I think I like time travel better on TV (Quantum leap, Charmed) than in movies. The Butterfly Effect is fun if you watch it with low expectations.

(I think time travel is like vampires or aliens -- you just have to go with it if you're watching a movie/TV show with that as a component, because it's not really possible to make it logical.)

And as a mostly non-comics person, Beverly, I know where you're coming from. The first time I read Preludes & Nocturnes (vol. 1 of the Sandman), I spent most of the book just being turned off by the art. But I foundf I really appreciated Gaiman's use of language, so I kept going with the series, and by the time I had finished the second volume I really appreciated the way the art and text were integrated. I'm not sure what, if any, comics I'll read when I finish The Sandman, but I have two volumes to go before I have to decide.

I just found out that my little brother thought that Anchorman was horrible, and he was actually ashamed to have seen it. What happened to the kid who used to watch Billy Madison with me, and quote Old School and its counterparts ad nauseum? Sniff. The kid's grown up. The student has surpassed the master. Wipes tear.

that's the premise that the film demolishes - that's what Tom thinks at the start before he's framed.

Right. The problem is, if I can figure that out in 20 minutes, how can jurisprudence, law enforcement and a panoply of nattily-suited people take months/years to figure it out? Do IQs drop sharply in the near future?

I mean, surely they've got Alan Dershowitz's head in a jar somewhere, yammering at them about the concept of reasonable doubt.

I liked Minority Report. I'd have loved it if they went for the tragic inevitability angle (someone here had mentioned a possibility that the too-happy-an-ending could be interpreted as Anderton's hallucination/dream post-halo-ing, which I liked), but as it stood, it still had some beautiful visuals and neat ideas. I liked what they did with Colin Farrell's character, and Samantha Morton, as usual, astonished me speechless. I was genuinely moved in the scene where Agatha imagined Sean's futures, her face rapturous, her image backlit into a kind of incandescent suffering sainthood. It sort of went downhill from there, but I'm still glad to have had that scene as well as that terrific scene in the mall.

I'm still glad to have had that scene as well as that terrific scene in the mall.

Oh man. Best. Chase scene. Ever.

Right. The problem is, if I can figure that out in 20 minutes, how can jurisprudence, law enforcement and a panoply of nattily-suited people take months/years to figure it out? Do IQs drop sharply in the near future?

Because they want to - it's a useful method of social control. But the ending sucked ass, I agree.

(someone here had mentioned a possibility that the too-happy-an-ending could be interpreted as Anderton's hallucination/dream post-halo-ing, which I liked)

I don't know if I was the only one who said that, but it was certainly how I interpreted it.

I still think the best movie treatment of time travel was in The Spy Who Shagged Me, when Basil Exposition turned to the camera and said "I suggest you don't worry about those things and just enjoy yourself."

as well as that terrific scene in the mall.

I liked that scene quite a bit, as well as the brief appearance by Peter Stormare as the black market doctor (he really needs to get more work out here, though he gets plenty of leading roles in his native Sweden).

Because they want to - it's a useful method of social control.

So, apparently there has been some major tort reform too -- because the first person whose family sued the city/state for false imprisonment should by modern standards make meelions and meelions of dollars and completely bankrupt state, city and police department and end this particular experiment of social control.

I mean, after all, none of the prisoners have committed a crime; they're imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit; ergo, false imprisonment. Imagine the lawyer's percentage of the settlement! It would make John Grisham blush.