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Minority Report
The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is, a good murder mystery conceived well before September 11th retelling a short story that was published long ago in 1956. The movie is half a work of philosophy and half a head-scratching what-if narrative exploring the merger of computers, extra-sensory perception, and genetic research. All of this is painted on the screen in the sad muted browns, sepias, blues and greys of an amateur watercolorist who can't keep the colors from turning to mud.
The conceit is the kind of classic conundrum that made science fiction great: the police in 2054 can tap the minds of three "pre-cogs" who see visions of murders a few hours before they will happen. Tom Cruise plays a cop who flies off in a jet pack to nab the soon-to-be-bad guys and lock them away before they kill. Can we really be sure the crime will be committed just as the pre-cognitives predict? Cruise is an earnest believer in the system's perfection until, it should be obvious, the system implicates him in the pre-murder of someone he's never met.
The yarn unfolds as a long string of chase scenes mixed with some flashbacks and some pre-cognitive dodges. Cruise's character, we're told, is a fast runner and he spends plenty of time running fast. The plot is crisp and layered enough to unfold several times. The hinge points are as good as the philosophical question they serve.
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary, with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19-year-old in an art school in Southern California. The unity of vision that delivered the oily dystopia of Bladerunner is missing this time. I wouldn't be surprised if someone tightened the budget screws in the middle of the film and sent them scrambling to save money on some scenes.
The tone coming from the actors is also a bit uneven. Spielberg managed to toss in funny moments in the Indiana Jones trilogy and whole schtick came together with the amazing certainty of comic-book escapism. The bits of humor in this movie's chase scenes, though, ruin the nervous paranoia and amped-up tension crackling through the narrative's ganglia. Is this supposed to be summer joy ride or a serious exploration of the meaning of justice?
These errors in execution don't matter too much because the storyline is so strong and central to our current struggle with terrorism. No one probably wants to hear that Dick wrote this story just a few years after the Supreme Court finally decided that it wasn't really legal to lock up Japanese-Americans on the off chance that they might take their orders from Tokyo. The movie theater where I saw the film is only a few miles from the prison that held much of Baltimore's City Council during the Civil War.
Despite the uncomfortable fact that moments like these happen again and again in history, there's no way to escape wondering whether Spielberg is some kind of pre-cog being who gets his version of the zeitgeist delivered early. The timing is just eerie.
Peter Wayner thinks his new book, Translucent Databases is about ten years ahead of its time. His book about steganography, Disappearing Cryptography , may be a few months late."
so if this future comes about does it mean ill be charged for music i download before i even listen to it? damn the riaa would have a field day with that! =)
12ft of rope, 4 bottles of vodka, 2 midgets, 3 cheerleaders, 1 crazy weekend
In the first paragraph of the summary say: "Go see this movie" or "Don't go see this movie".
*afeared of Lone Gunmen Spoilers*
"Derp de derp."
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house. The logos for the Gap and Pepsi haven't changed since they were faxed over from the product-placement department. Many of the scenes look contemporary with minimal set dressing, but then along comes a great car chase tricked out like the wet dream from some 19 year old in an art school in Southern California.
In the 1950s we were all promised flying cars through the amazing miracle that was atomic energy. But we're still driving plain old cars that run on gas. Not everything will change in the future. And also, I could see malls like the ones today being set up because of nostalgia.
Also, did anyone else notice that Spielberg switched camera lenses or something during some of those past-looking scenes? Everything looked fuzzier, like from glare or something.
Hasn't anyone else read Isaac Asimov's tale of the mighty Multivac and how it can predict crimes before they happen? Amazing!
what does this movie have to do with minorities?
Think of minorities in election results, not populations. To tell you any more would be spoilers. Are you incapable of going to see this movie?
FWIW, I thought it was very good.
we'll have cars that drive themselves down the sides of buildings, be able to prevent crimes from happening in the future, have really sweet video processing systems with haptic interfaces.
But we'll still have to sneakernet media from one workstation to another via removable media. Nothing ever changes.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
if the psychics have conflicting views, the view that is discarded is the "minority report" it has nothing to do with social/racial/ethnic what have you minorites
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look. At one moment, we see computers to inspire the next generation from Apple, in another moment we're in a mall that isn't as fancy or as new as the mall around the corner from my house.
I disagree. That's one of the strengths. It is ony 50 years in the future, and Spielberg uses a few advances to make it both close to home and alien.
To get all Darko Suvin on the matter for a moment (Suvin is an esteemed critic of and thinker about sf, read his stuff, it rocks), it is clear that the makers of this movie know what their novum (the "difference" that makes it sf) is, and they're sticking to it - precrime. Other lesser nova include the retina-scans and neuroin. What is very, very successfully done is their ability to focus on the important nova and their effects on society without getting too fancy with flying cars and moon malls and so forth.
What I'm trying to say at 4:48 pm after a long hot day is that the movie is a masterful example of putting an alien concept in a familiar context - for maximum effect on the viewer. A bonus is the gritty feel, and it was cute for me as a DC resident to see the future of the city (you know, we have Lexus plants _all over_ Capitol Hill).
Good movie. See it.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Except this review does not take 25 minutes to read, and you dont end up bored to tears by the end of it! :)
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
That would be the Glendale Galleria (in Glendale, CA), which looks outdated even today, appearing suddenly in the middle of DC in 2054. On the other hand, there are plenty of things around today that were here in 1952. Surely, EVERYTHING would not change in 50 years...
I have not seen it yet but it is on my wish list. Dick was a great author, very visionary. I would also say that he greatly influenced William Gibson in the realm of cyberpunk. If you want to know why check out A Scanner Darkly, a book about an undercover narc in the future who uses technology to his advantage, but also has a habit that is killing him slowly. Dick was a heavy addict at one time and this book reflects his experiences. It is actually a darkly beautiful book and the forward is dedicated to all of his friends who fell into the world of heroin abuse. Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) was a very good book although the movie was only 'vaguely' based on it. BUT the movie kicked ass. Rutger Haur as the phliosopher replicant was great. He adlibbed most of his scenes and they kept em. One of my fav's still. So if they keep it on the real with the book it should be good. Heard a rumor once that Lucas wanted to adapt Dick books. God save us all. Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
It was all there:
- the pointless "humorous" hijinks interrupting the flow (oh! the protagonist is going to eat a moldy sandwich! ha! ha! ha!)
- the sappy/happy ending when this movie really deserved an unhappy one
- the trite music from John Williams (which seemed especially bad this time...
- and worst of all, the constant need to explain every minor plot twist three times because Spielberg assumes (correctly?) that his audience is really quite stupid.
Minority Report would be a decent movie if it just wasn't so fucking annoying.is he even trying anymore?)
Is this a serious question? I'll answer in any case. We're not talking about racial minorities here, if that's your thinking. A minority report is this:
"After a majority of members of a committee agree on its report (majority report), members who disagree with the majority may write a dissenting report. This is called a minority report. Both reports are then submitted to the full meeting of the Assembly (i.e., the plenary) where the minority report may (by majority vote of the plenary) become its majority report."
Basically it is, I believe, a dissenting opinion.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
I thought the conception and excution of the film's near future was actually very well done. It is important not to change TOO many things, or you end up with a future that isn't "relatable."
Put another way: I think a mall which is largely recognizable, but has just a few odd tweaks, is a more effective way of delivering future shock than a totally unrecognizable one.
And, realistically, the near future WILL still have lots in common culturally with the current-day and even the past. I don't find the notion of The Gap logo not changing a stretch (however, I might expect it to be a place where geezers go to shop . . . comforting fashions for elderly Gen-Xers).
Stefan
This review makes too great a logical leap by trying to tie the pre-cogs/precrime plot of Minority Report to the 'War on Terrorism'. Not only is it, well I don't really have a better word, stupid -- but it seems the reviewer is trying to make a political point. Albeit with all the striking power of a wet noodle.
/. editorial staff will try not to drop such obvious dreck on us in the future. Of course history tells me differently...
Sorry, this article doesn't cut it as a movie review -- or -- as a philosophical statement. It sucks on far too many levels. Moderate me offtopic if you like, but don't moderate as a troll or flamebait, this is truly my opinion and I stand behind it.
I would hope that the
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Nada. You just write something long enough and they give up editing by the end. :-)
Seriously, hang on to it. Auction it on eBay. Might be worth a house payment, someday.
Because he was setup. Its quite simple to realise it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. The pre-cogs saw it was a pre-meditated crime, because they realized that Anderton would know about what he was meant to do a few days in advance. It was kinda weird, but it actually happened, thanks to in charge dude (name?) and the precogs.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Maybe you haven't been reading the same newspapers as I have... Abdullah Al-Mujahir was, last I heard, a U.S. citizen who is being held indefinitely by the military without being charged with anything. So... unless you'd like to back your comments up with some clarification, you're nothing but a troll.
I thought Minority Report was an entertaining movie and decent SciFi, but for some reason I got the feeling that the movie simply "could have been better" but I'm at a loss to point to specific instances where I felt some touch up was necessary.
In addition, the movie is actually quite different from the original short story, which I guess would be natural when someone like Spielberg tries to expand a short story to a two and half hour blockbuster which is designed to appeal to Joe Consumer.
Tom Cruise, Kind of
Yes, it's a joke-Enjoy
tcd004
***POSSIBLE SPOILER AHEAD***
(i don't give much away about what happens, but rather, what doesn't)
Maybe the original short story covers this, but I was miffed that this particular hole in the story was left untouched:
Why do they have to convict people of these crimes they haven't commited? (or whatever they call it when they arrest you for pre-crime) Why not intercept the criminal before the crime is commited, hold the suspect for like 72 hours, possibly giving them some kind of counseling, and then release them? If they never commited a crime, they can't really be guilty of it, so no harm, no foul. In the movie, they say that premeditated murder is almost extinguished, because no one is dumb enough to try it anymore. This would still be the case under my idea, and you could even consider imprisoning those who are repeat "offenders". But it would keep people from commiting crimes of passion, and allow them to continue their lives.
Thoughts, anyone?
The Free desktop that Just Works
It was a well executed movie, but there was some obviously biased left-wing exaggerations. Anyone who says this movie was realistic or "could happen" is a paranoid alarmist.
** SPOILERS BELOW **
First off, it seems the department of precrime has done away with the entire judicial system. You're caught and then hauled off and put in your little halo/tube thing with no trial or investigation. Also, if you think the American public would be cool with prisoners being plugged into the Matrix and sealed off, you're a moron.
If there in fact was a department of precrime, those who were prevented from committing murder would not be arrested but most likely be put into counseling along with restraining orders placed from those who were going to be killed. They wouldn't go to jail as if they committed a crime, simply because they didn't. If you think they would, you too are a paranoid alarmist idiot.
The kicker for me was at the end when the entire precrime system was abolished.. and this was something we were supposed to feel good about. Nevermind the fact that D.C. would probably shoot back to the number 1 murder rate city in the country overnight. Nevermind the fact that precrime could have been used legitimately and usefully, preventing murders by intervention but without punishment (what an idea!)
I also love the fact that our precog friends decide to live on a farm at the end where they can read books. Because as every good bleeding heart liberal knows, technology and society are evil. Please.
Oh, and of course everyone would be cool with them immersing the precogs in a vat of goo for all their lives. Starting the movie with this premise, something which would never be legitimate, and then breaking it down at the end to help us feel good about the conclusion is the cinematic equivalent of a straw man.
I realize it was just a movie, but I want could curb some of the alarmist reaction to this wholly unrealistic depiction of what the world would be like if we could accurately predict murder. Putting this out now after 9/11 makes it all too easy for the lefties to jump on it and say "See???" Don't let them.
--
okay. this is the one thing which bothered me also, other than why didn't the evil doctor just butcher and kill tom cruise out of revenge, instead of HELP him. anyway...
it goes like this. the old guy (who anderton works for) finds out that agatha has contacted anderton about her mother's murder. the old guy has to cover it up.
so he finds the sap (crowe) and pays him to be in a hotel room, acting like he killed anderton's son.
now -- this would still not be enough to trigger the pre-cogs vision, because without the vision, anderton would have NO IDEA how to find this guy. and what is MORE strange is that it is a "premeditated" murder.
so i can't tie it all together either. in any case, only a few of the names and the basic principle of precrime were taken from the short story, everything else was basically an entirely new story.
-rp
Not according to this:
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-lawyer -attacks26.story?coll=bal%2Dhome%2Dheadlines
The US citizen from Louisiana is still locked up in a military prison and is being denied an attorney, much less a trial! (And that news is from today, 6/26/02.
Basically [a minority report] is, I believe, a dissenting opinion.
Thanks. You expressed it in terms that the legions of armchair lawyers on /. could understand without giving away the plot.
Now this immediately raises a question. Why didn't they just call it a dissent? Simple: If Fox called the movie "Dissent", then Interplay would hang them if they tried to make a video game out of the movie.
Will I retire or break 10K?
ummm....remember Jose?
/ ne wsid_2040000/2040675.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas
Those who live in glass cubicles should not throw stones
Read this:
"A court's inquiry should come to an end once the military has shown ... that it has determined that the detainee is an enemy combatant. ... [T]he court may not second-guess the military's enemy-combatant determination."
This was written by the Department of Justice. In plain English it says that the military may keep someone locked up for as long as they want, without trial. Even if they're an American citizen. Article available here.
And FYI: The recent arrest announced by Ashcroft was against a US citizen who they had kept in custody for over a month before announcing it. All based on their good word.
Which is, I hope you'll agree, somewhat suspect if for no other reason than they are humans, and are therefore fallible.
Trials (by jury), or military tribunals (in secret)?
Of course in the reviewer's own estimation, by this time everyone should wear pseudo-future space clothes and all restaurants are Taco Bell.
:))
I thought the mixture of futurism while maintaining modern elements is a pretty good guess. It's 50 years in the future, I don't see our society changing too much. But anything can happen. No one can predict the future (well, except maybe the precogs
This is just one view of the future, and it seems realistic enough. I thought it was done tastefully and thoughtfully, unlike such tripe as Battlefield Earth. My only qualm with the story was the ending, which, like AI, would have been better had they cut the last 10-15 minutes out.
The plot is crisp and layered enough to unfold several times
I'm sorry to disagree, but I found the plot clumsy, inefficient, and not particularly thrilling.
Assuming that there was anyone in the audience unfamiliar with the premise, was it necessary to set up the premise in at least four repetative sequences, any one of which would have done the job:
1. In the 15 minute opening arrest sequence.
2. In the 5 minute discussion following that sequence.
3. In the Robocop-like "Precrime" commercial.
4. AGAIN by the tour guide?
Technology was inconsistant in the film:
1. Why didn't they use the spiders in the opening sequence when they didn't know which house it was? In fact, why didn't they just run in and check all the houses instead of having 50 guys just stand there?
2. You think the computers were Steve Jobs inspired? I was SHOCKED that they were using a FLOPPY to move files from computer to computer.
3. What was up with waving your arms around like a conductor to move windows?!
4. What was up with that horrible 3d projections system in Tom Cruise's house? Why would anyone use that? It was like bad UHF reception.
5. "If you don't wait twelve hours... you'll go blind." Or... maybe six.
6. Whats up with a giant organ in the prison room?
7. Don't you think the spider technology would have showed up in lots of other places?
8. If the cops have those stun gun things, why would using bullets be standard issue?
9. Wouldn't the revelation of PSYCHICS have tremendous scientific reprocussions beyond precrime?
10. The ads, which were supposed to be annoying in the story... were annoying in ACTUALITY. Part of the reason I think is that I know that this wasn't tongue-in-cheek made up ads, but ACTUAL ADS from ACTUAL companies who were paying big time subsidies for this VERY REAL product placement. How ironic.
11. Did anyone else get the feeling that this future had about 50 people in it total? I did not feel like this was a "real" world at all.
12. There were just a lot of plain silly and inconsistant things. I did like the cereal box tho.
Action Scenes:
1. The Tom Cruise Plays Car Frogger scene was dull.
2. Were there any other action scenes? I suppose some chases... blah.
3. The action, billed as on the same level as Indian Jones....wasn't.
Characters:
1. Did Tom's drug addiction go anywhere? Did anyone even buy this character?
2. Haven't we seen the "I never said she drowned" "whoops!" about a million times?
3. "Surely by now the precogs have predicted you're going to kill me. So you're caught in a paradox.. bwahaha" How the hell did Tom know what they predicted? They could have predicted what enivitably happened.
4. The surgeon who replaces Tom's eyes gives a big speech about getting screwed over, then does....nothing bad. Fixes the eyes, leaves a nice sandwich.
5. Tom's coworkers at precrime have no problem whatsoever going after him.
6. The precogs were just plain silly.
7. As for Max von Sydow, don't even get me started.
Plot
1. Why did Tom's crime of passion get a full 36 hours of lead time when they had established that such crimes come at the last minute?
2. As the film was kinda winding down, I turned to my friend and predicted not only who the guy Tom was searching for was, but what choice Tom would have and what he would do. I was right, but never could have anticipated...
3. The extra 20 minutes or so following that, which like was totally unnecessary and cheesy.
4. What is the point of putting the precogs in a barn somewhere?
I still don't see why murders stopped by precogs NECESSARILY need to lead to arrests and prosecutions. I mean, say they had stopped the murder of passion at the top of the story-- rather than putting the dreaded headphones on the husband, couldn't they have gotten him into some family counceling? I mean, having a precog to stop a murder doesn't automatically mean you have to prosecute the pre-murderer.
With the 95% positive response on rottentomatoes.com I was expecting something really impressive.. But as time goes, I'm just left with... "well, that was kinda mediocre..." Certainly not at all thought provoking.
I think many critics are smokin' crack.
Many successful logos never change. If you bought ads in this movie, you're buying your way into the future.
Think Coca Cola's logo will be much different in 50 years?
Also, how could the reviewer call that mall normal? Holy crap. It was like walking into a physical version of Amazon.com.
PLUG:
Read this Interview with Tom Cruise, sorta
tcd004
Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomb" suspect, is a US citizen. He has been placed in military custody as an "enemy combatant." He was placed in military custody, because in order to keep him in police custody, law enforcement must charge him with a crime and present evidence of it. They are unable or unwilling to do so, so they are doing an end-run around the constitution .
Perhaps thousands (the justice department won't say) of non-US citizens are being held without being charged with any crime. The justice department's secrecy on the issue, and its trampling of Mr. Padilla's constitutional rights, could lead one to wonder if more US citizens are in custody without due process.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Episode I gave a whole new meaning to the word "jarring."
Dunno about the Gap logo thing. I think the fact that it even exists is a bit of a stretch. I mean, how many clothes manufacturers in 1950 are still popular today?
c-hack.com |
2054 looks to be a terribly advanced age, except for one thing: sneaker-net. Cruise's character uses the large interface to view and interpret the precogs' visions, but he must first upload the data from the small terminal on the other side of the room, using what must be a mid-21st-century floppy disk. And I thought we would have made progress in networking by that time. Maybe we run out of IPv6 addresses too, and decide to drop the idea altogether.
This guy has so many axes to grind that I think he forgot he was reviewing a movie halfway through.
And for those of you who aren't pretentious, my review is: good movie. The only baggage it has is that which you bring with you. One big "suspension of disbelief" hole and one big plot hole, but very enjoyable to watch.
Holes listed here, but since they're spoilers:
The people we are locking up are NOT citizens of the USA.
Even so, the Constitution (Article 1, Section 9, Amendment 5, and Amendment 6) guarantees rights to "persons", not just to "citizens." From Article 1, Section 9: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." But does this wag-the-dog war on terrorism require such a suspension of habeas corpus?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Philip K. Dick could write a helluva lot better than Spielburg can ever direct.
Anybody seen this AND read the short story? Any comments on how faithful the adaptation is?
Anybody looking forward to a JK review?
:)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
heh that's the second time I've been modded a troll over requests to avoid movie spoilage.
I guess what the moderators really want me to do is say stuff like this:
* Imagine a beowulf cluster of Minority Reports
* I'll never buy this movie on DVD because I run Linux
* Here's a link to the first 3 reviews I found on Google
* This isn't news! I've seen movies before!
and
* The movie's already available for download on Kazaa
"Derp de derp."
Heh. Paying to see this movie is a spoiler in itself, but anyways.
My favourite bit. In the future, when pre crime predicts that one of their own officers is going to commit murder, they decide that removing your security privelidges isn't necessary. You can walk right on in to 'the temple' , where the @#$%ing precogs are lying around, and it's all fine and dandy because the lazy bastard pre crime admin doesn't see any problem with letting a fugitive access the building.
Bravo to the story writer on that one.
Oh here's a classic - The pre cogs have apparently been lying in that stupid indoor pool for 6 years, and they have more of a tan than me.
And i'd love to see who was in charge of all those usability studies which showed that clean sheets of glass are much easier to read text on than todays computer monitors.
the law clearly states that if you join a foreign army, you renounce your American citizenship. I realize that al-Queda is a nationless army, but we have declared war on them nonetheless.
What is the strict definition of "foreign army," I wonder...
The physics were completely XP.
To start off with, our boy TC jumps from one rapidly falling car thingy to another more-rapidly falling car thingy just like anybody could jump from a three foot portch. Hello? Newtonian physics?
Then there's the jetpack scene. Guy in jetpack is flying around at incredible lift/weight ratios with standard rocket propelled thrust. As if that wasn't bad enough, these things can actually cary THREE PEOPLE, with armor weapons and backpacks! And all of this done with about an 8 inch flame. And evidently for a gosh-darn good amount of time.
To top it off, these amazing devices can skim the ground at about 3' without any wings to use for lift!
Then there's the whole problem of temporal paradoxes. Evidently TC has been set up to find this guy by his 3V|7 boss who pretends to be the man who kidnaped his kid. Fair enough. But how did the "precog" see this happening when seeing it happen is what caused it to happen. There would have had to be an initiator for the temporal paradox to have occurred. Somewhere along the timeline something would have had to put TC in the room with the fake-rapist without the intervention of the precog. But wait, we can't travel in time, so that's not possible. Evidently this "precog" isn't just seeing the future, she's creating it.
Then there's the villain himself, who somehow turns from noble champion of justice into a person willing to do anything , including murder innocent people, just for the perfect justice system. Yet he's not portrayed as a madman, because he shoots himself in the end.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
How do you know? The government has refused to say who they have detained or even how many (although there have been leaks otherwise).
And US born doesn't mean jack -- if they are a citizen of the United States of America then they get the rights, privledges, and duties thereof. Whether born, naturalized, or otherwise (can't think of an otherwise offhand, but I'm not an immigration lawyer either). Point being, they're not.
Everyone seems to be ignoring this on the basis of "well, that's ok, because these are bad people and it's not me". What proof do we have that they are bad people? The government's? The same people that are locking them up and refusing them trial, right? Uh... and you don't think that vague evidence could be manufacturered or outright lied about?
I'm familiar with the law and Supreme Court decision that the AG is using here. But it does not apply to US citizens. It's questionable if it applies at all, since we do not have a formal declaration of war (but that gets into the War Powers Act, which everyone, especially the Supreme Court, has been dodging for nearly 50 years now). And there are US citizens being detained and stripped of their rights here. This is the same crap we yell at despots and communist countries about on a daily basis.
I'm all for locking them up and letting them rot... or even hanging them... but either we do it right, through the legal system we have established, or we start kissing freedom goodbye. And I'm not talking about the freedom people whine about with the RIAA/MPAA - I'm talking about actually being able to go outside your home without worrying that the government will put you away for pissing off some minor bureaucratic official.
Personally I think it was a fuck up.
However, I'll post a counter just because. You stated "but the question is why did the prophecy happen in the first place?"
solution 1) Because there was no first place. We experience time sequentially, but maybe everything has already happened, and happened at once.
Or how about this: Cruise wasn't present when the vision initially happened, he only found out when he got to work that day and watched the recorded images. So lets say Max Von Sydow finds out that there is going to be a pre-meditated murder commited by some third party before Cruise doees, and Crowe is the victim. So Sydow contacts Crowe, plants the evidence before cruise goes to stop the murder. Cruise then finds the evidence as he is trying to stop the original third party crime and kills the guy himself. When cruise is viewing the vision of all this happening, the precogs show himself killing the guy first, which changes the future before they have given the complete vision, and the vision is updated on the fly. You see, seeing himself commiting a crime changed the nature of it. It would have been different if the vision had been better organized and showed him preventing the third party crime before shooting Crowe, but it didn't work out that way.
That is all pretty contrived, and audience members should have to invent elaborate solutions to fix a plot goof. I think spielberg could have cleaned up that aspect if he tried. Maybe it just got edited out.
Two movies come to mind; both released LONG before Sept 11th.
1) "The Long Kiss Goodnight": (Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson) A movie where the CIA, conspiring with it's supposed enemies, attempts to commit a terrorist act to kill 4,000 people, and blame it on Arab terrorists. All this, for no other reason than to increase their federal funding. Does everyone remember the Slashdot stories around Aug/Sept 2001 where this CIA/NSA said their lack of funding was imparing their ability to do their jobs and protect Americans?
2) "Canadian Bacon" (Alan Alda, John Candy): The president's approval rating is very low because of the end of the Cold War (munitions factories close everywhere). So, the president authorizes agents, posing as canadian terrorists, perform small-scale terrorist acts against the USA. Using the media, they impose the fear of Canada in Americans, even using the line "They Walk Among Us" (Startlingly Similar to the term "Sleeper Cells" of today).
Both movies are VERY good in their own right. I suggest EVERYONE check them out.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The system is based on deterrence, not prevention.
Once someone has (subjuctively) committed murder, dealing with that criminal is not what the justice system is for. The goal at that point is to kill/imprison/prisonrape that criminal as an example to to future criminal-wannabes.
Of course, I have to admit, when you're dealing with future crimes, I'm not sure what the difference is between the criminals and the criminal-wannabes. And maybe that's your whole point. :-)
I guess there must be some threshold of intent that they cross? Instead of the real life point where a person crosses the line of considering to murder and actually committing murder, you have a point where someone considers considering murder, and considers committing it. Ugh.
You know what? The whole thing is so ridiculous, that I don't think you should take it seriously and worry about the problems. It all leads to time-travel paradoxes anyway, and no one ever gets anywhere with that crap. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Interestingly enough the movie skips on issues it should have addressed. For instance we already have 'pre-crime'laws like conspiracy to commit murder, overthrow the government, etc. The Precrime system also doesn't distinguish between crimes of passion/manslaughter and pre-planned murder. I wonder if they freeze drunk drivers who get into accidents too.
The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is.
I can't wait till he reviews Two Towers. In fact, I can't wait till the US population as a whole gets wind of this being released!
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Warning, this post will contain spoilers (although if you're read this far, you probably don't care).
The resonance between this story and the current war is so strong that it's almost impossible to watch it for what it is, a good murder mystery conceived well before September 11th retelling a short story that was published long ago in 1956.
The movie had almost nothing to do with the short story. It was similar in that it was a murder mystery, there are precogs, and these precogs detect murder. The places where the movie took off from the story are numerable, and the places where the movie actually went against the story starts about 1/3 of the way through and continues until the end.
The movie is about a guy in charge of precrime who discovers the fallibility of the system and goes out of his way to bring those in charge of it (who were involved in multiple wrongdoings) to justice. The "echos" weren't even addressed in the short story, nor the possibility of faking murders beforehand.
The short story is about a guy in charge of precrime who discovers a potential fallibility in the system, but goes ahead with the murder because he believes in the system.
The difference is really quite striking.
This is an excerpt from a comic by Robert Crumb, Weirdo #17.
quoting:
"It is an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months. "
IMO, a must-read for anyone who enjoys Dick's work.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
It's even more blatant than that. The movie spells it out several times--Anderton (Cruise) found out about the murder from Agatha, went snooping around and discovered that Agatha's report on the murder was missing. He told Max about this discovery, and that's when the setup was planned.
Good points. I guess most American Citizens would be OK with the fact that the ones being detained are the "bad guys"....And it is easy to make that assumption if it is always -- "someone else"....But imagine that being you....(maybe you were joking with a friend in an airport about a bomb, or you were having a sarcastic conversation on your cell phone...etc...etc..)
Much like my belief in the Death Penelty was pretty much shreaded when I read the story of people let go 20 years later (and a precious few steps from the "green mile") because the REAL killer was caught...or DNA evidence proved otherwise. I had always been ignorant to the fact that "if they were found guilty -- then 100% of them must have done it...." it's scary to think that a certain percentage may have not done anything....Except not have a good enough alibi.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Why why WHY does Speilberg have to blow most of his movies in the last 15 minutes? I was really into it until it all tied up in a big shiny bow. The bad guys are punished, the good guys come out on top and life is better. COME ON. Movies should tell you something, not BEAT you OVER the HEAD with a HAMMER with "The world is a better place" engraved on the handle.
Bah.
Triv
His book about steganography, Disappearing Cryptography , may be a few months late.
You mean there's a whole friggin' science devoted to the science of studying stegosauruses now? Screw being an general palenotolgoist -- when I grow up I wanna be one of those high-priced specialists!
GMD
watch this
Well, this is probably a troll, but, what the hell, I'll bite...
The people are being held on the charge that they are enemy combatants. Their citizenship doesn't even matter.
This is what is frightening. All the government has to do is slap the label of "enemy combatant" on someone and they can keep them locked up forever? No one has seen the evidence except the Justice Dept. If the evidence is so damning, there shouldn't be any problem getting an indictment and a conviction. So why trample the Constitution?
Now what my real question is: If you are so concerned about the rights of an enemy of the United States, maybe you should be under investigation.
No, jackass. I am concered about the rights of a citizen of the United States. You know, that bastion of freedom and justice that Bush is always going on about?
This is 100% false. A complete lie. Typical leftist propaganda. Ideology before the truth.
The only "American Citizen" to being locked up outside, the American Taliban John Walker Lindh, is Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir. He has a lawyer, who has appeared in front of a judge. Her name is Donna Newman and she appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey to plead Padilla's case. Its not like they picked him up off the street and threw him in the brig. Once his conspiratorial behavior with Al Qaeda was documented before the highly respected Judge Mukasey, Padilla's status was changed and he was thrown into a military prison where he belongs (right before the firing squad). Two seconds on google would have pointed that out. But John Ashcroft bashing is in vogue for the politically frustrated left, so these little pesky details never seem make it out when dealing with Padilla. Your Civil Rights are fine, you just don't have the right to make people listen to this "Sky is Falling" hysteria.
Mr. Dirty Bomber was not arrested for changing his name into something most American's cannot pronounce. He was arrested for travelling to a nation that harbors terrorists and meeting with Al Qaeda officials in order to plot out a radiological attack against innocent American Citizens. This is a conspiracy to commit terrorism. Terrorists are referred to by the Geneva Convention as "unlawful combatants" giving you pretty much the permission to put a gun to their head and blow their evil brains out. But this is America and we play nice with evil people. We give these unlawful combatants the benefit of the doubt and try them through military tribunals instead of executing them on the spot.
If you want to ensure that you do not end up like Mr. Muhajir, don't conspire with terrorists in a plot to harm vast numbers of Americans. Feel free to call John Ashcroft a religious poopy head, he won't stop you by calling you a terrorist.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Actually, I think the unchanged nature of the logos can be chalked up to simple product placement. Firms like The Gap, Pepsi and Reebok paid a ton of money to get their logos into this movie, and they want to build brand-recognition in the here-and-now.
There's an interesting article over on Slate about the ads in Minority Report. Though product placement is nothing new, this film represents the first time corporations have actually hired outside advertising agencies to realize the full-length commercials that were played throughout the movie.
Arresting people guilty of "pre-crimes" is obviously a questionable practice. Instead, why don't the police use the precognitions as a TIP? They can stake out the (future) crime scene, capture the whole crime on video, and stop it in progress. There would then be no question about guilt PLUS the violent outcome of the crimes are avoided. This is a win-win situation.
cpeterso
Willfully or not, you are misunderstanding the concern here. Your nominal citizen was challenging jurisdiction. But you know what? At least he got a trial! It wasn't enough for the President to say, "Oooh, he's a danger... better lock him up." In the current wave of illegality, the President and his agents have specifically and deliberately denied -- to acknowledged American citizens -- their right of habeus corpus, their right to know the charges against them, their right to face their accusers, their right to counsel, and their right to a speedy and impartial trial by their peers. What is the justification? That the President claims that they are enemy combatants. They cannot even get a judge to review that determination... if the President says it is so, it must be so.
I am not usually a paranoid anti-establishment type, but if you wrote up the list of law enforcement expansions of the last year and showed it to anyone -- but made sure not to say it was the US -- there would be only one question: Is this Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I disagree. The point was, if you could prove that precognition works, what impact would it have? Of course for precognition to work there'd have to be a particular metaphysical orientation in the Universe. But it is not a priori outside the realm of possibility that this could be a scientifically-verifiable, physically-reliable occurence.
Remember, the science ficton author doesn't have to believe his/her postulated physical laws are true, or even that they could be. The author need only explore what happens if they were true.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
My mistake, sorry Tim!
peterwayner has obviously not read the short story....
All the "material witnesses" being held in Federal custody are illegal aliens from Al Qaeda sponsoring countries that already had deportation orders from the INS. So they are not "American Citizens" but foreign criminals. I feel safer at night that they are rotting in prison than running loose on American streets. Break the law, go to jail. Violate the immigration laws, skip deportation orders, rot in jail. They had an opportunity to return their country of origin when the deportation order was given.
There are not "Activists" in prison being held without trial nor are they held for a week without being charged or arrested. That is not even a logical statement. In order to be put in prison at a protest, you have to be arrested. Cops just don't grab you and throw you in the jail. They arrest you.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Re: Resonance ... try this on for size: The old Republic (an inefficient, but fundamentally peaceful democracy) is manipulated into giving Supreme Authority to an elected politician with questionable allegiances. In the process, the republic slowly becomes a royal, military dictatorship (or empire).
... seems like such crap. Then I remember an interesting meta study from the 90's, in which it was determined that AS A GROUP, people who believed in ESP, psychic pheonoma, etc scored higher (on average) on Rhine exams, etc than a similar group of "non-believers". Again, not talking about individuals, talking about group averages. So, I dunno, makes me think.
a) nazi germany
b) the republic of rome
c) star wars: attack of the clones
d) bush whitehouse
e) all of the above
Re: Relying on precognition as a plot device
Does anyone have any pointers to this study?
thanks
=brian
Progress makes its changes upon the present day in bursts and halts. Some things change rapidly, other things take decades. Typically, the things that change the quickest are the "everyman luxuries" such as cars, computer devices, and clothing. Our ever evolving concept of what "looks modern" is part of what drives that. Take a look at a six year old computer, it looks boxy and antique already -- yet when that computer was produced, it was likely at the height of what people considered Neat. The things that do not change as rapidly are extreme luxuries, and non-luxury items. Of course, there are always exceptions, but in general this is the case.
To bring this back to the film, the types of things that you saw looking wildly different and futuristic were precisely the types of things that go through rapid periodic aesthetic modification. Cars, electronic devices, watches, and clothing. The types of things that did not change are the things that haven't really changed in the past few decades for us either.
Secondly, as far as logos go, these do not rapidly change too much either, at least the bigger companies do not, and for a very good reason. If you go about changing your logo every two years, it stops having as much subliminal impact -- unless your company is already a behemoth, and then changes can actually be considered innovative, and people come to expect them -- however they usually revolve around the core idea. Pepsi Corporation is a good example of a company that has reworked their logo frequently, while always retaining the basic design that we all know by sight. How often has Proctor & Gamble fiddle with their logo? Even Microsoft has managed to hang on to their logo for a few decades now. Changes are made, but they usually are not often made, and rarely are they drastic.
I for one think that the concept of the future was quite realistic, and I found it refreshing in a way to see a design team correctly assess the way the world changes. I absolutely love the way Blade Runner looks, it is one of my favorite movies, and the design is a big reason why -- but it isn't necessarily all that realistic.
V
Keep in mind that there was a plot put into place to frame Anderton. That means that at some point Anderton and the guy he is accused of pre-killing would run into other. I'll agree it still seems like a self-fullfulling prophecy, but on the other hand we do not get to see how Anderton arrives at the hotel in the dream, so maybe the path he took was different?
-- Argel
Care to back it up with any facts?
> Terrorists are referred to by the Geneva Convention as "unlawful combatants" giving you
7 39003e636b/6fef854a3517b75ac125641e004a9e68?OpenDo cument
> pretty much the permission to put a gun to
their head and blow their evil brains out.
Americans like you might provoke some people to take other Americans and "put a gun to
their head and blow their evil brains out". Ever heard of the presumption of innocence? Not guilty until proven guilty before a court? YOU taught these principles, now you abandon them!
Some background:
"Unlawful combatants" are an invention of the American government. The term was used to justify the execution of German spies in the second world war. It has no foundation at all in any internationally recognized body of law or the written American constitution.
Proof: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256
Terrorists are either PoWs (Geneva Convention: fair treatment) or criminals (justice system, local court, International Criminal Court).
"Unlawful combatants" are an American legal fiction to be able to hold unconvicted people without either international or national legal responsibility.
BTW: George Washington was a terrorist.(Ask the British!)
Moritz
(And guys - if you're looking to improve the quality of submissions Slashdot gets, it would probably be a really good idea to allow a limited form of feedback for rejections - even if it was just a choice from a drop-down menu ("This story was rejected because we have a writer working on the same story right now", for example.)
Oh - and in response to one user's post - go see it, but with lowered expectations.
Review: Minority Report
Reviewers of Spielberg's latest film are falling over each other to laud his new, gritty noir vision of the future, "Minority Report", based on the Phillip K Dick short story of the same name. Roger Ebert loves it; the movie is currently standing at 93% at Rotten Tomatoes, and Salon gives it a thumbs-up. But what's the reaction of your average geek?
(Full disclosure - while I am familiar with his work, I have not read the Phillip K. Dick story - so you're not going to read any comments about how the movie did or did not live up to the book. It stands and falls here on its own merits. Plot of the movie is discussed, but the ending is not given away. Plot of other Spielberg movies is also referenced.)
For those of you who have not yet been saturated by press releases or the trailer - Tom Cruise plays John Anderton, an investigator in the "pre-crime" police division of Washington D.C. in 2054. The department's work is facilitated by "pre-cogs", beings with the power to see the future - in particular, future murders. Alerted to crimes before they happen, the pre-crime unit can interpret the waking dreams of the pre-cogs and intercept the perpetrators before the event. This program has been such a success that murders in the D.C. area have been practically eliminated, and the government is considering taking the pre-crime unit national. Pre-cogs, it is claimed, are never wrong.
As a final safety check, federal investigator Danny Witwer (played by Colin Farrell) is sent to inspect the pre-crime facility. Anderson and his boss, Director Burgess (Max von Sydow) fear that the program is going to be taken away from them. However, things quickly get far more complex than mere power games over jurisdiction.
Another alert from the pre-cog pops up. This time, Anderson sees himself killing a man - a man he does not know. Convicted by the infallibility of his own system and convinced he has been set-up, Anderson runs, determined to escape his own destiny by finding out who framed him.
The Washington DC that he runs to is a computerized Paniopticon, biometric readers omnipresent and blithely accepted by the populace. However the street (to paraphrase William Gibson) always finds a means to subvert every technological innovation - and to continue to run, Cruise must sink into the underbelly of the world he knows and confront his own past.
As a geek, your acceptance of Minority Report's plot will depend a great deal upon your stance on temporal paradoxes. The effectiveness of the pre-crime unit rests in the belief that once the future is "seen" it must occur, and Anderton's unit is therefore justified in taking pre-emptive action. However, as Witwer points out, by intervening you have forestalled the event - is it therefore right to incarcerate someone who has not committed an offense? Determinism is assumed to be a fact, but it turns into a question central to the film.
Spielberg has received a lot of recent press claiming how much "darker" and dystopian this movie is than much of his early work. I've seen comments that extrapolate from "Saving Private Ryan" through "A.I." to this movie that suggest the man is on a trip that rivals Poe in bleakness. Suffice it to say that anyone who believes this has "E.T" burned into their minds but has forgotten "Empire of the Sun" or even "The Color Purple", films as equally as grim as "Minority Report".
In fact there comes a point about fifteen minutes before the end of the film where Spielberg could have wrapped it up, leaving every plot thread neatly tied, and delivered a much darker ending. However Hollywood, or his own essential optimism, has driven him to deliver a brighter alternative, much like "A.I." It is not a completely unsatisfactory conclusion - the climax involves a very nice moral conflict - but it is not the bleak outlook I expected from reading the pieces on Spielberg's new "dark vision".
Spielberg does not fail to hit upon themes that are central to his work - the breathtaking innocence of childhood; the loss of humanity and its possible redemption; and the two-edged sword of technology. (Spielberg is no starry-eyed technologist - the potential misuse of man's tools has been an ongoing thesis since "Duel". In "Minority Report" there is an interesting sub-theme of technology as a new religion, with Anderton, the tool user, set against Witwer, a traditionally trained Jesuit seminarian before he became a cop.
Spielberg's visualization of the near-future of 2054 is complete and compelling. Animated advertising crawls over every surface; enhanced personalization of every experience has come at the price of a sharp loss in privacy; the gap between the well-to-do and the drug-addled poor has grown massively. One wonders, however, if the appearance in the film of companies we have today is there for verisimilitude or is merely clever product placement - how many corporations do you expect to survive another 50 years with the same logo? And while the technology shown is (for the most part) very believable, it is ironic that the cause behind the pre-cogs ability is somewhat glossed over.
In his directing Spielberg has taken note of his younger, hungrier competitors, such as David Fincher.. Part of this change was to hire Alex McDowell (the production designer of "Fight Club" and "The Crow"). In addition, his camerawork, in cooperation with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (who worked with him on "Schindler's List") is more fluid than ever, using juxtaposition and video techniques to sometimes dazzling effect. And unlike his peer Lucas, who seems happy to place ultra-mirrored spacecraft in pristine environments and shiny robots on rich green grass, Spielberg's use of CGI is more subtle, "dirtier" and almost invisibly integrated in the scenes.
In terms of the cast, Tom Cruise is, well, Cruise. He's been chosen for roles for twenty years because he is an effective actor who is also cute, charming and bankable. His role as Anderton doesn't tax those abilities in any way. Max Von Sydow is the slightly scary Old Testament father figure he established himself in even before "The Exorcist". To me, the most effective player in the cast is Colin Farrell. Given a smaller role with far less screen time than Cruise he still succeeds in making his character deep, complex, and far more dynamic than the leading man's, with better lines and sharper delivery.
The plot is certainly enough to keep you guessing, with enough twists and turns to throw most. The movie has one "discovery" and an attendant chase scene that does stretch credibility somewhat, but otherwise the plotting is coherent and relatively bulletproof. There are holes, but none large enough to spoil the movie.
As a vision of the future, "Minority Report" is chock-full of ideas. As a movie, or even as a cyberpunk thriller, it leaves a little to be desired. After the film you won't want to tear your eyes out, but you may feel a sense of disappointment that Spielberg, who has demonstrated time and again that he can be deeply insightful into the human condition, warn of the dangers of technology while showcasing its attractions, and deliver a wild ride, could not quite succeed in delivering all three at once in this movie.
Think of it as a time-travel conundrum. Technically, you can't know the future for the same reasons you can't change the past. Say you want to change, say, the shirt you wore Tuesday from blue to red, and you go back in time and convince yourself to change the shirt.
Now, you've changed your own past, which means you wore the red shirt. But if that's true, you had no motivation to go back in time in the first place. The paradox is that you when you change the past, you either remove the reason for or make impossible (think the "kill your grandfather" riddle) the doing of time-travel.
So, turn it around. If you can know the future and can change it, then pre-cog is invalid under many circumstances. If you can know the future and not change it, then trying to act on it will inevitably create self-fulfilling prophecies, predicated on knowing the outcome!
My wife hates time travel and refuses to talk with me about it.
The broad strokes of PKD's "Minority Report" are faithfully reproduced: the department of precrime, the three "cogs", the inherent paradox of precrime, and the idea of a "minority report" where two cogs disagree with another. Also, the plot line has a similar feature in that John Anderton discovers that he is supposed to murder someone, and is attempting to find the minority report to clear his name. But everything else is quite different.
The original short story is way antiquated in technology, thus most of the technological details are completely new for the movie: like the eye scanners, jet packs, guns, cars, etc. Heck, in the story, John Anderton uses magnetic (or is it punch?) tape and printouts for interfacing with the reports for the cogs, not some uber hand flicking interface (very cool BTW). The cogs in the story are drooling idiots who babble stuff about the future, not the drugged, sentinent (photogenic) oracles of the movie. The story doesn't deal with the origins of the cogs (not that I remember at least). In the original, John Anderton is an old man (closer to the Max Von Sydow character of the movie), and there is no subplot involving missing/dead children or missing parents. In the original, there are no past crimes to dig up, nor old enemies, just a new one out to discredit the deparment of PreCrime. Compared to the movie, the short story is a much less layered, direct story dealing with the central paradox of precrime; the paradox of foreseeing the future and being able to act upon that knowledge. The movie on the other hand, touches on themes of privacy, identity, justice, societal benefit, and drug addiction in addition to that paradox.
On the whole, I prefer the movie to the book. well, except for the ending of the movie, that was typical Spielberg sentimental mush. Of course, without the incredible vision of PKD to begin with, there would have been no movie. IMHO, PKD remains one of the most influential SF writers ever.
EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Gur ragrejvavat bs gur benpyr naq vgf pyvrag vf n pynffvp bs nyy svpgvba vaibyivat benpyrf. Frr, sbe rknzcyr, Brqvchf Erk, va juvpu gur benpyr'f cerpvpgvba gung Brqvchf jbhyq zneel uvf zbgure naq xvyy uvf sngure vf jung xvpxf bss gur riragf gung yrnq shsvyyvat gur benpyr'f cerqvpgvba. Frr nyfb gur benpyr va gur Zngevp, jub trg Arb gb oernx fbzrguvat va ure xvgpura ol cerqvpgvat ur'yy oernx vg. Jbhyq fhpu guvatf unccra jvgu n "erny" benpyr? Jub xabjf? Ohg univat gur cerpbtf frg va zbgvba va gur riragf gung yrnq Naqregba gb gur cbvag jurer ur'f ubyqvat n tha ba Pebjr vfa'g n cybg-ubyr; vg'f n shaqnzragny nffhzcgvba bs gur pbafgehpg bs na benpyr nf gurl unir vzcyrzragrq vg. Lrf, lbh pbhyq pbaprvir bs na benpyr gung qvqa'g vavgvngr frys-shysvyyvat cebcurpvrf. Ohg Fcvryoret naq Pb. unfa'g pbzr hc jvgu fbzrguvat cnegvphyneyl rtertvbhf jvgu guvf, naq fbzr zvtug nethr gung va snpg gur ersyrpgvba vg pnhfrf ba guvf frrzvat cnenqbk vf va snpg bar bs gur fgeratguf bs gur cybg, abg n jrnxarff.
An even better question is where are the hoverboards that Back to the Future promised us?
I want a hoverboard
If only those psychics could predict when a company was about to cook it's books, they could simply inform the press, so that good stocks wouldn't get taken down with the bad.
le sigh.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I don't think anyone is denying the events that occurred. The problem is when we treat our response to terrorism as a war. Declaring a war on terrorism is as effective as declaring a war on murder. In fact, it's a lot like that. How do you declare war on murder? Find all people who are associated with murderers and plow tanks into them? That doesn't really solve the problem, all it does is make people think the problem is being dealt with. That difference is where the dog is being wagged.
The biggest failure of the movie may be the set design and the look.
Why SF must be futurist? In most of Philip K. Dick stories the idea is more important than even the story. Perhaps here the message is that out society will not advance in the next 50 years.
"I think this line is mostly filler"
I have to admit that, after his learning experience of walking in Kubrick's shoes to finish A.I., Speilberg now has at least a small idea of what it takes to have "an edge".
However, he failed to achieve with "Minority Report" the same level of sympatico that Ridley Scott was able to achieve with "Blade Runner", or even what Paul Verhoeven was able to do with "Total Recall".
In other words, Speilberg may know where the edge is, now, but he's afraid to go to it and look over, for fear of falling.
THe absolute worst movie ever made would be a Spielberg version of a Clive Barker short story.
Gary Fleder ("Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead") is more likely than not to turn in a morbid showing on "Imposter", due to be released later this year.
"Imposter" will probably suck. REmember that you heard it here first. My reasoning is that all of the other good Phillip K. Dick adaptations have been short stories. It will likely be impossible to cover an entire book in just one movie.
Frankly, I wish Ridley Scott had done "Minortiy Report"; I guess he's too busy producing the likes of "Blackhawk Down" to direct, though.
Given my choice of everyone, I'd like to see John Carpenter direct a Phillip K. Dick based movie; he did such a good job with "The Thing" (an adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s -- former editor of Analog Magazine -- story), and "They Live", even though it was a comedy (written by Ray Nelson). He, like Kubrick, also has a good track record in science fiction (as opposed to Spielberg, who's science fantasy, through and through).
I don't mind Spielberg trying to stretch; but hiding in safety is not my idea of stretching, and if he can't bring himself to take the risk, he should stick with bringing us the next Indiana Jones installment, and if he wants to do science fantasy, then pick a science fantasy author whose stories are better suited to his talents. Now that Jack Clayton ("Something Wicked This Way Comes") is dead, maybe he could cover some of the other Ray Bradbury short stories? His talents would mesh well with many of the "The Autumn People" mileu, where you are supposed to be sympathetic to "the monsters".
-- Terry
Hmm... You make a good point. I had thought of the Cer-pbtf as more limited than an Benpyr, but I will certainly buy your version.
Thank you for not reading my post and responding. I said:
But what else can you expect from someone that has angry with America...falsehoods.
Terrorists are either PoWs (Geneva Convention: fair treatment) or criminals (justice system, local court, International Criminal Court).
Article 4 of the Geneva Convention states:
No members of Al Qaeda meet this standard therefor they cannot be afforded PoW status. They are not criminals in the same manner as a burgler or murderer. They are what they are. Terrorists. A group of individuals that do not care about the Geneva Convention, US Law and human life, including their own.We will do with them what we see fit. As a nation we cannot recognize the ICC as American Law trumps International Law under the US Constitution. If you don't like it. Tuff. They are lucky that when they are captured we allow them to continue to breath. Any other nation would have executed them on the spot. And it is a much better treatment than my apartment neighbor received from Al Qaeda. They still haven't found anything to identify his DNA in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
But that's the beauty of a causal loop.
He could have sent Crowe almost ANYWHERE. The causal loop would work itself out.
Sure, the amount of time between the ball dropping and the killing might be different dependent on the location, etc... but it doesn't matter, because once set in motion, the events will occur.
In PKD's world even the future is grimy, scratched, the windows are sandscored plastic, the light is yellow, the blue plastic chairs have cig burns on them. There is either mass transit or shitty old cars. You breathe in dust and brown smoke. The best things in life are somewhere else and the worst prison in the world is in your own brain.
So you are saying that CNN is lying that Padilla's attorney argued his case in front of US District Judge before June 12th? I think you need to get your facts straight. And I will stop being angry, as a downtown NYC resident, when the organization that plotted and executed the murder of my neighbors is completely destroyed.
All things considered, I have been listening to NPR too much.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I was eating dinner at a cafe last night and talking about the RIAA, the TCPA, the DMCA, and other four letter words. The music was too loud and everyone agreed that they would rather not have it. Someone joked that the RIAA would still make us find a way to pay for it. We laughed. Then someone pointed out that ASCAP and the RIAA do go to cafes and hit them up for royalties. So some of what we paid probably did go to the RIAA. And we had no choice in the matter.
At least I got to listen to it.
what is MORE strange is that it is a "premeditated" murder.
That also bugged me, how the murder was described from the start as premeditated; didn't see how that could be the case when he didn't know Crowe. It fell into place nicely with the line "I've spent six years thinking about killing the man who took Sean" (or whatever it was). The victim wasn't planned, but the act cetainly was. Much the same way barricading oneself in a bell tower is premeditated; you may not have known who you were gonna take out, but you definitely had human targets in mind.
Dyolf Knip
Yes, there's a difference, but that's not what I was talking about. This basic premise is that technology can pre-judge people and let us put them in jail before they do something. This is just as much part of the short story as the movie. The evolution is a bit different, but the assumptions are the same in both.
Drive though Sunnyvale sometime.. Architecturely its like driving through the 1970s..
Yes and no. There are big changes. Many of the Eichlers are being torn down by people who want something bigger. The rest have been renovated a number of times. The colors change with the fashions and so does the landscaping. If anything, the new drought regulations must have changed things dramatically between the 1950s and today. Now desert -like gardens are hip.
You're right that much of the architecture doesn't change over time. The Washington Monument looks pretty much the same. But details almost always change.
Here's another datapoint. The Levittown suburb looks very different from the original swirl of houses that, in the words of Pete Seeger, "all looked just the same." Every owner has added a porch here, a laundry room there, and now all of the houses are vastly different. In fact the historical society from the town deliberately bought one relatively unchanged house to preserve the memory of the 1950s.
A /. member went to see a movie produced by a member of the Motion Picture Association of America starring in the lead role an ardent believer in the Church of Scientology, and that /. member didn't immediately burst into flames? Or would he have to have been wearing an "I (heart) .NET" t-shirt for that to happen?
Oh my God, I tought I was going crazy! I keep hearing that song over and over and over in so many trailers, I was starting to think I couldn't tell the difference between one tune to the other.
The theme has been repeated so many times, I started to think Judge Dredd ripped it off too. Thanks for comfirnming that, and I can't believe they keep doing that. Get some original music people!
- sigs are for wimps.
http://www.moller.com/. Very sweet engineering, but after The Twin Towers (and Pentagon) Tragedy (not suppsoed to call it nine-eleven anymore, didn't ya know?)I just can't see having these become as common as cars are today being a good thing. Packed with C4, one of these would be a terroist's dream.
Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.
Yes, I did. Sorry, what can I say - I wrote it on STDIN to my codec with limited editing abilities. :)
what does this movie have to do with minorities?
A minority is the opposite of a majority. If you're thinking of "minorities" as "people with dark skin", then you've absorbed too much progressive propaganda. Here in Los Angeles, latinos are still frequently called "minorities" in the press, even though they make up for than 50% of the population.
As you're mother always said, "look it up in the dictionary"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
...but then I heard they cast that Tom Cruise guy in it for some reason, instead of an actor.
Oh well.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Following your logic any CIA spy in foreign countries could be put before a military tribunal and them ne shot because:
He has no
- fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance
- is not carrying arms openly
- is not conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war
But most civilized nations don't put any spy they catch or any foreign national in a country they occupy before a "military tribunal", which is part of the executive and NOT a court. Ever heard of the seperation of powers? Spies are normally put before a court, their guilt is either proven ot they are free to walk.
America is abandoning it's own standards. Of course terrorists and enemies of the state should be punished. But using the democratic legal system! Not by having a few members of the army decide with no legal representation!
The crap happening right now in the USA is extremely Unamerican! It reminds me of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union!
I won't comment on the ridiculous notion that the US Constitution is above international law. That is just too much crap.
Moritz
Film's not yet out over here. But...
Of course some of it's going to _appear_ derivative of other films. It's based on a book by Phil K. Dick, the guy who wrote the book "Bladerunner" was based off. The guy who had a massive hand in inspiring Gibson and others to go cyberpunk in the 80s. It's gonna be derivative in the same way that "Lord of the Rings" is derivative of "Willow" and "The Dark Crystal".
Grab.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
IMHO this review is thinly veiled self promotion dressed up as pretentious twaddle.
Role on story moderation.
Much like my belief in the Death Penelty was pretty much shreaded
I'm still a supporter of the death penalty, shrug... even though it doesn't make fiscal sense and there are clearly issues with the system. I'd rather see it applied only in cases where it's not questionable about who did it and there was extreme violence used (multiple homicide, rape). I'm pleased to see some recent Supreme Court rulings regarding DNA evidence and mentally challenged death row inmates.
The prison system is self-governing to some extent though... do shit to a kid and you're unlikely to make it out in one piece, if even alive. And while it may be vigilante justice, I don't cry tears at what happened to Jeffrey Dahlmer.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I was watching Harry Potter at the weekend (or rather my wife was watching it - I think I was cleaning up painting gear), when I heard the Darth Vader theme (dar dar dar dum dee-dar dum dee-dah). I made my wife back up the video and replay it, because I couldn't believe even JW would stoop to such obvious re-use (he would have made a great C++ coder, though!).
It's when Harry discovers the Mirror of Erised, IIRC.
--
E_NOSIG
"only in cases where it's not questionable about who did it "
Ya thats about what I ended up at. If their is no doubt then fry em....If there is doubt or no real evidence then it's hard to say.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Ah, so all that crap about 9/11 was deliberate Katzian obfuscation to make the editors' eyes glaze over? The problem is that the confused metaphor-drawing doesn't bode well for your books...
So, turn it around. If you can know the future and can change it, then pre-cog is invalid under many circumstances. If you can know the future and not change it, then trying to act on it will inevitably create self-fulfilling prophecies, predicated on knowing the outcome!
What if the pre-cogs work like predicting weather. We can forecast the near future of weather pretty well... as the event approaches, the prediction becomes more accurate.
However, if it is predicted to be cloudy tomorrow, and somebody takes advantage of that information and seeds the clouds--then it'll rain tomorrow instead of just be cloudy.
SPOILER ALERT
First, the things about it that I thought were ok:
What I hated:
That scene would have seemed hackneyed and forced even in a crap-fest like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (I loved the other Indy movies, but that one sucked and you know it.)
It's as if you were watching North by Northwest and suddenly there was a guest appearance by the Three Stooges. You know, just to ``lighten things up.''
(In case you missed that idiotic moment in the movie -- they glossed over it really quickly -- just after Max von Sydow shoots the Fed in Sydow's office, someone exposits that Cruise just killed the Fed in his home.)
Everything that was good about Minority Report -- which was the approximately ten minutes of the movie they (obliquely) devoted to the details about how invasive the government was -- was handled better in Gattaca.
Everything else about Minority Report was complete crap, and Spielberg is a pandering, ham-handed clod.