|
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Movies (RSS)
Sorry, but there are no more tags available to filter with.
-
Such a wonderful film, especially in light of my recent post around decline and fall.
Below is the song that the protagonist sings twice in the film — worth reading:
life is brief.
fall in love, maidens
before the crimson bloom
fades from your lips
before the tides of passion
cool within you,
for those of you
who know no tomorrow
life is brief
fall in [...] Read More...
|
-
bobw answered my question on the primer forum thread... Basically the way the box works is that time moves alot faster while in the box. In the minute that the box was on, the weeble did about 650 round-trips - one minute backward in time, one minute forward in time, until the box is turned off. The weeble experienced about 1300 minutes in the box. But the weeble can't leave the box, whereas a human can. So to travel back in time, I step into the box as it's turning off. In my first trip back in time, I go back as long as the box has been turned on (say 4 hours). At this point I exit the box and it's 4 hours earlier. If I stayed another 4 hours in the box, then exited, I would have spent a total of 8 hours in the box and "objective time" would not have moved at all. But as soon as I leave the box, I create a new "timeline" - the "original" copy of me is still living out the day (hasn't gotten in the box yet), so he's staying out of the way so he doesn't meet me (his twin). If he does, who knows what will happen - maybe something will freak him out and it'll convince him not to get into the box that day, in which case my timeline is no longer going to take place... that's actually exactly the effect that Abe and Aaron are trying to exploit when they discuss punching out the corporate dude that they don't like - Abe and Aaron go punch out the dude, then go back in time, and stop their original selves from doing what they were about to do. Anyway, if you get back in the box before the box has fully shut down, then somehow you "complete the circle" and there's only one of you left. If you don't, there are more copies of you running around. Wicked :-) Read More...
|
-
I woke up this morning with more questions about "box mechanics". A weavil (sp?) spends one minute of wall-clock time (from the outside frame of reference) in the box, yet spends roughly 1330 minutes from its frame of reference inside the box. Where does that time go? Relativity has time dilation, where an object traveling at relativistic speeds will experience time at a much slower rate and when they get back to a frame of reference that is relatively "at rest", they will find out that the original frame of reference has "aged" significantly longer. Thus, it is always possible to travel to the future, but not to go back to the past.. Say a similar principle applies, and the box exerts a similar influence to time dilation, except in the opposite direction - time restriction. This would match up well with the original experiment - the weavil actually experiences a significantly longer interval than the observers outside the box. That doesn't mean that the weavil had to move back in time - say the weavil decided to get out of the box midway through the interval (670 minutes) - the observers would just see it emerging 30 seconds into the "trip". The weavil has not traveled back in time - just experiences "alot more" time than the observers. That's at least the "occam's razor" explanation. But let's allow for the prevalent "theory" that you actually DO travel back in time - that is, somehow you go back in time when you enter the boxes. What I don't get is how the boxes now work for Aaron and Abe. The idea is that they enter the box in the afternoon (say 4:30pm, I forget the exact time) as the boxes are winding down, which somehow "shifts them back" to when the box was started. But presumably the weavil experiment results are still to be reckoned with. The weavil experiences time 1330 times "slower" than the folks outside the box. So presumably, in order to go back to about 8:45am the same day (roughly 8 hours = 480 minutes), Abe and Aaron would have to get into the box for less than 20 seconds. At some point in the movie they do allude to getting in "once you start turning off the box", so presumably you get in 20 seconds before the box has completed its shutdown, and once it's shut down you just get out. But here's the issue - every second equates to roughly 1330 seconds, which is roughly 22 minutes and change. If I miss by a bit, I have a very different time that I "emerge" from the other side. Abe and Aaron were very meticulous about everything, but didn't time Read More...
|
-
A good timeline is posted here . I still haven't processed it fully yet, but the idea that Aaron brought two boxes back with him starts making sense. The original failsafe box has to be moved to somewhere else, because Aaron is still in it. He has to also get an additional box to replace the original failsafe, because Abe is expecting it there (and empty) - and indeed uses it later on to go back himself. The third box is necessary for Aaron to be able to privately go back (potentially a few times) to refine the "party intervention" until he's satisfied with it. He needs the additional box because all the other ones are in the other timelines and are already "in use". OK, melts your brain. Read More...
|
-
I've watched Primer three times now - the second time with subtitles on, the third time with the director commentary on. For those who haven't seen it, it's a great indie-geek time-travel movie. If you haven't seen it, stop reading this blog entry and go rent the DVD. If you have, and are wondering what the heck was going on, watch it again, or read some of the forums - the best explanation I’ve read is the blog entry by Francis Shanahan. The only thing I’m not entirely sure about (that people seem to believe but doesn’t seem necessary to me) is that Aaron took one box back in time through another. My assumption through the movie was that the failsafe was started on the first moment that Abe decided to go back through time – it was called the ‘failsafe’ because it could get Abe back to a time where he could change something small so that he wouldn’t be able to build the box and stop the whole thing from happening (or something). Aaron’s obsession was with the party (which happened after Abe had first gone back in time, so the failsafe must have been already running). Of course, the failsafe at some point reads a display for how long it’s been running – 3 days and 22 hours – so perhaps Aaron does have to take another one back, so he can keep going back until the ‘right’ day. But that particular detail of the movie didn’t make much sense to me – because if Abe was planning on building a true ‘failsafe’, he would have had it running the whole time… BTW, the forum is also an interesting source of info… Read More...
|
|
|
|