The Day After Tomorrow
"The Day After Tomorrow" is (I guess) based on the enduring classic novel of the same name written by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein is widely considered to be the "Soren Kierkegaard of Science Fiction" -- not as influential as Asimov and not as literary as Bradbury, just as Kierkegaard was neither as influential as Kant nor as literary as Nietzsche. I say the book is an enduring classic, because I read it when I was young and I have no recollection of what it's about. But anything which shows the world going to hell in a handbasket is just to my taste these days. I'm especially fond of stories where "the human race" fucks up big time, and there's nobody to sue or pray to when the bill comes due. We just have to take our lumps and perish from this earth. I'd like to see a movie in this genre called "The Day After Election Day."
prereviewer - Chris Bumcrot, 01/06/04

via prereview
- bill 5-14-2004 11:39 pm [add a comment]

I prereviewed it in Nov. '03 but Joe's link to it is busted. Here 'tis:

The Day After Tomorrow
The preview shows tornadoes convincingly destroying LA skyscrapers and a tidal wave engulfing NY skyscrapers. I'm thinking, "Hey, supposedly everything changed after 9/11 and we don't do this self-hating Independence Day shit anymore." Well, I-Day (and Godzilla) director Roland Emmerich is back with more latter-day Irwin Allen foolishness (better looking effects, though). The, er, adventurous quality of the science in this movie can be summed up in the following blurb from the Internet Movie Database: "A climatologist tries to figure out a way to save the world from abrupt global warming. He must get to his young son in New York, which is being taken over by a new Ice Age."
prereviewer - Tom Moody, 11/19/03

• funny thing. i prereviewed toms prereview of The Day After Tomorrow back in august of '01. even then i could sense world changing events afoot.

  while the shrub scrubs his brushes in crawford, i sense world changing events afoot. it might not be the day after tomorrow, but soon. i see a man in flowing robes, perhaps he is a climatologist looking for his son amid great crisis or else he is a figurehead for a shadowy band of militant religious fanatics bent on murder and mayhem. his name might be george, or it could be osama saddam. either way, there will be too much focus on special effects and not enough effort put into writing a reasonable plot. im sure tom will agree with this when the time comes for his prereview.

  
  - dave 5-15-2004 12:24 am [add a comment]

From Liz Smith's gossip column yesterday:

I CAN'T wait to see "The Day After Tomorrow," the disaster movie about ice- bound New York after the polar ice caps melt. This stars Dennis Quaid ,Jake Gyllenhaal ,Emma Rossum and Sela Ward . There's a big premiere May 24 at the American Museum of Natural History.

This maybe-not-so-sci-fi thriller comes just as the screenplay for a movie titled "Freeze" landed back on my desk with a thud this week. About 20 years ago, my pal Patti Goldstein and I wrote this treatment about an instant ice age. (You know, heroine comes downstairs in August to find her swimming pool skimmed over with ice. A polar bear wanders into a yard up in Pittsburgh.) Patti found it buried in her files last week.

Years ago, we took our idea to our friend, producer David Brown ,who opined that "movies about snow and ice are never popular." When we pointed out that Howard Hughes' favorite movie was "Ice Station Zebra," David just harrumphed and said, "Well, that was Hughes!" Then we met with the famous producer Jennings Lang, who was charming and acted as if he adored us, but sent us away with our idea for "Freeze" dangling as he advised us to "Write something you know - write about life for the girls who work at Cosmopolitan." So we never got our movie made. We'll see if "The Day After Tomorrow" overcomes the Brown-Jennings dogmas.