2012 - The End is near, woohoo
Time to start accepting all those offers of new credit cards and running them up! However, I should not get involved in any soap operas. :p
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Here's the Variety review
2012
By TODD MCCARTHY
A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Columbia Pictures presentation of a Centropolis production. Produced by Harald Kloser, Mark Gordon, Larry Franco. Executive producers, Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich, Michael Wimer. Co-producers, Volker Engel, Marc Weigert, Aaron Boyd. Directed by Roland Emmerich.
Jackson Curtis - John Cusack
Adrian Helmsley - Chiwetel Ejiofor
Kate Curtis - Amanda Peet
Carl Anheuser - Oliver Platt
Laura Wilson - Thandie Newton
President Thomas Wilson - Danny Glover
Charlie Frost - Woody Harrelson
Gordon Silberman - Tom McCarthy
Tony Delgatto - George Segal
The notion of playing God is implicit in the job of a film director, and rarely has the sense of a wrathful, vengeful deity at the helm, albeit a pagan one, been so comprehensively felt as in "2012.'' For demolition maestro Roland Emmerich, "Independence Day,'' "Godzilla'' and "The Day After Tomorrow'' were mere appetizers for the lip-smacking smorgasbord of global annihilation laid out here. This simultaneously spectacular and risible concoction looks likely to trigger a worldwide B.O. tsunami for Sony.
Hooking their doomsday scenario on an interpretation of a Mayan calendar that points to an earthly catastrophe in 2012 -- specifically on 12-21-12 (what movie will pin its release to that date?) -- Emmerich and writing-producing partner Harald Kloser begin by dumping Los Angeles into the sea and follow with the destruction of Las Vegas, Yellowstone National Park, Washington, D.C., the Vatican, India, Tibet and a giant cruise ship.
Anyone who stops to think about it between grabs of popcorn might pick up the hint that Emmerich is taking particularly gleeful aim at the United States (which other director has destroyed the White House in his films not once but now twice?) and Catholicism (he goes out of his way to detail the collapse of St. Peter's and Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue), while no other religion gets taken to task. But then, that would be taking this eye-popping display of movie pyrotechnics far too seriously. Or not.
Coming up with halfway decent characters with which to populate disaster films has always proved an almost insurmountable problem, but Kloser and Emmerich have brought a measure of wit to the enterprise. Pic's Everyman is Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a rumpled author whose most recent unsuccessful novel happens to have been called "Farewell Atlantis,'' and who never paid enough attention to sexy ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and their two young kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily). He's now forced to look on as Kate shacks up with Gordon (Tom McCarthy) while he scrapes by as a limo driver for L.A.-based Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov (the very engaging Zlatko Buric).
As SoCal hopes for the best amid an alarming upswing in tremors and cracked streets, government scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) alerts U.S. President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover, almost too predictably grave) that increased solar fires (happily, for a change, not man-made global warming) are about to turn the Earth inside out in a way not experienced since the day the dinosaurs died.
While Wilson's chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), readies the evacuation of the elite and the president deliberates about how to preside over the planet's final chapter, Curtis leads his kids on a series of escapes and near-misses worthy of Indiana Jones -- in a limo, RV, private plane (flown by nonpilot Gordon), giant Russian cargo jet and, ultimately, the biggest vehicle ever built. The action is preposterous by any standard, but that's designed as part of the fun; eye-popping indeed are the sights of the streets of Santa Monica rippling like so many ocean waves, molten meteors spewing out of Yellowstone, the sea claiming a ship the size of a football field and a six-engine jet crash landing on a Himalayan glacier.
Unfortunately, it's not easy scripting the final act of a movie about the end of the world when you don't really want the final image to be a charred rock. Let it be said that "2012'' plummets from reasonably distracting spectacle to sheerest silliness when, in the pointlessly protracted final reels, it tries to maintain interest in the (confusingly staged) jeopardy of a handful of characters when much of the world's population has already been wiped out or is about to be. Never has Rick's observation in "Casablanca'' been more true, that the problems of a few little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
On any level other than as sheer visual sensation, "2012'' is a joke, for the simple reason that it has no point of view; the film offers no philosophical, metaphysical, intellectual and certainly no religious perspective on the cataclysm, just the physical frenzy of it all. But to ask this would be taking the picture far too seriously. Or not.
In Cusack and Ejiofor, "2012'' has two actors who convey above-the-norm intelligence for characters in this sort of fare, although even they can't keep up the pretense as the film degenerates. Most casting choices are agreeably offbeat down through the ranks, with Woody Harrelson supercharging his scenes as a wackjob radio sage who issues on-the-air reports from the front lines of destruction.
Except for some patchy work when St. Peter's crumbles, the visual effects are pretty sensational, delivering the cutting-edge CGI goods auds want and expect. It will be hard to watch "Earthquake'' ever again after this one.
Screenplay, Harald Kloser, Emmerich. Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen, HD), Dean Semler; editors, David Brenner, Peter S. Elliot; music, Harald Kloser, Thomas Wander; production designer, Barry Chusid; supervising art director, Don MacAulay; art directors, Dan Hermansen, Ross Dempster, Kendelle Elliott; set designers, Jay Mitchell, John Burke, Peter Ochotta, Douglas A. Girling, Nancy Brown, Peter Stratford, David Clarke; set decorator, Elizabeth Wilcox; costume designer, Shay Cunliffe; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Michael McGee; supervising sound editor/sound designer, Paul N. J. Ottosson; visual effects supervisors, Volker Engel, Marc Weigert; visual effects and digital environments, Uncharted Territory; visual effects, Scanline VFX, Double Negative, Pixomondo, Hydraulx; special visual effects and animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain; special effects supervisor, Mike Vezina; stunt coordinator, John Stoneham Jr.; associate producer, Kirstini Winkler; assistant director, Tommy Gormley; second unit director, Aaron Boyd; second unit camera, Don McCuaig; casting, April Webster. Reviewed at Regal Cinemas, Los Angeles, Nov. 3, 2009. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 158 MIN.
With: Liam James, Morgan Lily, Blu Mankuma, Zlatko Buric, Beatrice Rosen, John Billingsley, Chin Han, Osric Chau, Philippe Haussmann, Alexandre Haussmann, Jimi Mistry, Johann Urb, Ryan McDonald, Stephen McHattie, Lisa Lu, Henry O, Patrick Bauchau, Chang Tseng.
2012
By TODD MCCARTHY
A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Columbia Pictures presentation of a Centropolis production. Produced by Harald Kloser, Mark Gordon, Larry Franco. Executive producers, Roland Emmerich, Ute Emmerich, Michael Wimer. Co-producers, Volker Engel, Marc Weigert, Aaron Boyd. Directed by Roland Emmerich.
Jackson Curtis - John Cusack
Adrian Helmsley - Chiwetel Ejiofor
Kate Curtis - Amanda Peet
Carl Anheuser - Oliver Platt
Laura Wilson - Thandie Newton
President Thomas Wilson - Danny Glover
Charlie Frost - Woody Harrelson
Gordon Silberman - Tom McCarthy
Tony Delgatto - George Segal
The notion of playing God is implicit in the job of a film director, and rarely has the sense of a wrathful, vengeful deity at the helm, albeit a pagan one, been so comprehensively felt as in "2012.'' For demolition maestro Roland Emmerich, "Independence Day,'' "Godzilla'' and "The Day After Tomorrow'' were mere appetizers for the lip-smacking smorgasbord of global annihilation laid out here. This simultaneously spectacular and risible concoction looks likely to trigger a worldwide B.O. tsunami for Sony.
Hooking their doomsday scenario on an interpretation of a Mayan calendar that points to an earthly catastrophe in 2012 -- specifically on 12-21-12 (what movie will pin its release to that date?) -- Emmerich and writing-producing partner Harald Kloser begin by dumping Los Angeles into the sea and follow with the destruction of Las Vegas, Yellowstone National Park, Washington, D.C., the Vatican, India, Tibet and a giant cruise ship.
Anyone who stops to think about it between grabs of popcorn might pick up the hint that Emmerich is taking particularly gleeful aim at the United States (which other director has destroyed the White House in his films not once but now twice?) and Catholicism (he goes out of his way to detail the collapse of St. Peter's and Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue), while no other religion gets taken to task. But then, that would be taking this eye-popping display of movie pyrotechnics far too seriously. Or not.
Coming up with halfway decent characters with which to populate disaster films has always proved an almost insurmountable problem, but Kloser and Emmerich have brought a measure of wit to the enterprise. Pic's Everyman is Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a rumpled author whose most recent unsuccessful novel happens to have been called "Farewell Atlantis,'' and who never paid enough attention to sexy ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) and their two young kids (Liam James and Morgan Lily). He's now forced to look on as Kate shacks up with Gordon (Tom McCarthy) while he scrapes by as a limo driver for L.A.-based Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov (the very engaging Zlatko Buric).
As SoCal hopes for the best amid an alarming upswing in tremors and cracked streets, government scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) alerts U.S. President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover, almost too predictably grave) that increased solar fires (happily, for a change, not man-made global warming) are about to turn the Earth inside out in a way not experienced since the day the dinosaurs died.
While Wilson's chief of staff, Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt), readies the evacuation of the elite and the president deliberates about how to preside over the planet's final chapter, Curtis leads his kids on a series of escapes and near-misses worthy of Indiana Jones -- in a limo, RV, private plane (flown by nonpilot Gordon), giant Russian cargo jet and, ultimately, the biggest vehicle ever built. The action is preposterous by any standard, but that's designed as part of the fun; eye-popping indeed are the sights of the streets of Santa Monica rippling like so many ocean waves, molten meteors spewing out of Yellowstone, the sea claiming a ship the size of a football field and a six-engine jet crash landing on a Himalayan glacier.
Unfortunately, it's not easy scripting the final act of a movie about the end of the world when you don't really want the final image to be a charred rock. Let it be said that "2012'' plummets from reasonably distracting spectacle to sheerest silliness when, in the pointlessly protracted final reels, it tries to maintain interest in the (confusingly staged) jeopardy of a handful of characters when much of the world's population has already been wiped out or is about to be. Never has Rick's observation in "Casablanca'' been more true, that the problems of a few little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
On any level other than as sheer visual sensation, "2012'' is a joke, for the simple reason that it has no point of view; the film offers no philosophical, metaphysical, intellectual and certainly no religious perspective on the cataclysm, just the physical frenzy of it all. But to ask this would be taking the picture far too seriously. Or not.
In Cusack and Ejiofor, "2012'' has two actors who convey above-the-norm intelligence for characters in this sort of fare, although even they can't keep up the pretense as the film degenerates. Most casting choices are agreeably offbeat down through the ranks, with Woody Harrelson supercharging his scenes as a wackjob radio sage who issues on-the-air reports from the front lines of destruction.
Except for some patchy work when St. Peter's crumbles, the visual effects are pretty sensational, delivering the cutting-edge CGI goods auds want and expect. It will be hard to watch "Earthquake'' ever again after this one.
Screenplay, Harald Kloser, Emmerich. Camera (Deluxe color, Panavision widescreen, HD), Dean Semler; editors, David Brenner, Peter S. Elliot; music, Harald Kloser, Thomas Wander; production designer, Barry Chusid; supervising art director, Don MacAulay; art directors, Dan Hermansen, Ross Dempster, Kendelle Elliott; set designers, Jay Mitchell, John Burke, Peter Ochotta, Douglas A. Girling, Nancy Brown, Peter Stratford, David Clarke; set decorator, Elizabeth Wilcox; costume designer, Shay Cunliffe; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Michael McGee; supervising sound editor/sound designer, Paul N. J. Ottosson; visual effects supervisors, Volker Engel, Marc Weigert; visual effects and digital environments, Uncharted Territory; visual effects, Scanline VFX, Double Negative, Pixomondo, Hydraulx; special visual effects and animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain; special effects supervisor, Mike Vezina; stunt coordinator, John Stoneham Jr.; associate producer, Kirstini Winkler; assistant director, Tommy Gormley; second unit director, Aaron Boyd; second unit camera, Don McCuaig; casting, April Webster. Reviewed at Regal Cinemas, Los Angeles, Nov. 3, 2009. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 158 MIN.
With: Liam James, Morgan Lily, Blu Mankuma, Zlatko Buric, Beatrice Rosen, John Billingsley, Chin Han, Osric Chau, Philippe Haussmann, Alexandre Haussmann, Jimi Mistry, Johann Urb, Ryan McDonald, Stephen McHattie, Lisa Lu, Henry O, Patrick Bauchau, Chang Tseng.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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'Mayan 2012 apocalypse theory' not true, Nasa says
The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, Nasa insisted on Monday in a rare campaign to dispel rumours fueled by the internet and a new Hollywood movie.
The Telegraph
The latest big screen offering from Sony Pictures, "2012," arrives in theatres on Friday , with a $200 million production about the end of the world supposedly based on theories backed by the Mayan calendar.
The doomsday scenario revolves around claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X - or Nibiru - collides with Earth.
The mysterious planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and internet theorists.
Some websites have accused the US space agency of concealing the truth about the wayward planet's existence, but Nasa has denounced such stories as an "internet hoax."
"There is no factual basis for these claims," Nasa said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.
If such a collision were real, "astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye," it added. "Obviously, it does not exist."
"Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," it insisted.
After all, "our planet has been getting along just fine for more than four billion years," added Nasa.
Initial theories set the disaster for May 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012, to coincide with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.
Nasa insisted the Mayan calendar does not in fact end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.
And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be "negligible," Nasa said.
Modern Maya in Guatemala and Mexico have also rushed to debunk the "prophesy".
they view the burgeoning end-of-the-world 2012 industry with a mixture of confusion, exasperation and anger at what is perceived as a Western distortion of their traditions and beliefs.
"There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture," Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests and spiritual guides, told The Sunday Telegraph.
Cirilo Perez, an adviser to Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom is a prominent ajq'ij - literally a "day counter", a wise man who makes predictions and advice on the most propitious dates to marry, plant or harvest. He decried the commercial exploitation of Mayan culture by outsiders.
"This has all become business but there is no desire to understand," he said. "When foreigners, or even some Guatemalans, see us, they think 'Look at the Maya, how nice, how pretty', but they don't understand us."
The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, Nasa insisted on Monday in a rare campaign to dispel rumours fueled by the internet and a new Hollywood movie.
The Telegraph
The latest big screen offering from Sony Pictures, "2012," arrives in theatres on Friday , with a $200 million production about the end of the world supposedly based on theories backed by the Mayan calendar.
The doomsday scenario revolves around claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X - or Nibiru - collides with Earth.
The mysterious planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and internet theorists.
Some websites have accused the US space agency of concealing the truth about the wayward planet's existence, but Nasa has denounced such stories as an "internet hoax."
"There is no factual basis for these claims," Nasa said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.
If such a collision were real, "astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye," it added. "Obviously, it does not exist."
"Credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012," it insisted.
After all, "our planet has been getting along just fine for more than four billion years," added Nasa.
Initial theories set the disaster for May 2003, but when nothing happened the date was moved forward to the winter solstice in 2012, to coincide with the end of a cycle of the ancient Mayan calendar.
Nasa insisted the Mayan calendar does not in fact end on December 21, 2012, as another period begins immediately afterward. And it said there are no planetary alignments on the horizon for the next few decades.
And even if the planets were to line up as some have forecast, the effect on our planet would be "negligible," Nasa said.
Modern Maya in Guatemala and Mexico have also rushed to debunk the "prophesy".
they view the burgeoning end-of-the-world 2012 industry with a mixture of confusion, exasperation and anger at what is perceived as a Western distortion of their traditions and beliefs.
"There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture," Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests and spiritual guides, told The Sunday Telegraph.
Cirilo Perez, an adviser to Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom is a prominent ajq'ij - literally a "day counter", a wise man who makes predictions and advice on the most propitious dates to marry, plant or harvest. He decried the commercial exploitation of Mayan culture by outsiders.
"This has all become business but there is no desire to understand," he said. "When foreigners, or even some Guatemalans, see us, they think 'Look at the Maya, how nice, how pretty', but they don't understand us."
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
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