No, but I began humming, “Knockin’ on heaven’s door!”
Nitpicks
[ul]
[li]Hey, it’s freezing outside, let’s light a fire but neglect to close the curtains! :smack: [/li][li]Also with the why burn books when there’s all this crappy furniture around?[/li][li]Crappy wolves[/li][li]The boat that makes it all the way down the street, but then gets stopped by a bus.[/li][li]Through out the entire movie, no-one(bar girl with septicaemia) shivers! Also, people just “forget” to put on gloves and do up jackets. Because you forget things like that when it’s that cold.[/li][li]Also with the “Oh it’s the ice monster” thing.[/li][li]And the stupid parody in between mammoth and climate change. That mammoth did not die from a climate change*[/li][/ul]
On posters down here, it had pictures of the Sydney Opera House getting engulfed by a wave. Whether or not such scenes were ever in the movie, or just created for ads. I have no idea
*As far as I know it dies from a volcanic outburst. Froze from a volcanic outburst you say? Incredible but true I say. The story goes such that, the air was so hot (from the outburst) , it rose incredibly high, got super cool, then dropped suddenly, freezing the mammoths in their tracks. But anyone can correct me.
Right. Because the entire continent of South America is just one country… like Australia.
:rolleyes:
I don’t think that’s what KarlGrenze meant. He meant “country” in the sense of “geographical area” (e.g., from rough country, “Jimmy Carter country,” what have you), not “a country.”
Ahh…, Pleistocene epoch Death Rays…
Thanks, that’s more what I was getting at. I’m well aware South America is not a single political country. 
Watching a frozen Eiffel Tower would have been very cool… they should have put that instead of the stupid wolves.
The space shuttle wouldn’t matter. There isn’t one permanently docked at the ISS. They leave a Soyuz capsule up there. The crew of the ISS wouldn’t be out of the woods yet though.
Unmanned Progress cargo ships launched by Russian Soyuz rockets are currently resupplying the ISS. This would depend on Russia still having launch capabilities. If they could be resupplied, there wouldn’t be a problem in the short term. With no resupply, they would have a smaller time frame for return.
I’m not certain on where the Soyuz capsule could reach, but I would question its ability to get to the southern hemisphere from the ISS. It’s possible that a very frigid recovery would be needed at the normal landing site.
today i did something really scary… i read the novel based on the movie.
the book has the space station in contact with houston. the cape is having trouble with the edge of the storm. at the end of the book (shudder) they are preparing the shuttle to go to the station.
if you think the movie was humourous and unreal, the book is light years worse(?) further out of this world (?) unbelievable.
I saw it tonight and thought it was ass. The special effects were cool and I liked the Cheney digs but the main characters were such cliches and the storylines so hackneyed that I was actually verbally begging for the family to die. Did they miss a cliche? Cancer kid? Check (and I agree he should have been euthanized as a kindness to the audience), Workaholoic-dad-who-was-never-around-for-his-kid-but-now-he’s-made a PROMISE-by-god? Check. Awkward kid who doesn’t know what to say to the chick that he likes? Check.
I really hated the series of artificial crises stacked one on top of another. Having to go fetch penecillin for the chick with gangrene wasn’t stupid enough for this movie. They had to be attacked by wolves while they were doing it? And why did the friends have to go with Donnie Darko to get the medicine? Why did he need help? I hated the actress playing Darko’s love interest. I found her affected, her facial expressions too cutesy and self-aware. Her character was annoying as well. How about that speech where she’s whining about “Everything I’ve worked for” and “future that doesn’t exist…”
Millions of people are DYING, you selfish bitch. Who cares about your future?
They should have cut her damn leg off…or better yet let her die and then eaten her corpse.
I couldn’t see any purpose for Dennis Quaid to go hunting for the son either. It was like we were supposed to think this one goody-two-shoes family was the only important family in the world. Everyone else had families (I’m assuming) but they never seemed to show any concern or even curiosity about their welfare.
The only character I liked was Bilbo Baggins. I think it was because the actor was just in a different class than the rest of the cast.
I saw it last week, and thought it generally, “Eh.” However, the more I think about it, the more it sucks.
The special effects, as has been noted, were spiffy. However, they were used to depict such inane events that each scene as a whole wound up looking pretty silly, in my opinion. One giant tornado in downtown L.A. might have looked cool, and could still have been genuinely disastrous. Multiple giant tornandoes in the same small(-ish) area just looked silly. The giant storm surge through Manhattan looked cool. But then you’ve got the Giant Water-Wall of Doom suddenly moving more slowly, giving the Intrepid Heroes plenty of time to rush to safety in the public library (which, from what I recall, was smaller then the wave front…).
What was really annoying was the apparent idea that the Worst Storms Ever weren’t providing enough danger for our Intrepid Heros. So we get scenes in which Hero Girl has to rush out to a taxi to get a freakin’ purse while a giant wall of water approaches. Oh, and she has to cut her leg. Then Hero Boy has to rush out to save her from the impending Water-Wall of Doom (an utterly pointless scene, since the lady whose purse was saved wound up dying anyway because she left with the security guard’s group!). Bah. Then, later, Hero Girl has a cough, thereby telling us in movie-speak that “she’s sick”. We thus learn she has blood poisoning because that cut got infected! I don’t know, but if my leg looked like that, it would probably hurt like hell, and I damn sure would have mentioned that to someone at some point. So now Hero Boys have to go find medicine to save Hero Girl. But wait! Now we have the twin dangers of Rabid Hero-Seeking Timber Wolves and the Great Freezing Eye to contend with! Will our heroes escape certain death to save both themselves and Hero Girl*?! A real nail-biter, I’m sure.
The wolves were especially silly. As mentioned, they looked pretty lame. And I’m not sure of the location of the NYC zoo in relation to the NY Public Library, but it is truly stretching credibility to the breaking point and beyond to believe that these wolves would escape the zoo and unerringly head straight for the downtown Manhattan, wherein they would naturally seek food (e.g., Our Heros) in a giant Russian tanker. I dunno, but maybe they would have actually stuck around the zoo, where they already knew the food was. Bah again, say I.
The cliches were thicker on the ground than was the resulting snow pack: Scientist Who Was Right All Along; Scientist Who’s the Best at What He Does; Person of Authority Who Just Wouldn’t Listen (But Later Has a Change Of Heart); Person of Authority Who Just Wouldn’t Listen (And Dies For His Hubris); Estranged Family Brought Together By Disaster; The Noble Sacrifice; the Doomed Heroes Who Nevertheless Die With Dignity; Smart Kid Who Saves His Friends; the Race to the Finish (in this case, outrunning The Big Freeze) and so on.
They should have just left out the nonsense about global warming. They could have had some other event trigger the breaking off of the ice shelf at the beginning (or just not even bother explaining why it happened), and then go from there as to what effects that would have on the climate and weather. One of the biggest problems with Epic Natural Disaster movies is in trying to explain the disasters. Volcano, 10.5, this one - all lamely try to invoke ridiculous scientific explanations in order to set up the premise, instead of just letting the premise more or less speak for itself (not that that would necessarily help with some premises, but the writers could at least cut their losses by not being more stupid than is necessary for the movie).
Ooh! Aliens are cooking us with cosmic rays for their culinary pleasures and they mistakenly cause the ice agae.
Or…, a wizard did it.
Well, doesn’t the ISS cross the Equator twice each orbit, and spend as much time over the Southern Hemisphere as the Northern? They should be able to land anywhere within a range of latitudes, North and South. Let’s see… Moscow is at 55 deg. 45 min. North. Sydney is at 33 deg. 54 min. South. So it looks like anywhere in Australia should be good.
The more I think about this stupid movie, the more I think it could have been really something if it had a good script. Emmerich must have a ridiculous ego or just really bad taste if he thinks he’s producing good scripts.
Forget the wolves. The worst thing was Dennis Quaid trying to look thoughful and dramatic as the world goes to hell. Having him as the lead scientist just didn’t work. That big stupid Joker style grin he ended the film with pushed me to the brink of vomiting.
So the group in the library were the smart ones and made it but not smart enough to burn the wood furniture instead of books? Riiiiiiiiiiight.
From what others have said, it is quite possible that the furniture had varnish and lacquer that are toxic when burned. Hence, they couldn’t burn it.
I do wonder, if that was the case, if they had other burnable stuff that was not paper.
I’m thinking it had more to do with symbolism. Something along the lines of survival instinct taking over and people willing to burn books if it means they will live. I realize a movie can’t cover every single detail but I was figuring someone would mention it.
Since I don’t own a chimney, someone with one can correct me but don’t all the fumes go up the chimney? So any fumes from burning varnish would go out and not have a drastic effect on them. Also, if the walls are freezing, I’m going to take my chances with getting lung cancer in 20 years and start throwing everything into the fire.
Ah, but in an Emmerich movie you need a scene of a scientist or some kind of official being woken up by an urgent phone call, in order to make it plain that Something Important is happening. In Day After Tomorrow, we actually got two such scenes. I wonder what the record is? I’d like to see a movie where every five minutes, we see somebody being woken by the phone, grabbing it and barking out something like “Kenderson! What is it?” Then listening and choking out, “Oh…my…God!” I’d pay to see that movie.
I think I noticed at least three “My GOD!” moments in this movie. All that was missing was a scientist removing his eyeglasses as he said it. Oh, wait… we did have that (Ian Holm).
Funny thing about that… I saw this movie on a free pass. An appliance repair shop (?) gave out about 400 free passes for this movie’s sneak preview the night before it opened.
Maybe that coloured my appreciation of it. Still, even with all the stupidity, of which the velociwolftors were #1, it was fun enough to watch. Mamybe the pretty girl sitting with me also affected my appreciation of this flick.
Oh well. 
Wait for the sequel: The Day After the Day After Tomorrow
Followed by Sometime Next Week
And it’s prequal Tomorrow
And it’s spinoff series , The Night After Tomorrow