Time Travel

Hey, Christopher Nolan fans: You only have to wait another year and a half to see your favorite director's next venture. Co-distributors Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures announced Friday that the "The Dark Knight Rises" director's new film, "Interstellar," will debut on Nov. 7, 2014. Written by his brother, Jonathan Nolan, "Interstellar" is a time-traveling epic based on scientific theories developed by Caltech physicist Kip Thorne, who will executive produce the movie.

Hey, Christopher Nolan fans: You only have to wait another year and a half to see your favorite director's next venture. Co-distributors Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures announced Friday that the "The Dark Knight Rises" director's new film, "Interstellar," will debut on Nov. 7, 2014. Written by his brother, Jonathan Nolan, "Interstellar" is a time-traveling epic based on scientific theories developed by Caltech physicist Kip Thorne, who will executive produce the movie.

Abrief word of advice: When approaching Michael Hirst -- the creator, writer and executive producer of Showtime's "The Tudors," avoid asking when Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays King Henry VIII, is going to get fat. "I have a beef with people who say he should be fat or otherwise it's inauthentic," Hirst says. "It's drama. The criteria people use to judge historical drama is completely wrong.

TRAVEL SHOW Presentation Planning your next vacation? Learn where to go and what to see at the 15th annual Los Angeles Times Travel Show. Rick Steves and Andrew McCarthy are among the featured speakers. When, where: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa St. Admission, info: $10 at the door; children 16 and under are free (one child free per each paid adult). Save $2 by buying online at latimes.com/travelshow. Use promo code LAT. CAMBODIA Slide show Photo tour guide Ralph Velasco will discuss his circumnavigation of Tonlé Sap and his recent trip to Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Battambang.

Hotel ZaZa in Houston offers a package for those who want to see a few dinosaurs during their stay. For starters, there will be dino bones on display in the lobby as well as two tickets to the Houston Museum of Natural Science , dinner and other extras starting at $249 a night. The deal: The historic hotel, located in the Arts District on the edge of Hermann Park, is featuring a Texas Triassic Tour that also includes dinner for two at the hotel's Monarch Bistro , a free bottle of wine, free valet parking and free Internet access.

Director-cinematographer Peter Hyams' ambitious but majorly disappointing "A Sound of Thunder" suggests two things: One, that a large-scale sci-fi disaster movie must have state-of-the-art special effects to have a prayer of succeeding; Two, even if an enormous budget were available for the most spectacular effects imaginable, the timelier-than-ever Ray Bradbury short story upon which this movie is based might well have been brought to the screen far more persuasively in animation instead of

Regarding "Spirits of the West," Oct. 28: I was through Goldfield, Nev., last August on a road trip. I was surprised by the pristine condition of the town, which seemingly pops up out of nowhere. It doesn't take much imagination to transport yourself back in time while in town. I remember visiting Bodie back in the '50s, when you could walk into the buildings, and see pots still on the stove and books in the classroom.

"I said: 'I'm going to pitch an idea that's going to scare the hell out of you,' " writer-producer Don Bellisario recalled, reminiscing about a meeting many months ago with NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff, who wanted him to create a TV series for the network. "And then I pitched 'Quantum Leap.'

All folk dance troupes offer vicarious travel, showing audiences the cultural riches of far-flung regions. Only the most daring, however, take you to another time--reproducing societal heartbeats very different from our own. Instead, most companies crank up the pace, or vary the pattern, so that an old dance matches the pulse of contemporary entertainment. Not Avaz International Dance Theatre.

True love is difficult even under the best of circumstances. But what if your soul mate has come into your life via a time machine? Even EHarmony can't help you with that dilemma. These out-of-time romances, though, are a perennial hit in popular culture. And for good reason: They're an emotional thrill ride. If true love finds a way against these tremendous odds, then it gives audiences hope that they too will find their one and only. If the couples' love is thwarted, these stories are cathartic weepfests.

Hey, readers: You have great travel tips Re "Before You Go," the article of readers' tips (Feb. 17): You were right. I've taken a bottle of aspirin so far, and my head still hurts from whacking it. Keep those tips coming. Nick Tuzzolino Arcadia (Editor's note: We received so many great reader tips that we're starting a new weekly feature, called Your Tips, and will run it weekly as space permits. ) :: One of the reader tips suggested taking a familiar food to calm children on a plane, perhaps a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Readers' tips were the centerpiece of our Feb. 17 issue. But there were so many of them we weren't able to use all of them in one issue. We'll be printing many more in the coming weeks. If you have a tip you'd like to share, please send it to travel@latimes.com , along with your name and city of residence. Want to carry a sandwich or salad on board in your small collapsible cooler? Freeze oranges or lemons and use them as your "blue ice. " Also, carry empty reusable water bottles and fill with ice and water after clearing security.

Marybeth Bond of Gutsy Traveler knows how to troubleshoot travel disasters -- even the unexpected ones. Here are five tips on how to head off adverse situations when you're on the road. She'll be giving advice on packing and preparing for trips at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Travel Show at the L.A. Convention Center. I don't court disaster, but it can strike unexpectedly away from home: a cracked tooth causes a toothache, a hurricane or tsunami shuts down stores and cash machines, or you are the victim of an accident or crime.

The Los Angeles Times Travel Show opens this weekend at the L.A. Convention Center with a lineup of activities, speakers and events that bring the world closer to home. Here are some highlights of what to see: Get inspired: Meet the big kahunas of the travel world during the two-day show: guidebook author and travel expert Arthur Frommer, host of "The Amazing Race" Phil Keoghan , European guidebook author and TV host Rick Steves , actor and travel writer Andrew McCarthy , and Mike Wolfe of "American Pickers.

Think of Japanese movies, and two things readily come to mind: samurai and anime. But organizers of the L.A. EigaFest - a showcase of contemporary cinema from the Land of the Rising Sun - aim to show Angelenos that the nation's filmmakers are up to much more than that. The festival, now in its second year, runs Friday through Sunday at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and features films on such topics as an unraveling supermodel, a time-traveling Roman architect and a single mother raising two werewolf children.

Vocalist Sarah Cracknell waved her white feather boa at the crowd while introducing one of the final songs of her group's Saturday night set at the Fonda in Hollywood. “This is the first song I ever sang with Saint Etienne,” she said, “and I've been wearing one of these ever since.” Indeed, the boa was Cracknell's companion throughout Saint Etienne's gig, the final show of a U.S. tour of the States in support of its excellent new record “Words and Music by Saint Etienne.” The buoyant blond wore a form-fitting sequined dress, and as keyboardists/programmers/co-founders Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley broke into “Nothing Can Stop Us,” a beat-heavy romp propelled by the sampled rhythm of a 1967 Dusty Springfield song, Cracknell started dancing with a graceful nonchalance.

Bill Hicks wants to travel back in time and get to know the father who deserted him when he was 7 years old. Michael Darrow Baker has a longer journey in mind--back 4 billion years to the Precambrian Age, before life on Earth began. While many believe time travel is out of this world, neither Hicks nor Baker are waiting passively for scientists to come up with a device capable of bursting through the time barrier.

Heads are often spinning in Jean-Claude Van Damme's movies, usually because the erstwhile Muscles From Brussels has sent them into orbit with one of his well-placed martial arts kicks. In "Timecop," however, the spinning has a different cause: the dizzying premise behind the inevitable action.

Like many time-travel movies, writer-director Rian Johnson's "Looper" has elements of mind-bending intricacy. The plot, after all, concerns a young hitman (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in the 2040s who dispatches targets sent to him from further in the future, until an older version of himself (Bruce Willis) shows up with his own agenda and then promptly escapes. But for all its clockwork precision, "Looper" is at times unapologetically blase about its twisty mechanics, preferring to focus on its characters and their tough choices.

Hotel ZaZa in Houston offers a package for those who want to see a few dinosaurs during their stay. For starters, there will be dino bones on display in the lobby as well as two tickets to the Houston Museum of Natural Science , dinner and other extras starting at $249 a night. The deal: The historic hotel, located in the Arts District on the edge of Hermann Park, is featuring a Texas Triassic Tour that also includes dinner for two at the hotel's Monarch Bistro , a free bottle of wine, free valet parking and free Internet access.