h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Monsters University.

Not as good as Monsters Inc. But worth seeing. If you like Disney/Pixar, that is.

Mol

I finally got around to watching 2012 last night.

What a dire piece of drivel that was. If you've not seen it yet, don't bother.

I think though that the most annoying thing about it is, you can't help but think that it was, or should have been, a book. As a book I think it would really work, lots of smaller stories intertwining with each other, etc, etc. As a film though it mostly seemed to be sickly sweet family crud interspersing car/plane sequences where they narrowly avoid getting killed. Lots.

Story idea, pretty good. Film version, utterly dire.

You didn't like the science content? ... They start with a climate change premise and then they go berserk / moronic.

It lost me at - I need to drive to see the crazy guy in the woods to get a map - and continued the vertical nose dive downward from there...

The film lost me on the prologue when it claimed that neutrinos had mutated:

"It looks like the neutrinos coming from the Sun have mutated into a new kind of nuclear particle. They're heating up the Earth's core man and suddenly act like microwaves man"

I mean that sort of thing can rip a hole in the space-time fabric man, and create a port hole into another dimension man ...

"Wolverine": I had little interest in the story line. I had a lot of interest in the scenery. Japan is a beautiful country. Ah, but the characters sometimes got in the way.

"2 Guns": Nice premise, talented actors, but violence played for laughs got tiresome after about 80 minutes, so I split. When a movie goes seriously wrong, I don't stick around to see how it ends.

"Blue Jasmine": It kept my interest with excellent acting that filled out the characters' back stories and made them seem real. The camera work, dialogue, and direction were among the best of the year. Even the extras delivered solid work. You could really believe this was real life. Then the end came, and it hardly seemed worth what the rest of the movie had been building up to. There were some laughs along the way, but the ending seemed deeply tragic. here was a basically sympathetic, likable title character whose life had been spent doing what other people expected of her, and the one time she ever acted on her own, she brought down her entire life. It's enough to drive a person crazy, which she evidently was at the end. Bring on the men in white coats. Sad, really.

Watched The Heat last weekend. Very, very funny with great action scenes.

Just got back from The Wolverine and, unlike paul, I was really in to the storyline: I love the X-Men series and this was very deeply rooted in it whilst being accessible to the newbie (my mate hasn't seen any of the X Men films, he just fancies Hugh Jackman). It was very satisfying: lovely performances from a cast of mostly unknowns: Jackman's sidekick was particularly awesome. The villain was a good choice too.

Sorry, but I can't see 2012 as a climate change disaster movie. It's a plain disaster movie. Nowhere does it say "mankind did this, the climate changed, and caused this..."

"2012" is quite a disaster movie. There's a scene late in the film in which some "arks" are bobbing in the water high in the Himalayas. My curiosity is raised about what the people in those arks will do to survive. If the ocean waves have gotten so high that they're all the way up to the Himalayas, chances are there won't be much arable land that hasn't been washed away.

And anyway, earlier scenes have seen the bottom dropping out of the California landscape. That should have *depressed* the sea level as the water drained into subterranean caverns. So, what is left of the Earth? What is there to live on as the ark people try to resume their lives?

>> Sorry, but I can't see 2012 as a climate change disaster movie. <<

Agreed I take that reference back ... it was just a muddled disaster movie. I was temporarily conflating it with the film "the day after tomorrow".

Taking the crew from work to go see Alan Partridge "Alpha Papa" tomorrow. Not exactly my cup of tea to be honest but will report back - am more excited to see the District 9 / Matt Damon - sci fi culture commentary piece "Elysisum" later this month.

Matt Damon seems to have good instincts for picking films to be in. I'm looking forward to "Elysium," too.

Ewan MacGregor is another actor who seems to pick good projects.

It wasn't just you that said that Stone, it's on the cover too.

I just got back from seeing "Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters." It was entertaining and took my mind off my drab, wretched life for a couple of hours. The scene in the stomach of an enormous sea beast was kind of yucky, but naturally our heroes escaped form it by cutting a hole in its side and sailed through the hole. The Golden Fleece is being guarded by a cyclops in an abandoned amusement park on Circe's Island. So, not only do we see a lot of fighting, but also some neat rides.

"Sorry, but I can't see 2012 as a climate change disaster movie. It's a plain disaster movie. Nowhere does it say "mankind did this, the climate changed, and caused this...""

Climate change is not, in and of itself, man made. If the disaster involves the climate changing (which as far as I can tell it does) it is a climate change disaster movie. QED.

I'm planning to see "Elysium" tonight.

We saw The Frozen Ground today. Weren't sure, as neither of us are keen on Nicolas Cage but it was very good. I must have seen far too many Columbo episodes as I guessed exactly how they were going to nail the serial killer, quite early on. The killer (who we know from the start, so no spoilers required) was played by John Cusack, who was the hero in 2012 which you've all been dissing above. He must be a very good actor because I hadn't realised they were the same chap, and this role freaked me out. I enjoyed 2012 for what it was, I know the "science" was psycho-babble but that never put me off Star Trek. I love disaster movies,

GB

An intelligent disaster movie is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, we often see the other extreme. "The Core" [2003] was so far from any scientifically plausible scenario that it's a wonder the studio that produced it survived. However, some of the actors that were in it [Hilary Swank, Stanley Tucci and Aaron Eckhart, for instance] have had fine careers since it came out.

I saw "Elysium" tonight. It may well end up becoming considered one of the year's best movies. I liked that so much of it was unpredictable. There's a little girl with leukemia who will die if she doesn't get up to the deluxe space station called Elysium where the planet's richest people have taken up residence. They have state-of-the-art medical technological that can cure almost anything quickly. None of that is on Earth, which is grossly overpopulated and polluted. Almost like a prison colony where robots keep everybody in line. Renegades have tried to take shuttles to Elysium to get a better deal in life, but they get shot down by a bossy high official played by Jodie Foster.