2012 is like watching a Special Olympics weightlifting event. the young man grunting and flexing under the lights is showing off. his feats of strength are impressive. there is awe in the eyes of those who witness his skills, his talents. But in the end, regardless of how cut he is, how much he can bench and how awesome it is to see him do it, you’re just watching a powerfully strong person with below average intelligence pick up heavy things and drop them. and that’s all you’re doing.
Hitchcock would be proud.
That’s not to say there can’t be any enjoyment in that, and not just of the mean-spirited variety, either. Word is that this movie cost about 250-million dollars. there are maybe two or three moments total where it doesn’t look like it. and if you’re coming solely to watch a moron hoist the left coast and smash it down into the ocean, you’re going to leave pleased. But there is a story here, and it takes up a significant amount of the nearly three-hour runtime and, unfortunately, that same moron is in charge of that, too. To wit:
John Cusack is Jackson Curtis, a barely-published author estranged from his wife (Amanda Peet) who lives with his children (both annoying moppets) and their prospective stepdad (Tom McCarty). Cusack is taking his annoying kids on a lame camping trip, where they happen upon the Army monitoring the crust of the Earth thanks to Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) an earnest, naive scientist who has discovered that the sun is jizzing neutrinos into the core of the Eart. this of course, will cause the core to overheat, giving the Earth really bad skin, like geological psoriasis crossed with volcanic pizzaface. Just like the Mayans always said it would happen.
After the Army releases him and his kids, Cusack bumps into Woody Harrelson, looking like a homeless wood nymph and living in an RV, subsisting off Pabst and pickles. That sentence, by the way, accurately describes probably the most three-dimensional character in the entire movie. Anyway, Harrelson has been keeping tabs on the government’s secret plan to build humanity saving superboats called “Arks,” because the government has really shitty writers and planners. Cusack sponges a couple PBR’s off Harrelson, writes him off as a crazy wood nymph with shitty taste in beer and drives his kids home just in time for LA to fall into the ocean as bill Hicks smiles and lights another Marlboro 100 in Hell.
From this point forward, Cusack outraces an earthquake, drives through a collapsing building, jumps a limo AND an RV over giant cracks on the ground, outruns the ash cloud from the eruption of Yellowstone National Park on foot, drives a Bentley out of a crashing airliner onto a glacier and manages to hold his breath for roughly eight minutes underwater. Because he’s been cast to be “cool” and appeal to “the kids,” he does it all with the same bored, lazy, uninspired look on his face, even when he’s screaming for his life.
Bull. Shit.
The characters aren’t even characters, they’re single personality traits dressed up in human suits. When it’s most convenient, they transform into convenient stepping stones for the plot. Like when Peet’s plastic surgeon boyfriend happens to know how to fly a plane. or when Cusack, mankind’s least published author, also happens to also be the human being best equipped to navigate raining automobiles, failing skyscrapers and, most impressively, Los Angeles traffic in a fucking limo.
Everyone else in the movie can be summed up entirely by two-word descriptions. Danny Glover is: BLACK PRESIDENT. George Segal is: OLD DAD. Oliver Platt is: ASSHOLE BUREAUCRAT. Beatrice Rosen is: HOT WHORE. one of Cusack’s kids still wets herself at age seven, an endearing character quirk until we realize that it’s her defining characteristic. In fact, as the camera pulls back through the clouds to bring us the end credits, we get: “No more pull-ups!” she proudly tells a smiling Cusack. I forgot this was a plot point until she capped off the survival of humanity by reminding us of mankind’s real victory: bladder control. and you’re going to need a mastery of that skill if you hope to make it through all two-hours and 40-minutes of 2012
Kind of a big deal.
Emmerich doesn’t try to avoid the classic disaster movie cliches. Nor does he try to put a creative spin on them. he simply grabs every single one of those cliches, and I mean every single disaster movie cliche you’ve ever seen, from Irwin Allen to his own Independence Day, and he wallows in them shamelessly. I don’t mean that in the haughty literary way. I mean to use the word in the way mangy dogs understand it as they flop on their back–feet in the air, tongues lolling–and wallow in the freshly flattened carcass of some large rodent that found itself under a semi’s wheels. That is how Emmerich wallows in 2012, twisting his hips, eyes glassy and wild, red rocket gleaming in the beautiful, pointlessly destructive asshole we know as the sun.
For more from Fatboy, check out his review of The Invention of Lying and The 5 most Unintentionally Racist Movies About Racism.
'2012' Sucks Worse Than the Mayans Could Have Predicted
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Hardcore fans can be quite the conundrum. when you’re going to a sporting event, a raucous crowd can really add a lot to the experience and make the game a lot more exciting. (Except for the wave. That’s a lame pain in the ass.) but they can also suck the fun out of something that’s great, too. Case in point, MovieMistakes.com put together 139 mistakes that have occurred in The Simpsons. Now, if these mistakes were something interesting like “In this scene, Homer’s black,” or “In this scene, there’s a penis hanging out of Lisa’s mouth” I would be all for this. but instead, it’s mostly just random continuity issues where Marge’s shoes are green in one scene and red in the next. Which I could give two shits about (and don’t worry, I have way more than two shits in me at all times.)
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See some more after jump:
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See the list of all 139 here.
139 Continuity Errors In The Simpsons. Remember Them? (pic)
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India Real Time offers quick analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime@wsj.com or follow India Real Time on Twitter and Facebook.
Check out the main contributors to the blog and their bios here.
<a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/07/29/india-this-evening-narendra-modi-figures-in-cbi-probe/tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/07/29/india-this-evening-narendra-modi-figures-in-cbi-probe/Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:05:41 GMT 00:00″>India This Evening: Narendra Modi Figures in CBI Probe
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Tricia Choi’s bunnies were jumping out of their rainbows and Into the Pixel 2010, the featured exhibition at San Francisco’s Hotel des Arts last month. see the rest of the week at Art MoCo after the jump.
Colour bursts forth from Chor Boogie’s Hotel des Arts courtyard mural.
Are Lorraine Peltz’s chandelier works maturing? Do more layers refer to more memories and experience?
Lola’s new paintings show even more depth and narrative then ever before. we like the protective cat.
Anna Krachey’s photos are not what at first they may seem. this artist really makes the viewer look twice.
When the music stops playing, pick up a pencil. Thirty years of work by Ric Ocasek is featured in his first New York exhibition.
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This Week At Art MoCo
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Senior Open Qualifying venues named for 2011
NEWS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE EUROPEAN TOURBetchworth Park, Burhill Golf Club and Kingswood Golf and Country Club were today named as the three qualifying venues for The 2011 Senior Open Championship.
An estimated 300 players will take part in the 18 hole qualifier across the three courses on July 18 hoping to earn a place in the field for The Senior Open Championship at Walton Heath from July 21-24.
It is the first time Walton Heath has hosted the Championship as the Surrey venue marks the 30th anniversary of it hosting The Ryder Cup in 1981 – the first biennial contest between a combined continental European Team and the United States on European soil.
Several players from that Ryder Cup are likely to be in the field for The Senior Open Championship including Sandy Lyle, Sam Torrance, Tom Watson and Bernhard Langer who will be defending his title after winning his maiden Senior Major Championship at Carnoustie on Sunday.
The qualifying competition will give non-exempt players the chance to join these golfing greats in the Championship with the hope of reproducing the performance of Pete Oakley in 2004 who came through qualifying before going on to win the Championship at Royal Portrush.
Andy Stubbs, Managing Director of the European Senior Tour, on behalf of The Senior Open Championship, said: “Following the success of this year’s Senior Open at Carnoustie last week we are delighted to announce three fantastic courses in Betchworth Park, Burhill and Kingswood as the venues for next year’s qualifier and we are extremely grateful to the respective Members for giving up their facilities.
“The Senior Open Championship continues to grow each year and it is vital that we have strong qualifying venues to support this. All three courses are close to Walton Heath and I’m sure the Surrey area will benefit from the boost to its economy that is associated with hosting the Senior Open Championship.”
Labels: Pro seniors
posted by Colin | see story on its own page | Tuesday, July 27, 2010 ![]()
Scottish Golf View – Golf News from Scotland
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2010 Winter Olympics Snowboarding Preview – from Universal Sports
Tags: 2010, jacobellis, lindsey, olympics, shawn, snowboard, sports, universal, vancouver, white, winter
This entry was posted on June 25, 2010, 10:50 am and is filed under Snowboarding. you can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2010 Winter Olympics Snowboarding Preview – from Universal Sports …
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The White House documents corroborate that White House officials joined Abramoff team members for expensive meals and that White House officials were offered and accepted expensive tickets to sporting and entertainment events from Abramoff associates. in fact, the White House documents contain numerous examples of tickets offered to White House officials that were not reflected in the [documents the 2006 report was based on].
Whether or not the “fruit” was actually part of a quid pro quo, the new findings make clear that Abramoff got results for his White House lobbying efforts. Perhaps Abramoff’s greatest success in lobbying White House officials was to force the dismissal of Alan Stayman, a State Department employee. Stayman was in charge of the federal government’s relationship with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a major Abramoff client. Stayman had taken actions in a previous government job that displeased the CNMI government. the CNMI, and, by extension, Abramoff, wanted him gone. according to the committee’s 2006 report:
Stayman was an official in the Department of the Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs during the 1990s who advocated labor reforms for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands that Abramoff opposed on behalf of his client, which was the Commonwealth.
The committee’s latest report corroborates the 2006 report’s information about the firing of Alan Stayman. Three pieces of evidence highlighted in the new report indicate that Stayman’s firing was politically motivated (i.e., came from the White House). the first is a deposition by Monica Kladakis, then-Deputy Associate Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP), in which Kladakis confirmed, according to the report, that “OPP became involved in mr. Stayman’s removal after White House officials were contacted by mr. Abramoff’s team.” the second piece of evidence is a July 2001 e-mail in which Stuart Holiday, then-Associate Director of OPP, says: “We pulled the plug on [Stayman].” Finally, according to the report, “in the internal White House communications about mr. Stayman’s case, White House officials repeatedly noted they would be giving status reports to Abramoff lobbyists.” the new evidence corroborates the information from Abramoff’s firm’s records, which include a report by an Abramoff associate that then-White House political director had promised to get Stayman “fired.”
The White House documents highlighted in the new report seem to indicate that, like the fired U.S. attorneys, Stayman was dismissed despite good reviews from his superiors and general support in the State Department for extending his tenure. a 2001 memo from James Kelly, the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, asked that Stayman remain in his position “until at least November 4, 2003.” and Kladakis testified that Kelly had been “very upset at the idea of us having Stayman leave.”
The White House documents in the new report also provide evidence that the White House sought Abramoff’s input when making decisions about political appointments to the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA), which, according to its website, “has administrative responsibility for coordinating federal policy” in the Pacific island territories where Abramoff had clients. in one example, Matthew Schlapp, the Director of the White House Office of Public Affairs from 2003 to 2005, asked a White House staffer to send an Abramoff associate the resume of a candidate for a position at OIA. the same day, Schlapp sent then-Karl Rove assistant (and former Jack Abramoff assistant) Susan Ralston an email. in the email, Schlapp told Ralston that he had asked the Abramoff associate to “check out” the candidate for the OIA position. As it turned out, mr. Abramoff opposed the candidate, who did not receive the appointment.
In addition to orchestrating Stayman’s removal and influencing OIA personnel decisions, Abramoff got the White House to agree to refrain from endorsing the Republican candidate in CNMI gubernatorial election. (Abramoff supported a third-party candidate). according to the 2006 report, Abramoff’s efforts prompted Ralston, Karl Rove’s assistant, to email Abramoff, writing, “You win 
. KR said no endorsement.”
Perhaps most shockingly, the new report provides evidence that Abramoff’s preferences even took precedence over those of the Republican National Committee, which supported endorsing the GOP candidate. according to the report, on October 17, 2001, an Abramoff associate emailed Matthew Schlapp and Ken Mehlman (then the director of the White House Office of Political Affairs). the Abramoff associate asked Schlapp and Mehlman for a “huge favor”: that the White House avoid endorsing the GOP candidate in the CNMI gubernatorial election. in a follow-up email, the Abramoff associate sent Schlapp background on the gubernatorial candidate Abramoff wanted the White House to avoid endorsing. Mehmlan got right on it:
Mr. Mehlman forwarded the [Abramoff associate's] request to Leonard Rodriguez, who worked under mr. Mehlman in the Office of Political Affairs, instructing, “Please advise on whether to do this or not, reaching out to the relevant people at the RNC.” mr. Schlapp forwarded the background [on the candidate] to mr. Rodriguez. mr. Rodriguez then followed up with the RNC, was told that the RNC’s Western Regional Political Director “strongly recommends that [the candidate] receive an endorsement from President Bush,” and forwarded this information to mr. Mehlman and mr. Schlapp.
Needless to say, the recommendation of the RNC’s Western Regional Political Director was ignored: No endorsement came. Despite administration officials’ denials, it seems that in the Bush White House, Jack Abramoff and his clients had more pull than the President’s own party.
(Mother Jones has covered Jack Abramoff extensively in the past. For background on Abramoff’s life story, see Barry Yeoman’s story from the September/October 2005 issue, “The Fall of a true Believer.” More recently, in November 2006, Peter Stone explained how Abramoff created a network that funneled money all over D.C. and in April 2006, Steven Hill explained how far beyond Abramoff the problem actually goes.)
Top story box photo by flickr user miss karen used under a Creative Commons license.
New Report: Abramoff Met Bush, Influenced White House Policy
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Olympic themed events to take place at the Fishing Heritage Centre and Meridian Park to celebrate the start of the two year countdown until the London 2012 Olympics.
Events will be taking place across North East Lincolnshire this month to celebrate the start of the two year countdown until the London 2012 Olympics.
Two of these events will be held at council venues, the Fishing Heritage Centre, Grimsby, and Meridian Park, Cleethorpes.
The Fishing Heritage Centre will be hosting a free Olympics ‘Open Weekend’ from July 23 to 25.
During the weekend, children and families will be able to take part in a 1950’s Olympic themed trail, contribute to giant sports-themed, wall art, and see Olympic themed films on Saturday and Sunday.
Visitors will also be able to take free tours of the Fishing Heritage Centre and the Ross Tiger trawler subject to availability.
Meridian Park will hold a free Olympic themed family sports and fun day on Saturday, July 24.
The event will run between 11am and 4pm and people will be able to try their hand at a range of sports and games. all under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.
The organisers ask that people taking part wear appropriate clothing and bring sun protection.
Councillor Leanor Pidgen portfolio holder for culture, leisure and tourism, said: “The London 2012 Olympics will be a fantastic spectacle and a real boost to the UK.
“These events will be a fun, free day out where people can find out more about the sports and games taking place at the Olympics and warm up to the event itself.”
For more information at the events at the Fishing Heritage Centre, call (01472) 323445 or for Meridian Park, call (01472) 323349.
Steve Beasant | OLYMPIC THEMED EVENTS HEADING FOR NORTH EAST …
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