disaster movies

I've always hated natural disaster movies. They make me twitchy and uncomfortable in ways that movies about war, monsters and madness have never been able to do. I remember a period in the late 1990s where it seemed like everything was a disaster movie - giant storms, volcanoes, asteroids hitting the planet, tornadoes, everything. They appear sporadically, filling me with dread and unease every time I have to sit through a preview in the theater. The appeal of them remains incomprehensible to me. I suppose it is because there is no understanding beyond "these terrible things happen sometimes and there really is no reason beyond the habits and peculiarities of nature." (Though there is definitely the trend of "humans fuck up the planet everything goes to hell" movie storyline as well which often ends up even worse and more ridiculous.)

Inevitability is a concept I don't handle well. Neither is the idea that some things just happen and there's no real reason or way to change that. Things happen. I hate that.

Watching the footage of the quake and the tsunami in Japan twists that same nerve. I suppose I can't enjoy these movies because my brain just does not recognize movie magic as different from the real thing, even at their most overdone. I wouldn't have ever imagined entire houses could bob like driftwood or the sheer volume of debris came from thousands of lives wrecked in moments. The videos on Youtube of the waves rushing in on the coast as cars speed away, the tiny figures of people on bridges or rooftops seem both unreal and painfully real.

(no subject)

We watched the Michael Bay Transformers movie this evening... The original Transformers movie was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I loved Transformers as a kid. What is there not to love about giant robots who fight other giant robots?

I feel like my IQ was damaged by watching this movie. WTF Michael Bay? It was jaw dropping bad and the only reason I sat through it was the Riff Trax that was better than that entirely awful mess. For a movie about awesome giant robots, there wasn't really much awesome giant robot time. Way too much terrible, terrible human time. Plus there was some of the worst, worst dialogue and acting in a Saturday afternoon popcorn picture I've seen. I enjoy a good explosion filled action movie with unrealistic scenarios, cheesy lines and two dimensional characters. This was not even a good popcorn movie. DUDE.

As dinner was prepared, Eric suggested some cable channel needs to run a line of crazy wacky Japanese programming. Every donation puts more great Japanese game shows on air and goes to the disaster recovery.