2012 Review

As many of you may already know the ancient Mayan civilazation's calender comes to an end on the date 12/21/2012. Why did the Mayans choose this date to end their calendar? Did they get tired one day and just stop and go home? Did they run out of stuff to write on? Or did they actually foresee something happening at this time? I have looked into potential catastrophes that could occur on this date myself, the most likely being a solar flare event. In this case that's exactly the primary focus of the movie.

The beginning of the movie is used to setup the whole idea of what's going on, the idea of a peaking solar storm turning our planet into one big microwave, cooking it from the inside out. Now personally I couldn't see something on that large of a scale actually occuring. But then we wouldn't have much of a movie if there wasn't a major catastrophe now would we?

For the most part the plot focuses around one man named Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) who is trying to find a way to save his family from the ensuing chaos occuring all around him. That is one thing this movie has no shortage of, it's absolutely loaded with action and destruction to the highest degree. You've never seen destruction on this kind of a scale before. Many scenes in this movie are nearly completely computer generated, but nearly all of them look very realistic and believable. That being said, there are a few wacky moments in the movie as well, such as when an aircraft carrier gets taken in on a tidal wave and takes out the white house. It's cool to watch, but not very high on the believable scale.

The movie focuses around several major events occuring on the planet at the same time, however the west coast of the U.S. is where the shit hits the fan first. It starts off with a few earthquakes and things rapidly go downhill from there until eventually entire tectonic plates below the surface of the Earth begin shifting positions causing California to sink right into the ocean, that's not where I'd want to be when this all started to go down that's for sure. Makes me glad I live in the midwest.

The acting in this film was very good, it had plenty of stars in the cast including Danny Glover as the president of the United States and Woody Harrelson as a zany, pickle loving, conspiracist who did a radio broadcast about all kinds of conspiracy theories. There are a few jokes tossed around here and there, but overall the movie keeps a fairly serious tone. I also couldn't help but think some of the emotional scenes were a little overdone. I understand they wanted to get the reaction from the audience but to me it just seemed liked they should've been more focused on the action than on teary phone calls.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie though because 2012 is a subject that I have long been interested in since I first heard about the prophecy when I was around 12 years old. I do recommend seeing it for the breathtaking CGI scenes as well as an action-packed story that will keep you gripping your arm rests for the duration of the ride. Whether or not anything in this movie will actually come to pass is yet to be seen. Will 2012 actually be the end of the world? I doubt it. Will anything happen at all? Possibly. But afterall it's Hollywood's job to spice up what they have to work with and they certainly did a good job doing so with this movie.

I recently went to see the Michael Jackson movie This Is It. It gives us a glimpse into the rehearsals and production of M.J.'s latest planned 50 show London tour which had already been sold out. The footage shown in this movie was never originally planned to be shown to the public. It was only due to Michael's untimely death that it was released. It really would have been a shame not to show all the work that was involved in the making of this massive show.

The movie almost felt like you were getting your own personal concert from Michael. It shows him performing all of his most famous and legendary songs on stage, only you're seeing the rehearsal versions of the songs. Between the songs you really get to see how devoted Michael was to his music and how he really wanted every single detail of his show to be flawless. I was continuously impressed throughout the movie at his amazing dance skills, he seemed just as talented as he ever was when he was younger.

The thing you really see in this movie is just how much work was being put into the production of this show. They even recorded several new videos for his songs. The new Thriller video inparticular was very cool, it was even filmed in 3D which is actually how Michael wanted the original music video to be filmed. The new Smooth Criminal video was also rather unique being in black & white and using classic movie clips.

I think in the end Michael made some mistakes in his life, but he really was an extremely smart and talented person. The messages he was trying to get across were peace, love, an end to racism, and saving our planet. These are all the right messages that I believe in myself. This is part of the reason why I have always been such a big fan of his music.

But truly, there has never been anyone quite like Michael Jackson in the past and I really don't think there will be anyone like him in the future, he was one of the greatest talents of our time, sadly he left us early. But if you have any interest in pop music at all then this is definitely a great movie to see, if nothing else just for the amazing music. After all Michael Jackson is the one and only king of pop!