Day 52: "You sure I can't talk you outta this?"

Truer words than today's quote have never been spoken.  Since today was a pot luck day, I decided to take a stroll into the past to see the 1974 disasterpiece Earthquake.  What can I say, I'm a sucker for cheesy, disaster epics.  I really wish I'd picked something else to DVR.  Released during the "Golden Age" of the Hollywood disaster era (the 70's had it all, from The Towering Inferno  and The China Syndrome, to The Poseidon Adventure and Avalanche), it fulfilled the requirements of the day: huge star-studded ensemble cast, disaster of epic proportions, and total lack of quality control.  At 124 minutes long, the titular seismic event doesn't occur until 72 minutes in.  That means that for 1 hour and 12 minutes I had to endure the most contrived, shallow attempts to develop characters and set up some semblance of a story.  I literally nodded off for about 10 minutes and was really mad when I told myself I would have to rewind and watch what I missed, which wasn't a lot.  The effects were OK for 1974, but other disaster films were better.

As for the actors, well lets just say most of them had seen better days by then.  Charlton Heston, Eva Gardner, Lorne Greene (really, Adama?), George Kennedy, Genvieve Bujold, Walter Matthau (a cameo, seriously, just a cameo), Richard Roundtree, and a very young Victoria Principal all collected a paycheck for this.  Shame on all of you.  This was nothing more than the actors going, "Really, I'm going to get paid?!?  For this?!?"

If you are in the mood for a retro-disaster movie that inspired some of the crap disaster movies that have come out in recent (read: the last 15 years) years, watch something else.  Watch Airport, watch The China Syndrome, watch Gene Hackman in The Posiedon Adventure, hell, watch The Swarm.  Just don't watch Earthquake.  It makes me wish California would have fallen away from the rest of the U.S.A.  1.5/10.

Tomorrow's movie: Bolt.  Man, I really wish Miley Cyrus wasn't in this.  Words cannot express the length
and breadth of my loathing for that particular human being.  Oh well, watching 365 movies, it was inevitable.  See you then, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!