I cranked out the studio-provided Blu-ray screener and went to town. I'm re-watching In Time and I'm going to make sure I can explain how to read those pesky arm clocks.
First up, Blu-ray, on the right TV is amazing. I will be saying that for some time. It's like the poor man's 3D. The details in the image are amazing. Amazing to the point of the depth in the images almost feeling like it's 3D. It trips out my eyeballs. But it has to be on the right TV, not just any TV or the content quality of Blu-ray will be lost on the product.
In the movie In Time, when a person hits 25, their arm clock kicks in and they only have 1 year to go. It's a wonderful premise for a movie where there can be so many references to time... killing time. I don't have the time for that. That kind of time will get you killed. All kinds of quirky fun.
And Justine Timberlake is out to expose the system designed to keep people desperate and in their own time-zones.
And everybody in the movie is pretty to look at. But the story falls into some cliches at about the half-way point and it erodes into a classic Bonnie and Clyde syndrome.
It's an OK movie with just a few weaknesses in the story.
The Blu-ray package, aside from the obvious HD imagery, the extras include items titled "The Minutes." This extra talks about how too many folks alive will put a burden on the planet, so prices (time) are controlled by the rich. This extra delivers to the viewer background details of the story inside of In Time. From the perspective of the characters, not the actors. It's a neat how they deliver the content.
The other extra are "deleted/extended scenes." As with some scenes, it's weird to see a quick 15 to 30 second cut scene or what not.
But then there's that pesky extended "strip poker" scene.
Plus the theatrical trailer and Live Extras but my BD player is not hooked up.
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How To Read The Arm Clocks from In Time
(Your Arm Clock Showing 1 Day, 0 hours, 12 minutes and 50 seconds)
I've been asked a few times about the arm clocks and even I had misinterpreted the numbers at first. But I figured out what each number meant. Let me explain...
In the opening scene, we see an arm clock showing "0000-00-0-23-48-25" and the 25 is ticking down one second at a time. My first premise then is the following:
years-months-days-hours-minutes-seconds.
But then I've discovered that the arm clocks in In Time actually read
years-weeks-days-hours-minutes-seconds.
When we first see Olivia Wilde's character, her arm reads
000-00-2-23-54-36. Hence, 2 days, 23 hours, 54 minutes and 36 seconds and counting. Justin Timberlake then asks his mom how much time she has, and she replies, "3 days, not even."
In a few other scenes, my assumption is confirmed on the hours/minutes issue. But then I was stumped on the first six digits of the "arm clock."
When he got the time from the millionaire, the man's arm reads "0116-39-4-00-00-03."
At first I thought the numbers were years and months. But then when the millionaire gave Timberlake his time, I saw an interesting issue with the numbers. What I thought were months were actually weeks since that number rotated and it hit numbers over 12...
But then some whacky editing in that scene threw me off for a bit until I realized it was them, not me, making the mistake.
At one point in the time transfer, the numbers jumped up on the millionaires arm:
Here's how his arm looked as he transferred his time to Timberlake:
0012-16-5-10-36-44
0011-15-5-18-35-43
0001-02-3-06-12-30
0000-51-3-05-12-20
0009-38-1-03-09-16 << The years go back up!
0008-26-0-11-46-03
0005-00-3-06-01-26
0005-50-3-25-00-25
0000-00-5-17-12-46
0000-50-3-16-00-33
0000-00-4-07-00-33
0000-00-0-00-16-07
The man stopped the transfer at
0000-00-0-00-05-00 Which would mean 5 minutes then.
Timberlake then visits his friend, and his wife Great is handling her baby and says how they could use that baby's year right now.
The baby's arm reads "0001-00-0-00-00-00."
And then it was cinched for me when Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried were talking about when their one-year clock started ticking down... and they showed their arms.
Amanda Seyfried's arm read " 0000-51-6-23-59-5 " when her 1-year clock kicked in and she looked down.
And that's that. If you ever have any questions, fire them off, I'll do my best to find you some answers! -Bruce
Hi Bruce, thanks for your explanation of the 'arm clock' One question though... Can you make sense of the board that Cillian Murphy is looking in the scene where they are viewing the CCTV footage of the guy who 'timed out' and fell off the bridge. Zone 12 reads: Per Capita Time Mean/Very Low at 1:7:17:33 (or at least it was at the point I paused it) I read this in 'arm clock' as 0000-00-1-07-17-33 or 1 day, 7 hours, 17 minutes and 33 seconds. However Zone 9 reads: Per Capita Time Mean/Rising 9:5:18:0:17:30:14
ReplyDeletethere are 7 sections on the board with the first section having space for 3 digits. Now, reading it from right to left it would be: Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Years, ??? so 9:5:18:0:17:30:14 would be 9 something? 5 years, 18 weeks, 0 days, 17 hours, 30 minutes, 14 seconds. I have decided that as box two (years) only has space for 2 digits then this box goes to 99 and the first box therefore indicates 'centuries' thus... 9:5:18:0:17:30:14 equals 9 centuries, 5 years, 18 weeks, 0 days, 17 hours, 30 minutes, 14 seconds or on an 'arm clock' 0905-18-0-17-30-14. I think I've just figured it out... oh well, I've written this now I may as well post it.
And who says "talking it out" doesn't help!?
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