i think movie theatres were undoubtedly more popular when 17 inch televisions were a luxury. aside from missing out on the SMELLS and general excitement of a theatre, watching movies at home is usually much better. you have full control over everything and there's no talkative people in front of you. i guess the downside of this is that you get quite used to pausing a movie and doing something else, or browsing the web while watching or just generally not paying as much attention as you should. it's a nasty habit!

also i was watching an interview with some actress in some horrible movie and realised that a lot of actors are those people that like garbage movies. they like that trash! they're doing a good job. also i'm rather certain most of the budget of big budget movies goes towards wages and hookers rather than technical costs etc. there's no way you could make primer on a 7k budget with contracted actors.

also i was watching an interview with some actress in some horrible movie and realised that a lot of actors are those people that like garbage movies. they like that trash! they're doing a good job.

sidney poitier directed ghost dad

oh man is the prisoner out? is it any good? it looked pretty garbage from the trailers but i'd still like to see it.

there's some parts of the timeline that you're not meant to know and you don't need to know, like how many times they went through the shotgun party until they got it right, or everything about granger. ginger guy just gets freaked out by him so goes back to undo everything, so the main characters don't know either

actually i think i might try and draw up a timeline

words not drawn (Click to reveal)

Abe up on the roof watching Erin. He's already built three time machines, one for each of them and the backup, and he's travelled back in time in one already

Abe meets Erin on a park bench, Erin has used the back up several times already (later when they're calculating stock gains he has huge trouble writing, he has the ear piece in a lot and his ear bleeds. Erin forgets the basketball game)

Erin has already stopped the shotgun guy. Abe yells at him for risking his life (abe wasn't at the party).

Erin gets a phone call. Can't come home for dinner. Says "ok, 6 o clock"

They go back in time, Erin takes his phone back and thereby stops his double from answering

Kid sets off alarms, wakes abe up.

Abe meets Erin, says they can go punch his boss in the face then travel back and stop the kid setting off the alarms.

On the way they see Thomas Granger, drunk with 2 days regrowth. Erin says he saw him at 6(!), had some function with his wife. There's a clean shaven one at home.

Abe freaks out, knocks himself out while he's still asleep and uses the back up to return both of them to 4 days ago. He locks the still asleep version in the bathroom.

Abe comes back to the roof, meets Erin and doesn't say the right stuff, so Erin knows Abe used the backup.

Erin explains that the timeline we were watching was Abe's first, but not his. He had found out about the failsafe and used it, bringing a folded time machine.

This Erin drugged the first Erin and locked him in the Attic. Then he met and faught with his future self who had already recorded all the conversations, and won, but decided to let him become the main Erin because he had more invested.

Erin shares the ear piece with Abe and invites Will and tells him to invite his cousin (Rachels ex) to the party.

Abe and Erin both go, Erin may have gone 20 times. They stop the shotgunner. Their doubles wake up. Abe sabotages their time machines, so there are two Abes and Erics in existence, those that went through time lots and those that were locked up. The narrator is talking to the locked up one I'm guessing, since he says he owes him.

no the prisoner is garbage and the two main good guys have really weird mouths. also I'm not sure about the timeline, my main problem concerns which Erin becomes the main Erin. who even is MAIN ERIN (the one who repeatedly goes to the party or not) and since there's three of them, what happens to the other erin in your timeline so there's only two at the end? I'm just wondering if it doesn't say in the movie or if you've missed something.

no, that was all intentional. this wasn't some accidental clusterfuck of information. it's extremely possible to put together a very coherent timeline or sequence of events based on what happened. the exception is really granger, since that was left unknowable, but there really needed to be something like that in the story. at the basic level this is really a story about two ethically-unaware idiots opening pandora's box, and watching chaos ensue. i don't know how you can expect NEBULOUS from a movie that endeavors to portray that, since that goes against the central premise of the movie. the only way to tell this story was to make it totally fucking chaotic and ridiculous. i'm actually pretty impressed that he kept things as generally sane and understandable as he did. you could really go completely overboard by trying to make a realistic story about time travel.

even if you don't try to dig through the way the plot WORKS, i still think that the movie has its own merits. all that really matters is the two men, the machine, and the reality of how out of control the whole situation gets. figuring out the plotline is completely inessential in realizing the actual point of the movie.

I meant the presentation of the plot is obfuscated (this is what causes any possible confusion), and I'm saying this is either deliberate in the presentation of the story or it's a mishmash of garbage or maybe a mixture of the two. it's about how the plot is presented, not whether there's an actual timeline you can construct. now that I'm fully awake I'm leaning towards the former but I'll have to watch it again to be sure.

and no, I'd still argue the real value of the movie lies in the presentation of the plot. without this foundation the movie would be (might be) another dumb, if entertaining and charmingly low-budget sci-fi flick. it seems like when people are talking about how primer is such a good film, this is specifically what they're talking about. it certainly does have other merits but none of them are remarkable enough to make it a good film. time travel and morals: one man sets out to destroy the Box he created while another makes a Box big enough for a house!

no the prisoner is garbage and the two main good guys have really weird mouths. also I'm not sure about the timeline, my main problem concerns which Erin becomes the main Erin. who even is MAIN ERIN (the one who repeatedly goes to the party or not) and since there's three of them, what happens to the other erin in your timeline so there's only two at the end? I'm just wondering if it doesn't say in the movie or if you've missed something.

when he goes back the first time, he drugs his duplicate and locks him in the attic. he intends to record the conversations of the day and he comes back from the future already having done so. they fight, then agree that the one who recorded the day should continue on. i just presumed he'd enter the box again but i guess since he didn't record the day he'd have no reason to. the narrator has to be the one that travelled back in time lots otherwise he wouldn't know the details.

there's a bit that really irks me, when abe lets the other two guys back into the garage, he says "wait, what'd you call him? when you walked in, what'd you say?" and they tell him about the shotgun guy. they didn't say anything at all about anyone, he just turns around randomly and says it. he can't have travelled back in time yet so idk but all this detail is fairly unimportant.

the movie wouldn't have been exciting if it didn't have the plot get more and more complicated. it would've been a boring movie if the two of them went back in time a couple times to make money on the stock market.

sequence of events. watch the prisoner you'll get what I mean

I meant the presentation of the plot is obfuscated (this is what causes any possible confusion), and I'm saying this is either deliberate in the presentation of the story or it's a mishmash of garbage or maybe a mixture of the two. it's about how the plot is presented, not whether there's an actual timeline you can construct. now that I'm fully awake I'm leaning towards the former but I'll have to watch it again to be sure.

and no, I'd still argue the real value of the movie lies in the presentation of the plot. without this foundation the movie would be (might be) another dumb, if entertaining and charmingly low-budget sci-fi flick. it seems like when people are talking about how primer is such a good film, this is specifically what they're talking about. it certainly does have other merits but none of them are remarkable enough to make it a good film. time travel and morals: one man sets out to destroy the Box he created while another makes a Box big enough for a house!

i absolutely think it's a deliberate component of the major thrust of the story, and not some superfluous element meant simply to confuse the audience as much as possible. like i said in my last post, this is a story about scientific ethics, and idiots opening pandora's box. the manifestation of this idea in the film is the progression of this experiment going from tightly-coordinated with all angles considered to completely out of control to the point where they each abuse the fuck out of various timelines and some dude pops out of the box and nobody knows how. even if it WASN'T time travel, and something else like teleportation ethics or whatever, the filmmaker would need to show that scientific concept in complete, alarming disarray to make us aware of how badly those ideas can evolve into complete chaos. the idea of time and cause and effect is completely perverted and destroyed in this film, and it really NEEDS TO BE, or the core ideas and drama would not be as effective. i don't think it's outlandish to say that the utter confusion that stems from this was deliberately put there to contribute to the effectiveness of the ideas at work here. the chaos and loss of control the main characters experienced would NOT have been as clearly defined or dramatically effective had he presented the story in another, more straightforward method.

i really believe he uses the bewilderment the audience experiences to his presentational advantage here, adding unique drama to a circumstance that would otherwise be plan and matter of fact. i've seen other movies do this before, like the welles version of kafka's the trial. virtually nothing is literally explained in that film, and you're meant to take what happens at face value, and there ends up being something quite terrifying about the lack of understanding the audience and protagonists know about the circumstance. the story very easily could have been elaborated on in several ways to be less confusing, but it would have destroyed the basic drama of the film, and certain qualities that the mystery is meant to provoke. while i don't think primer is exactly like the trial, i think it's a similar premise, where the end result of the film is for the audience to feel quite intimidated by how much they really do not know about certain key elements of the story. i'm not going to say it's as well done as the trial, but i believe it explores a similar presentational method. there's a pretty massive gap between obscuring information from the audience for some cheap unpredictable plot twist, and doing so because you have a distinct plan for integrating the audience's lack of understanding into how you wish them to perceive the work as a whole.

i'm not getting where you're seeing garbage here, since the ideal goal of every major element of a film is to act as a manifestation of the ideas present in the work. really more than anything else in the movie the plot structure DOES THAT and acts as a means to make the audience aware of how careless scientific inquiry can go completely wrong. he allows this to get out of hand, and that's where the core drama stems from. what i said stands: even if you do not understand the plot in its entirety, being aware of the fact that it spirals out of control and has bred intense chaos is all that ultimately matters. you do not need to watch it a second time to understand this.

I meant the presentation of the plot is obfuscated (this is what causes any possible confusion), and I'm saying this is either deliberate in the presentation of the story or it's a mishmash of garbage or maybe a mixture of the two. it's about how the plot is presented, not whether there's an actual timeline you can construct. now that I'm fully awake I'm leaning towards the former but I'll have to watch it again to be sure.

by former i'm pretty sure he means the presentation is deliberate, you both seem to agree

I'm leaning towards agreeing with him, I still haven't had a large enough chunk of free time to watch it a second time

watched man bites dog after seeing a clip climbtree posted in the random thoughts topic in general. i viewed it posted in near-entirety on youtube, minus a short scene that would have gotten it taken off the site(you'll understand why if you watch it there).

what an upsetting movie. it's called a black comedy, but i didn't really see that at all about it, although that may be the humor not translating well through subtitles. usually i don't miss the boat entirely on humor in movies, but i'm really not able to see the humor in this movie. not sure if i really liked it, but it was a fairly interesting, fairly well-done movie that has some interesting(and possibly unintentional) observations to make about the relationship between media and society. i felt pretty sick by the end of it(with the world, not just the movie), so i guess it had to have done something right.

watched man bites dog after seeing a clip climbtree posted in the random thoughts topic in general. i viewed it posted in near-entirety on youtube, minus a short scene that would have gotten it taken off the site(you'll understand why if you watch it there).

what an upsetting movie. it's called a black comedy, but i didn't really see that at all about it, although that may be the humor not translating well through subtitles. usually i don't miss the boat entirely on humor in movies, but i'm really not able to see the humor in this movie. not sure if i really liked it, but it was a fairly interesting, fairly well-done movie that has some interesting(and possibly unintentional) observations to make about the relationship between media and society. i felt pretty sick by the end of it(with the world, not just the movie), so i guess it had to have done something right.

Yeah, the black humor passes a little bit better in french. Checked some sequences with subtitles and some parts are not that well translated. You loose a certain part of subtleties. But yeah, you do feel kind of sick and unwell after watching something like that.

district 9, it was ok. kinda stupid in the beginning. I was pleasantly surprised when that horrible acting I saw in the one trailer didn't show up in the actual movie.

watched the movie surrogates. an interesting concept for a movie, but very poorly made. i was watching it with someone else and almost walked away from the movie several times during it.

i saw some woody allen movie on netflix (Deconstructing Harry), which is really funny. mostly because it's nerdy woody allen making these films in which he dates dozens of beautiful women. netflix got me to try to watch a movie called Cashback, which i couldn't finish.

and i saw New York, I love you, which follows the same idea as Paris, je t'aime. the movie really broke down after Shia Labeouf played this bellhop-type with a bad russian accent, a bad leg, and a hunch back. we had to fast forward it was unwatchable!