Filling out Michael J. Fox's puffy vest is actor Akshay Kumar, according to rumors. The lovely Aishwarya Rai may also be taking on the role Lea Thompson once played. Rai is so gorgeous, I could easily be talked into seeing this film, but again why make it a remake? Why not just a funny, Bollywood time traveling movie?

The director, Vipul Shah won't be forcing the actors to play teenagers, but I wonder how they will deal with the whole teen angst issues, and of course Biff the bully. Let's hope that it isn't a direct remake of the film because I just can't see how you could have a Back To The Future without "Calvin Klein" showing up to the school sock hop. Many other sites seem to be questioning whether it'll be a page for page translation as well.

The movie production is set to begin this February.

[Real Bollywood]

Prometheus stole fire from the gods but Hollywood nabbed lightning from Zeus himself - and here are the ten best ways they've put those thunderbolts to use.

Create Life
This is the one that started it all. Before Frankenstein, lightning was just a handy way to collect some insurance money. After Frankenstein, it could do anything. Although Mary Shelley's novel provided no description of Victor Frankenstein's methods, the classic 1931 film cemented lightning's place in the popular imagination as the giver of life. Part classical Zeus imagery and part flashy spectacle, the revivifying lightning bolt is now inseparable from Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

Save gas on your DeLorean
Great Scott! The entire plot of the first Back to the Future is centered around a lightning strike, necessary to power the DeLorean and send Marty McFly back to… well, you know. Doc Brown's plan to swap lightning for plutonium to get the necessary 1.21 gigawatts is also a clever nod to the history of technobabble – by the 80s, nuclear power had become the all-powerful pseudo-science of choice, but in the 50s lightning was still the dominant fix-it. Which leads to the most dramatic "should've gotten the longer extension cord" moment in all of movie history.

Scramble tv transmissions and DNA samples
Considering Doctor Who's long history with scientific hand-waving, you'd think they'd be old pros at the lightning fixit. But lightning saves the day in only the very lamest of the new series episodes, proving that we are better off with paradox machines and timey wimey detectors after all.

First, the mildly dreadful Idiot's Lantern climaxed with the Doctor clinging to a tv tower while some flashy pink lightning somehow trapped a face-eating television monster inside a Betamax tape. Then a year later, the exuberantly dreadful Daleks in Manhattan two-parter found the Doctor once again struck by lightning while clinging to a tower, this time the Empire State Building, causing his Time Lord DNA to mix with that of the already genetically awkward Human-Dalek hybrids. Somehow this saves the day. I don't know. I really try not to think about these episodes too much, and neither should you. If you want to try to suss it out, here's a clip:

Leap tall buildings in a single bound
It's a fairly established bit of Superman lore that a freak lightning accident can transfer the Man of Steel's powers to an ordinary human – a random Army private in a 1958 comic, a woman who would become electric villain Livewire in The Animated Series, even Lana Lang on Smallville. But my favorite example is Lois & Clark's "A Bolt From The Blue," in which lightning strikes while Superman is stopping a suicide, turning a 90 pound weakling into a 90 pound Hercules. Metropolis's newest superhero charges citizens for his services, asking Lois to print his price list, but in the end everything is put back to normal thanks to that other great scifi fixit – reversing the polarity.

Control lightning itself
The power to control lightning is not as common a side effect as you might think – so leave it to The X-Files to cover the obvious angle for us. Third season episode "D.P.O." features a young man whose lightning strike left him able to harness the power of electricity. Soon, four other men in town are conveniently struck dead by lightning, bringing in our favorite FBI agents so that poor Mulder's cell phone can get zapped as well. Check out the clip below to see Giovanni Ribisi use his powers to defibrillate Jack Black.

Teach robots to love
Yes, yes, we know: Short Circuit's Johnny 5 bears a remarkable resemblance to his adorable robot successor Wall-E. But while Wall-E gained his sentience through years of isolation on the desiccated Earth, Johnny 5's personality burst into life and into our hearts in a bolt of lightning. The lightning itself isn't the interesting part, so here's Johnny 5 busting out the moves with his friend Stephanie.

Help you cheat on tests
Saved By The Bell's Screech was one of the greatest of the tv nerds – you never knew when he was going to fall out of a locker, masquerade as a woman/teacher/alien to further one of Zack's schemes, or get struck by lightning. The wonderfully cheesy Saturday morning sitcom never shied away from patently ridiculous plot devices – see the famous Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout and, my personal favorite, Zack's 1502 on the SATs – and it only took till the series' third episode for lightning to strike. The bolt hits Screech, of course, who becomes instantly but temporarily clairvoyant, and he uses his newfound lightning-powers to help Zack and the gang cheat on a history exam. Good thing it wasn't earth science!

Magnetize all available metals
You may be seeing Danny Kaye on your tv this time of year in White Christmas, but it was in the 1956 classic The Court Jester that he taught us how lightning can save the day even in vaguely-medieval England. The lead-up to the jousting scene is well-remembered for its impossible tongue twister about the pellet with the poison in the flagon with the dragon, but it wasn't fancy word-play that saved Danny Kaye's neck in the end – just good old-fashioned lightning. The bolt, in all its cheesy 50s special effects glory, magnetizes his suit of armor, giving him that vital edge against his enemy's mace. This is one of the greatest sketches of all time, so if you watch only one of the clips in this article, make it this one.

Magnetize all available non-metals
In another fine instance of random lightning-induced magnetism, Gilligan's Island had good old Gilligan go bowling in a storm and get struck just as he's throwing a strike. Naturally, this causes the bowling ball to become magnetized to Gilligan's hand. If the idea of a rock getting magnetized to a hand sounds implausible to you, just wait for the Professor's explanation at 3:30 on the video, one of the finest feats of technobabble ever recorded. Oh, and when they try to remove the bowling ball? Gilligan turns invisible. Of course.

Score free plastic surgery
And sometimes, lightning just makes you pretty. In a subversion of the classic Frankenstein trope, 1960's monster-family sitcom The Munsters had patriarch Herman Munster – normally green-skinned and bolt-necked like a traditional Frankenstein monster – turn magically, hideously normal after a freak lightning accident in Grandpa's lab. True to family form, the rest of the Munster clan is disgusted by Herman's newly handsome appearance. But fear not! Another lightning strike at the end of the episode turned Herman back into his usual ugly self. Check out the clip to see actor Fred Gwynne in his only appearance as Herman Munster sans make-up.

So next time you walk through a storm, hold your head up high - because if you get struck by lightning, who knows! You just might discover another fantastic power of the sci fi world's greatest fix-it.

Marty's 2015 Trainers

A far cry from the “Air McFlys” Nike released this past summer, these replicas don't powerlace, but they do have that pleasant DeLorean glow. At $607.43, you'd hope you could wear these sneakers for a night on the town, but they are sadly listed as “non-wearable.”

Kirk Gibson Jr. Slugger 2000

The official slambat of quasi-fictional LA Dodger Kirk Gibson Jr., this telescoping bat is ideal for future crime. $173.54.

Hoverboards

Hoverboards are available in Pitbull or Mattel. Neither will get you off the ground, but the Mattel version features a footloop and the Pitbull has extendable rockets. $260.32.

[via Fashionably Geek and Topless Robot]

Science fiction helped to invent product placement, with Steven Spielberg's shoehorning of Reese's Pieces into E.T., making them the official candy of penis-fingered growly alien visitors. But that wasn't actually the first instance of product placement in the genre.

What was? It's hard to say, but one of the earliest instances was the overexposure of Sugar Puffs cereal in 1966's Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. The movie version of the classic Doctor Who story starred Peter Cushing as the eccentric time-traveler, who visits a ruined future London where the killing-machine Daleks have taken over. There's no food or clean water, and the survivors of the Dalek attacks live in total squalor. But hey... did we mention Sugar Puffs cereal is sugary and delicious? Sugar Puffs helped to finance the movie in exchange for having their posters visible throughout.

Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey features prominent references to, and fake ads for, Pan-Am, IBM and Howard Johnson. But those were simply companies that director Stanley Kubrick thought would still be around in a few decades. As far as I can find out, no money actually changed hands — in fact, Kubrick contacted 50 companies and asked them to submit logos and designs for what their products might look like in 40 years.

Also this nifty bit of Marlboro promo in a Superman II fight scene predates E.T. by a couple of years. Kneel before our cool, refreshing smokes:

But yes, E.T.'s focus on Reese's Pieces may well have been the first high-profile example of product placement in a science fiction movie. The media reported widely that M&Ms had turned down the chance to be in the mega-hit, and Reese's Pieces reaped some extra publicity from all the coverage. The candy's sales spiked 65 percent after the film came out, and kids wrote to Steven Spielberg with fan art that featured Reese's Pieces prominently:

But there's also a lot of exposure for Coca-Cola, Coors beer, Speak'n'Spell and Pez candy, among other brands, in the movie. Here are some more screen shots:

Around the same time, TV's Knight Rider showed us the way forward in science fictional product placement: people will always want to buy the supercars they see featured on screen. (See below for Transformers and the new K.R.) General Motors gave the show's makers models of the new Trans Am, which they decked out as KITT, and people rushed to buy their own KITTs.

But E.T. and Knight Rider were like babies, or maybe monks, compared to the Back To The Future trilogy. Seriously, google "Back To The Future worst product placement" and set aside an hour or two to look at all the lists of the "worst movie product placement of all time" that include the BTTF trilogy. References to Pepsi are jammed into the first two films (like when Marty tries to order a Pepsi Free in 1955), his mom thinks he's named Calvin Klein, and the films ram Nike, Pizza Hut, AT&T, Hasbro and Mattel down your throat. (The DeLorean gets a free pass, because it's actually funny.)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home took advantage of its present-day setting to pimp Michelob beer — the official beer of the Federation — and of course, Scotty gets to know an Apple Macintosh better. The Trek franchise liked that product-placement money so much, Kirk and his crew go camping in Levis jeans in Star Trek V. Meanwhile, Apple got sluttier and sluttier, getting some first-class pimping in Mission Impossible and Independence Day — where a Mac notebook is the key to stopping the alien invaders. And then in Blade Trinity, one character goes to the iTunes music store to assemble a playlist for her ipod, which she listens to while fighting vampires. There's also a nice Apple plug in I Am Legend.

Another movie which wins a spot in the product-placement hall of shame is Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone gets woken up in the future, and finds that Taco Bell/Pizza Hut has won the "franchise wars" and now all restaurants are Pizza Huts:

One of the first television series to be accused of shoving consumer items in your face was Babylon 5, which stuck a gigantic Zima sign over the alien boxing ring in the episode "TKO." Series creator J. Michael Straczynski insisted the show got "not a dime" for the Zima plug, and it was just for the lolz.

Men In Black got a lot of flak for its relentless pushing of the Ray-Ban Predator 2 sunglasses, which tripled in sales to almost $5 million after the film came out. And Men In Black II is another proud moment for product whoring. An alien intruder arrives on Earth and needs to assume a form to confuse us humans. So of course her/its eye lights on a Victoria's Secret ad:

And then there's the famous taxi chase in The Fifth Element, which leads up to the cops getting showered with McDonald's cartons. Good thing they still have Mickey D's in this dystopian future:

One trend in the 2000s has been movies featuring fake advertisements for real products as part of the plot, sort of a throwback to 2001. Who helped pioneer this? None other than Steven "Reese's Pieces" Spielberg, who has Tom Cruise walk through a mall full of personalized ads in Minority Report.

Michael Bay also crams The Island full of fake ads, including a Chanel ad that stars the woman Scarlet Johnasson was cloned from.

I, Robot pushed Converse's Chuck Taylor shoes so much, there's a whole Chuck Taylor web page devoted to the film. (The movie gets four Chucks out of five.) I have blotted this movie out of my memory, but apparently all Will Smith does in it is wave his "antique" Chuck Taylors around and talk about how fast he can run away from the killer robots, thanks to his Chucks. If you saw this movie and liked the shoes, could you buy your own pair? Gosh, I think so!

I could be here all day discussing the wealth of car product placement in recent movies. The Lost World: Jurassic Park features a new kind of Mercedes Benz SUV, and Steven "man-whore" Spielberg lovingly, frames a shot so you can see the Mercedes logo really clearly. That Steven. The Matrix Reloaded is such a great Cadillac ad, with its freeway chase, that the DVD even has a featurette about the product placement. Terminator 3 is brought to you by Lexus and Toyota. I Am Legend is one big ad for the Ford Mustang. Transformers is basically built around promoting GM's latest car models, and the second film is already getting buzz around the new Chevy Volt and Corvette models. The Dark Knight is plastered with Ford. We have a new Knight Rider show, which is basically a Ford Mustang infomercial as the car transforms into different Ford models. Fringe is also chock full of Ford.

Heroes has had product placement for Sprint, Apple, Dell and other brands, but also especially Nissan.

A new growing category of product placement in science fiction, rivaling cars and computers: phones. After all, if you're under attack by aliens, you really need to be able to reach your comrades in a hurry. Hence, Jericho's and Heroes' constant whoring for Sprint, Superman Returns' constant Samsung and Virgin whoring, Cloverfield's Nokia love, etc. etc.

It's pretty amazing. Judging from our research, there's been more product placement, and more blatant product placement, in 2008 than in the past few years combined. We could literally spend an entire post just listing all the product placement this year. And it's getting way more blatant, especially on television. As we mentioned above, Sarah Connor Chronicles set a new high-water mark with its hour-long Dodge Ram commercial last week. Smallville devoted an entire episode last spring to Stride gum, and how it can turn you into a superhero. And then there's Eureka, which has apparently been finding ways to feature Degree For Men in every. single. episode. this season, including the one where Degree provides protection from a lethally hot second sun.

Where will it end? How much lower can we go? In the interests of ironic dystopian amusement, I can hardly wait to find out.

Additional reporting by Katharine Duckett.

We've labeled all the futuristic features of this home, and color-coded it so you can see which gadgets don't exist (red), sort of exist (yellow), and are in your kitchen right now (green). Below, you can see which movies each device came from, and a bar graph that measures how many greens the movie got vs. reds. We also included domestic vehicles like cars in our "home of the future."

The documentary New Horizons turned out to be most accurate — at least when it came to domestic improvements that are possible with modern technology. This reel commissioned by General Motors focused on realistic advances in the automotive industry, looking only 20 years ahead. After all, why overreach? Googie’s had yet to be built in its landmark style, and human spaceflight was but stardust in scientists’ eyes.

In all the flicks, two of the most accurately-predicted items were large screen TVs and videoconferencing. Wireless technology, implied often by The Jetsons, is now ubiquitous. Less popular devices available today include the Master Cook (in the form of kitchen computers), fins on cars, and thumbprint entry.

Though the Scene Screen doesn't exist as such, it gets a yellow because it could be created by the do-it-yourself crowd. Just set up a projector display for your window. And you can create a Garden Center by winching a hydroponics rig above your dining room table.

In the red zone are a lot of technologies we wish we had — or maybe not. You’ll have to wait for the three seashells, walk-in Orgasmatron, and gigantic fruit (though we’re already genetically modifying produce) — but anti-grav space boots probably aren’t on the way anytime soon.

Of course, what would a piece on everyday life in the future be without mention of the notorious flying car? The roadable aircraft in development today leave us with hope… as well as something to be desired. Even the promising Moller Skycar falls short, lacking the ability to be driven as an automobile.

The self-driving, self-repairing, foam spewing car technology of Demolition Man is also unavailable to today’s motorist. When compared to the domestic conveniences afforded to us now, this film’s gorgeously grandiose vision of modern LA was the least in tune view of the future reviewed (we’ve got at least a couple of decades before 2032 to fix that, but we’d better get cracking).

Personally, I’ll be happy with a simple populuxe revival.

The TARDIS: It's possibly not the most famous time machine in science fiction (yet) - that would probably be a certain car that you'll meet below - but it's definitely the most distinctive. Doctor Who's stylish acronymtastic (its name stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) mode of transport may have started life as a means of keeping the show's 1963 first episode budget down thought up by BBC staff writer Anthony Coburn, but it's since become one of the most recognizable images in SF TV. Something that the BBC must be happy about, having trademarked the familiar blue box in 2002.

The Cosmic Treadmill: A glorious example of Silver Age comic book (il)logic, the Flash's self-built "cosmic treadmill" allowed him to travel backwards and forwards in time - as well as through parallel universes - by running so fast that he'd hit the perfect vibrational frequency that would allow him to zip away. Created by Flash and Green Lantern writer John Broome, the somewhat ridiculous gimmick has stayed around in the Flash books ever since, proving that some ideas are so dopey that they cross the line into permanently awesome.
Doc Brown's DeLorean: What is it about the time machine from Back To The Future that makes it so perfect? That it was one of the first green time machines (after that whole plutonium thing, of course)? The very specific need for a very particular speed? The fact that it put the already spacey look of one of the '80s most impractical cars to good use? Perhaps all of the above, but what will always single it out for our love and adoration was the fulfillment of Doc Brown's promise that, where we're going, we won't need roads.

The Time Bubble: Ah, the simplicity of 1950s design. The Time Bubble - so named because it's a clear bubble that travels through time - first appeared in 1958's Adventure Comics #247 as the 30th century's favored method of time-travel, and who can deny something with such sleekness and beauty? Thank creators Otto Binder and Al Plastino for what must surely be the objet d'art aesthetic of purity that all other time machines should aspire to.

The Time Tunnel: On the one hand, I should be more worried that they never really got the time tunnel to actually work properly, but on the other, dude. It was a time tunnel, an honest-to-goodness man-made version of the Guardian of Forever, but with less Joan Collins - You didn't need to operate any funky machinery or maintain your internal vibrational frequency, you simply needed to enter the tunnel and off you went. The only drawback, if the experience of Tony Newman and Doug Philips is anything to go by, is that you'll never get to come home again. But if you liked your present-day life so much, why would you time travel in the first place, right?

Gale point blankly admitted, "Let me answer one question before anyone asks it, which is, 'Is there ever be a Back To The Future Part IV...No."

Apparently the crowd at the 5th Annual Celebration Exotic Car Festival benefiting the Make-A-Wish Foundation was angry with his response, and he explained that, "We've all seen sometimes where they make one too many sequels and you say, 'Maybe they shouldn't have done that.' I'm not going to name any names of movies, but you know what they are!"

Gale also explained that he would never make a Back To The Future movie without Michael J Fox. [Moviehole via Cinematical]

• The Masks from Mission Impossible: The latex masks which could apparently turn a thin Tom Cruise into a chunky Philip Seymour Hoffman weren't exclusive to the movies. They used a fair share of these disguises throughout the television show, and the best part was when they'd cut from the live person to the dead looking fake mask being peeled away to reveal the operative underneath. At least MI:3 showed us a bit of how the machine that makes them works, but it still doesn't explain how they fit so well. The company that makes those could have made a fortune at Halloween every year.
• The Translator Microbes in Farscape: Science fiction properties have tried for years to get around the problem of everyone speaking English on new worlds lightyears away from Earth, and this has led to everything from The Universal Translator in Star Trek, to the Babel Fish in Hitchhiker's Guide, and the telepathic translating done by the TARDIS in Doctor Who. So, by the time Farscape came around, the writers decided to make them injectable translator microbes that let you understand whatever languange was hurled at you. Other people could understand you as well, but only if they were likewise injected. They didn't work perfectly, and often failed to translate slang like "dren" and "frell."
• Almost Everything in the 1960s Batman TV Show: Batman has had a slew of his own wacky gadgets, both in the comic books where he has an outfit for every possible encounter, and in the television show which really took the cake in creating bizarre items for Batman. Almost everything he used was a "Bat" something. In this clip from the show, you've got probably the lamest Batman gadget ever invented: The Bat Ladder. What exactly makes this a Bat Ladder, and why did he need to label it? In case he lost it somehow? Que ridiculo. Then there's the Bat-copter, the "Bat Auto Mode," and the Shark Repellent Bat Spray, which apparently makes sharks explode. He even has Barracuda, Whale, and Manta Ray repellent in there too.
• The Psychic Paper from Doctor Who: While this seems cool at first, eventually you start thinking it was an easy stopgap by the writers to get around the Doctor showing identification. In the old Tom Baker episode "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" (featuring the Doctor as a sleuth in Victorian London) the Doctor is asked to turn out his pockets, and he has everything in there from jelly babies to a toy Batmobile. We sure would have loved to see what Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant has crammed in there. Maybe a junior g-man badge would have worked just as well.
• The Giant Amplifier from Back to the Future: Doc Brown was an eccentric inventor, to be sure, but why on Earth would he create a massive speaker? Watching this movie again, it seems like it was just created for comic effect, and surely it would have blown out both of Marty's eardrums, scrambled his brain, and broken a bone or two in the process. Slight chance of overload my ass. Maybe the terrorists had asked him to build this thing too.
• Reed Richards and his Unstable Molecules: Unstable molecules sound like they'd be, well... unstable. Seems like just an easy way to explain why the Human Torch's clothes don't burn up, or why Sue Storm doesn't have to strip naked every time she turns invisible. Were the Thing's blue shorts made out of unstable molecules too? No idea what he needed them for. Reed supposedly made a fortune for the Fantastic Four by selling the patents to all of his inventions, but were most of them stolen? One thing is for sure, while he could seemingly invent a teleportation device out of a wristwatch and sticks of gum, he sure couldn't invent anything to turn Ben Grimm human again. So, how did Reed invent these things? In the movie the cosmic rays did it, but in the comics, it was just pure Reed Richards pseudogenius. It's also the name of an awesome graphic novel about the "real life" Fantastic Four by James Sturm.
• The Jetpack from The Rocketeer: Now, don't get me wrong, I wanted one of these things so bad that I could taste it. Who wouldn't want to slap on a funky helmet that makes you look like a hood ornament, a cool leather jacket, and just take to the skies? The problem was that later I realized this thing would totally burn your ass off. I mean, the flames shot out mere millimeters from his butt... how on Earth did he not scorch himself? Asbestos pants? Even one little throwaway line could have someone explained this, but now I just imagine Cliff Secord in a hospital bed with third-degree burns covering his backside. Plus, how could he even bend his legs upwards without melting those boots?
• Dick Tracy's Magnetic Space Coupe: Dick Tracy is probably best known for his two-way wristwatch radio, which later became a two-way television and eventually housed a computer to help him solve crimes. However, in the 1960s things got a lot more ludicrous when Tracy and Co. traveled to the moon via his Magnetic Space Coupe. While they were there, Tracy met "The Governor of the Moon" and his daughter, "Moon Maid." She eventually married Tracy's adopted son Junior, and they had a daughter together who... sorry, my brain just exploded.
• The Antigravity Belt Buckle in Ultraviolet: Or "Ultraviolent" as I like to call it. Milla Jovovich's badass vampire, er... "hemophage" with a conscience used this round little belt buckle to change her personal gravity, meaning she could walk on the ceiling, climb up walls, and it could even make her motorcycle drive up the sides of buildings. While we could (barely) buy the nanotech/portable hole technology in her wristbands and in that white plastic backpack, this thing just sent it over the top. What would keep her from flying off into the sky?

Time Cop. Jean-Claude Van Damme is the only one who can safeguard history against those who would change it for their own evil ends. But a corrupt U.S. Senator (Ron Silver) is messing with the timeline in order to become president in 2004. Van Damme quickly figures out what's going on. But then Silver changes history some more, so when Van Damme returns to his present, everything has changed and Van Damme no longer has a job. It's up to Jean-Claude to go back once again and change the past a second time, getting rid of Silver in the process. Weirdly, this is one of the best movies about time travel in spite of its action-movie star.

(Versions of Van Damme's Time Cops show up a lot in SF, including the ChronoGuard in Jasper FForde's Thursday Next novels, and the temporal police from the 29th century, who show up in Star Trek: Voyager a few times. Stephen Hawking has famously theorized that some kind of temporal police must exist, to prevent the horrendous paradoxes that would otherwise happen. In Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake, they're referred to as the "Quantum Angels.")

Primer. Abe and Aaron create a time machine, which requires you to lay inside it for as long as you want to go back for. They go back and start meddling with their own pasts, speculating on the stock market and tinkering with other things. But soon they're making more serious changes — knocking out their past selves and taking their places. They live through the same day or two over and over again, creating alternate timelines with subtle differences each time. Eventually, Abe and Aaron start trying to counter each other's interference, but keeping up with which version of Abe or Aaron you're seeing gets trickier and trickier.

Back to the Future Part 2. When "Doc" Brown carelessly leaves his Delorean time machine unguarded, that big lunkhead Biff goes back in time to 1955 and gives his younger self the means to become rich and powerful far beyond his pathetic dreams. Our hero, Marty, has to go back in time to 1955 for the second time in a row — except instead of changing Biff's future as he did in the first movie, he's just trying to undo the changes that Biff has already made.

Up the Line by Robert Silverberg. Jud Eliott III gets a job as a time courier, showing tourists the wonders of history. But some of his crazy colleagues start messing around with the timeline and wrecking history, so he has to keep going back and trying to fix the damage without attracting the attention of the Time Patrol. And then he falls in love with a time paradox named Pulcheria, his own great-great-great-great-grandmother, and it all goes to pot.

The End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. Harlan belongs to a time agency called Eternity, which exists outside of time itself. He and his fellow agents go around changing history to reduce human suffering. But then Harlan has a falling-out with his bosses over his girlfriend Noÿs, whom they want to erase from history. Harlan is supposed to help one of his colleagues, Cooper, go back to the 24th century and become the scientist whose discoveries later make the Eternals possible. In a fit of pique, Harlan sends Cooper back to 1932 instead, so he can't lay the groundwork for Eternity and Eternity will never exist. Finally, after the Eternals un-erase his girlfriend, he agrees to go back and rescue Cooper from the past — but then his girlfriend Noÿs reveals that Eternity's secret purpose is to edit history to make sure humans never colonize the stars. So instead Harlan helps her to change history so that humans discover atomic energy earlier, and start down the path of space exploration. As a consequence, Eternity ceases ever to have existed.

Lightning by Dean Koontz. Laura has a guardian angel who shows up to help her whenever she's in danger, but then it turns out other people are trying to undo the "angel's" work. Some evil Nazi time travelers are trying to destroy Laura. As Laura's son explains:

They can hopscotch around us.. They can pop ahead in time to see where we show up, then they pick and choose the easiest place along the time stream to ambush us. It's sorta like... if we were the cowboys and the Indians were all psychic.

Doctor Who. For a show all about time travel, Doctor Who doesn't have that many stories where the Doctor and another time-traveler are both changing the timeline back and forth, surprisingly. But the Doctor and his fellow Time Lord the Master get into some duels on a few occasions. The most over-the-top is in the comedy special "Doctor Who And The Curse Of The Fatal Death," where the Master and Doctor meet up in a castle. The Master goes back in time and bribes the architect to put a trapdoor right where the Doctor happens to be standing. But then it turns out the Doctor also went back in time, and bribed the architect even more — to put the trapdoor where the Master is standing instead.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams contains a lot of cris-crossing back and forth in Reg Chronotis' time machine (much of which is lifted somewhat from the episodes Adams wrote for Doctor Who. In particular, the ghost of the last surviving Salaxian possesses a disgruntled literary magazine editor, inspiring him to go back in time to repair the Salaxian spaceship before it can explode, back at the dawn of life on Earth — which will have the effect of making sure life never develops on this planet. The instructions for fixing the ship are buried in the second half of Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan." But Chronotis and Dirk Gently, our detective hero, go back to Coleridge's time and ensure he never finishes that poem, so the instructions are lost and the alien plot is foiled.

Terminator. The Terminator movies and TV show are all about people and cyborgs traveling back in time to change, or safeguard history. The machines want to kill Sarah Connor before she can ever give birth to future resistance leader John Connor, so John sends Kyle Reese back in time to protect him — and Kyle becomes John's daddy. And then, the machines send more cyborgs back to kill John, and eventually Kyle's brother Derek ends up back in our time hanging out with his friend/nephew as well. And Sarah Connor either dies of cancer or travels forward in time past her own death date and somehow avoids it. Maybe in the second season of Sarah Connor Chronicles the machines will figure out they just have to wipe out the Reese brothers as kids, and all their problems go away.

Time After Time. H.G. Wells and Jack The Ripper battle each other in the bizarre future of 1979. Once they both reach the future, time travel doesn't play that much of a part in the story — except that at one point, Wells travels forward in time three days with his girlfriend Amy, only to find Amy's obituary in a newspaper. They have to travel back again and prevent Jack the Ripper from making Amy his fifth victim. (In the end, it turns out the obituary was mistaken, and it was Amy's friend who was murdered.) And then Amy goes back to the 19th century and marries Wells, changing history at least somewhat.

Meet The Robinsons. An animated Disney film, very loosely based on the book A Day With Wilbur Robinson. Tom Selleck invents a time machine. (We'll just pause to let you absorb that piece of info.) And then a villain named Bowler Hat Guy travels back in time to sabotage a memory-scanning machine that a kid named Lewis has invented, which gave rise to all the amazing inventions in Tom Selleck's utopian future. ("Tom Selleck's Utopian Future" will be my next band name.) So Tom Selleck's son Wilbur has to travel back in time to our time, to make sure Lewis repairs the memory-scanning machine.

Crime Traveler. In this British TV series, a physicist named Holly Turner invents a time machine, and a lazy detective named Slade uses it to travel back in time and solve crimes before they happen. But in the final episode, a criminal gets his own time machine, and travels back in time to give himself an airtight alibi for a couple of murders. Slade has to travel back as well, to catch the other time traveler in the act.

Research by Nivair Gabriel

If you're into hats, the auction has a ton of 'em as well. Besides the aforementioned hat from Oddjob, you can also pick up the bowler hat worn by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. While some of the items are fetching a high price, you can pick up something like this prop newspaper from Superman for only a hundred bucks.

The sheer amount of stuff they're auctioning off is staggering. Anthony Pugliese was either the world's biggest packrat, or had the idea to auction this stuff off a long time ago. It reminds us of the episode of Amazing Stories called "Gather Ye Acorns," where Mark Hamill kept all of his childhood toys, and then auctioned them off to become rich when he was older. If I'd done then, then maybe I could afford Humphrey Bogart's hat from The Caine Mutiny. [Thanks Plague]

• The sound was originally recorded in 1931 for Frankenstein, and it quickly became a staple for haunted houses, spooky castles, and impending bad weather on film soundtracks everywhere.
• Originally recorded on optical film stock, most modern day version are 15th generation (or older) copies, meaning you can no longer hear the original crackles and pops that are apparent on the original.
• The sound was featured in Star Wars, courtesy of Ben Burtt again, and can be heard during the trench run sequence on the Death Star.
• The most famous science fiction use of the sound (besides Frankenstein) was probably when the Delorean was struck by lightning in Back to the Future. In fact, we're surprised they don't use that sound effect when anything gets struck by lightning. It's just so perfect. Maybe because I can't get it out of my head right now.
• Other science fiction films that latched on the Castle Thunder were: Ghostbusters, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Big Trouble in Little China (okay, we know this is fantasy... but c'mon), Short Circuit, The Land Before Time, The Monster Squad, and of course Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.
• The sound can be heard multiple times every day inside The Haunted Mansion as both Disneyland and Disney World, most famously in the stretching room when the host suggest a "way out." Cue the thunder and screams.
• The sound effect was a favorite on Scooby Doo, and could be heard during the opening credits. However, they later "retired" the sound from the show in 1988 to make way for digitally recorded thunderclaps. The bastards.
• However, it's still featured prominently in the opening to Aqua Teen Hunger Force, so there is still some cartoon love for the sound going on out there.
• For my money, the best usage of the sound was in the opening sequence to Dr. Shrinker, which was part of the Krofft Supershow. One day I'll devote an entire triviagasm to this show, trust me.

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• The Black & Decker Food Hydrator from Back fo the Future II: This is something you'd expect to see Ron Popeil infomercializing to you on late night TV, especially since he invented the electric food dehydrator, "You can make your beef jerky for $3 a pound!" We'll take the BTTF version though. Pop in a miniature dehydrated pizza, and seconds later you're enjoying a fresh pie.
• The Super Microwave from The Fifth Element: Leeloo has the biggest case of munchies we've ever witnessed since a Cheech & Chong movie, and as she barrels through a digital encyclopedia full of knowledge about Earth, she keeps popping chicken dinner pellets into the microwave and zapping out full-sized steaming dinners in the blink of an eye. We'd hate to see what it could do to Hello Kitty.
• The Toasting Knife from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: This one may be too far-fetched; a knife that toasts your bread as it slices. Maybe if Toshiba would just finally can their HD-DVD division and put them onto cool home kitchen gadgets, we could see something like this on store shelves within six months. Plus you could reenact lightsaber battles at home a lot easier by just nabbing this from the cutlery drawer.
• The Replicator from Star Trek: I'm sure some of the Trekkies out there will know the answer to this, but why did they employ cooks on ships in Starfleet when a replicator could just give them anything they wanted, ready to eat? The Next Generation used it to replace the food slots from the original series, and Picard himself used it to whip up piping hot Earl Grey tea on numerous occasions.
• The Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Not to be outdone by Star Trek's replicator, this thing would actually analyzes your brainwaves and taste buds and give you what would your body was craving, although it never gave poor Arthur any proper tea. In the film there's a similar device that Trillian says detects what your body is craving and gives her a donut. These things would put convenience stores out of business.
• J.F. Sebastian's Hard Boiled Egg Beaker from Blade Runner: Okay, so it's really just a tall beaker full of boiling water and eggs, but that doesn't mean someone like Proctor-Silex couldn't slap their name on a glass container and stick a heating element on the bottom. It would just look cool if you had bubbling hard boiled eggs ready whenever you wanted one, and it sure beats the briny jar full of pickled eggs that's a fixture at dusty dive bars.
• The Hanging Garden Center in Back to the Future II: One reason to double dip in the well of BTTF is that they nailed the cheesy plastic era of the future better than those black and white "The Kitchen Of Tomorrow!" pieces. The McFly dining table sports a voice-activated hanging hydroponic garden that can drop down to give you fruit on demand, then retracts when you're done unless you're a spaz like Marty Jr.
• Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons: Rosie had to be the ultimate kitchen and home gadget. Not only would she cook and clean, but she's also keep your kids and husband out of shenanigans. Although she had a little bit of programmed sass because she was modeled after Hazel from the 1960s. She's a lot less creepy than the sweet potato pie-baking bots in I, Robot, and less annoying than Mr. Belvedere.
• Honorable Mention: Pee Wee's Breakfast Machine from Pee Wee's Big Adventure: This is something you could actually build in your kitchen today, it you had a lot of time and patience. But who wouldn't want a Rube Goldberg device that would make them bacon and eggs every morning? Although you have to add the Mr. T cereal on your own. The closest thing we've ever found to it is this Egg McMuffin machine, but it doesn't incorporate Abraham Lincoln at all.

• Back to the Future 3: The final action sequence in this movie has not one, but two spectacular train crashes. First, back in 1885 as the Delorean gets pushed up to 88 miles per hour, the locomotive takes a header into the ravine and its boiler explodes, kicking up tons of earth in the process. Then, moments (or years) later when Marty arrives in 1985, he almost gets turned into roadkill by a modern day train, which does reduce the time machine to bits and pieces. There's even a little "death scene" as the flux capacitor "dies."

  

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• The Matrix Revolutions: Niobe might be flying a ship that has "a fat ass," but she does a pretty decent job of evading sentinels, crashing through a barely open door, and not getting everyone squashed when she crash lands into the dock in Zion. She's lost about half of the lifters on the ship, and manages to scrape off just about every external appliance on the thing, which means you wouldn't want her to parallel park anything. Plus they must have some pretty decent seatbelts on that thing.

  

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• Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith: While the acting is this scene is a disaster on another level as Hayden Christensen deadpans "We're coming in too hot," the visual effects are nothing to sneer at. Although why a ship that huge has dragfins and flaps on it, I'll never know. Clearly it's not meant to fly in the atmosphere, and it should have burned to a cinder the way they were flying it. He even yells at R2D2! Don't blame the droid for your bad acting, just take it like a man and crash that damn thing.

  

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• Armageddon: Not long after they've already destroyed a space station, the flight crew of the Independence gets nervous about landing on the ginormous asteroid and tries to adjust course. This results in several "OH SHIT!" moments as their shuttle gets riddled with debris, the pilots get sucked out the windows, and it crashes down... fairly intact. There's a great scene when Bruce Willis onboard the Freedom shouts "Is that the Independence?" and a pilot's body smacks into the window. Guess that answers that question.

  

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• Star Trek Generations: The Enterprise separates into two piece, and the back half explodes in a warp core breach, and the saucer section smashes into Veridian III and carves a massive groove of destruction behind it. Technically, crash lands on the planet twice, since Picard hops back in time to stop Soran, although that sadly doesn't mean we get to see Data cuss twice in a row. Is anyone else impressed that the forward viewscreen managed to stay working as long as it did? That's some quality workmanship right there, even if every panel on the ship seems to explode in a shower of sparks whenever the ship hits something.

  

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• Any vehicle from the Star Trek Universe: Dilithium Crystals. This is an element created just for Star Trek that powers everything from the U.S.S. Enterprise to a Klingon Bird of Prey. Dilithium had to be mined, just like we have to drill for oil, and could be hard to come by. Of course, when Star Trek: The Next Generation came out the writers decided to just cheat and make it something that they could make synthetically, thereby killing any future "we're out of gas!" storylines.
• The Time-Traveling Delorean from Back to the Future: plutonium, gas, and/or garbage. Doc Brown's time-tripping Delorean actually has an engine that does run on gas, although when he came back from the future he'd converted the flux capacitor to run on a Mr. Fusion device, thereby eliminating the need for plutonium pellets for driving through the decades. Just toss some trash inside, and you're good to go.
• Anything in the Battlestar Galactica universe: Tylium. In the world of BSG, both Cylon and Human ships run off of a fictional ore called tylium. It's only found on certain planets, and has to be mined, just like dilithium crystals. But unlike the crystals, it also has to be refined and turned into a gasoline like substance. No idea what kind of mileage you get out of it, but it also powers their "faster than light" drives, so it must pack quite a punch.
• The TARDIS from Doctor Who: artificial black holes, radiation, life force... take your pick. The TARDIS in the world of Doctor Who looks like a giant blue phonebooth, and travels through both time and space. However it's actually a sentient being that draws its power from one of several different sources, depending on what season of the show you're watching. In the current incarnation of the show, the Doctor has to stop periodically near a space-time rift and suck up the leaking radiation in order to keep things going. A sort of interstellar pit stop, if you will. Photo by lizardian.
• The Spaceship Heart of Gold from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: a cup of hot tea. The Heart of Gold ran on an infinite improbability drive that took it through "every point in the universe at once" when it was switched on. Not too shabby. All it took was an electronic brain and a good Brownian motion generator, like a cup of tea, and you're off. Probably the cheapest form of travel ever invented.
• Anything in Star Wars: your guess is as good as ours. While you sometimes see strange hoses and gizmos hooked to the ships before they launch, it was never made clear in these movies what they run on. George Lucas apparently never wanted us to get bored by the details, so you could fill in the blanks on your own for this one. Lando was running a gas-mining facility on Bespin in The Empire Strikes back, so maybe he was in the spaceship fuel business. We may never know, so be careful with whatever you put in the tank of your X-Wing.

• As always, extinguish all smoking materials while refueling and be sure to hold on to your receipts. Your own mileage may vary.

The Batmobile from Batman Begins. This was the first on-screen version of Batman's muscle car that didn't just look like a cheesy toy car. Instead of the stretched-out roadster of previous movies, director Christopher Nolan opted for a compact, tank-like design. In "attack mode" the driver shifts to the middle of the car, in a more secure prone position. This car doesn't look like it's only designed to impress Kim Basinger.
Top speed: 110 mph, plus jet engine and adjustable control surfaces let it jump 30 feet without a ramp.

The DeLorean from the Back To The Future movies. This car's main superpower is making those movies look incredibly dated. But it also travels in time if you feed it enough plutonium. And after a visit to the year 2015, it also gains the ability to fly, with wheels that turn sideways and become thrusters.
Top speed: A regular DeLorean could reach 124 mph. It needs to reach 88 mph to time-travel.

The flying taxi from The Fifth Element. It looks just like a regular cab, but it can fly. It handles amazingly well, judging from some of the teeny openings Bruce Willis manages to steer it through during the high-speed cop chase. And it can stop on a dime to hide behind billboards.
Top speed: Unclear, but it's fast. The original movie script says: "Korben and his flying taxi are absolute masters of the air. The cops have trouble following him."

The self-folding car from that SciFi Channel ad. Long after people have forgotten Flash Gordon and Tin Man, they'll still be passing around this ad. It looks like a regular pick-up truck, until the driver presses a button. Then it folds up to the size (and weight) of a golf ball.
Top speed: no clue.

The Whomobile on Doctor Who. Stranded on Earth in the early 1970s, the Doctor started dressing like Prince. Except instead of driving a little red Corvette, he pimped out an antique roadster named Bessie to go super fast. Then he built his own spaceship-looking car. With huge honking fins! Because, of course, an alien trapped on Earth has to stay incognito at all costs.
Top speed: 150 mph (in real life), plus the Whomobile can fly (using dodgy greenscreen.)

The Spinner from Blade Runner. Deckard's cop car flies, but also has vertical take-off and landing (VTOL). It uses regular internal combustion, plus antigrav and a jet engine. It also directs air downwards to create lift. And it has a pretty sweet glass cockpit.
Top speed: Deckard mentions a fellow cop was going 150 mph when he went off a cliff.

KITT, from the Knight Rider TV show and TV movies. KITT was a Pontiac Trans AM with a super-computer that could talk to Michael (its driver) and even drive itself. (Plus KITT prints money in one episode, which could be handy.) The new Knight Rider, airing in February, will feature a new KITT that can launch a mini-car drone and fire a rocket launcher
Top speed: 300 mph, plus a "turbo boost" lets you jump over obstacles.

The Lexus from Minority Report. Lexus designed a special flying car for Tom Cruise to zip around the city of 2054 in. The car includes an electric engine, body panels that change color at a voice command, doors and ignition that require a DNA match, and "auto valet."
Top speed: According to Lexus, this car can get up to about 350 mph. We have a winner!

These films join 475 others in the National Registry, although only 13 others are science fiction, including everything from Alien to The Nutty Professor. Even Groundhog Day is in there, trapping Bill Murray for all eternity in a regressive time loop. The Library itself chooses a few of the films, and the public nominates the others, which means you've got films like Fast Times At Ridgemont High sitting alongside Citizen Kane, so we're not clear on how auspicious an honor this is. But at least future generations will have access to topless Phoebe Cates.

Check out some of the cool features of the National Film Registry's Film Vault/Bunker:

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• It's built mostly underground, so a nuclear attack won't stop us from having fresh copies of Dances With Wolves at hand.
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• There are over 90 miles of shelves inside, which make browsing a real bitch.
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• A below-freezing vault keeps film masters, as well as Walt Disney's head, perfectly preserved.
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• They preserve digital film at the petabyte (one million gigabytes) level. Cell phones will catch up to that storage level around 2015.
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• It is fully equipped to playback antique film formats, even movies on Beta tapes.
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• It has high-quality fiber optic connections to Capitol Hill for when your congressman needs to run out and catch a few minutes of Do The Right Thing.
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Wuthering Heights Among 25 Top Films [Yahoo]

Diamond Select Toys has created a replica of the famous gadget that "makes time travel possible" in some unexplained way that involves flashing lights. It's house in a replica box that looks just like the one in the film, and it can be sitting proudly in your living room next year. Better yet, just install this sucker in your Honda and see what happens when you get up to 88 miles per hour. Hopefully you'll see some serious shit.

Cool Stuff: Back To The Future Flux Capacitor Replica [/Film]

Famous names: Robert Zemeckis, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover

Crunchy goodness: 3

Sequels: This ultra-popular, family-friendly franchise produced two sequels - one of which took place in an amusingly dated 1980s idea of the future, full of flying cars and handheld videogames.

Life lesson: Teaching your dad how to make out with your mom is totally awesome!

Stunt casting: Christopher Lloyd, famous as a weirdo on Taxi, is the mad engineer with the mostest in this flick. Too bad nobody but Nicholas Roeg ever figured out that Lloyd is actually a brilliant, versatile actor - catch him in Roeg's Track 29 for a serious dose of bizarre.

Official Universal Back To The Future Website