owlrigh

I spent the longest 2 1/2 hours of my life watching 2012; it was only after I saw the movie that I realised the director was also responsible for The Day After Tomorrow -- once I knew that it explained everything.

To begin with it seemed all right -- although it's hard to find John Cusack believable as a chap who'd mastermind a rescue operation, let alone cross-continent one, with an aeroplane flown by a chap who'd only done a couple of lessons. Anyone will rise to the occasion, no matter what?

The tsunamis got my heart racing. Seeing the walls of CG water falling on people, buildings -- I must admit, it did affect me. How cool is the power of water? If they ever to manage to harvest tides for energy it'd be great, even if an eyesore, hazard to navigation, and change underwater ecology.

Speeches, my god, they were so bad. The guy at the end, with the clock ticking past 15 minutes, speechifying people into opening the doors to save those throwing themselves at the boat -- what? To open the hydraulic doors would presumably take a few minutes, and then another few to close them. Getting everyone on board and then the doors closed in time -- what were the chances? What a surprise to find things going haywire: not!

If Everest was still up high, and the computer models said that the water wasn't going to go up that far, couldn't they have put into place some sort of secondary evacuation plan for people to go to high, very high places? If rigid buildings were going to go under, then how about the flexible sort, low-lying, to save as many more people as they could? Anyway. For a while there I thought they were going to be in spaceships rocketing out of the atmosphere, and then they'd be there for centuries while earth stabilised and the survivors eked out an existence on the broken land, to which they'd return as messianic saviours! Wait, that happened in SF books, which are much better.

Up until where the first car chase scene occurred I thought it'd be okay. Once the Cusack character started flooring it to escape growing cracks, and then flying through collapsing, rubble-filled buildings, it went downhill. Flying planes through debris and falling buildings? Yes, very good. Up until then it was fun, and then it was daft.

All I can think of is that this is going to fuel a rise in folks carrying useless gear around. I tend to visit edcforums.com every so often; it's a board for people who are interested in "every day carry", being ready for most situations. Now, there are likely some normal folks on there -- I like to consider myself normal -- but there are also the likes of the chap who carries four torches with him, or the chaps who carry several knives, or a fully laden backpack with him ... every day. I don't know their situation, whether he needs to trek through an hour of bush and then some white water rafting to get to the nearest town, but I think very not likely. Just slightly mad with the overkill.

I went to see Terminator Salvation for the second time yesterday, this time with Ben; the first was with a coworker with SFnal tendencies. I'd hoped for some discussion of the movie with the coworker, but instead we discussed his intentions to move to Thailand to be with his boyfriend, and so Ben and I nerded it up in the car last night, desperately trying to avoid stepping out into the cold.

My opinion was that if it wasn't a Terminator movie, it's not all that likely that anyone would have bothered hyping this, because the storyline is thin on the ground, so full of holes they might as well renamed SkyNet to MosquitoNet. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy it; I did go see it twice, after all.

( Spoilery musings about the good and bad. )

I have been steadily watching the days go down until today: when I could go see the latest Star Trek.

Ben and I went to the matinee session, the first screening in Ballina, and after getting our ususal crunchies and drink we shuffled in and sat down.

"Look at all the single guys," said Ben once we were comfortable.

I looked around; sure enough, there were lots of men sitting by themselves. Usually around here there are packs of oldies, or couples, but not often men by themselves.

There was this peppering of blokes, but it took me a while to notice that they were seated in this particular order: bloke empty seat, bloke. With lots of empty seats all around. Why seated so close?

"Are those guys together, do you think?" I asked Ben.

"Of course. They can't sit next to each other; that'd be gay," was his response.

It was clear that these guys, all of them, thought so; they stretched their necks over the empty seat to talk to one another, but that space was taboo when it came to two blokes seeing movies!

I found this very funny, laughing until I cried. I started Ben off too, and I saw little tears of laughter in his eyes. We calmed down in time for the trailers, at which I think our laughter would have proven annoying to the others.

Ben nudged me when the trailer for Transformers appeared; I nudged him accordingly when the Terminator one concluded. He wants to see one, me the other, and we'll drag one another along for the viewing.

All in all, we were both very pleased with the movie. It was full of action, which I was told about by a lucky fan who got to see an advance screening, but at the same time it felt appropriately Star Trek-y.

( Spoilers )

I got my hands on a fan-produced vid for the film Equilibrium not long ago, and it intrigued me enough that I set a friend to getting it so I could see the thing. The fan vid was well-produced, giving a good idea of what the film was like, especially when I read a synopsis or two to shore myself up until I could see it.

Equilibrium is set in a post-WWIII dystopic world. They've survived the third world war, although there is no details of it, and the city (world?) of Libria is where they're attempting to keep the peace and avoid a fourth world war. To do this, as it begins in the opening credits, they are doing away with the thing that spurs humans to war: emotion.

( Spoilers. Lots. )