My articles this week covered such things as the new and awesome Clash of the Titans trailer, potential sequels to Indpendence Day, and a return to kick-ass vampires:
** Please note that this does contain spoilers but it's necessary to encourage you not to pay to see this movie **
My wife and I saw 2012 last weekend. I was really looking forward to seeing this film after I saw the trailer because I am a huge fan of end of the world and apocalyptic films. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's how I was raised to believe the rapture was going to happen in the late 80s or maybe the early 90s and then the world would end right after the tribulation before the year 2000. I found that a majority of Christians like spending their time thinking about when and how the world will end.
I have to admit that these disaster flicks are fun to watch but I wouldn't consider them great movies. You have to be prepared to accept a high level of bad dialog, acting, and story lines. Movies like Deep Impact, Armageddon, and Day After Tomorrow are good examples of this. However, 2012 puts them all to shame. One of the things that I was most disappointed about was the lack of historical and scientific background of the premise of the film: The world was ending in 2012 because the sun changed and the Mayan calendar predicted it. First, why was the world ending? In the movie, the sun started to emit neutrinos that for some reason started to heat the earth's core and destory the earth's mantle. What caused these neutrinos? The movie didn't say. I am assuming that this was caused by a particular alignment in our galaxy which the Mayan calendar predicted would happen in 2012. That's a big assumption on my part because the movie doesn't give me much to work with. This leads me to my second disappointment. There was no background given on the Mayans and their culture, technology, and how their calendar works. The movie had one 15 second clip of a news report of a group of believers who killed themselves around a Mayan temple because they thought the world was ending. The Mayans were a pretty advanced civilization for their time. They had their own writing and mathematical systems. They were also very advanced in architecture and engineering. They might have been the first astronomers. They demonstrated this by creating a calender that was based on their observations of the visible galaxy.
My last disappointment was at the end of the film where it turns out that the movie is just the story of Noah's Ark 2. In the trailer you see people walking into huge ships that look like space ships. When I first saw that I was excited by the idea because I thought the film would totally destroy the earth by ripping it apart and then the space ships would float out into space in search of a new home. That's not how it turned out. Instead, the end of the world was brought about by a series of huge earthquakes around the planet that caused tidal waves which swept over the continents and covered the earth in water just like in Noah's flood. So the ships were used as arks to keep everyone safe until the waters receded. They even called them arks in the film. So enough of the disappointment that was 2012. The world is not ending in 2012. The Mayan calendar actually doesn't end at 2012. 2012 just starts a new calendar cycle. Instead how about some real science to answer the question of when the world will end.
The Andromeda Galaxy is our closet known galaxy to our galaxy. Scientist have confirmed that it is slowly approaching and is on a collision course for our galaxy. Astronomers have seen this type of event occur in other galaxies and the result is the galaxies are merged or one takes over another. When this happens you can assume that the earth will be ripped apart. Don't worry this won't happen anytime soon. Scientist estimate that it won't happen for another 5 billion years. Who knows, the human race probably won't be around by then. Either we will have depleted the earth's resources and had to leave the planet, another giant asteroid similar to the one that exterminated the dinosaurs could hit earth again, or a virus could overtake the earth and kill everyone. It's not all doom and gloom though. The philosopher Daniel Dennett put it nicely when he said "The planet has grown its own nervous system: us". So if a huge earth ending event happens in the future then hopefully we will have the technology and the means to stop it.
Earlier in the week I ranted and raved here on the blog about the total lack of style and the raunch in our society. I asked the question "has it always been like this?" And no sooner than I hit the send button a couple of thoughts entered my noggin, Imagine that!
First off Hollywood does still make decent movies. Four of them popped into my head right after I wrote the previous post. 1) The Spanish Prisoner starring Steve Martin. Not only did this movies reveal to me that Steve Martin can act like more than The Jerk it shows that not every crime movie has to be about murder. 2) Second-Hand Lions is an excellent coming of age movie (not what you think) that shows older men teaching younger men how to be men. 3) National Treasure was a brainy action flick that was believable and the heroes were heroic, the heroine was really pretty and more than just decoration, the comedy relief was funny without being vulgar. For that matter there was only one kiss in the movie and the only cuss word was in Dutch. 4) Lars and the Real Girl was an excellent movie about a guy who buys a sex doll (not anything close to what you may be thinking.) This movie showed how families, churches and communities should act. This movie was one of the best that I have ever seen. So our entertainment industry still puts out quality work at times. One must be selective is all.As I searched out the web seeking out the answer to my question I landed on the old pulp fiction of the first half of the 20th Century. The were hastily written and cheaply printed works that mostly dealt with unacceptable themes, sort of. These pulp fictions were popular from the 1890s to about 1950. The cover art for these tome were somewhat sensational. They usually depicted some scantily clad woman being attacked or accosted by some vicious thing like a plant, or a villain, and alien or what have you. The stories on the inside were mild compared to the cover art to be sure. Some really big names in literature wrote pulp fiction like Arthur Conan Doyle and Kurt Vonnegut. As I read through the articles about pulp fiction I was overcome with the urge to crank out a 50-75,000 word rough draft full of the themes of pulp fiction and spend the next six months or so cleaning it up and then see if it would be publishable. Of course I would be contributing to the problem. I guess that is part of the problem. People like pulp fiction and they always have. Even me.
It was a good movie. I have never read the books but the movie is solid. The problem with the movie is that likes lots of series you know the gist of what is going to happen. It's got some chick flick in it for sure but it is mostly interesting and you could do worse. Go ahead and treat your girlfriend to one of "her movies" and go an see it.
Adidas Imperial Stormtropper sneakers. You know, so you can run faster when random people start chasing you down the street. To beat the crap out of you. Or ask where did you buy them. It can go either way.
There are also Darth Vader shoes and hoodies, all part of next year's Adidas Star Wars Collection. Check out the rest of the images at [Kicks on Fire—Thanks Ponies]
Send an email to Jesus Diaz, the author of this post, at jesus@gizmodo.com.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los amantes del cine que llevan palomitas de maíz y un refresco a la sala para disfrutar mientras miran una película podrían estar comiendo el equivalente a tres hamburguesas "cuarto de libra" de McDonald's con 12 cucharadas de manteca, según indicó un estudio.
Un análisis de laboratorio de los "snack" que se venden en los cines de Estados Unidos reveló que un paquete de palomitas de maíz mediano y un refresco contienen 1.160 calorías y el valor recomendado para tres días -60 gramos- de grasas saturadas.
La investigación fue solicitada por el Centro para la Ciencia y el Interés Público (CSPI).
"¿Quién espera que un "combo" de palomitas y soda tenga unas 1.500 calorías y el valor de tres días de grasas de las que dañan el corazón? Eso equivale a las grasas saturadas de un pan de manteca y las calorías de dos de ellos", señaló la nutricionista del CSPI Jayne Hurley en un comunicado.
La experta dijo que aún compartiendo una porción chica de palomitas entre dos personas eso implicaría consumir el valor de un día de grasas saturadas, que son las que taponan las arterias y están vinculadas con la enfermedad cardíaca.
Hurley indicó que cada cucharada de aceite "mantecoso" que se agrega a las palomitas suma otras 130 calorías, según el estudio publicado en Nutrition Action Healthletter.
"Pedir que se nos sirva esa salsa es como pedir aceite para las papas fritas", añadió la especialista.
(Por Belinda Goldsmith; Editada en español por Ana Laura Mitidieri)
Special effects were great especially those 2 km tall tsunamis. The story...was there any? It seemed like a get-from-point-A-to-point-B sort of movie. It would also seem rather sadistic to say that I liked the movie a lot when it's about the destruction of the earth. Personally, the movie was interesting up until the point where Crazy Charlie died. Then everything was blah. Of course, that's just my opinion. Leave comments if you have and would like to share your own.
