I recently had the pleasure of seeing two very different disaster movies. 2012 was every bit the entertaining piece of crap that I thought it would be. The special effects were incredible, the dialogue was abominable, and you could telegraph every plot twist and eventuality 15 minutes into the film. A number of great actors lined up to sell out for the flick and I in turn did my part to sell out and watch it. I hang my head in shame. When the movie ended I did my best slow-building sarcastic clap-- you know the one at the end of big speeches in cheesy movies where one guy claps alone really slowly and loudly until the whole crowd erupts into a roar of applause. A few people laughed, my girlfriend gave me a disapproving look, and we bolted for the exit. The walk home found us pondering the Mayan prophecies and the actual scientific proof that the earths magnetism has been eroding to some extent. Perhaps in 2012 we'll look back at this craptastic movie as a prophetic harbinger of doom. Hopefully not.
The second film was Collapse, a documentary that's playing only in one theatre in New York and only at one showing a day at 1:25 pm. That said, if you're unemployed like me and have some free afternoon time, I highly recommend seeing it though it will possibly leave you scared shitless if you buy into the gospel it is preaching.
The movie is centered around an interview with a man named Michael Ruppert, a brilliant ex-LAPD cop turned investigative writer who graduated valedictorian of his class and became increasingly interested in Peak Oil. Like most people in the peak oil community, he assumes we've recently passed world peak oil production and that the governments of the world are quietly figuring out what the hell to do as they gobble up any field that can get their hands on. Gloom and doom ensues.
I recently read Omnivore's Dilemma, which has a passage about how the seemingly innocuous invention of oil-based synthetic fertilizer by Fritz Haber in the early 1900's actually allowed an otherwise impossible population explosion. There are actually billions of people that could not even be alive on this planet if synthetic fertilizer didn't allow us to make enough food to feed everyone. Interestingly, Haber's invention of synthetic nitrogen is also the underpinning for synthetic gunpowder which made the unprecedented scale of destruction in World Wars I and II. It's funny that the history book rarely mention the guy.
Anyhow, long story short. Skip 2012. Definitely check out Collapse. You can catch the preview here:
http://www.collapsemovie.com/COLLAPSEMOVIE/
Also, a couple of my friends made some brilliant music videos recently that I think you'll like:
Hurricane Bells "This Year"
OK Go "WTF"
OK Go - WTF? from OK Go on Vimeo.
See you soon,
Eytan
