The Prestige: A really late review

Two of my friends host weekly dinner & movie parties.  Yesterday's was "The Prestige" I loved it, and we all had a great talk afterwards about certain parts of the film.  MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW.

The Movie Itself:
The multiple story lines at different points in time were reminiscentof LOST & Pulp Fiction.  I liked how the Olivia betrayal scene was shot twice, once for each memoir.  Seeing that it was the same director for "Memento" makes sense.

During some points of the movie, I'd almost confuse "The Professor" with "The Great Danton".  This was for several reasons.
1) They were often in disguise.
2) They became a single unit when they locked in as rivals.  It reminded me a lot of Ridley Scott's "The Duelists" The advantage of that film, however, was that the two leads looked very unique in relation to each
other.
3) They seldom *felt* like the actor that portrayed these characters. Very little Batman or Wolverine in them.  In fact, the director went to great lengths to make nearly everyone in the movie appear foreign to the essence of the actors playing the parts.  Bowie was portrayed as short, even more restrained, and curt.  Very staccato.  Andy Serkis acted neither like a cat with a peanut stuck in his throat, or an enormous ape.  Instead, he played a much more garish character; that of a loud and gaudy American.

Huge Freaking Plot Hole:
"What knot did you tie?"
"I don't remember"

Seriously?  OK, I can buy that, with the guilt and panic and all.  But did anyone ever *look* at her hands from the time they broke her out of the water to the time they buried her?  That would clue you in about the knot methinks.  Even if it was halfway undone, I would think one could figure out what it used to be pretty easily.

Post Movie Ponderings aka Beyond Clone Killing Dilemmas:
If Tesla built this machine that *freaking* cloned anything inside of it, why wasn't it put to much better use?
I'm no Tesla, but here's just a FEW of the things I came up with that you could do with such a machine:
1) Replicate gold.  Instant funding!!!  Hmm, I wonder if you can make a copy of a copy.  1 gold bar =  2 gold bars = 4 gold bars = 8 gold bars.  Even if you couldn't make a copy of a copy, you still could generate limitless gold, just slower.
2) Replicate hard to manufacture items.  Like the Mona Lisa.
3) Replicate Tesla.  Imagine a room full of Teslas, working together on a project.  Besides the need for a little more money to house and feed them, think of how much more work they could accomplish.  First invention they could work on: A safe form of suspended animation for humans.  Teslas throughout the ages!  And, it would also be a handy way to ensure that they don't get on each other's nerves.

So, it worked well as plot moving device, provided you didn't put any post movie thought into it.

Dr. Who Title Sequence Complete Set

One thing I absolutely love about the internet is being able to think about an idea, check to see if anyone has already done it.

I came up with the idea of "3D Minesweeper" a long time ago. A quick Google search turns up quite a few results, some of which were very close to my idea (and all are not as nearly as fun as I thought they would be)

Yesterday, I wanted to see the title video sequence for every doctor along with the different logos used over the years. A quick search on YouTube yields multiple results:

This one looks to be the most complete:

For just the different songs, check this link out (It is missing the end credits song from the fifth doctor, which has a wonderful explosion sound... oh well)

For a bunch of Logos, go here (I got the one from the fifth doctor here):

Shazam, but for Movies & TV Shows

You've probably heard about Shazam by now. No, not the comic book, and certainly not Sha Na Na (why did I always think they were related? their outfits?), the new app for iPhones and Android phones and other stuff, that enables them to identify songs being played over the radio. Not only that, but it then gives you band and album info, and enables you to download the song right then. I have waited my whole life for this, and I don't even own an iPhone!

But, I really want the same/similar thing for movies and TV shows. Particularly for things on cable. There's a ton of movies and shows that I caught the last half of, and for whatever reason, don't get the name of the show. This is especially true in the mid to late 80s, before the TV guide channels were interactive.

So, I should be able to go onto IMDb or Google, and type in a few lines about the plot, an estimated release date, any known actors, etc, and get a narrowed down list of potential movies.

Here's one that I'd really like to know about, tell me the name if you know it:

And old couple are leaving their house for the summer, to be house sat by a family (Mom, Dad, Daughter, and Grandma). At the beginning, you see photos of others who have house sat on a table. Over the course of the summer, all sorts of bad things happen to the people, and they eventually realize that the place is evil, nasty and haunted. At the very end, when they decide to leave, the wife forgets something and goes back in to get it (typical horror plot device, where I always yell to the TV "DON'T DO IT!!"). When she doesn't return, the man goes back in after her. He goes to the top floor, and finds her appearing to be dressed up like an old lady in a rocking chair. Somehow he gets out of there, but when he's outside, bricks from the chimney fall & kill him. The ending shows the return of the old couple, and they add a new photo to their table of previous house sitters.