Review: 2012 or Science is Hard

I saw 2012 tonight and the line-up beforehand was the biggest I’ve seen in awhile. Apparently the end of the world is going to be a big hit.

Rather than a traditional review, I will summarize 2012’s story in convenient list form. Follow the list and you, too, can write a globe-spanning disaster epic!

1. Make a list of great disaster movie scenarios, including:

  • earthquakes
  • volcanic eruptions
  • tidal waves

2. Combine all of the above.
3. Ask yourself, “Is this specific scenario ridiculous?” If the answer is no, make it ridiculous. If the answer is yes, go to 4.
4. Make the scenario even more ridiculous.
5. No one knows science anymore, so it’s okay to make everything up. When a character exclaims “That’s impossible!” cut to the next scene.
6. No one speaks French, either, so feel free to make that up, too.
7. Ramp up the urgency using the old “my calculations were off!” trick
8. Include at least one (1) each of the following:

  • plucky pet that barely makes it
  • noble sacrifice (ideally someone who becomes increasingly sympathetic as the story progresses)
  • wise old person who accepts death with quiet dignity
  • hero who appears to have died but wait — he’s OK!
  • 1-3 plucky kids
  • a sacrificing and decent president
  • 3-5 famous landmarks getting trashed (eg. White House, Sistine Chapel, Washington Monument, etc.)
  • a bad guy who gets his just rewards
  • a bad good guy who learns just what this whole humanity thing is all about

9. Pad out to 2 hours and 38 minutes.
10. Serve and enjoy!

They really took point #4 to heart. Spoilers follow but really, is it possible to spoil a Roland Emmerich film?

It’s not enough to have a colossal sea-going ark imperiled with an imminent collision with any old mountain, it must be Mt. Everest! This is a film that treats the supervolcano in Yellowstone erupting as a side event. You can’t have a tsunami wipe out the White House, you must have it struck by the USS John Kennedy aircraft carrier first — but not before showing the president looking up and literally saying his prayers.

The science was ludicrous, of course. #5 actually happens.

They had a cute Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator doing a news conference in one scene. Too bad Schwarzenegger won’t be governor in 2012 due to term limits. The end of the world comes even sooner for him. For some reason they had the Italian premier decide to stay behind and pray at the Vatican (which, of course, gets destroyed in lavish detail, complete with the oh-so-subtle symbolism of a giant fissure appearing between David and the hand of God in the Sistine Chapel).

But despite all this, I still had a good time. As disaster porn goes, this movie delivered. Everything from collapsing freeways and skyscrapers to capsizing cruise ships and trains shooting through instant new canyons, 2012 had it all. California literally slides into the ocean.

Jon Cusack is a likable actor but he really doesn’t have much of a role here as a good-but-flawed father/husband/writer. His character (and many of the others, really) survive too many implausible situations to count and I guess it’s hard to really figure out how you’d react to the world coming apart. You’d be upset and kind of panicky, maybe. The kids were decent but forgettable and Woody Harrelson hams it up as a radio broadcasting end-of-the-worlder. Despite running over 2.5 hours, the movie surprised me by not feeling so long. It helps that once you start ravaging the planet it’s hard to buy time for touching, quiet moments.

In closing, if you ever want to see a movie that features giraffes and elephants being airlifted by helicopter across the Himalayas, 2012 is the movie for you!

Of posts not written

It turns out writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days really cuts into the time you normally devote to going on about various inanities in your blog.

On the plus side, I am near 32,000 words as we hit the halfway mark, about 7,000 words ahead of the pace and I think the science in my story is probably more accurate than the science in 2012 (more on the in the next post). And mine is a horror story.

1980: The Year of Living Garishly

1980 is when the movie musical Xanadu came out. This was only a few years after Grease — which was a huge hit, so naturally musicals came into vogue again and not surprisingly most were crap. Xanada featured Olivia Newton-John, Gene Kelly (!) and the music of ELO. Sure it was high concept nonsense but I was 16 and didn’t know better. I recall coming away from the movie having rather enjoyed it.

Tonight, for reasons unclear to me I visited YouTube and checked out a number of songs from the movie and yikes, it’s terrible! Yes, the ELO songs are still great but they stand on their own quite nicely. In fact, it’s better if you close your eyes and skip the whole looking-at-the-video part of them. This is a musical that makes Grease look like a masterpiece and that one wanted you to buy Stockard Channing as a teenager.

Horribly dated, horribly shot, campy, kitschy but only somewhat self-aware of it, I get the feeling the actors had fun shooting this and Gene was content to pad the inheritance for his kids but if you can watch this with anything less than your jaw hanging open, unable to articulate how horrible it is, you’re a better person than me!

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may still be worse, though.

Here’s the clip for All Over the World. Out of context I haven’t the foggiest what exactly was going on here. I think they’re picking out clothes for something. You know how that goes.

Only 48,000 words to go!

National Novel Writing Month is officially underway today. I am working on The Ferry, starting it over from scratch (it stalled out more than a decade ago with about 11,000 words written), retaining only the basic plot. The characters are new but carry a few similarities to the original ones. My progress is being tracked here. I’ve cracked the 2,000 word mark on my first day. Not bad.

The fun of Halloween

Tonight I saw the Halloween-appropriate Paranormal Activity. Shot in a cinéma vérité style, this low budget effort featured a good cast and nicely ratcheted up the stakes as said activities became more and more invasive. I have to admit I’m a sucker for the pseudo-documentary style of film-making and I think this one did a solid job of portraying the demon-afflicted couple in a (mostly) believable* manner. Less satisfying were the people occasionally talking (nervously?) amongst themselves in the audience and a number who constantly got up from their seats, perhaps feeling some nausea from the occasionally tipsy camera work. The guy to my left spent most of his time literally on the edge of his seat leaning forward and then glibly said at the end, “I want the last hour and forty minutes of my time back.” You’re not fooling anyone, Mr. Fraidy Cat!

* okay, there were several not-so-believable bits. SPOILERS FOLLOW. LOOK AWAY TO AVOID! Micah and Katie document the manifestations in their home using a big-ass video camera and the film shows them regularly reviewing the footage via a laptop “hooked up by Firewire” as Micah states several times. At one point the couple leaves the house with a Ouija board on the coffee table, with the camera recording it. The planchette busies itself scooting across the board and then bursts into flames. This was not enough to make them think perhaps staying in the house might not be a wise idea. On the final day, Katie insist on staying and says everything will be fine, then goes to sleep with a, I daresay, devilish smile on her face. Apparently Micah never reviewed this clip because I’d get the freak away at that point. But maybe that’s just me.

After the movie we strolled down Davie Street and being the clever lad I am , I quipped about Halloween on Davie — could you tell the difference? There were a surprisingly large number of people in costume, ranging from ultra-basic (cat ears) to elaborately made-up vampires, zombies and overweight cowboys. And fireworks. Lots of fireworks that even as I write this are still exploding somewhere a few houses over. People seem very intent on getting their money’s worth this year. Interestingly, Nic said this kind of tomfoolery isn’t indulged in back east. Maybe they just eat pumpkin poutine instead.

“The Danger of Halloween”

As originally seen in The Huffington Post.

Kimberly Daniels believes that Halloween is a very naughty sort of occasion. Some choice quotes from her piece on the subject:

During Halloween, time-released curses are always loosed. A time-released curse is a period that has been set aside to release demonic activity and to ensnare souls in great measure.

Those mini-Snickers you plan on handing out to the wee ones? Not only will they rot their teeth but also their soul!

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

And finally:

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have. Then declare with me: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

I think Ms Daniels would not approve of the decorations out in front of the house. I’ll have a few more added to the Halloween gallery tomorrow, including the pumpkins in all their candlelight glory. Everything is courtesy of the demented mind of Tim, of course.

Only two days until NaNoWriMo!

I just like saying NaNoWriMo.

That would be National Novel Writing Month. I’m signed up and ready to pound out my 50,000+ word masterpiece* over the next 30 days, starting Sunday (no day of rest here).

I intend to keep writing here on a daily basis as well. Perhaps my novel will be about a guy struggling to find work who finds himself trapped in his own blog. It could be called The Blog but in big scary wiggly letters and 3D and stuff. You know.

* my definition may differ than yours…or the dictionary’s

That Facebook stuff

I don’t think I’m cut out for this fancy Facebook thing. I haven’t updated my status since my birthday on September 19th. Somehow I’ll pull through, though.

More on this possibly later!

Background midi files and animated gifs, how I shall miss thee — Geocities closing

Today marks the end of Geocities, perhaps the most popular service early on in the days of the World Wide Web to allow the masses to make their presence known on the Internet. And that presence was largely made through the heavy use of automatically-playing background midi music, epileptic seizure-inducing animated gifs and the liberal use of Comic Sans. The spirit of Geocities will never die, though, and not just because tripod.com still exists, as the whole thing has pretty much been transplanted into myspace.com.

Meanwhile, with pre-made templates and tighter control on design elements, personal blogs like WordPress and social networking sites like Facebook have largely reined in the more gaudy elements of those manyfold Geocities sites. In a way it makes me a little sad, in the same way that one witnesses the loss of innocence when a child stops believing in Santa. In another way is makes me glad because many of those sites provided compelling evidence that the average net-user had the taste and design chops of a moss-covered rock.