Ten Point Five Five Five

2004-05-03

If you want to see some a crappy movie with outstanding special effects, set your TiVo for NBC at 9:02p.m. tommorow. Then you can catch 10.5, a movie about California falling into the ocean. No, I'm not kidding, somebody actually bought that line of tripe.

But do not, under any circumstances, watch it live. The camera operators are drunk and the director wouldn't know subtlety if it, err, politely coughed in front of him. (Somehow, "subtlety" doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would bite someone in the bum...) What skill the actors have is squandered in pursuit of cheap schmaltz. It would have to stretch itself to reach merely "trite and formulaic".

But hey, for great special effects... and a fast forward button!... we can forgive much, right? Scientific accuracy, any sense of drama, the ability to look someone in the face without immediately Zooming In (somehow, the camera work by the director makes Zooming In seem like an entire Genre worth Capitalizing), all washed away in a panache of computer and model effects. And some of the bad actors will most likely end up dead!... though not nearly enough of them.

Be sure to miss this tommorow unless you have the appropriate Technological Aids to watch this exercise in converting ignorance and idiocy into cash safely.

And don't miss this review on the IMDB.

I particularly enjoyed the preview of and look forward to the full version of the special effects shot they previewed for tommorow's conclusion where someone takes the fault line drawn by the concept artist far too literally, and actually have water pouring into California precisely along the faultline which has magically dropped below sea level, instead of the entire coast sliding into the ocean. It really is the perfect summation of modern society; millions upon millions upon millions of man hours spent engineering outstanding computer technology and all that special effects technology, only to have some muttonhead with an IQ firmly in the "embarrassing" category turn the whole edifice to the cause of stupidity. Mothers don't let your sons (and daughters) grow up to be engineers; it's damned depressing if you think about what your mighty works are turned to by the PHB's in charge too much.