Celebrating the cinematic personalities born on 11/24 . Even if you're not cinematic, you're probably a personality. Wish yourself a happy one in the comments. There's no way there's been no Scorpios (or now) Saggitarians reading. Speak up when it's your big day! Garret, Shirley and 'Izzy' 1913 Geraldine Fitzgerald actress ( Wuthering Heights, The Mango Tree, Rachel Rachel ) 1942 Billy Connolly , comedian,...
2012 ! They blowed up real good! Mrs. Skippy and I saw the Roland Emmerich disaster flick yesterday, and I can definitely recommend it, with two caveats: Suspend your Disbelief Willingly and Completely, and Check your Brain at the Door. It's cheesy, it's full of cliches, it's not ever going to win any awards for writing, acting, plot or logic (let alone science), but it's got the best disaster special...
Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American Science Fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie’s sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the [...]
Saw 2012 this weekend Emmerich is the obvious heir to Irwin Allen - but improved. Those films had bad effects, bad script and bad acting. 2012 has the requisite bad script and acting but the effects are fantastic - the earlier scenes of a car and then a plane escaping mass destruction are the closest I have seen to the ubiquitous 'thrill ride' experience in the cinema. The last half hour was fairly...
Finally, our conclusion. Here's part one, part two, and part three. I really had intended, when I first outlined this, to keep it to one or at most two columns. What can I say? Comfort food's a staple around here lately. Between cold and flu season, and then hosting our godson Phenix for a couple of [...]
Capsule Review: From the watery depths to the fiery sky, Irwin Allen's follow up to The Poseidon Adventure was an ambitious attempt to take the disaster movie genre to new heights (pun intended). The formula was simple: cast a long list of film stars as guests at a ...
Mike Russell's latest "Culture Pulp" riff on disaster movies is obviously more informed by Irwin Allen-styled '70s schlockos than Roland Emmerich's 2012, but the rules explained in the last four panels [see below] are followed fairly closely by Emmerich....
The final day extravaganza 2012 is not only porn disaster movie trailers and television commercials promise. It’s much, much more stupid than that. Massive changes in the outcome of the planet’s crust in the leveling of entire continents – however, cellular phone service remains uninterrupted. Billions flee for their lives around the world – but the same half [...]
It's hard to praise 2012 without offering at least a few conditions, but I can say that it never made me angry. Roland Emmerich's latest Irwin Allen-on-steroids disaster movie is the mother of all apocalypse movies, and it mostly satisfies, if only because it encourages audiences to indulge their insensitive worst and really celebrate widespread death and destruction.
If the world was to end in three years as it's been foretold by the Mayans when they devised their intricate series of calendars and almanacs eons ago, you'd probably want it to see its inevitable demise happen the way that it does in Roland Emmerich's new movie 2012 . After all, how could one panic when being entertained by some of the most spectacular displays of destruction ever devised by Germany's...
While movie theatres aren't quite desperate enough to offer flu vaccinations to ticket buyers, they'll do everything else they can to get seats filled during the coming holiday season. Boffo box office would be like a booster shot for a business plagued with the same worries as so many industries.
Roland Emmerich, the Irwin Allen of this generation, shows the destruction of several Christian landmarks (the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio) in the disaster epic 2012, opening next weekend. No scenes showing Mecca...
This time around, most of mankind bites the dust. There is no crossing the border into Mexico, there is no library to hide in, or anything of that sort.