2006-05-25 - 11:14 a.m.
"10.5:Apoca-what?" And commercials.
So, how about that TV last night, huh? Like, I imagine, some of you, I switched between "Lost" and "American Idol", but most of my attention was on "Lost". Not that it did me any good; no-one on that show *ever* makes any sense. How much better, then, to go back to Sunday and Tuesday nights, to the thrilltacular mini-event-thing-that's-four-hours-long-but-three-of-that-is-commercials! Otherwise known as "10.5:Apocalypse". Apocalyptic it was, my friends, if what we were witnessing was the state of TV scriptwriting today. The end is nigh, and the Four Horsemen are Cliche, Plagarism, Explosions, and One Dimensional Characters Who Spout Meaningless Words of Wisdom That Are Thinly Disguised Oprah Truisms. That last one's a killah. Our journey into an apocalypse as banal as it is commercial-ridden begins where the last one left off. They probably thought it would save them ten minute's worth of money (seventeen with commercials) if they showed the flashback/montage (flashtage? Montback?) of the previous spectacular, but all it serves to do is make you truly horrified by how *bloated* Kim Delaney looks, compared with however long ago it was they filmed the first one. Seriously, did she get a job as a taste-tester at a Mallomar factory? The girl is frightening. To paraphrase Joey, "Some fat girl ate Kim!". But back to the movie, and the first in what turns out to be a running "homage" (*cough*plagarism*cough*) of scenes to "The Poseidon Adventure" - the Cruise Ship That Gets Flipped Over By The Tidal Wave That Ate California. Bob wanted me to point out that a) it's not actually possible as filmed, and 2. *just* like the Poseidon Adventure. So much like it, in fact, that we both wondered whether it was simply a promo for the new movie (boohiss), and we hadn't noticed the switch over to commercial. As it turned out, this was Just The Beginning. Of course, since this movie is titles "Apocalypse", we need more than earthquakes and tidal waves, we need lava. Cue Mount St. Helens. But wait! In the first of way too many annoying cuts away from the plot line just beginning to develop, we cut to BloatCentral, the center of communications and geologic-sounding scientificy things, where Kim Delaney is monitoring... Mount St. Helens. Does anyone else think "no-one sleeps until this crisis is over!" is a recipe for sleep-deprived, psychotic, bad decision-making? I mean, "no-one goes home! We sleep in shifts!" might be reasonable, assuming the crisis only lasts a week or so (or four hours, including commercials), but no sleep at all sounds like a recipe for... Disaster. Yeah, so sue me. Despite all this, it's good to know that FEMA has a plan for if the country explodes - you know, since they didn't have one for when the country floods. Mind you, it's untested. Wow. Really? Hopefully it's been fully *rehearsed*. Idiots. Just to cement their idiocy, they pause the action for everyone to mumble on about what a great guy the previous head of FEMA was, even though they all hated him the last time. The current FEMA head should take note; it doesn't matter how badly you screw up, if you die nobly, no-one will call you on it. But wait! There's salvation in sight! More specifically, there's bras in sight. 11 minutes into the movie, and NBC has a chick in a bra. Sadly, you are not to know that this will also be the last time in four hours you're going to see a chick in a bra (barring a Victoria's Secret commercial), so if you're watching this on a repeat, soak in those precious few seconds, as they're the last ones you're going to get. Depressingly, Chick in a Bra (whose name is Laura) is a bit of a bitchonwheels (inabra) to her boyfriend/husband/SO (turns out he's her husband, but the mistake is understandable...) because husband's older brother is going off to do manly FEMA rescue-type things, and he's going with his older brother because... I think it had something to do with standing up for himself and being his own man. Honestly, I kind of switched off listening for a second; I hate those kind of discussions because they're unfair, and nasty. Anyway, it turns out Laura(inabra) is pissed because her husband (I'm not sure I ever caught his name, or cared; that is how truly one-dimensional these characters were) isn't going out with her to see her parents. The entire country is in a panic, FEMA is pulling in anyone and everyone who's willing to help, and you... words fail me. As does the cameraman, who appears to be on crack; every scene is punctuated by a series of zooms that seem to be made by someone who hasn't quite worked out the "zoom" feature on his cheap movie camera. In, out, in, out; Bob was convinced that someone was going to be showing off the state of their pores sooner or later. Me, I figured with all the in-out-in-out, the cameraman would have an orgasm sooner or later, and things would calm down a bit. Admittedly, I didn't get the brunt of it like Bob did; I was sewing throughout the entire thing. *Finally* (where's that stupid quick cut when you need it?), we switch back to Mount St. Helens, where we come across happy carefree people taking advantage of the cheap summer ski lift tickets to go mountain biking. ...which, I have to say, is a really cool idea, and much the most interesting thing so far. Sadly, they are all young, happy, and carefree, as I stated before, so they are clearly slated to die hideously. It starts with a rumbling, and the two almost supernaturally cute 'n' perky twenty-somethings on the lift look scared and freaked-out, but maybe that's because they forgot to put down the safety bar. You know, because they were so gosh-darned *excited* about living and stuff. Which they're not going to be doing any more of shortly, so we'll cut them a break, and say maybe the bar got *loose* with all the rumbling and the shaking and the OHMYGODSHESFALLING and it doesn't matter in the end, because they both get a huge faceful of pyroclastic cloud and die. Horribly. They have put in a little script conceit of having a newscaster read the "news", I think mostly so they won't have to spend any money on special effects, such as actual *disaster* *footage*. Besides the cheesiness of this little trick, they managed to dig up Scott Bakula's ugly twin and cast him as the newscaster. SBT is clearly delighted at being released from whatever laboratory they grew him in, as he delivers every single incredibly awful and dire news announcement with the same cheery smile and twinkling eyes. Kind of like Geraldo in the first Gulf War, now that I think about it. Now, because two plot lines and a huge mega-disaster aren't enough, they start following people in a refugee camp (like CNN, but less emphasis on the excrement-strewn streets). And in this refugee camp we find a Kind Doctor, who flags down a scared-looking blond girl carrying Red Cross T-shirts (because nothing says "AID!" like blazoning all your refugees with your logo) to help him with something medical that should clearly be done by someone more nurse-like, and certainly not by someone who hasn't washed their hands and is likely to get T-shirt lint in medically importune places. But it's okay, because she's the President's daughter! Oh, totally didn't see that coming. Thank you for that exciting twist, script writers. All the while, the camera is still zooming in and out like a family of seals is out touring the country, and hasn't quite worked out how to get the light touch on the zoom button with their flippers. In! Out! In! Out! ...I need a cigarette. And maybe one of those Red Cross T-shirts to clean up with. We're back BloatHQ, where the bloatiest of the bloated, Ms. Delaney (seriously, she's scary, you guys!) is frowning and looking serious about something. Unfortunately, they keep switching from situation to situation too fast for me to actually tell what she's all frowny-faced about. I think it's something about a continental fault-line that's been dormant for oodly-million years, but is really pissed off that American Idol was totally fixed this season, and is waking up and causing some kind of havoc. How much, we all know, since we've seen the previews, but they're not sure about at BloatCentral, because it builds dramatic tension, or something. Bless the script writers! They thought that this would be a good time to bog down the plot with pointless bravado, yelling, and a whole hunka-hunka personal issues. Because we *care*, dammit! Meanwhile, trees get burned by "magmatic flow" (yes, my spell-check didn't recognize it, either) at a rate of an acre a minute. But that's not as interesting as the President's daughter getting hassled by her parents to stop helping and behave more like Paris Hilton (I think that's what he said; I have a low tolerance for "emotional" scenes). But at least FirstLadyMom isn't as insanely whiny as Sela Ward in "The Day After Tomorrow". I could etch glass with *that* voice. Yet *more* characters?! It's Native American Guy! NAG will save us, right? These people are all in tune with the earth and stuff, because the earth is out mother, man! Uh, well, no. He's as mystified by it as anyone else, and his sole reason for existing in this movie appears to be to stand there and look confused while his horse panics, then to look suitably disbelieving as the entire Monument Valley (I think that's where they said it was) fills up with water. As portrayed by a bad matte painting and some CGI water effects. At this point, I stopped caring about *anyone* in the movie, what with the rapid jumps, the bitchy people, Kim Delaney's expanding face (just her face, mind you the rest of her didn't look *that* bad, but there was a lot of Ann Wilson from "Heart" camerawork going on, if you get my drift). There's nastiness on phones, then Laura (bitchinbra) gets a scare and re-directs her endless roadtrip to Vegas to "help, because I *am* a nurse" - a cheange of mood that leaves her husband worried and baffled, because where is the selfish bitch he married? The world is coming to an end! In Vegas, we (not she, but we) run into Kim Delaney's Dad, played with great aplomb by Frank Langella, who can make even a sucky script work for him, and he and KD have phone conversation, then he, and *no-one else* feels a tremor, as he's a geologist with wacky theories about the earth's shifting crust, and not just a winning poker player, but that's after he hangs up on KD, who looks puffier than ever. But wait - she has a reason to look puffy - her boyfriend/colleague/some guy she knows just got killed while hanging out by a boiling collapsing Hoover Dam in a helicopter, so she's sad. The boiling water bit was okay, if ridiculous - if it heats up that fast, it's turning to steam, not boiling like it's ready for the Ramen Noodle packet - but I want to know, WHERE ARE MY DEAD FISH? I'm sitting through this dreadful tripe (har!), and I don't even get oodles of dead fish (seeing as Lake Tahoe is boiling, it should be boulliabaisse by now). This movie blows. And it's only half over. And here's the best bit of script all night: "One thing everyone's asking is - why now?" Delivered by a newscaster we don't ever see again. Why? Because we wanted to do a movie, and "10.5 - Nothing Much Happens" isn't going to pull in the advertisers, you cretin. Why now - sheesh. Because God hates you. He hates me, too - I am still watching this thing. And thus endeth part the First - the second installment will happen soon. Watch as North *and* South Dakota get throughly hosed, and the new acres of beachfront property prompt a real-estate boom in Minneapolis. Oh, and nuclear disaster. It's not an apocalypse unless we can work the whole nuclear angle in there, you know?
Dorsal - Ventral
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