Amazon Blogs: Armchair Commentary Daily Digest

Check out these Updates from Armchair Commentary for April 22, 2010.

Saving the Planet, One CGI Action Sequence at a Time April 22, 2010 Hollywood sings REM’s "It’s The End of the World As We Know It" all the way to the bank. Big-budget Armageddon films loaded with special effects tend to be a hit with audiences (uh, what does that say about us?). As we plant a tree in honor of Earth Day, April 22, let’s look back at a few heroes who saved ourplanet from doomsday. Armageddon:   An asteroid heading toward Earth threatens to blow us all to smithereens in this 1998 FX-packed thriller from director Michael Bay. Bruce Willis leads an all-star cast (Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Owen Wilson, Ben Affleck) as he takes a team of oil-drillers into space to dismantle the asteroid before it can strike. There’s a romantic subplot that had me in tears by the end of this film and that's rare in a Bruce Willis movie. Deep Impact: This movie draws a natural comparison to Armageddon because it was also released in 1998 – and has tearjerker ending. A seven-mile long comet is blazing a trail toward earth and it’s up to a group of astronauts (led by veteran actor Robert Duvall) to snuff its fuse. Interestingly, these astronauts are using nuclear weapons to blow up the comet (hey, I thought we were “no nukes”). Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman and a pre-Lord of the Rings Elijah Wood also star. Independence Day: Here come the aliens. It’s almost a given that any film starring Will Smith is going to be riddled with wisecracks (put aside The Pursuit of Happyness for a moment). If you’re a fan of 1953’s War of the Worlds, you’ll notice an abundance of parallels between that film classic and Independence Day. Roland Emmerich directed this 1996 blockbuster, which also stars Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid and Bill Pullman. The Day After Tomorrow:  Global warming dooms the planet with typhoons, massive flooding and a subsequent freeze that turns our world into an ice rink. Roland Emmerich (again!) directed this 2004 film starring Dennis Quaid as a  climatologist who warns us of the impending calamity – but, of course, we don’t listen. The Day After Tomorrow gets a major thumbs-up for using sophisticated CGI as Earth enters another Ice Age. Dress warm while watching. 2012: I’m beginning to think Roland Emmerich knows something we don’t know. Emmerich also directed this 2009 end-of-the-world epic based on the ancient Mayan prediction of global disaster. That’s less than two years away folks, so take notes. Starring Danny Glover, John Cusack andAmanda Peet, this three-hour movie is better suited to watching at home than it was in the theater. The FX were impressive on the big screen, but even more so with a “pause” button in hand. An Inconvenient Truth: If this 2006 Academy Award-winning documentary doesn’t inspire you to do something to help save us from ourselves, nothing will. No CGI, no special effects, just a straight-up, unglamorous doc with Al Gore at the lectern showing us what we’ve done to our planet. An Inconvenient Truthshould be required viewing in all school classrooms. Just because it’s educational doesn’t mean it’s boring. And here's a switch: we can be the heroes this time. Move over, Bruce Willis. – Francine Ruley

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