Hold on to your hoverboard: 'Back to the Future' is now

Welcome to the future. October 21, 2015 is the date "Back to the Future" professor Doc Brown and Marty McFly journey to in their time-traveling DeLorean in the much-loved movie trilogy.

The world as imagined by director Robert Zemeckis -- with hoverboards, self-lacing sneakers and flying vehicles -- seemed a long shot when "Back to the Future II" came out in December 1989.
 
Fans of the series are marking Wednesday's landmark date by celebrating some of the predictions that came true in the futuristic saga -- and some that didn't.
 
The films follow the time-travelling adventures of young Marty, a teenager living in small-town America in 1985 played by Michael J. Fox. He sets out in a DeLorean car converted to voyage the space-time continuum by his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown.
 
"I was a teenager when the film was released. I remember thinking it will be fun to watch it later when I have a family," said Brad Russell, founder and president of the Washington West Film Festival, which is organizing a retrospective on the series.
 
"We watched it this year with my family. It was rewarding."  

Russell is organizing a marathon projection of the three films, which came out in 1985, 1989 and 1990. Many other movie theaters are doing likewise.
 
He even managed to get the town of Reston, Virginia outside Washington to change its name for the duration of the festival.
 
A billboard that reads "Welcome to Hill Valley" -- the fictitious town where the film takes place -- is to greet hundreds of collectors of DeLorean cars expected for a parade on Oct. 25.    

A red carpet will be unfurled for Christopher Lloyd, who plays Doc Brown, and Bob Gale, who wrote the script for the trilogy....