FILM BUFF

CINEMA CELEBRATED AND DEBATED. BOOSTING YOUR MOVIE GENIUS TO SUPERHERO LEVELS…

IS IT BOLLOCKS?

Film Buff investigates the facts behind outlandish movie plots.

Q In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Dr Jones discovers a time machine invented by Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes. McGuffin or real artefact?

The Dial is based on the real artefact, the Antikythera mechanism, an Ancient Greek gadget discovered in 1901 in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. It has been described by scholars as the oldest known example of an analogue computer. The hand-powered machine charted astronomical movement and could predict eclipses decades in advance. It is kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and over the years a number of studies and X-rays have unveiled a series of bronze gears and inscriptions. But was Archimedes the architect? In 2008, continuing research by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project suggested that the machine may have come from the Corinth area due to the type of calendar used on the gear. Syracuse, home to Archimedes, was a colony of Corinth, but further studies in 2017 discounted this theory, placing it nearer to Epirus than Syracuse. What is true is that the mechanism is split into pieces (82 known fragments) – so who knows what might be discovered if all the pieces are found and reunited?

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The biggest movies… WITH DOGGY TITLES

ON LOCATION REEL SPOTS BEHIND THE CAMERA

WHAT? Quaint clapboard house in Los Angeles with ample garden for barbecues belonging to Dominic Toretto throughout the Fast Saga series.

WHERE? 722 East Kensington Road, Angelino Heights, LA

GO? The neighbours don’t appreciate street-racing fans and the house is blurred out on Google Street View, but there’s nothing to stop you taking a spin a quarter mile at a time past the Toretto casa.

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