RUNTIME ERROR: While waiting for True Grit* to start, Spacewoman and I were treated to the trailer for Jake Gyllenhaaal's upcoming thriller, Source Code, about a top-secret government technology that allows Person A to take over Person B's body for the last eight minutes of Person B's life. Gyllenhaaaal is forced to relive the same eight minutes of some guy's life again and again to avert a terrorist attack and to woo Katie Holmes's stand-in. It's kind of Groundhog Hard: With a Vengeance, I guess.
Is the eight-minute limitation the most arbitrary central plot contrivance ever concocted? Why eight minutes? After that, the Fetzer valve runs out of 3-in-one oil and gauze pads? The midichlorians get restless? Just enough time for Gyllenhaaaaal's Eight-Minute Abs video? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
*Loads of fun.
1. Michelle Monaghan is a much better actress than Katie Holmes. (Admittedly, not saying much, but in particular, she's really good in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)
ReplyDelete2. Yes, it's a goofy/arbitrary premise, but the guy behind it did "Moon," which was supposed to be quite good, and pretty much any of these time travel movies have goofy "rules" which can't be broken.
Once the bus goes above 50 mph it's armed; if it goes below 50 mph it explodes.
ReplyDelete"Moon" was indeed quite good.
ReplyDelete<span>I can't believe you woke me up to explain this to you.
ReplyDeleteThe super science soul projector (SSSP) has to have coordinates in four dimensions or he wouldn't wind up in the right head, would he? If we only know where the terrorist is for the last eight minutes before the boom boom, that's all we get.
And the SSSP obviously has a limited range, or we'd be sending Jake back to Weimar Germany to change the course of history and insure that Valkyrie never got made. Presumably we can't even send Jake back a dozen years and get the terrorist laid in high school to insure that he's better adjusted as an adult -- though, come to think of it, Groundhog Day meets Weird Science is a movie I'd probably go see. Basically, if the last-known location prior to the eight minute window is out of range, there you go.
You take what you get and you don't get upset.</span>
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<span>And Matt is right that Monaghan > Holmes.</span>
We're being enslaved and having an entire fake universe pumped into our brains because we're a more efficient power source than adding another fusion power plant.
ReplyDeleteDuncan Jones? I'm there. Moon was brilliant.
ReplyDelete(I read this originally as Kate Hudson, so I'm sticking with this comparison)
ReplyDeleteMichelle Monaghan's high points are Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and Gone, Baby Gone. Kate Hudson's highpoint is being the 7th or 8th most interesting character in Almost Famous (and she's good in it, but that's one of the more inexplicable Oscar nods of recent years).
That said, this is not the most ludicrous Monoghan project coming down the pike. That would be Machine Gun Preacher, which has this description on Wiki: "<span>Machine Gun Preacher is an upcoming action biopic about Sam Childers, a biker preacher-defender of Sudanese orphans. The movie was written by Jason Keller, directed by Marc Forster and stars Scottish actor Gerard Butler as Childers." Good lord.</span>
Time travel will be invented in the amazing future year 2004 and the only person to be trusted with it: Jean-Claude Van Damme.
ReplyDeleteAll of this happened before and all of this happened again. Also, angels!
ReplyDeletePaging unemployed Black Smoke Monster. Paging unemployed Black Smoke Monster. Please pick up the red courtesy phone for a job offer.
ReplyDeleteAhh, a major plot contrivance indeed, but a situation that could actually happen should a crazed bomber rig a bomb to the speedometer of a vehicle.
ReplyDeleteWell, who would you entrust it to? You sorely underestimate the crimefighting power of doing the splits in one's underwear.
ReplyDeleteMichael J. Fox, natch.
ReplyDelete