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Friday, January 6, 2012

Winter Movies: Minority Report

After the fun and flurry of the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations, January can seem pretty quiet. The days are long and dark. The garden appears dormant. Spring is still a few months off. It's a great time to head back to the movies, for more movie star plants.

First up is Minority Report, a futuristic crime thriller, loosely based on the short story by Philip K. Dick. In the movie, crimes of passion have been eliminated in 2054 Washington, D.C., because of an experimental program that uses three specially gifted human “Pre-Cogs” who can see crimes that will be committed in the future. The drama unfolds as the Pre-Cogs predict that John Anderton, head of the Pre-Crime unit that acts on these predictions, will himself commit a murder. The short story and movie both wrestle with freewill and determinism. Can someone be held accountable for a thought? Will a person take a predetermined action based on a thought, or might they take alternative action? The 2002 movie adds a lot of fun, futuristic gadgetry to the bigger questions.



I’m picking this movie for the genetically engineered security plants, and the greenhouse scene between Anderton and Dr. Iris Hineman, one of the brilliant, but deranged, scientists for the project. The plants have a very minor supporting role, and are not included in Dick’s original story. But I enjoyed the imagination behind the motion-activated vines that can ensnare unwary victims; the menacing Doll’s Eye hybrid (based on Actaea pachypoda  - White Baneberry) that can slash skin and deliver a toxin that renders paralysis and death, unless an antidote is quickly given; and the carnivorous plants that seem to caress Dr. Hineman’s face as she tends them. Learn more:


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