Cataclysm Odds

Yeah, I saw the trailer for 2012, too.

I’ve seen less overblown dramatic horseshit from one year in the life of a teenybopper than in that 2 minutes I want back.

As for not noticing the difference between Preznit You Betchya and Preznit Kenyan Nazi Commie Socialist Death Panel, I have to disagree with you. In foreign policy, perhaps. In domestic, certainly. I’m guessing that Simple Sarah would have freaked out (babbling about spirits and demons killing the world’s credit) while the world’s economy collapsed thanks to the GOPer plan of doing absolutely nuttin at all.

2012 sucks: Even

heh
funny economy/film industry story about this. a good friend of mine has been the visual effects supervisor of Emmerichs films for a while (she is one of the very few powerful women in the industry). creating such classics as Godzilla, and 10,000 BC. I know I know. but the effects were good.
anyway
after I saw the trailer for 2012 (which I think rocks btw – remember I am an effects guy. who cares about the movie) I emailed her and told her.
she explained she had nothing to do with it. why, I asked.
well
Roland wanted to make it in Germany and get him some serious tax breaks and other incentives. that sucks, says I.
yeah, she says and to add insult to injury after he had hired the crew the economy in the US collapsed to the point that the dollar was so weak it made more sense to make it in LA. with a German crew.

I still cant decide if this is good news or bad news for the film industry.

ps
wanna see a real kick ass trailer?

try this one

hey
want to find out if your husband is gay?

take this simple quiz

—

omg

Thugs attack two transvestites… who turn out to be cage fighters wearing fancy dress

theres video!

@Capt Howdy: The trailer does rock — especially the long version I saw on cable last week. But then I realized, that’s probably the only good two minutes of the movie.

@Capt Howdy: I really liked Independence Day. I thought it was hilarious and deeply silly. Two big plusses so far as I’m concerned. To say nothing of the effects. Uploading from a MacBook into alien central computer: best cross-platform app evah!

On a similar topic it is now cheaper to import a top American costume designer into the UK and pay her in dollars instead of Euros rather than go with home grown talent and pay London’s going rate. We are the new Canadians.

@Benedick, Capt. Howdy: A friend’s younger sister did costumes for the X-Men movies and Superman Returns.

ID4 is one of the best guy movies ever. It’s on the sat almost every weekend and is guaranteed to bug Mrs RML every time I put it on. I love effects movies but all the CGI in the work could not save Terminator 4, with exteriors shot mostly here in New Mexico (along with Indy 4, the Transformers movies) due to our tax incentives for tha industry.

@redmanlaw:
I dont think Karen did ID4. but she did The Day After Tomorrow. which is also a pretty awsum slice of cheese I think.

@Capt Howdy: Case in point:

Giant Wave: Badass.

Rest of Movie: Meh.

@redmanlaw: Allowing for exaggeration I thought it had a very good story very well told. And of course using Henry V as your model didn’t hurt.

@Capt Howdy: I just watched the trailer on my secret Mac trailer thingum and it looks pretty damn great. Though I’m a touch mystified by the Mayans being the oldest civilization. What about the Sumerians and Hittites? Still. I just might have to go.

Single best visual effect I can think of was in Poseiden when Dennis Quaid drowned. Oh. Spoiler alert. I watched it over several times and could not see how the hell it was done. I liked that movie, too. He treated it as a ship of fools tale crossed with a some will live and some will die yarn. And the ship turning over was pretty fantastic. I think he’s an awfully good director even though I can never remember his name – not Emmerich, I know. Plus he always has improbably handsome men lurking around for no good reason which always helps.

@Benedick:
Wolfgang Petersen
Das Boot, Enemy Mine. yeah good stuff.
what I liked about Poseidon – as with another of my favorite boat movies, Ghost Ship – is that the sequence you want to see happens in the first 10 minutes.

@nojo:
I was working at Digital Domain on another movie when they were doing that giant wave. it was fun to watch it develop at my friends desk.

but yeah
stupid movie. but Emmerich does not make intellectual films.

@Capt Howdy:

It’s always fun to see stuff develop. During a hiatus from Disney Mr. ‘Catt worked as a effects freelancer FOR Disney (I know, makes a lot of sense how they do things) on Enchanted. So I got to see the drawings on his light table that eventually went into the final film. Always very cool.

@Benedick: I will not watch that movie, lest it befoul the memory of Shelley Winters and Ernest Borgnine.

And upside-down toilets. That, too.

@Capt Howdy: Das Boot was a very good flick. Better than “Run Silent, Run Deep” which I also like.

@Capt Howdy: Mrs RML and I ran into a friend one day on the Santa Fe plaza who said she was off to the Caribbean to do makeup on a pirate movie with Johnny Depp. “Pfft,” I said. “Like that will go anywhere.”

@nojo: Yes, what with his work in McHale’s Navy and all.

@redmanlaw:
omg
this is my day for good war stories.
I swear this is absolutely true. when I was at Disney (1995-2002) they had a little thing, and may still, called The Gong Show.
this is how it worked. anyone in the company (or in feature animation, I cant remember) could do a pitch for a project. you had exactly one minute.
you could use props.
a very good friend of mine did a pitch in one of these where he pushed the idea of doing film projects based on Disney theme park rides.
the Haunted Mansion (remember the dreadful eddie murphy thing) and the Pirates of the you know what. he used props and had it filmed.
we laughed and laughed. what next we asked Mike, the TeaCup movie??
anyway
about a year later Mike, then working at Dreamworks, was talking to a friend still at disney when he congratulated him. for what, asked Mike?
they are doing your idea of movies based on rides didnt you know?
Mike sued. the deal at the gong show was (I believe) 5 thousand bucks if they used your idea. Mike got an undisclosed amount and has not worked since.

@nojo: You’ve never seen acting if you’ve never seen the Shelly Winters death scene, oh, my. And when she volunteers for the death swim, too “Why I was champion swimmer at Rosencrantz and Guildenstern High, in Brooklyn.”

And Ernest Borgnine, he was the original retarded, and ugly, way back before ugly was the new retarded.

@Prommie: What, you don’t like Marty?

@Prommie:
one of THE funnies things I have ever seen was a bit Bette Midler did in a comcert performance once where she did an impersonation of Shelly doing exactly that.
she laid on her stomach on a barstool and . . . swam.

@Capt Howdy: Right. And an excellent early film with Jurgen Prochnow in love with a younger man. What I liked about his Poseiden was that there was no explanation, no set-up, just an irrational disaster. Very well imagined. And that drowning is amazing. You see the moment that he dies.

@Benedick: Even better than the real thing.

Loved ID4, but “Mars Attacks!” was even better. My all-time fave “guys movies” are Apollo 13 and Eight Men Out. Put either or both of them on loop and I’ll never get bored. Oh, I can also (and have) watch all the episodes of “Band of Brothers” without breaking sweat, great use of film for story telling.

@The Nabisco Quiver are Go!:
hey
cant resist telling you I got a screen credit for VFX for Apollo 13

check

it

out

however, I should explain. those pics are of the practical models made and used for the film at Digital Domain which I actually did not have much to do with.
my credit was as “digital artist”. I did digital compositing and other digital image manipulation.
little known trivia. that launch sequence was entirely digital.
most people thought it used at least some stock footage.
nope. 100% digital.
we were nominated for an Oscar but that fucking Pig (babe) won

@Capt Howdy: Ooh. I must Netflix it.

@redmanlaw: Not to flog a dead horse but… It is astonishingly well done. You literally cannot see how it is possible. Dennis Quaid holds his breath underwater till he has nothing left. And he breathes in water. And reacts to it. A startled shock. And dies. You see that moment. And he floats in the water. Amazing. And you cannot see how it’s done. The FX become lyrical and poetic. Structurally, it balances the uproar of the beginning. When the ship turns over you think you’ve seen it all. But in fact it’s only a prelude.

I’m increasingly interested in how we see death. I have a new piece about it. Death and dancing. And jokes. We might be doing a presentation in Jan. I will alert NYC Stinque.

@Capt Howdy: It’s impressive how the tension built up in Apollo 13, even though I knew what happened, and in fact remember some of the live newscasts during the flight itself.

@Dodgerblue: Did Marooned come out before or after the flight? I vaguely recall some overlap.

@nojo: Pretty sure it was before, I think, maybe.