2012 is an action/disaster film which is based on the 2012 phenomenon. The film is directed by Roland Emmerich (10,000 BC, the day after tomorrow, the Patriot). The film has a cast which includes John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt and Woody Harrelson.

John Cusack plays Jackson Curtis, a science fiction book writer who also works as a limousine driver. The film is very impressive in terms of its special effects- there are lots of long disaster scenes including meteors, tidal waves and earthquakes. The film has a very similar plot to that of the story of Noah’s Ark.

Although the film was visually brilliant it was slightly to long- around 2 and a half hours long. Some parts of the film felt very generic and predictable.Also at points the action becomes a bit ridiculous and becomes unbelievable.

Overall apart from being too long i did enjoy it and it’s definitely worth going to see if you like disaster films such as The Day After Tomorrow and the effects are visually amazing.

Film Rating: 7/10

My 2CENTS:
As a generation whose mentor has become the Media
Never shall we based our knowledge on what we see on screen,always shall we separate the facts from the Fiction.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

This movie, based on a book by Sylvia Nasar, glossed over some of the less savory moments of Nash’s life: he fathered a son out of wedlock, was arrested in a Santa Monica men’s room on “moral charges,” and made numerous un-P.C. remarks over the years about various minority groups. More flagrantly, the hallucinations Nash suffered in real life were entirely auditory, not visual. And Nash’s big, weepy Nobel Prize acceptance speech at the end? He never gave one.

Braveheart, 1995

Not only was the Scottish hero William Wallace gruesomely executed in 1305, having been captured by the English at Falkirk, but seven centuries later his memory was exhumed, smeared with blue face paint and mutilated by Mel Gibson. Wallace was not the poor villager the film depicts, but a landowner and minor knight. The litany of fibs extends from Wallace’s love interest (Queen Isabella would have been about two-years-old at the time) to his kilt – a garment not developed for another three centuries. The historian Sharon L. Krossa likens it to “a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th century business suits.”

10,000 BC, 2008

This tale of a mammoth hunter travelling across the prehistoric globe to rescue his bride, features some surprising revelations. Were sabre-tooth tigers bull-sized? Could man train Woolly Mammoths to help build pyramids? Did we invent sailing boats so early? Unfortunately the answer to all these questions is no. In fact, the filmmakers incorporated so many animals then extinct, or yet to evolve, and so many future technologies and geographical impossibilities that Archaeology magazine was compelled to review – and pan it: “Unsurprisingly, this tribe is starving, but it is hard to have sympathy for them because any culture that tries to hunt mammoths with a net gets what it deserves.”

The Patriot, 2000

Gibson (rugby) tackles history again with his turn as an honest farmer drawn into the American Revolutionary War, which historian David Hackett Fischer claimed in the New York Times “is to history as Godzilla was to biology.” Crimes erroneously attributed to British soldiers include immolating villagers inside their church, an atrocity actually committed a century and a half later by Nazis in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Meanwhile the director Spike Lee complained that the film “dodged around, skirted about or completely ignored slavery.” There is also strong evidence that Francis Marion, the basis for Gibson’s character, was a slave-owning serial rapist who murdered Cherokee Indians for fun.

Pearl Harbour, 2001

The protagonists of Pearl Harbour, George Welch and Kenneth M. Taylor, are based on two real-life US Army Air Corps Second Lieutenants, but the film weaves such a wildly inaccurate account of their love lives and sky-swooping exploits, that the cinematic incarnations have been rendered fictional. Before his death in 2006 Taylor told his son he thought the movie was “over-sensationalized and distorted.” The film’s villains fair no better than its heroes – the Japanese are reduced to a war-hungry stereotype that even in 1967 embarrassed TV bosses enough to mask it in latex and it call Klingon before broadcast.

Apocalypto,2006

This one movie has given entire Anthropology departments migraines. Sure the Maya did have the odd human sacrifice but not to Kulkulkan, the Sun God, and only high-ranking captives taken in battle were killed. The conquistadors arriving at the end of the film made for unlikely saviors: an estimated 90% of indigenous American population was killed by smallpox from their infected livestock.

Amadeus, 1984

Some years after Mozart’s death in 1791, a rumour circulated in Vienna that Antonio Salieri, court composer to Emperor Joseph II, had plotted the Austrian’s death – an assertion upon which Amadeus is based. But if Salieri was murderously jealous of Mozart he gave little clue to it. His contemporary Anselm Hüttenbrenner claimed that Salieri spoke of the prodigy “with exceptional respect,” and Mozart’s widow Constanze trusted the Italian enough to ask him to tutor her son. It is possible that Salieri was wary of usurpation by the young genius, but the rumoured vitriol was probably propaganda fabricated as part of the rivalry between Italian and German schools of music.

Gladiator, 2000

Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus is a coward who lusts after his sister Lucilla and murders his father, Marcus Araelius. In reality Commodus’s accession ended Pax Romana, two centuries of peace and minimal expansion by the empire and he has been described as a capricious show-off. But his father probably died of smallpox and far from falling in love with Lucilla, Commodus had her murdered after her involvement in an assassination attempt upon him. Ultimately, he was strangled in the bathtub by the wrestler Narcissus after twelve years of rule, not as the film asserts, while a new emperor, in a gladiatorial arena at the hands of Maximus – a fictional general based on Narcissus.

Young Victoria, 2009

Prince Albert really did prove his devotion to the pregnant Queen Victoria by bundling her into the well of a carriage during an assassination attempt, but he did not absorb the bullet this film dealt him. The gunman either missed or the pistol jammed, but the royal couple escaped unscathed. Screenwriter Julian Fellowes insisted that accuracy was paramount in his script, but that the alteration was necessary to show Albert’s deed to be “the act of bravery and selflessness that it was.” According to the News of the World, the present Queen was not amused by his decision.

Marie Antoinette 2006

In her stylised biopic of Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola sidelined the simmering politics of the French Revolution to focus exclusively on costumes and cakes. But while Marie lost her head for taking a similar stance, she might have lost it sooner had she propagated the film’s assertion that it took the queen a decade to conceive because Louis XVI was afraid of sex. The delay was almost certainly medical and in 2002 the historian Simone Bertière ascertained from royal correspondence that it was probably Louis’ “bracquemart assez considérable” mismatched with Marie’s “l’étroitesse du chemin” that blighted their love life. Perhaps too indelicate for Kirsten Dunst to explain between mouthfuls of macaroon.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

In 1585, when the movie takes place, Queen Elizabeth was 52 years old – Cate Blanchett was 36 when she shot the film – and was not being courted by suitors like Ivan the Terrible (who was dead by then). And though the movie has her rallying the troops at Tilbury astride a white steed in full armor with a sword, in fact she rode side saddle, carrying a baton. She was more of a regal majorette than Joan of Arc.

Memoirs of a Geisha

The geisha coming-of-age, called “mizuage,” was really more of a makeover, where she changed her hairstyle and clothes. It didn’t involve her getting… intimate with a client. In the climactic scene where Sayuri wows Gion patrons with her dancing prowess, her routine – which involves some platform shoes, fake snow, and a strobe light – seems more like a Studio 54 drag show than anything in pre-war Kyoto.

The Last Samurai

The Japanese in the late 19th century did hire foreign advisers to modernize their army, but they were mostly French, not American. Ken Watanabe’s character was based on the real Saigo Takamori who committed ritual suicide, or “seppuku,” in defeat rather than in a volley of Gatling gun fire. Also, it’s doubtful that a 40-something alcoholic Civil War vet, even one with great hair, would master the chopsticks much less the samurai sword.

300

Though this paean to ancient moral codes and modern physical training is based on the real Battle of Thermopylae, the film takes many stylistic liberties. The most obvious one being Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject. The Spartan council was made up of men over the age of 60, with no one as young as Theron (played by 37-year-old Dominic West). And the warriors of Sparta went into battle wearing bronze armor, not just leather Speedos.

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pass: soniquality

“Goodbye Blue Sky, Goodbye”

Hello All,

It’s been a while, Got a new job a few weeks back so I’ve been fairly busy. However mostly I’ve just been lazy

Well I’ve finished all my Christmas games and I can say I thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Dead Space was a great experience although sometimes overly frustrating. Most people say I put it on myself by playing it on Hard but I say they’re wrong.
The main problem I had with it was the ‘console’ feel, i.e checkpoints and no quicksaves. I’m very much a PC gamer (didn’t own a console till the original Playstation…unless you count the C64) and I find the constant repetition in console games very tiring. I had the same issues with Gears of War 2 as well, but to a lesser extent. Overall a very enjoyable experience and I’m looking to buy the Animated Prequel movie as soon as I can.

Fable II has been the clear highlight, I’ve now finished it a total of three times with different characters. While the story doesn’t change dependant on how you play, it’s all the little things that do. Everyone should know by now that I love the little things in games. By no means a perfect game, but it suites my kind of gaming well. It’s a game where the character is truly me, I can write my own character story in my head (even after finishing) and it has a real nice sense of moral choice throughout. I’ll be picking up the DLC for it very soon, the more Fable II I can get in, the better. I highly recommend it to anyone who lives in their own heads a bit and enjoys simple storytelling.

I’m looking forward to the new games coming out soon as well. the GTA IV DLC (exclusive Xbox content, suck that one Sony) sounds very cool and as far as I’m concerned the more GTA IV the better, truly the landmark game of 2008 that one. Dawn of War II is soon on our shores too which sounds more awesome every time details are leaked out. I’ll be grabbing that one with great enthusiasm and playing it to death most likely. Finally The Sims 3 is high on my list. I’ve always liked The Sims games but have felt a lot of things are missing and I often get bored after about a month or so. The latest installment has all the things I’ve been waiting for really, like the neighbourhood being much more alive with the ability to just walk outside and explore it at your own free will. Another big plus is that everyone else in the neighbourhood now ages and grows with you, so I can just play one family now and not have to worry about growing up everyone else at the same rate myself. The new character creation options are also looking quite awesome, not just physical options but the new personalities sound a lot more rounded out.

Call me a loser, but I’m a real sucker for Sims games, hopefully this one won’t disappoint.

In movie news I finally got around to watching Iron Man, which was in no way a disappointment. I’ve never really liked Marvel comic characters much but I’ve always had a soft spot for Iron Man. Probably because he’s my idea of a real hero, someone with flaws and who doesn’t rely on superhuman powers to be something special. All the same reasons I love Batman….Batman is still ten times more awesome though…

Watched the recent X-Files movie as well. Not a great cinematic moment or anything and I can see why it failed at the box office. If your a die hard fan like me you’ll enjoy this movie. However to the general movie goer it’s nothing overly special.

I won’t talk much about my recent viewing of 10,000 B.C because that could start a never ending rant. Despite the attempts to call it ‘fantasy’ the defenders of this truly horrible film, they still fail to point out anything remotely good about this film. It seems like someone just lost creativity when dreaming up this concept, it would have fared much better being a completely fantasy film, with original monsters and so forth. Instead it seems like someone just wanted a bunch of saber-tooth tigers roaming around and decided to ignore everything we know about the time period in question. To wrap it up, just don’t watch this film…unless your into torturing yourself.

Not a lot I’m looking forward to in film this year, unless James Cameron’s Avatar really does come out this year…but even that’s not till the end of the year. With all the drama surrounding the new Watchmen film over and done with I’ll be looking forward to that, although with a very cautious eye as unlike most I wasn’t that impressed with the trailers. There is Star Trek obviously and Terminator Salvation both of which look great, but I’ve been looking forward to those for a while so I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat anymore.

Still, I await some nice surprises in entertainment this year, hopefully something truly great will arrive. Last year it was The Dark Knight, GTA IV and NIN’s Ghost I-IV, this year it’s a bit hard to tell. I’m waiting on something coming out in the way of music, but with my tastes It’s hard to find something. Manson has recently released more details on his latest album so we might yet see that this year, which would be awesome.

No word on his Duke Nukem Forever-esque film project though….some day maybe.

Well that’s enough from me for now. Lets look forward to 2009 everyone.

oh yeah Obama is now president of the United States….whoopee.

- The Valiant Knight

2008 brought many things to us. So let’s see what’s the best of 2008 on photo bucket (in my opinion).

The Giants won the Superbowl against the Patriots

Twilight came out, and it totally rocked. Sorry there’s a lot of pictures and well I like Twilight.

Kayne West comes out with his new CD, with Heartless on it.

Batman the Dark Night came to theaters.

Forever by Chris Brown Released.

Taylor Swift released Love Story

Selena Gomez releases Tell Me Something I don’t know, and a new season of Wizards of Waverly Place starts.

Demi released her first Cd and stared in Camp Rock.

David Cook wins American Idol.

Wall-E comes out.

Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana go on tour, a new season of Hannah Montana, and Miley released a new CD.

All the Twilight saga (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn) are out.

It was released that New Moon would be in theaters November 20th of Next Year, yes that has to do with this year.

Bush had shoes thrown at him, not funny.

Rhianna and Chris Brown get together.

Hancock comes out.

10,000 B.C. comes to theaters.

Kung Fu Panda gets to theaters.

Indian Jones comes out, Twilight was 10 times better, sorry I had to say it.

Tinkerbell gets her own movie and series, OK.

Eagle Eye comes to theaters, I’m sad I didn’t get to see it.

High School Musical 3 comes to theaters.

Jonas Brothers release a new Cd, and go on tour.

Twilight becomes one of the best movies along with Batman The Dark Night.

David Archuleta releases Crush.

Jesse McCartney releases Leavin’.

Camp Rock goes global.

Bolt comes to theaters.

Michael Phelps won eight gold metals in the Olympics.

Celtics beat the Lakers for the Championship.

Iron Man goes to theaters.

United states gymnastic team gets silver over all.

Nastia Liukin gets best over all gymnist.

Shawn Johnson gets third in over all gymnast and first on the balance beam.

David Cook releases Light On.

Twilight Cast list set.

These are some good things that happened in 2008. If I missed any tell me, I want to be as accurate as possible.

OH, WHAT THE HELL, ROLAND EMMERICH?

WHAT. THE. HELL.

10,000 BC is a fine example of technical achievement gone awfully wrong.  Sure, there’s breathtaking landscapes and detailed CGI animals of years gone by, but the setting makes no sense.   Emmerich must have taken a history book and thrown it in a blender, because I can’t even make heads or tails of what the hell he’s managed to piece together.

10,000 BC tells the story of a tribe who lives in the mountains in the days of prehistoric man.   They hunt woolly mammoth and rely on an old woman for advice about hunting and other prehistoric stuff, like building huts made out of logs and bits of mud, and building fires.   That’s all, really, that these people seem to do.

The hunting tribe finds a young girl with strange blue eyes who is the last of her tribe.   Her tribe and family were slaughtered by some mysterious dudes on horses, so this can’t bode well for anyone else.   The old woman instructs the tribe that the blue eyed girl will help fulfill a great prophecy and that she is very important.

This is where the real set of problems begins.

The story centers around Evolet – the blue-eyed girl – and D’Leh, a hunter in the tribe who fall in love with one another.   This is where I start to question someone’s rational thought process.

These people do not look prehistoric.

They look like homeless rastafarians.

This is where this movie fails miserably.   The basic principle of a large, grandiose epic like this is kind of a big sham.   No one goes to see these kinds of movies for the historical accuracy, but people want to feel like they’ve witnessed something vaguely historically accurate.   Take Gladiator, for instance.   There’s a lot of historically wrong stuff there, but that’s not necessarily the point.  It feels real and the story is good.   People pay to see these movies in large part to be deceived.

If you can’t even manage to deceive your audience for one moment…that’s kind of sad.

There’s just some things my brain can’t take, like the concept of pyramids built by woolly mammoths.   Yeah, there’s that.   Then there’s the stupidly trite love story; Evolet is kidnapped by the same guys that killed her family, and D’Leh is forced to save her.  It’s a gaping mess.   The story doesn’t keep you focused because from the first scenes, you already know how D’Leh and Evolet’s story will end.  Not even the computer trickery lends a hand here, because the filmmakers have thrown such an odd, random assortment of crap at you that you can tell it’s crap, no matter how stylized and glitzy it is.

It’s preposterous.   D’Leh and Evolet aren’t simple prehistoric folk; they’re merely cardboard cutouts of simple prehistoric folk, and even the most uncaring viewer can sense that.

It’s an absurd mess of a movie which is only capitalized by the fact that when you think about it, the worst of the worst that I’ve seen on here has been made for mere pittances.  This is an overblown, under-thought piece of egotistical insanity that cost millions and millions of dollars.

The pittance films I can excuse.  In an industry that watches the bottom line on films, you really have to wonder how a large group of people seriously thought this was an excellent movie to make.   What’s more depressing is that people sunk money hand over fist into this, enough money that would constitute a Powerball jackpot and for what?

Woolly mammoths and Camilla Belle dazedly dragging her rear end through scenes, complete with extreme CGI dinosaurs and sabretooth tigers.

I feel a little sad and empty inside.

I saw this late last night, or perhaps it was early this morning.  I never check anymore.  Too much anxiety.

I have many thoughts about this.  I’ll try to keep my sorta review sorta organized.  Ah, hell, who am I kidding?  Fuck organized!

It reminded me of Dances with Wolves (:)) and 10,000 BC (:P).  It showed me a world I might never have seen.  It showed me very interesting, supposedly historically accurate details of this culture’s existence.  It was, at times, beautiful to look at.  The acting was surprisingly solid.  The story, perhaps pedestrian, was overall pretty satisfying.

And yet, it kinda sucked.

Now let me explain.  The overall feeling I get from Gibson (or The Gib, as I call him), whom I’ve nearly despised ever since his anti-Semitic, alcohol-fueled, but let’s face it, truth-serem-induced, ranting remarks of a couple years ago, is that he’s trying to justify the Spanish (Catholic) conquest of what we now call Central America.  Why do I think this?  The Gib is a publicly staunch Catholic.  His dad has publicly denied the Holocaust.  The (spoiler!) human sacrifice depicted in the film was shown as inhuman, excessive, superstitious, and excessive (heh).  The quote at the beginning suggests that the Mayan civilization was internally decaying, which it might’ve been, though I doubt The Gib could’ve proved it.  The end of the quote suggests that this was the reason why any civilization, though obviously in this case, the Mayan, would collapse.  Then, in the end, we (spoiler!) see the Spanish ships.  So add it all together, what I see is, well, an excessive culture was perhaps crushed mercilessly under the zapato (see that?  I used the Spanish to further illustrate my point.  Cool, huh?) of another, but, well, let’s face it, they kinda deserved it.  Right?

So akin to his father’s Holocaust denial, is The Gib justifying the genocide of the Mayan people?

I dunno.

And I didn’t mean to suggest that human sacrifice is a good thing, but to call it kooky is kinda dumb.  I mean, yeah, in today’s context, of course.  But in the late 16th century, when the Inquisition had been doing lots of nice things to people, I dunno that The Gib is in a place to criticize anyone.  And, AND, no, we don’t commit human sacrifice today, but we do, as a nation, endorse the state execution of criminals when comparable 1st world nations do not.  And when many of these documented cases are of ultimately exonerated individuals, I don’t know that there’s much difference between capital punishment and human sacrifice.

What I also find very interesting is that in some ways, Apocalypto and The Passion are not dissimilar.  In fact, they’re almost mirror images of each other.  Each depicts, to some degree, the fall of an empire.  In each, the fall doesn’t happen, but before the film begins, the audience is aware of the empire’s inevitable fall.  In each, there is a graphic depiction of violence.  In each, the depiction is fetishized.  In each, one guy, within the logic of the story, is portrayed as absurdly qualified to save his world.  The mirror part for me is that the message of The Passion as I saw it was, hey, this Jesus guy is doing a good thing and it’s bad that everyone wanted him dead (although as I understand Christian mythology, Jesus not only knew he was going to die, but was okay with it) whereas the message of Apocalypto seemed to be this guy’s doing a necessary thing, but no matter what, he and all his loved ones are fucked.  I don’t know if The Gib is aware of the similarities between the two works, but I would be interested to know what he thinks of the two.

I think that’s all I’ve got right now.

Ah, The Gib.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention is that I actually really appreciate what The Gib has done as the fact is, without him, this film never would’ve been made and I really think more films like this should be made.  And yes, I’m primarily saying that because I’ve written a film that has some simlarities and I want to get it made.

Fairly new to Blu-Ray is Roland Emmerich’s latest film, 10,000 B.C.    Barry generously braves through the movie for us…

I don’t know how, but I made it. Thirty minutes into it I almost bailed. I really did. But my thoughts dwelled upon the poor souls who may accidentally rent or purchase this film without reading my review first. I couldn’t let them down. It is my given mission, my destiny, to step up and take one for the team so they won’t have to. I gnashed my teeth, bared-down and endured.  Continue here

              10,000 B.C.              

NETFLIX SYNOPSIS:  Fierce mammoth hunter D’Leh (Steven Strait) sets out on an impossible journey to rescue the woman he loves (Camilla Belle) from a vicious warlord and save the people of his village. While venturing into unknown territories, D’Leh and his fellow warriors battle dangerous beasts and discover an amazing new civilization. Roland Emmerich directs this prehistoric epic full of thrilling action and adventure.

REVIEW:  My God, one can only sit back and marvel in awe at the sheer, spectacular badosity of it all. A movie made for people who have never seen any other movies before, since it rips off just about every good movie ever made. Let’s see, off the top of my head, “Apocalypto,” “Jurassic Park,” “Last of the Mohicans,” “2001,” “The Road Warrior,” any number of classic Westerns, as well as the Bible and quite a few fairytales. It’s a hodge-podge, taking various of the best elements from better films, dumbing everything down and jumbling them all together into something they think is a story. The movie as a whole feels like one of those sculptures created out of bits of trash from a junk-pile, except that whole is not greater than the sum of its parts, it’s less.

This is lazy filmmaking; there’s a scene where the various tribes have banded together and are going to cross the harsh desert to find their adversaries. Of course we know they’re going to get lost and be at death’s door, then finally find their way out just as they’re all about to perish. But we don’t get that journey, instead we get a brief scene that lasts about 10 seconds of some of them dying, then bang! – they miraculously find their way outta there the next minute. It’s like the filmmakers are saying “Yeah, we all know what’s going to happen, blah-blah, why bother showing it? Let’s move on to the next cliche. This one doesn’t have enough action to hold your interest.”

The dialog, oh my. Oh my my my. Again, just banal pieces of other films thrown together for effect. At one point the (terribly hackneyed) narrator actually uses the term “…many moons passed…” The tribes have all kinds of cutesy substitute names that are supposed to make them sound authentic – a winding river is “The Snake”, a Mammoth is called a “Mamut” or something like that, and so on. The writers just arbitrarily pick certain phrases and names and insert some like-sounding expression or trite metaphor and expect it to come across as a convincing language of these ancient people. This is most unfortunate since at other times their speech sounds quite modern; I really wouldn’t have been that surprised to hear one of the tribal brothers call another “dude.”

NF Rating: 1/10 of Star, for the hot ingenue.
Harold

Are you a Spore Whore?  Ah, who isn’t!?    This episode is a bit shorter and a bit more random but some topics covered are Spore, The Wanted, Technology Improvements and many more!

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