Time Capsule

Forty years ago, the Monkees' only feature film, "Head," hit theaters -- and people have been scratching their heads ever since. Though far from a masterpiece like the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" from 1964, the film, starring Davy Jones, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith, is a surreal time capsule -- a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness blast from the past. It's as if Jean Cocteau had consumed lots of LSD and decided to make a rock movie. Only its true history is a lot trippier, considering that Jack Nicholson wrote the script and a motley crew of the era's icons appears in the film.

STEPHEN SHORE, a precocious teenage chronicler of the Andy Warhol Factory scene, was in his 20s when he headed west on a road trip in 1973. He drove alone across the U.S., compiling a visual record of a vanishing American vernacular and kept a daily log of such details as what TV shows he watched ("Mission: Impossible," the Watergate hearings) and what he spent ($4 to fill the tank; $5 for a meal). "A Road Trip Journal by Stephen Shore" (a hefty $250 time capsule from Phaidon Press)

The GAP between a film's completion and its theatrical premiere is subject to some fluctuation, but 47 years is an unusually long delay by any standard. Kent Mackenzie's Los Angeles film "The Exiles," about a night ("any night," as Mackenzie described it) in the lives of young Native Americans living on downtown's Bunker Hill, finished in 1960 and reaching theaters only next month, is the subject of the year's most unlikely cinematic resurrection.

It was just a box filled with a bunch of papers when Inglewood sanitation superintendent Harry Frisby sealed and buried it more than three decades ago. But by the time his son Harry Frisby Jr. unearthed and cracked open the time capsule Thursday, the contents had become mildew-smelling history. The capsule from 35 years ago, and another from 50 years ago, were opened last week in a ceremony marking the South Bay city's centennial anniversary.

A time capsule has been found atop a bell tower at Mexico City's Metropolitan Cathedral, where it was placed in 1791, researchers said. The lead box filled with religious artifacts, coins and parchments was found by workers restoring the church in October. It was inside a stone ball at the base of a cross atop the 200-foot southern bell tower. Researchers spent three months preserving its contents, including a small case of wax blessed by the pope to protect against mishaps, said the Rev. Ruben Avila, rector of the cathedral.

Wide-eyed dreamers from throughout the world came here Friday to see the gleaming gold-and-white Plymouth Belvedere -- buried decades ago in a time capsule as a publicity stunt. What they saw was a waterlogged mass of metal with tailfins, shrouded in a patina of rust. Back in 1957, when Oklahoma was celebrating its 50th anniversary, all the attention was going to Oklahoma City, and Tulsans were feeling neglected. Oklahoma City's celebration had Mickey Rooney. Tulsa's had a beard-growing contest.

Personally, I'd rather not be my own time capsule ("Dear Me," by J.R. Moehringer, March 25). If I felt compelled to compose a message to my future self, I'd probably write it--OK, maybe type it and have it printed--on paper, seal it in an envelope and put it away somewhere. Why fuss with all this digital technology that might be obsolete by the time Future Me is scheduled to receive the message? Anyway, I can't think of what I'd feel the need to say, except maybe "Please send money" or "Having a wonderful time, wish you were here."

Set in the waning days of the Los Angeles punk scene, "Border Radio" is the first feature by Allison Anders, who co-wrote and co-directed it with Kurt Voss and Dean Lent. This relatively unheralded 1987 indie -- a DIY effort from three UCLA film students -- may seem an odd fit for the Criterion Collection, which has been doing a superb job of issuing definitive DVD editions for acknowledged world cinema classics.

The bear that left a 3-foot-long claw mark in an Ice Age clay bank was the largest ursine species to walk the Earth, about 6 feet tall at the shoulder and capable of moving its 1,800 pounds up to 45 mph in a snarling dash for prey. The claw mark by the extinct giant short-faced bear still looks fresh today in a southwest Missouri cave that some scientists are calling a national treasure -- an Ice Age time capsule sealed for thousands of years.

The hippie-burnout drama "Cisco Pike" is a movie in which the optimism of the 1960s slips into the disappointing loneliness that Los Angeles can cultivate like no other city. It is a cruel irony, then, that the 1972 film sank without a trace upon its release, so concerned is its hero's need for recognition and reward.