And I Feel Fine
Posted on | November 16, 2009 at 7:41 pm | 4 Comments
This past weekend, I went out and saw the disaster-porn flick 2012. I know, I know… but I have some gift cards to use up, and it looked like pretty eye candy. Well, if you consider the end of the planet to be eye candy… which in the hands of Roland Emmerich and crew, it most certainly is. Plus, I was depressed about the Broncos losing their third game in a row, and wanted to see some massive destruction. It’s a long movie, almost three hours, but there are enough “character” moments in-between things collapsing and blowing up to allow for much-needed pee breaks.
Though the movie is over-the-top, and utterly preposterous in the way that John Cusack & family keep narrowly escaping getting turned into fossil fuels for the next species that arises to dominate the planet, the movie is not without its charms. At least it wasn’t boring (for the most part – see “pee breaks” above). So I was willing to go with it. It brought me back to those heady teenage days, watching flicks such as The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, though the scale of 2012 dwarfs any catastrophe Irwin Allen could splatter on the screen in the 70s.
However, there was one thing that I just could not forgive. Granted, the movie takes place over only a period of a day or two. But during that entire time, John Cusack’s character (I could never figure out if he was named Curtis Jackson or Jackson Curtis – even the movie seemed to be confused on that point*) never takes off his tie. He is subjected to all manner of potentially life-ending scenarios, almost literally clawing himself back up from hell at one point, and yet he keeps that dang thing on like it’s the only link that humanity’s survivors will have to their past great civilization. The world is going down in flames, but dammit, I’m going to look good! GQ may not survive the holocaust, but future societies will still know how important fashion is. There’s even an extended sequence near the end of the flick were Cusack spends a lot of time underwater trying to fix a particularly vexing problem, and he still has that damn tie on. I kept thinking it would get caught in the gears he was dealing with, causing him to get crushed to death, but I guess that would’ve been too ironic for the filmmakers.
I tried to rationalize it by saying maybe he just didn’t have time to take off the tie, but there were a few minutes here and there where he wasn’t running/driving/flying/swimming for his life, including some time on an airplane when I think he was sleeping. So maybe he was keeping it on for additional warmth. Or he thought he might need it for a sling or tourniquet or something. I don’t know… it’s just hard to take the End of Humanity seriously when your protagonist is not even flustered enough to remove his tie.
Although at least he did loosen it.
Latre.
* – People kept calling him “Jackson”, and the cover of the book he wrote says “Jackson Curtis”, but at one point he shows his driver’s license to another character and it clearly says “Jackson, Curtis”.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Can Oliver Platt ever play a character who’s not full of himself?
Perplexing Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “pocket pool registration”.
Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: Still none.
Comments
4 Responses to “And I Feel Fine”
November 16th, 2009 @ 8:29 pm
I suspect the actual TEOTWAWKI will be, in Eliot’s immortal words, “Not with a bang but a whimper.”
November 17th, 2009 @ 5:56 am
When I saw your post’s title on my feed, I thought Beatles, not REM, so I guess I’d have taken different pee breaks.
And I suspect TEOTWAWKI won’t allow time for necktie removal, so you all should take them off now if you’re concerned about this.
November 17th, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Neckties are going extinct (I hope). Half the time you see a guy in a suit nowadays he doesn’t have a tie. Suits may be next. Our company recently ditched business casual as a dress code, never mind business formal. We went to a Broadway play in NYC, and about 1/3 of the audience wore jeans with a nice shirt, about 1/3 work dress pants and shirt (me – and no tie!) and the rest wore actual formal wear.
As a jeans and t-shirt/sweatshirt kind of guy, I’m not lamenting the trend. But I do want my lawyer to be properly suited up! If I had one.
November 17th, 2009 @ 10:47 am
“Work dress pants” isn’t a type of trousers. I meant to say “wore.”