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In Reply to: Watched 'The Presteige' last night... posted by mkuller on March 6, 2007 at 10:32:30:
I was very disappointed with the cheap sci-fi resolution. I expected something that at least made a little sense - an explanation of a magic trick, not an actual working human cloning machine! You actually saw that coming?
Follow Ups:
...I once saw David Copperfield and stout friend disappear right in front of my eyes. (Well, there was a curtain around them, but they were *out on a small platform hydraulically extended over the audience*!)clark
...I saw his act in Las Vegas two years ago.He is a great entertainer and the show was terrific.
He did a bit about an old car and his dad - the car appears and his parents stand up in the audience and wave.
His finale was a bit involving a remote desert island and a person from the audience appearing there and back.
A stout friend of his was introduced at the end in the front row - Jason Alexander.
We were behind Alexander and his son in the taxi line after the show and chatted with him. He said he is an amateur magician and had seen the show 3 times but couldn't figure out how he did the desert island bit. And those weren't Copperfield's parents but actors.
How about a spring driven roller coaster type device that shoots the actor from just under the stage to the theater rear is a split second. He surfaces in the back door just a secons after he mysteriously vanished from the stage. Picture a mining car on rails straight and spring fired.
Everything was explained, at least in my viewing.SPOILER ALERT:
It was accomplished through the experiments that were done with the light projections. Whether you find that plausible or not, that was certainly the method intended to explain the spectral projections. And many of the spectres, such as the little girl, show up in other contexts as real people. So the spectres were optical projections of real people.
that the film makers presented a picture that did not jive with the explination. I accepted the explination and figured they screwed up the visual.
Wouldn't it be better if it were really doable? And how much different fro sci-fi is unreal magic?clark
but it is a movie after all, and I was willing to buy it for movie purposes.If you are after complete plausibility, you won't find it here anyway; the clockwork precision with which everything had to work would not happen in real life. Many pieces had to fall just right- and they did.
It's a work of fiction after all. And I like these kind of puzzle plots, plausible or not. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and had a good time dissecting it afterward. BTW, the point I brought up about the optical method had to be pointed out to me as well. I did not put it all together myself.
To whatever degree it *might* work, the effect would have been visible from one vantage only -- along the perpendicular bisector, or very nearby. Yet the whole audience thrilled!clark
Far more implausible to me was a potion that would induce a type of false death that would fool a doctor. While the optical technology is at least partially believable based on current technology, this potion is not.But the whole thing is preposterous anyway. These kind of master plans where everyone reacts exactly as the perpetrator expects are complete artifice.
But it's an artifice that is very cinematic, going back a long way. Heist movies, con movies, this is in the long line of such plots. It's fantasy. If I wanted complete reality, I would see a documentary such as An Inconvenient Truth.
It was pretty serious, but clever and exciting. The first half always concerned making the plans, the second was their execution. Then one night... everything that might go wrong, did! It was hilarious, but the characters were shown coping in... characteristic ways.I still have it on Beta.
clark
I would dig it up. Thanks.
s
Grins
> You actually saw that coming?>After the second black cat and all of the top hats, yes.
I also saw Jackman's wife drowning with the special knot toward the beginning. Didn't you?
The only big surprise was Baile's twin.
"The only big surprise was Baile's twin."Early on Michael Caine's character said something like: "The *only* way he could do the trick is with a double."
I always take Michael Caine seriously and so even the twin was not a surprise.
No, given the setting of the film (1890's London) and subject matter (magicians), I expected an elaborate explanation of a serious of magic tricks, deceptions and illusions - not that the top hats and black cats were all really duplicated by some implausible cloning machine. I was expecting more of a "Columbo" sort of murder mystery. I went in knowing nothing about the source material or director. If I had known from the beginning that it was a science fiction film, I might have been more open to accepting the ending.
Performances.
...Ricky Jay in the early magic scenes did give it a ring of authenticity.
I'm with you Dalton well said nt
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