knowing

A few years ago I mused on the interest gleanable for Melbournites from the Nicholas Cage-starring film Ghostrider. I'm not one to deliberately rehash myself, only accidentally, so I won't go through the spiel. Watching the latest Nicholas Cage-starring film made to have been made in Melbourne, Knowing, gives the Melbournite a few rare moments, which people in various Canadian cities probably get all the time, of accepting a streetscape on the terms the film gives it, then suddenly realising, no that's Collins - Williams St intersection (above), or whatever. It is probably more annoying/strange for people in Boston (where a lot of the film is supposed to be set) that these Melbourne places fill in for their city, although the various streetscapes included tend to be relatively nondescript (I think I saw Parliament House in one scene towards the end, an exception, but only the steps).

As a film, it's OK but it drifted into vagaries at a certain point and I guess the hurdle you have to leap into the fantastic-bordering-on-psychedelic right at the end really depends on your disposition I would say. When you think about it the film's whole premise is so absurd it would be absurd to only accept it up to a certain point.

While accepting that the film's central premise is absurd, I reckon it opens a can of worms by the fact that the future predictions of major disasters 1959-2009 are all about centralised disasters. What about disasters culminating in major loss of life like, for instance, the rise of the automobile? The automobile kills more people in a day than the 81 who die in the subway accident (or whatever it was). Where does the prediction god draw the line? Are abortions mass slaughter in Prediction God's opinion? Apparently not, but for some this would be a consideration. And by the way I haven't done a tally but I'm pretty sure there have been a few more 'major disasters' (if the cutoff point is around 50 people dying in one place) than would fill two sides of a foolscap page giving about 3-4 such incidents per line! Oh, but wait a minute, it's a film.