Tuesday, March 20, 2007


Well, I'm a disgrace to my country. I showed this picture to someone and they said, "Oh, how appropriate - the NHL play-offs are just about to start." I had no idea. I lost interest in hockey as soon as I didn't need "Hockey Night in Canada" as an excuse to stay up past my normal bedtime. That was a looooonnnnnnggggggg time ago. To further erode my status as a loyal Canadian, I don't like beer!

Oh, and more heresy - "The Prestige" isn't worth your time. Good actors wasted on a dumb story. Unlike "The Illusionist", in which everything that happened was at least theoretically possible (i.e. no breaking of the laws of physics or, for that matter, history), "The Prestige" relies on both for its wrap-up. Did Nikola Tesla ever invent a machine that could make exact duplicates of real-world objects (including people)? Nope. Is such a thing possible? Maybe, but no one's anywhere near close. So, the entire story collapses on the impossibility of Hugh Jackman's character running off endless copies of himself (each copy subsequently murdered) in order to lure his rival into a situation in which he'll be mistaken for a murderer. The film's writer and director either forgot (or, more likely, are totally ignorant of) the rule that you can't come to the end of a complex story - even when the story itself is about magic - and go, "Ta-da! The explanation of it all is....um...magic!"

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh man, i couldn't agree with you more. several people have asked me whether i like the illusionist or the prestige and it's been hard to explain to them that even though the illusionist doesn't explain some of the magic, or dark arts used by norton, that's ok. but you can't make up fake science. that doesn't work with me. glad someone else felt the same way.
-- keith

7:21 AM  

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