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(The Crow, Dark City, Garage Days, I Robot, Knowing)
Producers:
Jason Blumenthal, Alex Proyas and Steve Tisch
Screenplay:
Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden and Stiles White
Original Score :
Marco Beltrami
Cast :
John Koestler: Nicolas Cage
Caleb Koestler: Chandler Canterbury
Diana: Rose Byrne
Abby/Lucinda: Lara Robinson
The Stranger: D.G. Moloney
Grace: Nadia Townsend
Reverend Koestler: Alan Hopgood
Allison: Adrienne Pickering
As Knowing begins, a weird girl scribbles down a load of numbers
as her entry to a time capsule to be placed in
front her school in the autumn of 1959. The plan is to bury it underground and dig it up only in 50 years time so the
kids of the future can see what sort of things their predecessors came up with. Let's just hope that it's not covered
in rain and is rotted away from insufficient storage, rather like the 25-year time capsule from Blue Peter...
Fast-forward fifty years and we see Nicolas Cage is Professor John Koestler, an astrophysics lecturer to a
bunch of overly smart kids. He hasn't got an easy life for himself, despite the massive house and big plot of land.
For a start he's fallen out with his Dad, many years before, but also his wife is dead and his son has hearing problems.
He believes that everything has a purpose, an order to it. It is determined. But what about the chance of a randomness
factor coming into the equation? Surely that can't happen... or can it? This will make sense later on.
In the meantime, when the time capsule is opened and each child at Caleb's school gets an envelope. While most of them
got a picture, he gets the one with numbers written on it.
Cage starts trying to fathom out what they mean and at first thinks it's a coincidence when he separates some of them
to tie-in with the number of lives lost on Sept 11th 2001, but then he checks out many more.... and yes, the girl has
basically determined the number of deaths within the next 50 years in tragedies. It also includes some that haven't
happened yet... Ooh, blimey!
Meanwhile, Caleb is getting some whistling in his earpiece and this is caused by voices whispering all around him, but
what can they mean?
Knowing is not your average run-of-the-mill Nicolas Cage movie, which is helped by the fact it was directed by
Alex Proyas, even though I never really enjoyed the two films I've previously seen of his - The Crow and Dark
City, as I can at least get an idea of what he's trying to depict and despite the nonsense of the premise it does
end up as a very intriguing film. There's also reasonable support from Rose Byrne as Diana, a woman he meets
by chance in a museum, but did they really meet by chance or is there a necessary connection here? Oh, what do you think
:)
I previously took a look at the DVD and, like that format, the film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and both picture and sound are without fault. The image is
sharp and colourful, bringing across the mystery of the situation as well as nicely detailing the occasional CGI
scenes just as they should be. For the record I'm watching on a 37" Panasonic plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1400
Blu-Ray Player. The sound comes in DTS 5.1 and everything mentioned within the picture comes across without a hitch
and the explosions pack a punch when required.
The extras are as follows on both DVD and Blu-ray:
Knowing All: The Making of a Futuristic Thriller (12:35):
All the key cast and crew members have their say amongst clips of the film about what's at the heart of the film. I'm
aware that sounds vague, but if I was to go into detail then it would spoil the film.
Visions of the apocalypse (17:13):
A segment about those who fear the end of the world before its time.
Theatrical trailer (1:22):
Presented in 16:9, although the two previous segments had film clips in 2.35:1.
TV Spots:
Six of them, ranging between 10-30 seconds in length, usually repeating most of the same footage, although they feature
an angle on that plane which doesn't actually make it into the finished film.
Director's Commentary:
with Alex Proyas.
The main menu blends a brief segment of the theme with some motion clips from the film, which is better than the DVD
which was a fairly dull affair - static and with some of the not-very-emphatic theme music. There are subtitles
in English and while the DVD version had a decent number of chapters with 36 across the two hours - and Contender used
to stick rigidly to 12 per release, however long the film - the Blu-ray version opts for a mere 16! Why the vast
difference between the two formats? Hopefully under their new brand, as E1, this is one important matter that's being
addressed for future films, as well as the subtitles which were lacking on many earlier Contender releases.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Blu-ray: 
As Knowing begins, a weird girl scribbles down a load of numbers
as her entry to a time capsule to be placed in
front her school in the autumn of 1959. The plan is to bury it underground and dig it up only in 50 years time so the
kids of the future can see what sort of things their predecessors came up with. Let's just hope that it's not covered
in rain and is rotted away from insufficient storage, rather like the 25-year time capsule from Blue Peter...
I previously took a look at the DVD and, like that format, the film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and both picture and sound are without fault. The image is
sharp and colourful, bringing across the mystery of the situation as well as nicely detailing the occasional CGI
scenes just as they should be. For the record I'm watching on a 37" Panasonic plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1400
Blu-Ray Player. The sound comes in DTS 5.1 and everything mentioned within the picture comes across without a hitch
and the explosions pack a punch when required.
