Really good trash
Stratum101
"Only an audience that feels invulnerable can enjoy watching on
screen
the wholesale destruction of its civilization and not take it as a
threat.
A cloud has lifted. It's safe to be happy and brainless again.
'2012' may be Hollywood's first post-post-9/11 movie."
See SFGate at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/13/MV161AICV3.DTL
Stratum101
In ultra-hip Dallas where to be campy is to be a suspected
Left Coast com'nist or at least unpatriotic, this film
gets a 3-star (out of 5) rating. Don't see why
the Dallasites are complaining. Los Angeles is
everybody's most nukable city.
Marko Amnell
"Stratum101" <j.co...@cross-comp.com> wrote in message
a02ced92-8226-4b8e...@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
The quote is interesting and the film may indeed
signal some kind of change in the collective
American psyche (it was the number one movie
at the box office), but I am sure you are aware that
this is one of the few positive reviews of the movie.
I watched 2012 and thought that, as a whole, it was
very silly and superficial. There was a missed
opportunity to address the issue of what it would
mean if nearly everyone on Earth suddenly died.
There are examples of interesting doomsday
films, such as The Quiet Earth.
The only enjoyable parts of 2012 are the special
effects of entire cities collapsing. Am I the only
one who thought that the depiction of skyscrapers
collapsing slowly, with great billowing clouds of
dust, must have been influenced by video footage
of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center?
Apart from these special effects, there were a few
laughs, such as the scene where California governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger says on TV that the worst
earthquakes are over and is interrupted by a massive
tremor that destroys all of California. The shot of the
Queen of England, her corgis barking loudly, rushing
into one of the arks that survive the apocalypse, was
also funny.
Marko Amnell
to an end in 2012 seems to me to have odd
affinities to Lovecraft (discussed in another thread
in RAB). For example, Michael Tsarion's
"Origins and Oracles" film series seems to have
borrowed heavily from the plot of "The Call of Cthulhu"...
"We discover that earth's crime-soaked history has
been manipulated by powerful secret societies with
bloodline connections to ancient alien visitors who
crossed their own DNA with that of earth's indigenous
inhabitants. According to Michael Tsarion's astonishing
thesis, some of these original 'Fallen Angels' are secretly
interred beneath the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in
other locations around the globe. These 'undead' vampiristic
kings of old have been feeding off the death and mayhem,
the pain and fear of human beings for millennia and
their servants, upon the earth's surface, have orchestrated
wars, assassinations, and a climate of perversity and
debauchery to feed their dark masters soon to arise again
from their unholy repose. This arising is forced due to
the approach of powerful constellational alignments and
the coming of an 'Age of Revealing' referred to in ancient
Maya texts, and in the Book of Revelations."
http://rarbg.com/torrents/filmi/download/8116810e02032a944a4b122f07cf88b2f72ddd41/torrent.html
I wonder if Tsarion is aware of this similarity...
Stratum101
> "Stratum101" <j.coll...@cross-comp.com> wrote in message
>
> a02ced92-8226-4b8e-b76f-6d83ba8b3...@j19g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
>
> > The Chron (_San Francisco Chronicle_) reviews "2012" the film:
>
> > "Only an audience that feels invulnerable can enjoy watching on
> > screen the wholesale destruction of its civilization and not take
> > it as a threat. A cloud has lifted. It's safe to be happy and brainless
> > again. '2012' may be Hollywood's first post-post-9/11 movie."
>
> > See SFGate at
>
> The quote is interesting and the film may indeed
> signal some kind of change in the collective
> American psyche (it was the number one movie
> at the box office), but I am sure you are aware that
> this is one of the few positive reviews of the movie.
I think we can take as given that it's extremely trashy.
The SFGate piece in effect calls it campy. (The special
effects are pretty good.) Brainlessness as high camp
might be worth exploring.
You'll notice there isn't a single mention of Dallas
in the film. So the Dallas Morning News didn't like it.
Not one bit. In the Fort Worth Star Telegram, it's
a different story:
"... and not one mention of Dallas. Hah!"
(I made that up.)
> There are examples of interesting doomsday
> films, such as The Quiet Earth.
Heard of it, never seen it. I just read the Wikipedia
article on it and think I might hunt it down. I see
it's not in the Dallas Public Library DVD collection
which is pretty good and is tiding me over, with an
occasional guest viewer, while I'm ensconced here.
One of the few diverting luxuries I've purchased
was a 26-in flat screen with built-in DVD player
at Best Buys mostly to watch IFC, Book Weekend
on C-SPAN2, the Dallas-Ft Worth PBS channel,
and an occasional something on TCM. I did not
have any TV for five months and didn't miss it.
Internet radio is hard to beat.
On that subject, the Dallas cinema scene
is okay. Probably good as Southern
cities go. It's not like L.A. with a zillion
cinemas. (But then L.A. fell into the
sea.) Got the usual well-stocked Borders
and B&Ns everywhere (and that's *all*
it's got) and one chain of half-decent
new/used bookstores called Half Price
Books, which is heaquarted in Dallas.
I'm to go to the Half Price HQ store in a couple
of hours where our little Mensa subgroup will be
discussing _Car Sagan: A Life_ by
Keay Davidson, which I recommended.
The store makes a community room
available. The establishment is a
money maker by the way, and that
has to warm the heart of any
book lover.
Marko Amnell
"Marko Amnell" <marko....@kolumbus.fi> wrote in message
7mt9v7F...@mid.individual.net...
> Am I the only one who thought that the depiction of
> skyscrapers collapsing slowly, with great billowing
> clouds of dust, must have been influenced by video
> footage of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center?
I'm not the only one.
"The scenes of humanity crushed (or about to be crushed)
under tidal tsunamis and smothered in molten lava are,
like 9/11 footage, memorable. If this comparison seems
crass, it's one Emmerich himself did his best to invite.
There are scenes in 2012 of people clinging to the sides
of collapsing buildings, calling to mind footage of those
who jumped from the World Trade Center towers. Now
that we have a mental library of such things actually
happening, which Emmerich is happy to tap into, it's
easier to see 2012 as an accurate picture of what a
disaster like "earth crust displacement" would actually
look like."
Stratum101
> "Marko Amnell" <marko.amn...@kolumbus.fi> wrote in message
>
> 7mt9v7F3ikll...@mid.individual.net...
Another in the genre was Curt Gentry's
_Last Days of the Great State of California_, written
in the late 1960s. In this one, a giant earthquake
dumps California into the Pacific. Glub, glub.
The split is more or less along the state line,
leaving Nevada with a west coast and Oregon
with a south coast.
Gentry also wrote a bio of J. Edgar Hoover and
he co-authored _Helter Skelter_ with Vincent
Bugliosi who was the lead prosecutor in the
Charles Manson cases and candidate two
or three times for D.A. of Los Angeles County.