[Newspoetry] newspoetry movie review: minority report

[Chris Piuma]

I have long wanted Newspoetry.com to branch into full-fledged 
"sections" instead of the pure "front page" feel it has now. Where 
are the restaurant reviews, the interviews, the sports reports, the 
classifieds? The local interest? The columnist who drones on about 
cats or the local rich folk?

For the love of pete, where are the comix?

Anyway, some of these sections have been touched on in the past, but 
if our nation's newspapers tell us there is more to news than the 
headlines, then I for one am ready to believe them. And even though a 
review of _Minority Report_ could hardly be considered lacking in 
headline content (as anyone who read's the blog at 
www.thismodernworld.com knows), it nevertheless gets this intrepid 
reporter's two thumbs up -- way up!

--
Chris Piuma, etc.
http://www.flim.com
http://www.theminorthirds.com


Editor-Within-Chief showed great grace and sensitivity to write on 02.07.04:

>Precognition is what science fiction plays at, but in _Minority 
>Report_, it can get you arrested.  You know the plot: the department 
>of "precrime" detains murderers-to-be on the basis of the 
>predictions of psychically-gifted "precogs".  Precrime's prompt 
>arrests have flatlined the murder rate, but the system's legitimacy 
>rests on the infallibility of the precogs, who after all, are as 
>human as the public who has traded their free will for security.  Or 
>so they think: the system also makes it possible to frame people for 
>murders they have yet to commit.  Maybe John Ashcroft has been 
>reading Phillip K. Dick?
>
>The film is a grainy and washed out quasi-noir, and sets are 
>cluttered and hazy.  The plot is complicated, so the screenwriters 
>expose it through dialogue (for example, at one point, Cruise asks 
>another character "you see the dilemma, don't you?", then proceeds 
>to explain the dilemma).  Just grit your teeth and remember, it's a 
>movie of ideas as well as a summer blockbuster, and unlike _Blade 
>Runner_, we're not going to get a better cut.  And sorry, there are 
>no cute aliens.  That's in theater 8, to your left.
>
>
>--
>Joe Futrelle
>editor-within-chief
>http://www.newspoetry.com/
>
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