PRIMER (2004) – HAPPY NEW YEAR and yes, I’m just childish enough to pat myself on the back for that play on words in the title of this blog post. With that out of the way I know I’m late to the game when it comes to Primer but my own skepticism about it made me keep it on the back burner in terms of priority movies to watch.
Since New Year’s Eve into the New Year is the closest any of us ever get to time travel I figured today was the perfect time to review this controversial film. Primer was made for just $7,000 (really) by Shane Carruth, who starred, wrote, directed, edited, arranged the music and pretty much did everything but wash the cars of his collaborators.
The film’s 2:1 film ratio has become legendary and decisively proved the benefits of having your cast repeatedly rehearse scenes before letting the cameras roll. Film stock ain’t cheap and anything an independent producer can do to save on it is pure gold.
Shane Carruth stars as Aaron and David Sullivan portrays Abe. The pair are engineers who – on the side – run a tech business out of Aaron’s garage. As a side effect of a project they are working on the two discover a means of time travel.
Don’t roll your eyes and assume that Primer is just another use of this well-worn concept. I made that mistake and put off watching this excellent and thought-provoking movie for far too long.
You can ignore reviews which claim the opening half of this 77 minute film is boring. Literally even the most casual exchanges of dialogue have bearing on the overall story. It’s not really a spoiler at this late date to point out that the very beginning of the film is NOT the “first run” of the events in the storyline, as a viewer discovers later. Continue reading
NUMBER ONE – Two gods of Bellona and Rennell Islands – NGUATUPU’A AND TEPOUTU’UINGANGI – As part of my look at gods and goddesses from various Polynesian island groups.
NUMBER THREE – A look at how CHE GUEVARA AND GUY FAWKES came to symbolize the opposite of what they were in real life. CLICK 
NUMBER ONE – BEATRICE THE POISON WOMAN – A Halloween Season look at the beautiful but deadly hybrid woman from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s horror story Rappaccini’s Daughter. CLICK 
NUMBER THREE – FRANKENSTEIN’S ARMY (2013) – A review of this look at a horror movie about a descendant of the original Dr Frankenstein. This Doctor F is reanimating custom-weaponized corpses for the Nazis during World War Two. CLICK 
NUMBER FIVE – THE SOUL OF KOL NIKON (1913) – My Halloween Season review of this neglected novel by female author Eleanor Farjeon. The story deals with a Changeling using his supernatural command of music to try to steal a soul for himself from a human victim. CLICK 
NUMBER SEVEN – THE BOURNE IDENTITY – My review of ROBERT LUDLUM’S NUMBER TWO NOVEL, about amnesiac intelligence agent Jason Bourne. CLICK 
GHETTO BLASTER (1989) – Rose Marie, best known as Sally Rogers on the ancient Dick Van Dyke Show, started in movies at age 4 in 1927 billed as “Baby Rose Marie.” Legend holds she was in a Vitaphone SOUND short released as an opener for The Jazz Singer, usually credited as the first feature-length movie with sound. 
I’ll start the review-proper for Ghetto Blaster by pointing out that you should buy this film for the Battlestar Galactica (Original Series) fan in your life. Richard Hatch from that show tries to portray the kind of grim and relentless inner city vigilante made iconic by Charles Bronson in Death Wish. 
NUMBER ONE – With superheroes practically taking over pop culture it should come as no surprise that my look at Marvel Comics’ character Mantis was a huge hit. 
NUMBER THREE – David Lynch’s excellent Twin Peaks returned for 18 more episodes that continued the story from the original 1990-1991 series, the 1992 film Fire Walk With Me and 2014’s The Missing Pieces. 
NUMBER FOUR – The American Left has come to love censorship as much as the religious right always did. 
NUMBER FIVE – Balladeer’s Blog was examining various espionage novels by Robert Ludlum, the man behind the Jason Bourne books. 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2012) – This adaptation of A Christmas Carol was a noble effort to try something different that was not just a gimmick. Ignore the negative IMDb reviews which accuse this adaptation of using “Elizabethan language.” They’re off by a few hundred years, since in reality the dialogue follows that in the Dickens novel of 1843. 
NUMBER ONE – My two-part look at NEW DEMOCRAT SLOGANS was a comedy hit. This “Party of CEO’s” has come to deserve its reputation for having driven away all of us except pompous snobs and hilariously pretentious asses. 
NUMBER TWO – One of Balladeer’s Blog’s most popular Ancient Science Fiction posts EVER was this look at a very obscure 1896 work and its fascinating female lead. 
NUMBER THREE – Legendary Camille Paglia was in rare form this year, speaking on behalf of all of us who left the Democrats in disgust in recent years. 
NUMBER FOUR – For Frontierado Season this year one of my blog posts dealt with the story-telling possibilities inherent in a neglected aspect of Mormon history. 
NUMBER FIVE – Another western figure got a lot of attention in July, a gunslinging lady who braved Old California on a stage coach route. 
NUMBER ONE – Hatred is in the DNA of the Democrats. One of the worst ways that it manifests itself is the way Democrats are so often the cause of the atrocities they then blame on everyone else. Slavery, the Trail of Tears, Japanese Internment, the Ku Klux Klan, the Spoils System, Tammany Hall, Jim Crow, you name it. 
NUMBER TWO – From my Ancient/ Vintage Science Fiction category came this review of an unjustly neglected tale. The Nth Man is a gigantic, Kaiju-sized man with green shell-like skin who does battle with military and political powerhouses in America of the “future” 1930s. 
NUMBER THREE – The pampered white children of privilege who pretend to be “the resistance” (LMAO) against President Donald Trump are a joke. They are the oppressors while trying to pretend they are the oppressed.
NUMBER FOUR – Alien: Covenant had been out for awhile by this point and Balladeer’s Blog reviewed it as the comedy that it is. 
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