What if you could live forever, but you’d have to buy the time? (Updated with winners)
The three winners of In Time iPhone 4 cases with card holders are scientist who looks younger than his/her age, shadowplay who looks older than her age, and radiohead who looks his/her age. Please post your full names in Comments (they won’t be published). You can pick up your prizes next week; details to follow.
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This is the premise of In Time, the latest film from Andrew Niccol, director of Gattaca and Simone and writer of The Truman Show. Starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, In Time is set on an alternate Earth in which science has unlocked the key to immortality. Humans stop aging at the age of 25, at which point they have only one year to live. From that moment on they have to buy time, literally, in order to go on living.
When we saw GATTACA for the first time we had a nerd spasm. “Eeeee it’s guanine, adenine, thymine, cytosine!”
“It’s about what happens when you desire to live forever,” Andrew Niccol said at San Diego Comic-Con. “The movie, for me, is like the child of GATTACA, but the genetic engineering has just gotten better. First of all, it’s an action thriller. I think a lot of people will just accept it on that level. They’ll go for the car chases and they’ll go to see Amanda Seyfried waving a gun in people’s faces, which she does brilliantly!”
GATTACA was one of the first movies in which we beheld Jude Law in all his glory. Jude, Jude, Jude, you should’ve lain off the yaya.
“But some people will go for the ideas,” Niccol continued, “because obviously it does say something about our desire to stay young forever. While we can’t turn off the aging gene, we do go to a lot of extremes to stay young.”
On the look of the film: “The world you’ll see is very familiar. Everyone is engineered to have a body clock and the idea is that this invention is the death of all other invention. The clock is good for no-one, we like to say in the movie. The poor die and the rich don’t live. But it’s interesting because the poor have no time to create anything new – there are no new cars, no new technology – and the rich have no incentive – why invent a new car when you could do it 100 years from now?”
Is immortality everything it’s cranked up to be? “There’s an interesting character in the movie that, even though he’s got thousands of years on his clock and his chronological age is about 105, wants to die. There may be a possibility that, even if we could switch off the aging gene and live forever, our psychology may not be able to keep up with our biology. So, as his character says, “Your mind can be spent even when your body’s not.” He’s actually immortal and wants to die. It’s an interesting thing. I think we need to go through the whole aging process.”
Justin Timberlake, Andrew Niccol and Matt Bomer on the set of In Time. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
In Time opens in local theatres on 28 October. Would you like an In Time iPhone 4 case and card holder? In Comments, post your real age, followed by the age you think you appear to be (Try honesty). We pick 3 winners, to be announced on Sunday.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 25th, 2011 at 20:36
Real Age: 23
Age I Appear To Be: 19
October 25th, 2011 at 20:40
I’m 36 and people tell me I look like I’m in high school. I’m in the US, though, so it’s probably because we Asians age differently than Caucasians or other races. The disadvantage is that I’m a doctor and most parents would want someone ‘older’ which is associated with ‘wiser’. I haven’t heard any of my patients’ parents (I’m a pediatrician) tell me I look too young, though, so I guess I must be doing something right. Either that, or they’re just being polite, hopefully it’s the former. :) It’s mostly the nurses who meet me for the first time who tell me that I look so young.
October 26th, 2011 at 08:29
Feels 20
Looks 30
Is 40
October 26th, 2011 at 09:29
Real Age: 27
Age I Appear to be:
(for Western people) 21
(for Asians) between my age and 30
October 26th, 2011 at 11:18
i’m 38 going 39 but i could still pass off as late 20s to early 30s, maybe 31.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:28
Marami sa mga kakilala ko na ang tingin sa akin ay Ate pero hindi nila alam mas bata pa ako sa kanila. Di ko naman sila masisi dahil siguro sa noo ko?
22 na ako pero dahil na rin nakasanayan ko nang lahat ng tao sa paligid ko eh mas matanda ang tingin sa’ken kaya pakiramdam ko nasa 28 na ako.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:44
I’m 34. Some people say I do look younger (comments would range from ‘You look like a HS student.’ to ‘You’re in your 20s, right?’. Right. ha ha I do know that I act younger than my age (like I am in my 20s hehehe). Maybe I will get the chance to act my age when I am settled down. (shudder)
October 26th, 2011 at 14:52
I’m 31; people think I’m 25.
October 27th, 2011 at 01:04
real age: 28
i think i appear to be 25
October 27th, 2011 at 01:06
I’m 28. I think I look early to mid 30s let’s say 35.
October 27th, 2011 at 04:45
I’m 32 and I look my age; is there something wrong with me? (besides wanting to die young)
October 27th, 2011 at 11:57
Currently experiencing my quarter life crisis.
Looks like in my 18, thanks to the cheap online vouchers.
(ok real age is 26, but it counts. I’m still recovering from the trauma).
October 28th, 2011 at 17:43
@balanar Get ready for the indifference that comes after the quarter life crisis. (Excuse me if I sound condescending; I do not mean to.)
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I’m 27.
Last time I was asked my age I said I was 28, because I really thought I was already 28. Then I did my Math.
People say I look 23. Caucasians say I look like I’m 19.
October 30th, 2011 at 13:36
34, and I’m beginning to look my age after losing 20 pounds all over. This should stop folks from commenting that I don’t look a day over 25.
The worst of it all was when somebody mistook me for an 8th grader when I was in the States. Really?
October 31st, 2011 at 01:38
Treinta y uno.
mukha raw beinte otso.
noong isang taon, pinagkamalang beinte singko anyos.
may natitira pang isang taon bago mawala sa kalendaryo.
single.
looking for someone with more time to give.
lalabas na ba ko ng iskuwater sa tundo?
November 4th, 2011 at 11:34
I liked the film. Though not everybody ‘looked not over 25’, it’s tough to live under circumstances were you earn for your life. What is eternity if there’s nothing to look forward to? Reminded me of Claudia, Lestat, et al from Anne Rice’s vampire chronicles. Or maybe Nicolas Flamel. The action was good, Bonnie & Clyde/Robin Hooding for the poor – back to the real world, how do we live our short lives?