove not to know such basic...

What happens when Jane Austen meets Back to the Future? In LOST IN AUSTEN (2008), a modern-day Pride and Prejudice fan travels to the fictional past and tries not to screw up the canon pairings, but it's hard when you're irresistible to every man in the story, and some of the women. Dave and Elise try to figure out if Mary Sue can ever be an adequate substitute for Elizabeth Bennet, and whether th...

It's sequel time on Another Kind of Distance as Elise Moore and David Fiore tackle Alan Taylor's Terminator Genisys (2015). We attempt to peel away its  Primer -like layers of plot complexity and find ourselves wondering if the writers even realize that those layers are there. Is it possible that they forgot to cast the "prime" mover of the alternate universe that takes shape in this film? Also: D...

In this episode Dave and Elise accompany Woody Allen on his temporal travels, to the past (MIDNIGHT IN PARIS) and future (SLEEPER), and discover, without much surprise, that he likes the past better. Find out why Woody Allen has it in for utopias, why Elise has it in for Woody Allen, and why Dave and Elise think that MIDNIGHT IN PARIS may be the ultimate Valium movie. Also – we celebrate the recei...

The two movies Elise Moore and David Fiore discuss in this episode epitomize the maxim, “If at first you don't succeed...”. In Groundhog Day , Bill Murray, at the splendid height of his original sarcastic comedic persona, is given apparently limitless chances to accept limitation and adjust his attitude, which is the amount he needs; while the curious Edge of Tomorrow examines the ways in which th...

Dave and Elise contemplate two movies that share a warped sense of time and humour and the kind of reticence about meaning and what's even actually happening that induces hyperinterpretation. In the process we discover that we can talk about a David Lynch film for two hours even when it's not one of our favourites.  We need your help figuring out what's happening in these movies - the time travel,...

In Part 2 of our Nimoy tribute, we look at two TV episodes dealing with time travel romance. If you've been listening to the show for a while (or even just listened to the first episode), you may already suspect that time travel + romance =/= good times all around. We contemplate the problems for writers of tragedy created by having a time-travelling hero. Also, Elise would like to apologize once...

In this episode we join the rest of the internet in paying tribute to Leonard Nimoy and his indelible creation, Mr. Spock, by looking at two time-travel movies in which he plays a key role. First we look at the Nimoy-conceived-and-directed Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), a lighthearted adventure in which Spock discovers his affinity for humpback whales and his uncanny naivety seems to spread...

"Come with us if you want to listen!" Elise Moore and David Fiore examine James Cameron's (and James Mostow's) Terminator mythos, which offers several different perspectives on the time travel story. Is this a loop narrative? An alternate universe tale? Depends which entry in the series you happen to be watching.  Join us for another lengthy podcasting triathlon! Along the way, Elise will delight...

In their first podcast of 2015, Elise Moore and David Fiore examine a pair of wistfully off-kilter comedies that are lightly haunted by the suggestion of temporal alterity. First up, we've got Brad Anderson's Happy Accidents  (2000) , which is about the closest thing to a Capra time travel comedy-drama that you are ever likely to see, complete with a Mr. Deed (Vincent D'Onofrio) and with Marisa To...

Season's Greetings from Another Kind of Distance! We've got an extra special (or, at any rate, an extra long) episode for you this time out. Our chronogically confused Christmas begins with the great Alastair Sim version of Dickens' Christmas Carol , which hit British screens as  Scrooge  in 1951. Then we try our hands at giving out wings by wringing all of the meaning we can out of one of the fin...

In an AKOD first,  Elise Moore and David Fiore cover a film that is playing at your local cinema right now (unless you're listening to this in the future - and, if so, I hope you like corn).  It's Christopher Nolan's  Interstellar ! Starring Matthew McConnaghy, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, some robots, and a whole bunch of other people who wanted to hang out with the Nolan broth...

Hello everyone! This evening, Elise Moore and David Fiore accompany a pair of distraught time troopers through the Foucauldian looking glass, wondering the whole time whether any of this stuff is really happening. Our first film is Terry Gilliam's justly-celebrated  12 Monkeys (1995) , starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt. Yes, it's based on Chris Marker's La jetée , but we'll get...

Rev your volume up to 88 and get set for our marathon discussion of all three Back to the Future films! Spoiler alert - these films have some pretty serious problems - perhaps best exemplified by Elisabeth Shue's TWO MOVIE-long nap! Back to the Future II makes About Time seem like a major advance in gender representation. But for better or worse, David Fiore and Elise Moore grew up in the 1980s, a...

This is the one you've been waiting for! Elise Moore and David Fiore tackle two of the preeminent weisentimer puzzle films in the chrono canon (note: one of these puzzles comes complete with missing pieces).  First up is Nacho Vigolando's  Timecrimes  (2007) , featuring Karra Elejalde, Barbara Goenaga (tellingly cast-listed as "La Chica en el Bosque" - although we were just calling her The Cyclist...

This episode, Elise Moore and David Fiore try to stop time and pause to reflect upon what has come before. We explore a few scientific theories regarding the possibility of time travel (from a lay perspective, of course), and then wade into the narratological uses of time in the movies we've watched with you. We hope former fellow Torontonian Northrup Frye would be proud of our efforts to anatomiz...

It's Rom-Chron time on Another Kind of Distance! Elise Moore and David Fiore confront the ecstasies and the banalities of quixotic, tick-tockic love amongst the comfortable classes. On the menu this week: a glimpse of the ways in which the amnesia narrative and the time travel narrative proper become virtually indistinguishable; some discussion of the relationship between subjectivity and timeline...