Over the last two days we sat and watched a film in two parts called Flood, starring amongst others Robert Carlyle and David Suchet. The first half was good (everyone enjoys a disaster movie) but for the latest fashion of, “Let’s shake the camera about to make it appear more exciting,” then the second half lapsed into bathos through to plain daft at the end. Robert Carlyle gets all emotional with his ex-wife and his estranged father, Tom Courtenay, who in turn sacrifices himself at the end to save London in a piece of televisual silliness. Yeah, you’re going underwater into a room that will close off and trap you in there until the city is saved, well, take some more air bottles you prick. But I guess the thing that completely shafted the whole film for me was that, Courtenay, the hero who sacrifices himself, was a climate modeller: “I inserted your data into my model with the result that I, and only I, know that disaster is on the way.” Not particularly credible now we know how climate models don’t work. And not particularly credible that a climate modeller would be seen anywhere away from a computer or press conference and actually out in the ‘environment’.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Flood
Over the last two days we sat and watched a film in two parts called Flood, starring amongst others Robert Carlyle and David Suchet. The first half was good (everyone enjoys a disaster movie) but for the latest fashion of, “Let’s shake the camera about to make it appear more exciting,” then the second half lapsed into bathos through to plain daft at the end. Robert Carlyle gets all emotional with his ex-wife and his estranged father, Tom Courtenay, who in turn sacrifices himself at the end to save London in a piece of televisual silliness. Yeah, you’re going underwater into a room that will close off and trap you in there until the city is saved, well, take some more air bottles you prick. But I guess the thing that completely shafted the whole film for me was that, Courtenay, the hero who sacrifices himself, was a climate modeller: “I inserted your data into my model with the result that I, and only I, know that disaster is on the way.” Not particularly credible now we know how climate models don’t work. And not particularly credible that a climate modeller would be seen anywhere away from a computer or press conference and actually out in the ‘environment’.
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8 comments:
I saw some of this on the telly last year. Fucking terrible. The worst program I've seen in a long while.
Rab Carlyle has done some good stuff but 'Flood' was a turd.
Dear God Neal. You're a great writer but your taste in movies is absolutely shite!!! Do you actually see these films advertised and think 'oh that looks good - I'll have to watch it!'? Or is it your wife that makes you watch them...???
- Steve R
Funny, just today this was written in another blog: Efforts to sell climate policy based on ever more scary scenarios of apocalypse cannot be sustained and are likely to work in exactly the opposite manner than desired. A good example of why this is so can be found in a recent paper (hat tip Dad) that suggests that the rate of sea level rise from 2003-2008 (2.5 mm/year) is 20% lower than that presented by the IPCC for 1993-2003 (3.1 mm/year). [...] Prometheus
"Dear God Neal. You're a great writer but your taste in movies is absolutely shite!!"
my sentiments to the deciding area of the brain mr. Asher. there is so much crap out there NOT to see. is that where your inspiration is? shitty trailers luring you to wasted 2 hrs of your time?
brave man.
you couldn't pay me to see that kidman trainwreck. i could turn on the tv to the soap operas and look out the window for a better time.
"your taste in movies is absolutely shite!!"
No, it's just because I've gone through a bit of a bad patch. I promise to post some reviews up here of stuff that I do like ... if I actually get to see anything I do like. The problem is at the moment that my TV boredom threshold clicks in after about five minutes. Not a lot on worth watching.
The Wire/season 3.
Dexter feat "The Skinner".
I just love that DVD cover, it reminds me of the cover of the book "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet" by Mark Lynas. Pure B-movie stuff: Floods! Doom! Destruction! Carbon dioxide!
you do have dubious taste in programming neal, may i recommend:
The Shield.
Battlestar Galactica.
Nip/Tuck.
The Sopranos.
Criminal Minds (s1-2 are the best).
Numb3rs.
Dexter.
a lot of people also recommend "the wire" but i've not seen it, so i don't know.
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