Spike Lee: Less Face Shutting, More Time Traveling
By Craig Kennedy - June 17th, 2008; 9:45 pm
Next up for Spike Lee is Time Traveler which he plans to co-write and direct from a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the first African-American Ph.Ds in theoretical physics.
Co-written with Bruce Henderson, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality traces Mallett’s life story from poverty to Ph.D. and of his dream to create a machine that would allow him to travel back in time to save the father he lost when he was 10 years old.
Source: Variety
Filed under: News, Upcoming
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Has all the ingredients for schmaltz. I love it and I’ll see it at first opportunity. Never heard of Mallett but I like that Lee goes out of his way to find these stories.
Huh. This is not what I would expect next from Spike Lee at all, which makes me extremely curious about it.
I didn’t read the memoir, but I have a layman’s appreciation of theoretical physics.
Isn’t “layman” and “theoretical physics” kind of an oxymoron?
I TiVo’d an episode of Nova on Theoretical Physics but never watched it…so that’s about as layman as you can get.
I was hoping someone would appreciate that contradiction.
Put it this way, I like listening to brainiacs talk about how time travel or teleportation might be possible, even though I have no idea what they’re saying.
NOVA’s The Elegant Universe is great, but I think I tried to watch some of it stoned, so I didn’t exactly learn much.
You don’t even need to be stoned to watch What the (bleep) Do We Know, but you’ll feel like you are. I like how much it boldly and blatantly sucks.
Cool of Stephen Hawking to realize a Brief History of Time was over our heads and give us Briefer History of Time. There’s an illustrated version that’s fun if you like migraines.
Waiting for History of Time for Dummies, or hey, maybe a pop-up book. Pop-up worm-holes! Whoa! Would be a great way to reduce overcrowding in schools.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is more my speed. Coming in November. Quantum rom-com.
“but I have a layman’s appreciation of theoretical physics.”
Me too, but I have zero expectation of having that fascination stimulated by a fawning biopic.
Ha Ryan. I like to think I can get my head around some of large scale cosmology, but the quantum stuff is beyond my lay brain. Also, I’m still searching for an explanation of string theory I can truly grasp.
“Me too, but I have zero expectation of having that fascination stimulated by a fawning biopic.”
ahahahhahaha. (crossing Time Traveler DVD off list of potential Sartre Christmas presents…)
Ryan, I couldn’t even make it through an audio book of “What Time Is It?”
“I’m still searching for an explanation of string theory I can truly grasp.”
me, still get tangled up trying to make a cat’s cradle.
speaking of which, I tried to Google “physics for poets” but accidentally typed “physics for pets“.
(This is what I used to try to do in Physics class too: i.e., change the subject.)
Don’t get me wrong Craig, I love time travel (and ScFi) movies but they generally don’t overlap much with more interesting science.
Interesting link Ryan. Can you help me out - what does |\psi_1 \rangle = |e^{-} \mbox{: x-spin} \uparrow \rangle \otimes |\mbox{m: initialized} \rangle mean?
I was laughing at your distaste for fawning biopics
“Can you help me out - what does |psi_1 rangle = |e^{-} mbox{: x-spin} uparrow rangle otimes |mbox{m: initialized} rangle mean?”
Means your keyboard’s fucked up, I think.
sartre loathes Hollywood biopics.
Ahahaha, Ryan.
Sounds like Contact, but swap out Jodie Foster and her dad for Chiwetel Ejiofor (for example) and his dad.
Also I’m guessing it will be relatively alien free.
“Can you help me out - what does |psi_1 rangle = |e^{-} mbox{: x-spin} uparrow rangle otimes |mbox{m: initialized} rangle mean?”
Or you shouldn’t have drank all that cough syrup, sartre.
Mmmmm (hiccup)… cough syrup (hiccup).
Actually, that would be LaTeX language. Which I’m all too familiar with…
My beef if: it’s ok not to understand theoretical physics. I mean, I dropped the course in string theory after a mere two classes, and Hawking’s theory of black hole radiation seems pretty shaky to me. But what bugs me is people who take theoretical physics WAY out of its domain of application and use it to explain totally unrelated things. Or mystify them further, on occasion.
Sorry, that was the (future) theoretical phsyicist in me speaking up (I’ll have my MSc in a little over two months, if everything foes well). As for the cinephile in me: I think this will probably be much too schmaltzy. But who knows, maybe Spike can pull it off.