Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
The Day After The Day After Tomorrow: A Sequel
Just finished watching The Day After Tomorrow. Normally when a movie makes a profound effect on me I write up a quick review, but to be realistic this movie didn’t make any profound effect on me. That could be because of my mental handicap that compels me to get my science stuff from scientific things and my entertainment stuff from entertainment things; I’m not like these enlightened “nuanced” movie audiences who mix the two together.
However, I was inspired to write up a quick synopsis for a possible sequel. This probably would make only a limited amount of sense to someone who hasn’t seen the Emmerich movie.
(May Contain Minor Spoilers)
The events of the first movie, it is discovered, have killed off all the vegetation in the western hemisphere and therefore left that part of the world permanently uninhabitable. The United States of America is subordinated to a mere province of the “third world country” from which President Becker was speaking at the end of the film. The American dollar is devalued, discontinued, and replaced with scrip which Americans earn by making shoes, toiling in rice patties, and milking cows for the third-world people.
Global starvation ensues. The United Nations triples the annual dues that are requested of America, from 25% of the U.N. budget to nearly all of it, and sends the bill to the last known address of Congress. Naturally, it goes unpaid. Dennis Quaid is forced to move into a mud hut with his son Jake Gyllenhaal, ex-wife Sela Ward, Jake’s girlfriend, and Sela’s boyfriend who is played by Russell Crowe. He must beg and borrow, and pawn his pick-axe, until he can buy enough equipment to continue his research. Years roll by as he continues this terrible, demeaning process within a global society that no longer has an economy. After decades of building sophisticated instruments from natural resources like the Professor from Gilligan’s Island, he makes a startling discovery: The flash freezing from the first movie had NOTHING to do with any human activity whatsoever!
Starvation, and starvation-related diseases, sweep over the entire human race. Sela Ward runs off with her boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal dies of starvation in the arms of his father. In one of the dreariest, darkest endings of all time, Dennis Quaid finds himself in his deathbed, his ribs poking painfully through his skin, dying of black lung, gangrene and scurvy in the same room as President Becker who is in the same final stages. The two men commiserate about how terribly wrong they were to blame natural climate changes on the most productive people and corporate entities, which, on reflection, throughout history, have done so much to ease human suffering and so little to cause any of it. Both men wish they could go back and repeat history to avoid the terrible mistakes they have made. Reading the Bible that the atheist guy saved from the library, they come across the passage about coveting your neighbor and realize this is where they went wrong. They wish they had not been jealous of these corporations. They wish they had not been so quick to believe the scientists who chased federal research dollars with politically correct prejudices in their research, and so slow to believe the scientists who did not. They wish they did not base so much of their “science” on glossy Hollywood productions. Belatedly, they realize there WAS indeed a money-grubbing, greedy industry in Old America that was truly bad for humanity, which went completely unregulated. This was the movie industry. But it’s too late for any of this now.
The doe-eyed cancer patient from the first movie is sworn in as the new President. The poor fellow who was flash-frozen from the helicopter accident, is thawed out, and he becomes the Vice-President. Nobody cares very much now though, because the United States is made into a non-entity. The rest of the world rejoices about this, for a brief time, until somebody remembers there’s no food, no foreign aid, and no military strength to protect anyone from the gangs of thieving marauders who roam the wasted planet at all hours of the day and night. “Day After The Day After Tomorrow, The” is hailed by critics as deep-thinking, poignant, dark, moody, and thought-provoking. It is also the most depressing story ever told right after “Grapes of Wrath”.
Hey…Roland Emmerich can have an agenda, so can I. 😉
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To paraphrase Gene Hackman in Get Shorty after Travolta says he has an idea for a movie, “Everyone does” But I gotta tell you, this would put butts in the seats.
- MM | 12/14/2010 @ 12:39