I saw "Timecode" a few days ago on television. Eric dissed it for some reason, saying that "Memento" is much better. Not having seen Timecode, he had hearsay and his own misconceptions to go on. What I had heard was that it was an experimental movie with the screen split up into four pictures, each showing a different part of the movie continuously. I thought it was basically one story while Eric said it was four disconnected stories with the audio all jumbled in. Well, he was partly correct, though I think he was just saying whatever came to his mind to win the argument, as he is wont to do.

Anyway, Timecode *is* an experimental film. Don't expect a great story, because it's not. But appreciate the technical aspects of the movie. It's filmed with camcorders, not film, so it does have that "television" look to it. Each of the four cameras filmed continuously, no cuts and that also means the whole movie goes by in real time. There wasn't a rigid script, mostly an outline with the actors improvising their dialogue.

We start with Emma (Saffron Burrows) talking to a psychiatrist. Some sort of marital problems with her husband Alex (Stellan SkarsgŒrd). Next we have Rose (Salma Hayek) and Lauren (Jeanne Tripplehorn) on another corner. They're in Lauren's limousine driving to one of Rose's (an aspiring actress) auditions. An argument starts, with Lauren accusing Rose of seeing someone else. Meanwhile there's an audition going on and finally Alex's company's executives are having a meeting but they end up talking about Alex and his drinking problem.

Everything eventually converges on the same building and we have the characters intercrossing. Alex and Rose *are* having an affair. Emma decides to leave Alex even though she knows nothing about the affair. Lauren bugs Rose's purse so she finds out what's going on. The lobby security guard and one of the auditioning actresses get high and the executives are nervous about Alex and this upcoming meeting with an up-and-coming film director. Meanwhile there are four significant yet short earthquakes throughout the film (the earthquakes are big enough to make people run for cover, and yet one minute later they're back in the office standing next to the plate glass windows). I think they did the earthquakes just to show that "yes, the cameras *are* all synced and running at the same time."

It's really cool when actors meet and you get two cameras watching the scene from different perspectives, like one from inside the limo and one from outside looking in. Also, since there are more than just four people to follow, there are some nice segueways as a camera follows one of the minor actors moving from one location to the next. It's amazing that the cameras are handled well and capture most of the action correctly considering the actors were improvising a lot of dialogue. There's also a lot of cell phone usage, which serves to sync action.

As for the sound, in general it follows the principal action. Sometimes they let some of the other sounds bleed into the main sound. There are also musical scores that unfortunately tend to drown out the dialogue. But once you know something is happening, say Lauren and Rose arguing, you don't need to hear most of that conversation and scene and the focus shifts to another corner. I think that there were theatres were each seat had a sound system so you could focus on whatever corner you wanted to listen to, but maybe I'm imagining that.

Luckily, in general there are only one or two interesting corners, with the others showing quite scenes, like Emma walking or the security guard chatting with a visitor. But you do have to pay attention to the movie, so this was one of those movies that I actually watched rather than sort of watched while playing Angband.

Lots of well-known actors in this movie: Steven Weber, Laurie Metcalf, Holly Hunter, Kyle McLachlan as well as the aforementioned Hayek, Tripplehorn and Burrows. There's also the scene where the young film director explains her concept of moving cinema forward with a movie much like Timecode, as she explains it to Alex's executives.

All in all probably not a movie for most people. If you know anything about how filming is done then it's a neat movie to watch and see how they did certain things. But like I said, it's not a great plot in the first place so you can either see that as "we can concentrate on the film itself" or "it's a boring movie."