LOOPER (2012) is a good time-travel thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a present-day assassin working for a 30-years-from-now crime syndicate: Forensic science has reached the point where they can’t hide bodies so they time-toss victims back to the present and dispose of them here. As part of the job, each “looper” is eventually assigned to “close the loop” by executing his future self. However when future JGL Bruce Willis comes back, he remembers his own execution and comes prepared to avoid it—and then change history by going Terminator on the future crime lord who will eventually murder Willis’ wife. Not perfectly logical (despite mob boss Jeff Daniels’ insistence they mustn’t disturb the future, they do quite a bit of it), but well-enough constructed and solidly performed to satisfy me. Emily Blunt and Piper Perabo play women caught up the chaos.“I’m from the future and I’m telling you—learn Chinese.”
WHISKY GALORE (1949) is a delightful Ealing Studios comedy about a tiny Scots island cut off from its whisky by wartime rationing until a cargo boat crashes with 50,000 cases—which the stuffy head of the local Home Guard is determined the locals won’t get their hands on (this would double bill well with Passport to Pimlico, another Ealing film about getting around wartime rationing). Both funny and charming—it reminds me of the argument made by one book on Ealing that the core of their best films is about community, this one being dotted with colorful characters such as a dour Scots woman and a sergeant who’s all too willing to let the locals have their way. Gordon Jump plays a shy boy given courage by Demon Rum. “I have been told there are cannibals in Africa, but nobody is going to teach my son to eat human flesh!”
The fifth season of PRIMEVAL has the team falling apart as Abby and the time-traveler Matt become convinced that Guest Scientist Alexander Siddig’s experiments with the time-bending anomalies will bring about the apocalypse Matt came back here to stop; Conner, meanwhile, assists Siddig’s research in the belief it’s going to help the world. While the monster-hunting core of the show is getting a little worn (the premise being that the anomalies keep popping prehistoric and occasional far-future horrors into our time), the avert-the-future story worked pretty well (and brings about a return for their best monster, the predatory future bat-men). While I’d have been fine if they’d wrapped up with averting the apocalypse, I’m sure I’ll catch another season if it comes.
THE HUNCHBACK ASSIGNMENTS is a steampunk Y/A by Arthur Slade in which a shapeshifting hunchback child is recruited by a covert British agency as a spy, then goes up against a ring of mad scientists (including what appears to be an alt.Dr. Jekyll) creating the Ultimate Weapon to take down the British government. Good; I’m guessing later volumes will reveal spymaster Mr. Socrates’ dedication to preserving the British Empire makes him just as Dark as the Clockwork Society he’s fighting here.
THE LITTLE BOOK OF PLAGIARISM by Richard Posner looks at what, exactly constitutes plagiarism and how it differs from copyright infringement, who if anyone it hurts, the flaws in the standard plagiarism defense (that the writer completely forgot the idea for his latest book wasn’t his) and the many venues in which it’s uncontroversial (“Judges usually rely on clerks to write their decisions but nobody accuses judges of plagiarism.”). I think some of Posner’s analysis of why plagiarism is more of an issue now than past centuries (Posner blames it economics, on the grounds that a crowded marketplace makes it more controversial when someone scams you away from the competition) is pretty weak—it’s true Manet lifted directly from past works to create Impressionist paintings like OLYMPIA but that has more to do with Manet’s radical reworking than a lack of interest in originality. Interesting nonetheless, but the book Stolen Words was more entertaining on this topic.
