Monday, November 16, 2009

Movie Review
    — 2012


Oh my God, what a steaming heap of…

Well, if you turn you brain off…

No, I mean really turn it off.  Don’t think about any of the stuff in the movie.

SPOILERS — SPOILERS — SPOILERS

  • Don’t think about the odds of surviving
    close call after close call after close call.
  • Don’t think about jumping a limo from the street into a sinking building, through the collapsing floors, and jumping it out the other side (just in time) and down a story or two with one door missing and neither losing any passengers nor setting off the air bags.
  • Don’t think about managing to get the plane to take off and then staying just 50 feet off the ground while buildings throw themselves at you.  Instead of going upAway from the destruction!
  • Don’t think about whether a super-heated volcanic ash plume only a few miles from a just-erupted supervolcano would foul the engines of a small prop plane, maybe melt things, or invade the interior air supply.
  • Don’t think about how an ash plume from Yellowstone can reach DC in 7 hours (averaging nearly 300 mph), and only reach Las Vegas (about 1/3 as far away and on the same side of the Rockies) in the same time.
  • Don’t think how a plane can take off from the Las Vegas airport, at the south end of the strip, and then cruise over/through the Wynn, the Venetian, and Paris casinos in that order, since those run north to south!
  • Don’t think about how they got two fat teens, two little kids, a fat adult man, two normal sized adult men, two adult women, and a small dog into a single Bentley.
  • Don’t think about how long it would take for hypothermia to set in atop a Himalayan glacier, for people wearing the same clothes they did in Southern California, Yellowstone, and Las Vegas.
  • Don’t think about how a 1500 meter tidal wave manages to make it far into inland India.  And really don’t think how it then increases to be more than 5000 meters high in order to crest the Himalayas.  (And definitely don’t think “Why didn’t any of the brilliant scientists question how a tidal wave would increase in height while travelling over a thousand miles of dry land?”, even if the in-movie answer would have be “We don't know, but there it is!”)
  • Don’t think about where the fuel is stored in a plane which falls off a cliff, impacts nose firsts, and explodes as a result.  And don’t think that there should be consistency when another plane runs nose first into the side of a ship.
  • Don’t think about how overtaxed the food stores would be on the ships after taking on twice the planned load.  Don’t think “Donner, party of five.  Donner, party of four.”
  • Don’t wonder about what devastation hit Africa, the only populated continent never mentioned during the destruction part of the movie.  (Because they actually sideswipe pretend to address that one.)
  • Don’t think about why there was no mention of the other half of the surviving rich people of the world at the end.

Once you stop thinking about science and the odds and geography and fuel lines and food… if there’s any of your brain left, you’ll probably enjoy the outright goofiness of this movie.

You’ll definitely be talking about this movie after it’s done.  You’ll be saying:

“What the…
how the…
fuck, that made no sense!”



Updated on January 2, 2010
 

Monday, November 2, 2009

Dream Journal: November 1, 2009


I rarely have any dreams, or at least only rarely have any that I remember past waking up.  (I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream about flying, although they say such are one the most common kinds.)  So when I do have a memorable one, I try to preserve it.
It was early evening and we were standing on the deck.  (There was a definite sense of “us”, but whether the other person was my real-world boyfriend or not, I can’t say.)  Down below, our cats (not my current cats, though) were leaping off the ground, landing in the top branches of trees, and then jumping down again — and not just jumping up and down, but 10 foot leaps into the air, into delicate twig-like branches, and doing backflips on the way down.  I soon realized that the trees were loaded with twittering birds, so the cats were jumping and catching them.

Looking closer at the branches nearest me, some of which extended onto the deck at foot level, I could see that the branches were laden with big plump berries or small plums, and the birds were feasting on them.  The berries were so ripe that they must have fermented and the birds were passing out after eating them.  There was even a stack of birds three deep in front of me.

Our dog (not my current dog, because I don’t have one) came over to the stack of birds, sniffed at them, and took the top one in its mouth, then dropped it over the edge of the deck.  The dog took the second one, and dropped it over the edge.  The dog then took the third one — a small, pure white bird which had been under the other two — took it in its mouth, and crunch crunch ate it.
And then I woke up.

I have no idea what the dream means.  (Do dreams always have to mean something?)  I can make up something sexual about watching other people doing fancy “tricks” and not settling for the first “bird” when a better one may be hidden behind it.  But the whole eating metaphor with the cats and dog gives that one a hard twist to the right.



Updated on February 3, 2010