Time Travel

How tempting, the idea of traveling to the past to correct a mistake or take advantage of a lost opportunity. What an enticement, the notion of traveling forward in time to see what the future holds. And how much fun, to hear all about it in an audio anthology produced by Dercum Audio. The imaginatively named Here Today . . . Gone to Tomorrow (six hours, $19.95) is a seven-story collection selected by science-fiction writer extraordinaire Isaac Asimov - and from his personal library, no less.

The cuteness of the title of this new play by Nicholas Wardigo sells both the script and Straw Flower's production short. Intriguing and substantial, The Do's and Don'ts of Time Travel, now at the Adrienne, is an impressive premiere from a company dedicated to discovering hidden talent. Rachel (played by Amanda Schoonover) is our guide through time and through the play, a kind of contemporary Proust if Proust were a film fan. Ostensibly, she is a young woman writing a dissertation on movies: "Time travel movies have an intrinsic problem: They all suck.

The universe is being ripped apart at the seams and the only person who can save it is . . . Cheryl Ladd. Sounds pretty grim - only one Charlie's Angel between us and oblivion - but that's the premise behind "Millenium. " Actually, despite the presense of a vapid Ladd and stoic co-star Kris Kristofferson, "Millenium" generally holds up well by putting an interesting spin on the old time-travel paradox. That idea is simply this: what would happen if you went back in time and killed your dad when he was just 10 years old?

A 20-year hiatus from directing ends with Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound, a sci-fi horror tale every bit as corny as the drive-in fare that the wunderkind producer-director cobbled together in the late '50s and early '60s. Attack of the Crab Monsters, Creature From the Haunted Sea, The Last Woman on Earth, The Pit and the Pendulum - Frankenstein Unbound has all the hallmarks of a Corman classic. Which is not necessarily a compliment. Decades-old schlock has a certain aura about it - call it nostalgia, call it bad judgment - that imbues the lame dialogue, cheesy costumes and nickel- and-dime props with campy respectability.

If you're a fan of ABC's Lost and missed last night's show, stop reading. Go to abc.com and watch the video replay. You missed one of the most informative shows yet in the mystery-a-minute series. Two of the biggest new enigmas: We see corpse-filled wreckage of Ocean Flight 815 at the bottom of the sea - nose, tail and midsection - so how could the plane have also crashed on the island, creating castaways? And how could the fossilized skeleton of a polar bear be found at a dig in the Tunisian desert?

Being billed as a "dance carnival," a two-night event at Old City's Envy will welcome fall with a bow to dance trends - past, present and future. Tonight will feature music from the '70s to the '90s with Roland Riso and Mike Polvere. On Saturday, Perry Angelozzi and Polvere will spin sounds from today and some of what the future may bring. Maduro, the cigar maker, is known for its monthly happenings around town, whether at Eden Rock or Billy Wong's with DJ Qool Marv, so tonight, make your way to Bleu Martini.

The time-travel romp Men in Black 3 returns us to a previous century, all the way back to that bygone era when Will Smith had yet to make a sequel. The year was 1997, Smith was coming off the cheeseball hit Independence Day , and he was about to make what seemed like just another alien invasion movie, adapted from Lowell Cunningham's Men in Black comic books/graphic novels. The movie paired Smith with legendary sourpuss Tommy Lee Jones, an idea that might prove either ingenious or terrible.

Time travel is tricky business. If you go back a decade or so - let's not even think about hundreds of years - and tinker ever so slightly with the fabric of events, the course of human history can change. Say you return to 1980s L.A. to leave that coffee-shop waitress you had a crush on a $50 tip, instead of the chump change you'd originally given her. Well, she could decide to run across the street on her break to buy a blouse at the very moment that the talent agent who was set to discover her enters the eatery.

Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking once speculated that there is a law in the universe that forbids time travel. Apparently, no one has told that to Hollywood. With summer's heat inducing audiences into air-conditioned escapes, yet another movie makes slipping into the past or future seem as effortless as walking through the cinema doors. The Time Traveler's Wife is the latest addition to a motion-picture genre that dates at least as far back as the 1949 Bing Crosby comedy A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is based on the Mark Twain novel and depicts the crooner contending with Merlin.

Bad omen for Fox's monster Mesozoic melodrama Terra Nova : It starts going downhill when the dinosaurs show up. A long time coming (it was supposed to bow in May), the show, which has a special two-hour premiere Monday at 8 p.m., is unquestionably a triumph of modern computing, populated with head-thwacking, cutting-edge electronic imagery. "It probably wasn't possible, totally, until we got a visual-effects team together that has literally created new technologies to make it possible," Brannon Braga, one of the show's 13 producers - another is Steven Spielberg - told TV critics at their summer meeting last month in Los Angeles.

One Shot Coffee didn't move far - less than a block - but it was effectively a trip back in time for the Northern Liberties coffeehouse. Melissa Baruno's revamping of a corner property (217 W. George St., 215-627-1620) has yielded a homey, old-fashioned setting by Workerman Studio of Manayunk. The tin ceiling looks distressed, as does the pickled wood of the counter. Wooden drawers behind the counter hold loose teas. A velvet curtain keeps out the winter chill. Baruno serves Stumptown coffee, which created a proprietary blend for the shop.

Arguably the biggest comic event of the year continues with the recent release of " The Traveler " from BOOM! Studios - the latest collaboration between legend Stan Lee and the upstart company. As was the case with last month's "Soldier Zero," it is unclear how much input Lee had with the creation and direction of "The Traveler. " But his fingerprints are again unmistakably on the character. The Traveler is a mysterious masked hero with time-traveling abilities who stands in opposition to the Split-Second M, super-powered assassins from the future, who we soon learn have powers related to the fundamental forces of the universe.

Cecily and Gwendolyn's Paranormal and Quantum Entanglement. Just what is it about our culture on Earth - if it's possible to have a planetary culture - that makes it so, so . . .? Well, you fill in the blank. That's the idea, or an idea, of Cecily and Gwendolyn's dive into paranormal and quantum entanglement, which they say is essential because each of us is quantumly entangled and if you ask me to explain that, I cannot. Cecily and Gwendolyn, two kooky Victorian time travelers with British accents, have been whirling around the centuries as social anthropologists, seeking the keys to cultural meaning, a quest I can't explain, either.

Cecily and Gwendolyn's Paranormal and Quantum Entanglement. Just what is it about our culture on Earth - if it's possible to have a planetary culture - that makes it so, so . . .? Well, you fill in the blank. That's the idea, or an idea, of Cecily and Gwendolyn's dive into paranormal and quantum entanglement, which they say is essential because each of us is quantumly entangled and if you ask me to explain that, I cannot. Cecily and Gwendolyn, two kooky Victorian time travelers complete with British accents, have been whirling around the centuries as social anthropologists, seeking the keys to cultural meaning, a quest I can't explain, either.

24. 9 tonight, Channel 29. Two-hour finale scheduled for 8 p.m. May 24. LOST. 9 p.m. tomorrow, Channel 6. Two-and-a-half hour finale scheduled for 9 p.m. May 23. TWO OF TELEVISION'S most iconic Jacks - Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) - hit the road this month as ABC's "Lost" and Fox's "24" draw to a close. And while at first glance the angst-ridden surgeon and the stoic action figure seem to have little more in common than a nickname, a closer examination reveals two guys who, if anything, might be too much alike.

Acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking once speculated that there is a law in the universe that forbids time travel. Apparently, no one has told that to Hollywood. With summer's heat inducing audiences into air-conditioned escapes, yet another movie makes slipping into the past or future seem as effortless as walking through the cinema doors. The Time Traveler's Wife is the latest addition to a motion-picture genre that dates at least as far back as the 1949 Bing Crosby comedy A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is based on the Mark Twain novel and depicts the crooner contending with Merlin.

The cuteness of the title of this new play by Nicholas Wardigo sells both the script and Straw Flower's production short. Intriguing and substantial, The Do's and Don'ts of Time Travel, now at the Adrienne, is an impressive premiere from a company dedicated to discovering hidden talent. Rachel (played by Amanda Schoonover) is our guide through time and through the play, a kind of contemporary Proust if Proust were a film fan. Ostensibly, she is a young woman writing a dissertation on movies: "Time travel movies have an intrinsic problem: They all suck.

At Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia in August, Philip Jacobson will portray bank robber Willie Sutton. But at Valley Forge National Historical Park on other days this summer, he will be, among others, Martha Washington. In 21st-century shirt and trousers. No cross-dressing, please. Down the lawn about 50 yards from George Washington's headquarters, Jacobson is a modern storyteller, dipping into 18th-century moments. Channeling a colonial infantryman, a German general and, yes, Martha.

If you're a fan of ABC's Lost and missed last night's show, stop reading. Go to abc.com and watch the video replay. You missed one of the most informative shows yet in the mystery-a-minute series. Two of the biggest new enigmas: We see corpse-filled wreckage of Ocean Flight 815 at the bottom of the sea - nose, tail and midsection - so how could the plane have also crashed on the island, creating castaways? And how could the fossilized skeleton of a polar bear be found at a dig in the Tunisian desert?