Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Pure socialist propaganda. Summary message: Everything would be all perfect and we could get rid of all human misery, if only everybody could be made equal. But it isn’t equal, we have just a few people living in their ivory towers hoarding resources. One percent of the population has about ninety-nine percent of the — not money, but time. Time is a metaphor for money. People have these implants on their wrists that glow in the dark, showing up as numerals that display how much time they have to live. People stop aging at twenty-five. From what reading I’ve been doing, it seems the no-aging-after-25 came first, and after that came a problem with overpopulation and famine. So the bio-clocks came after that, as a technological solution, which seems logical.
Time can be transferred from one person to another. It’s a very easy process. A block can be moved from one body to another by mutual agreement, a set quantity can be given without the receiver’s knowledge, it can be taken without the other person’s consent, it can be stored in machines. Time is used as currency. Everything costs an hour, or a day, or a week or whatever. A few minutes in, the plot is made more complex through some common bolshevik grumblings. The most heady of which is that the “inflation” that has become all-but-expected is actually deliberate — goods and services cost half again as much, or twice as much, as they did the day before. That’s so that more people die, so that shortages can be avoided.
Since there is no aging, the movie is filled with twenty-something puppy-faces. It’s a little creepy when this girl is supposed to be the mother-in-law of that guy, and he in turn is the father of that girl over there, and they’re all 25. Well one day, this puppy-face who’s already 105 years old gives away a century to Justin Timberlake. He leaves himself five minutes, which he then uses to commit suicide. Justin Timberlake, that night, gets all pissed off when his 25-year-old mother clocks out. She struggles to get home in time, running across town on foot with ninety minutes left on her life clock. Doesn’t quite make it. (Her feminine footwear for this hour-and-a-half mad dash…not quite appropriate for the task.) Well, when you zero out, your heart stops and that’s it. And so, just before her loving son could give her a few precious minutes from his new bounty to extend her life, she perishes in mid-stride, a cadaver before she hits the ground. So Timberlake does this “Nooooo!” thing, crouched on the pavement cradling her dead body, and the next day uses his wealth to travel into the posh district and make the rich bastards pay. He pays a few weeks for a swanky hotel suite, and then ups his vast holdings from a century to 1100 years. Then he pays “cash,” about 50 or 60 years, for a fancy car. The movie proceeds forward from there, sort of a hodge-podge toss-up between Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, Bonnie & Clyde and 1984. Justin ends up on the lam, with the daughter of the rich guy, and a time enforcement cop guy chasing them.
They end up tearing down the barricades of society, stealing time from what I guess would be the “robber barons”? — and distributing it to the masses in a way that is equitable, if anarchistic. Power to the people! Occupy time! It’s a little disturbing when you see the cliche repeated more than a couple times: “Is it really stealing, if what we’re stealing was already stolen?” Hmmmm…….
A thought: Some people die with time left over, and it seems from what I saw that in those situations, the time vanishes. Therefore, it is possible to spend time foolishly. If I’m pondering this correctly, then it isn’t really a zero-sum game. And if that’s true…if, as that guy says at the beginning, when he channels Michael Moore and says there’s plenty enough time to go around the problem is it isn’t being distributed…even taking this at face value, that could change. Time, in some situations, can disappear into a rat-hole. In fact, there’s one subplot where one of Justin’s friends goes to a bar with a decade on his clock, drinks a year’s worth, and goes into toxic shock. He dies that night, and there go nine years. Poof! So no, whether the people who wrote the movie realize it or not, you don’t get to equitably distribute this time and stop worrying about it. People have to be competent, even in this movie, even at the end. It’s a non-negotiable rule of life that when people go a few years without worrying about something, over time that thing will be managed as if nobody’s worried about it.
Another thought: Since Timberlake actually comes out and states the central message of the movie toward the end, something like “Nobody should be immortal if someone else has to die to make it happen,” this could very well be a prequel to Logan’s Run. Think about it: People don’t age past 25, Justin says nobody should be immortal if. What’s the rule in Logan’s Run? You check out at thirty. Logan’s full name was Logan 5? Maybe we’re looking at Logan 1. Suggest a sequel, in which they lay the foundation for the City of Domes.
It’s very difficult to work past the social commentary of the movie and evaluate it based on other things, especially when you happen to dislike the commentary…some of us have seen this same ol’ “everything is wonderful if everybody’s equal” thing get tested by reality, more than a few times. For us, the problem isn’t that we think the commentary is idiotic, the problem is that we know it is. And I’m not entirely sure that it’s possible to give the movie a positive review while giving the message a negative one. But I’m feeling generous, the directing was good, the acting was good, it moved along at a nice pace and it was entertaining. Plus, Olivia Wilde in her undergarments looks about as nice as you’d expect…the tits-and-car-explosions score is a bit low, since they’re wanting to hang on to their PG-13 rating. So there are no bare tits. I don’t recall seeing a car actually explode (one flips over an embankment, which is visually impressive). Either one would have improved things somewhat. Ms. Wilde’s hot bod is enough to keep the final product from completely sucking, even if the lighting is a little dim.
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