From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 26 14:49:36 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Chris T. Dias" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 26 May 1998 04:26:07 GMT Organization: All USENET -- http://www.Supernews.com Lines: 139 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6kdg8v$dlr$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer36.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 896156767 14011 (None) 140.142.64.5 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12566 Keywords: author=dias X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer36.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:11735 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1916 DEEP IMPACT STARRING: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave WRITTEN BY: Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin. DIRECTED BY: Mimi Leder. **OVERVIEW** Leo Biederman (Wood) studies the stars with his astronomy class. During his studies, he discovers a small bright spot. His teacher sends it off to be studied. He discovers that Leo has found a new comet. That, in of itself, is a career-making discovery. It quickly gets dashed when the astronomer realizes this comet is heading directly for Earth. But, as he leaves the tell the world, a runaway semi mows down his Jeep, preventing the world from knowing of the approaching comet. Fast-Forward one year later, with a major Clinton-esque controversy arising. The president just might be having an affair with woman named in files simply as Ellie. Tea Leoni plays a reporter for MSNBC who suspects there's more to the story of a cabinet official's resignation. She accuses him of having an affair with this woman and he gets to say, "I know you're just a reporter, but you used to be a person." Soon she discovers her error; he is resigning not because of Ellie but because of an E.L.E., which is jargon for "Extinction Level Event." He wants to spend more time with his family, and has stocked a yacht with dozens of cases of vitamin-rich Ensure. He must not have been invited to the briefing where it was explained that all surface life would be destroyed by the comet, or the other briefing about the 1,000-foot-tall tidal wave. My guess is, the president wanted him out of the Cabinet. The president, played convincingly by Morgan Freeman, goes on TV to break the bad news to the world, and talks of the Messiah Project, which will send a manned U.S.-Russian space craft to plant nuclear bombs in the comet and blow it up. We meet the Messiah crewmembers, including old Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall), called out of retirement because he once landed on the moon and might be able to land on the comet. The younger crewmembers resent him, we are told, although dissension onboard is never followed up on. The veteran has a nice line about the youngsters: "They're not scared of dying. They're just scared of looking bad on TV." There's another good line at the high school assembly where the Leo who also discovered the comet is honored. A friend tells him, "You're gonna have a lot more sex starting now. Famous people always get more sex." So, within 30 minutes of the film, the Messiah is launched...and 40 minutes in the film, they bounce along the surface. The first hour of the film runs like wildfire. By the end of the first hour, the Messiah pulls away from the comet and attempts to destroy it. The plan fails and instead of shattering, the comet breaks in two small parts. The 1.5 mile splinter will smack the Atlantic and cannot be avoided. However, if the larger 7-mile long one hits, there goes all life on the Earth. So, to make sure life will go on, each country is constructing underground caves that a select few will live until the disaster passes. Then they will emerge to repopulate the globe. A lottery will be held and those lucky enough will be able live on. The others can only pray. As the time ticks down, Earth holds its breath. **REVIEW** Deep Impact could have been really bad...thankfully it wasn't. It takes itself very seriously and never tries to be campy. It does this by trying its best to make things believable. This stems from making the Messiah ship realistic. It looks prefabricated, thrown together quickly in a year with an engine system I actually read about many years ago in a Carl Sagan book. But before I started liking this ship, the crew is on the comet, bouncing around 1/10 gravity and ready to plant the bombs. I wish this film was longer because then it would allow us to enjoy the epic scale of this movie. Instead it rushes into its drama of who would live and who will die. And they do die. There are four major character in Deep Impact: Leoni, Duvall, Wood, Freemen. Then there is about six to eight characters surrounding each of them. Of those 30 plus speaking parts, about six survive. Morgan Freemen's role, if replaced by a no name, would be totally unimportant. He is delegated to simply sitting in front of a camera and reading off a teleprompter. Easy job. The biggest role comes from Leoni and Duvall, two good actors in good roles. Obviously Duvall steals all his scenes and Leoni wasn't as bad some made her out to be. I couldn't find really any bad acting in the film, so what's left is its effects and story. As for the story the film does teeter precariously on that tight rope between ID4 and Mars attacks where there are four or five totally different stories and you really only care about one or two, everything else is just boring. Luckily, Deep Impact only has three major pots running and you like them all, even though the Messiah mission was the leader for me. When the first comet strikes, the effects are startling, but familiar. The initial tidal wave is amazing and jaw dropping but when it starts sweeping through Manhattan and Washington, its reminds me of the fireball sequences in Independence Day with the cars flipping and buildings falling. The best of these is an underwater sequence of Manhattan showing the head of the Statue of Liberty floating to the bottom. Could Deep Impact be better? Yeah...there were some strange actions by some people and I think that some of the solutions people had to some problems were tossed aside. One example is that the President announces they launched nukes to take out the big rocket but then announces that they failed. No effects, no suspense, like this plot point was just tossed away. I liked Deep Impact. It seems appealing to both disaster fans and science fiction nuts. I enjoyed it and the ending was very satisfying. As for that big rock... ...Well...I was sitting in my chair as Freemen announced the landing site. I mean here we are, in Prince George, high up, far in the continent. We should be okay. Then he says the second big rock will impact in Western Canada...Everyone in the audience just threw their arms up, "Well, we're screwed!!" PLUSES: +AMAZING SPECIAL EFFECTS +GOOD ACTING MINUSES: -SOME PLOT HOLES RATING: * * * 1/2 STARS OUT OF FIVE DEMOGRAPHIC: Deep impact has a high fatality rate but no one dies on camera. Millions die in the disaster but luckily, we don't see any. Language is minor and film can be very downbeat in its climax. Makes you proud to be a human being. Too bad there aren't any aliens to blast away... -- --- Chris T. Dias --- "The man who runs with scissors." From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 11 12:45:18 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!erix.ericsson.se!fci-se!fci!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: sm@forwiss.de (Ulrich Schreglmann) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 11 Jun 1998 04:42:07 GMT Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion Lines: 170 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6lnn6v$h4r$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer29.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 897540127 17563 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12846 Keywords: author=schreglmann X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer29.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:11997 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1927 REVIEW: "Deep Impact" (1998) (spoilers) Beware of movies containing sound in space while at the same time claiming they're "realistic." When the spaceship, meant to blow up the Big Bad Comet headed for Earth, takes off with with a supersonic bang reminiscent of the Enterprise going to Warp Speed, well, that was the moment the "ShYeahRight!"-level reached my consciousness threshold. It should have done so a lot sooner, what with its not just being the technical details that lack plausibility. But I guess I'm more of a technology pedant than a psychologist. OK, to get this straight right away: Deep Impact is a BAD movie. It's a screwed up movie about a subject of great potential. And whenever I see a film of that kind I try to remember all the big and little things that struck me as bad, thinking of ways it could have been done better. (However, after a few paragraphs I'll just resort to bitching.) It's a matter of fact a comet could be on a collision course towards Earth right now, and it might be detected late--maybe even too late to do anything about it. (Improbable it may be, yet not impossible.) It is also a fact that most comets are discovered by hobby astronomers, because the big telescopes, while being able to magnify single spots in the heavens enormously, are pityfully inept when it comes to surveying the starscape as a whole. So the first scene, in which a boy in high school astronomy class finds an uncharted spot in the skies can fill you, quite convincingly, with a sense of dread, knowing what the movie will be about. Cut to next scene, the photo with the spot that shouldn't be there is sent to a professional astronomer, who, after only a few seconds of computer wizardry, determines the snowball will hit Earth right smack in the middle. (We all know how fast astronomers can make such accurate predictions from the the last comet scare we had. "Oh, it'll come so close it might actually graze the moon--whoops, sorry, must have gotten a floating point wrong there.") Anyway, the comet is scheduled for the great get-together at least two years from then, but the astronomer has to race down the mountain in order to tell the world right that night, risking life and limb--and duly losing it. Actually that scene might have worked just as well as the first one, like this: Comet is discovered by accident, well in time to warn mankind, but a single cigarette butt falling into the lap of the oncoming truck driver is responsible for precious possible months of preparations lost. And a simple frown of concern on the astronomers face would have sufficed, instead of that silly panic attack we all know astronomers get. (From the movie Contact we know they always have to go somewhere really fast by car when that happens.) Later we find out the accident isn't even much of a delay--that authorities were informed at the time, possibly thanks to documents left at the observatory. So what was the point of the astronomer's death? Something like, "ooh, the comet has claimed its first victim?" (Maybe that's the astrological point of view, I don't know.) I have a deep suspicion the astronomer's death was originally intended exactly as described above by me, but then some dolt rewrote the script, left the death in, left it's point out. Cut to a TV reporter who, while investigating an alleged political sex scandal, stumbles over the government's secret plans involving their knowledge about the comet and preparations to deflect it. Well, this cliche movie including a ficticious President of the United States wouldn't be out of the Clinton term of office period if it didn't try to clumsily nudge into some real life popular political affair. (Makes you see the intern scandal with whole new eyes, doesn't it? Ooh! Well, everyone who reads the right tabloids probably knew all along outer space and some conspiracy is involved.) The President was about to go public anyway, because the national budget report is due, and it turns out they have spent quite a bundle on a big spaceship (the one that goes boom supersonically, in space) meant to transport thermonuclear bombs to the comet, thus blowing it into smaller bits that aren't on a collision course. Here we have a variation of the old James Bond cliche, "rich villain/government organization builds a supersecret super-expensive base for some supersecret super-expensive super-important plan." The incompatible keywords are, of course, "supersecret" and "super-expensive." If that were the real world the problem wouldn't be hiding the imbalance on your bank account. The problem would be simply this: The money is used to buy the goods and services of thousands of people, to build a space station/spaceship. Raising no suspicions in any of them and keeping all those in the loop quiet, especially about approaching Armageddon, in our information age where all it might take is a qualified post into sci.astronomy to make someone look at a certain spot in the sky more closely. OK, if that movie were James Bond level I wouldn't mind. But it IS boasting realism! Anyway, the supersecret, super-expensive spaceship takes off (with a supersonic boom). They obviously spent so much on the spaceship they even invented artificial gravity somewhere on the way. (It's the inevitable step, right after Teflon.) I can't remember the astronauts doing a lot of floating around. They even sleep in bunks lying down, not floating in sleeping bags the way you see real ones do in documentaries on Space Night. Maybe the ship just accelerates all the time. But in that case the crew would have lived in a tower, connected by stairs and ladders, not a long, flat corridor. The spaceship (which makes noise in space--have I mentioned that yet?) is powered by some prototype kind of nuclear acceleration. That's without a doubt what I would use in order to make sure mankind's last hope definitely reaches their destination--some never before used nuclear propellant. I can't make any educated guesses on how dangerous the sunny side of a comet is to an astronaut happening to stroll across it. My UNeducated guess, which I reach by extrapolating about the movie's "realism" so far, is: it was exaggerated in a sensationalist manner. (If anyone knows better, feel free to correct me. I'm sure there have been some discussions about the movie's realism already. I haven't read them yet, but I think I will. My critique is from the point of view of common knowledge.) The crew tries to dig a nuke far into the comet's night side before it turns to face the sun. They run late, the sun goes up, pockets of steam start exploding around them, shooting chunks of ice and one unfortunate astronaut into deep space. (Whew! More drama!) I wonder how probable it is the comet's rotational axis is parallel to its orbital axis. Because if it weren't there ought to be a polar region on it that is constantly in the dark. (OK, the pole wouldn't be the point of preference from where to blow a chip off. You'd be a fool if you didn't use the centrifugal forces in order to bifurcate the trajectories of the resulting pieces even faster. But you'd have all the time in the world to drill from there.) Anyway, the timing of the explosion was obviously off. The spacial iceberg breaks apart, but both pieces are still going to hit Earth. The ship hasn't any more propellant for a second run, instead they follow the harbinger of doom home. At home plans are under way to save a portion of mankind Dr. Strangelove style, in huge artificial caves. Later we learn most of the devastation will be a result of dust from the impact darkening Earth for two years, killing all plantlife. So what's the point of digging yourself in? Wouldn't that effort have been spent better on producing large numbers of greenhouses, ultraviolet light bulbs to shine in them and additional power plants to provide them with energy? It's not like you're forced to shield yourself from radiation, as in a NUCLEAR winter. A last effort to destroy the comets with tactical nuclear missiles from Earth fails. (Maybe by now the winter WOULD become nuclear.) The smaller comet's impact in the Atlantic Ocean is imminent; the president advises people to evacuate the coastal areas. Oh, great, NOW he tells them. (And apparently no one else who knew the point of impact in case they failed cared to inform East Coast residents in time, either, so highways wouldn't be congested.) The small comet hits and the Tsunami reaches as far as Washington DC. If to see the devastation of New York City is what you have come for, this is your moment. Well, one thing at least you can rely on. If a movie is as cheesy up to this point it has to have a happy ending. The astronauts, limping alongside, discover a pocket has formed in the large comet. They manage to fly in, explode their remaining nukes inside, blowing the large comet to smithereens while also sacrificing themselves. If I managed to suspend my disbelief this far--well, why not. I'm too tired too still worry about plausibility at this point. Maybe it's realistic, maybe it isn't, who cares. The President makes an encouraging speech in front of the ruins of the Capitol, already in a stage of reconstruction. The End. This review was mainly about the science aspects of this "realistic" movie. I could write a critique just as flattering and of this length about the so-called "character developments." But I won't. Suffice it to say, if you want to see the worthwhile bits, sneak in towards the end, see New York destroyed, then go see Mister Magoo or The Rainmaker or whatever else it is that runs in your local theater at the time. (This review was written in Germany. We're behind.) Ool. mailto:sm@forwiss.de http://www.forwiss.de/~uhschreg/ "There's nothing good--unless you do't" (German saying, stupid translation) -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==----- http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jun 12 13:37:28 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Doug Skiles Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Jun 1998 05:26:12 GMT Organization: Performance Motors, Ltd. Lines: 113 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6ll5dk$dk2$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: rskiles@mail.win.org NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 897456372 13954 (None) 140.142.64.5 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12789 Keywords: author=skiles X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12014 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1928 DEEP IMPACT (1998) Starring: Téa Leoni (Jenny Lerner), Elijah Wood (Leo Biederman), Robert Duvall (Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner), Morgan Freeman (President Beck), Leelee Sobieski (Sarah Hotchner), Maximilian Schell (Jason Lerner), Vanessa Redgrave (Robin Lerner) Directed by: Mimi Leder, Written by: Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin Rated PG-13 by the MPAA for violence and other intensity, strong langauge, and sexual references Reviewed by Doug Skiles Earthquakes, tidal waves, flaming debris, and all that jazz. It's the stuff that disaster movies are made of. And DEEP IMPACT is clearly a disaster film. As our story opens, Leo and Sarah unwittingly stumble upon a comet. They send the information off to a scientist, who is then (stupidly and predictably) killed before he can tell anyone that a flaming ball is headed for Earth. A year later, we find the government has gotten ahold of the records of the find somehow and knows of the impending disaster, but has yet to tell the world. Jenny Lerner, an aspiring reporter at CNBC (what's with aspiring reporters this summer?), unwittingly stumbles upon the government's plans to deal with the heavenly body heading our way, forcing President Beck to step up his announcement of the approaching comet. He makes the announcement, and then details his plan to stop it - they're sending a group of astronauts, led by moon landing veteran Spurgeon Tanner, up into space to land on the comet, plant nuclear bombs in it, and blow it to pieces. Before our story ends, we'll have to try this plan out, Jenny will have to reconcile with her father, Leo will get married to Sarah (apparently at age 14 or so... yeah, that's healthy), and basically, a lot of crazy crap will be goin' on. DEEP IMPACT owes a lot to the Irwin Allen disaster films of yore, with their collection of characters all facing down personal trials in their lives at a time of crisis. And like many disaster films, some characters are engaging, others are inane. Leoni is questionable as Jenny Lerner. Sometimes, she's excellent. Sometimes, she's downright bad. And she bounces back and forth quite a bit. Her parents are stronger though. Redgrave is wonderful as always, but perhaps the best part of her family is Schell, who turns out a fantastic performance. The film's weakest links go to Wood and Sobieski (who looks an awful lot like a little Helen Hunt, and even sounds like her in a few scenes). Elijah seems to be trying, but the horrible performance of his love interest, and their positively idiotic and laughable romance seriously hurts this movie. Their parents (such as the always-great Richard Schiff who plays Elijah Wood's father) are better, but do almost nothing. Morgan Freeman conveys real emotion and power as the President. He is the kind of President that you would respect and listen to. A commanding presence, as always, even though his screen time is rather limited. He really should've been used and developed more. The film's strongest aspect is the group of astronauts. All of their roles are well-acted, particuarly Robert Duvall's as the aging American icon. We truly care about them, and when they face danger, we're right there with 'em. They are the thread that holds this movie together. Still, one question sticks out - why is it that they are in their uniforms in some scenes, but fly through space wearing plain street clothes in others? Of course, that's a very minor gripe. Oddly, James Cromwell makes a brief appearance as a senator. An actor of his superb skill should've had much more to do, especially since he's saddled with a bit of foolish dialogue in his minor role. Mimi Leder's direction isn't as impressive as it looked back in THE PEACEMAKER (1997), her feature debut, but it's still quite good. James Horner delivers a great score, of course. The script, though, is fairly weak. The performances either let all the script's weaknesses shine through, or rise above them triumphantly, depending on which one of the film's plots are in question. The astronauts' scenes and those belonging to Morgan Freeman, along with a few of Leoni's moments, are powerful and at times, touching. Some audience members broke down and cried at times, and that's understandable. On the flip side of the coin, Elijah Wood's subplot is, unfortunately, laughably bad, and at times, Téa has the same problem. The end note of the movie is a depressing one. There is an attempt at a final upbeat scene, but it falls flat after the numerous deaths that came before. Like last year's TITANIC (1997), this is film that can leave you disquieted by its tragedy, although TITANIC was the story of a real disaster, whereas this is clearly fictional. Both, though, can put you into the position of wondering what you would do in such a situation. Still, Wood's plot and a number of Leoni moments really hurt the film, because they're the two plots that take up the most running time, unfortunately. In the end, because of that strong flaw, a film that is sometimes notably touching generates unintentional laughter. And when a climactic scene doesn't quite work, that's another problem. In the end, this is an above average disaster movie, but nothing fantastic overall. Be warned, there's only two action/special effects sequences in the film - the astronauts' visit to the comet and the title sequence, and, while both are nothing short of absolutely spectacular, summer action junkies would do better to check out GODZILLA (1998) for their adrenaline and CGI fix. DEEP IMPACT is more of a dramatic film than an action film. It poses interesting questions about how the planet's population would react to the impending end of the world, and then fails to answer them satisfactorily or very believably. Fans of disaster movies will enjoy it quite a bit. Fans of drama or action films, though, are likely to feel disappointed. Expect a disaster movie with more character development and less action, and you'll be alright. Rating: **1/2 "Heroes die... but they are remembered." - President Beck From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 15 16:17:47 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed5.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Luke Buckmaster" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 14 Jun 1998 23:00:37 GMT Organization: None Lines: 100 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6m1kml$ggh$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer38.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 897865237 16913 (None) 140.142.64.2 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12887 Keywords: author=buckmaster X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Importance: Normal Originator: grahams@homer38.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12073 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1930 REVIEW: Deep Impact By Luke Buckmaster (bucky@alphalink.com.au) Cast: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski, James Cromwell Director: Mimi Leder Australian release date: June 18 >From 0 stars (bomb), to 5 stars (a masterpiece): 2 and a half stars -------------------------------------------------- It's not surprising that the 60's and 70's style disaster flicks are now back in the Hollywood scene, with Deep Impact being the first "collision-course-to-Earth" film to be released in 1998 (Bruce Willis' Armageddon is coming out later on in the year). What is surprising, is what Mimi Lee (whose directorial credits include The Peacemaker) includes in the package: a study of apocalyptic conditions, love amongst chaos, the survival of hope, and some grueling space sequences. Oh, and there's also that Meteor hurtling towards Earth. But the question is - as tyrannical as it may be - does Deep Impact flourish in these ambitious, creating the supreme Sci Fi indulgence of disaster and "real" drama? The answer, sadly, is no. But there are not many science fiction films nowadays that can work on more than just "science fiction" levels; last years Gattaca was one of them, Space Odyssey another (yes, that is a gap of about 30 years). Deep Impact is great as a Sci Fi, but terrible as a drama. When reporter Jennie Lerner (Tea Leoni, of TV's The Naked Truth) investigates what she believes to be a White House sex scandal, she finds herself on hot pursuit of the greatest news scoop in history. Trouble is, she doesn't know what she's chasing. She does recognize that it's big - really big - when she bumbles into an interrogation with President of the USA Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman). In 48 hours, he addresses a dignified speech to the nation, announcing that a Meteor is on a crash-collision course to Earth. And that over the previous 2 years the world's biggest ever space shuttle, "The Messiah," had been constructed by the USA and Russia to destroy the troublesome rock with nuclear technology. The world "hopes for the best and prepares for the worst," constructing massive underground caves in the confidence that life will go on even after collision. As Deep Impact's promo posters read: "Oceans Rise, Cities Fall, Hope Survives." The primary problem with Deep Impact lies with its central character, portrayed insipidly by Leoni - a hazy, almost petulant actor who really does belong as a sitcom character only. Her role as an arrogant and presumptuous reporter has been done to death; picking journalist characteristics ranging from Lois Lane to Harry Shearer in Godzilla - and all the common cliches are unveiled. James Cromwell delivers a fitting line: "I know you're just a reporter, but you used to be a person, right?" As far as a capable cast is concerned, this is not a problem with Deep Impact, having three Oscar winners and two Oscar nominated actors. But they all tend to look overrun and imbecilic - struggling to maintain respect whilst muttering overly ambitious and unsatisfying dialogue. Although Morgan Freeman is often buoyantly powerful as the aristocratic Beck, when was the last time we saw him in his true, Oscar deserving form? Certainly not in his recent run of films - Hard Rain, Amistad, Kiss the Girls and Chain Reaction. In fact, it's been five years since Freeman has selected a truly impressive character to play (in The Shawshank Redemption); with the possible exception of the alluring detective William Somerset in Seven (and his replica performance in Kiss the Girls). Robert Duvall, grasping "hero" status in the film, is the only other actor worthy of a mention - giving an amicable presence as an astronaut brought out of retirement to lead The Messiah. One of his featured scenes, a quest to destroy the Meteor using nuclear devices, brings back memories of better times - of times of A Space Odyssey - and is a minor triumph in itself. But even with Deep Impact's moments of gripping cinema, forming superb Science Fiction framework, it fluffs up too many times to make it a credible experience. The film comes nail bitingly close to being a worthwhile epic to add to this years blockbuster tally, but Mimi Lee seems never able to keep it in capable, focused control. Review © copyright Luke Buckmaster -------------------------------------------------- Email bucky@alphalink.com.au to subscribe to my newsletter (unless, of course, you already have) or lukebuckmaster@hotmail.com.au for any inquiries or feedback -------------------------------------------------- Sites syndicating my reviews: MovieZone: http://moviezone.alphalink.com.au Mostly Movies: http://welcome.to/mostlymovies Festivale: http://festivale.webcentral.com.au Imdb: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Luke+Buckmaster -------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 29 10:51:25 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed5.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Andrew Hicks Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 29 Jun 1998 04:10:20 GMT Organization: University of Missouri - Columbia Lines: 89 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6n743c$jn8$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer27.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 899093420 20200 (None) 140.142.64.2 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12969 Keywords: author=hicks X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer27.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12174 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1952 DEEP IMPACT A film review by Andrew Hicks Copyright 1998 Andrew Hicks (1998) *1/2 (out of four) There's a 1,000-foot tidal wave at the end of DEEP IMPACT. I'd say it pretty accurately represents the towering flood of the last two years worth of disaster movies, which are getting more Irwin Allen- esque with every release. The early wave of this revival, while just as cheesy and laughable, at least knew to include thrills every five to ten minutes. DEEP IMPACT tries to disguise itself as a human drama, with endless filler comprised of disaster prevention plans the country keeps taking. The repeating cycle is as follows -- the president (Morgan Freeman) will go on TV and tell the country that there's a remote chance a comet will strike the earth, but that the nation's crack scientists and astronauts have some brilliant plan to stop the problem. Then we get to see the plan in action, in some sequence utterly lacking suspense. The mission will barely fail, and Freeman will tell the country that the comet is still headed toward Earth, and there's a remote chance it will strike, but that the nation's crack scientists and astronauts have some brilliant plan to stop the problem. It goes on and on throughout the movie, but every time Freeman goes on TV, we know his plan is going to fail. How do we know this? Because we've seen the TV ads for DEEP IMPACT, ads that feature Freeman telling the nation that "the comet is still headed right for us" and show disaster shots of the comet striking Earth and the giant tidal wave spreading. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the movie. Successful disaster movies have the main disaster toward the beginning and more little disasters that follow, but DEEP IMPACT saves its one disaster for the end and discloses all in its 30-second TV spots. Television is what's wrong with DEEP IMPACT. The main character, played by Tea Leoni, is a low-level broadcast journalist for MSNBC (and that's the mere tip of the product-placement iceberg) who stumbles upon a huge government conspiracy. She thinks it's an instance of an ex-Secretary of Something or Other (James Cromwell) resigning because of a mistress, and that maybe he took the fall for the president in the same area. When she goes nosing around Cromwell, he begs her to keep it under wraps. "I know you're just a reporter, but you used to be a human being." She figures out what's really going on after getting roughed up by some FBI men and doing an Internet search, where all good journalists learn the difference between a mistress and an extinction- level comet. Upon a top-secret meeting with President Freeman, Leoni agrees to keep the story under wraps until the president can hold a press conference, at which she gets to ask the first question. And everyone knows, if you get to ask the first question, baby you're a star. Leoni ends up in the anchor chair, broadcasting every step of the comet's collision course with Earth. And I'm sure it's comforting for her to know that, even though the world's ending in a matter of months, she's a cable news personality. So there she is, narrating the six-astronaut mission to blow the comet up. Such personalities as Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau and Blair Underwood cash their paychecks and go through the motions of this dragged-out process. But as anyone who's seen the commercials knows, the astronauts fail. They only end up breaking the comet into two pieces, which means even more destruction to the Earth. Yeah, thanks, NASA. That's when Freeman has to come on TV for the last time and say goodbye to all the people who aren't picked to live in the Missouri cave site for two years. They even have animals, two by two, ready to climb into the cave. If the focus had been on people living inside these caves after the world had been destroyed, DEEP IMPACT could have been a far more interesting movie. Instead we watch as a lovestruck Elijah Wood defies all odds to chase down his young wife, while people pack the highways out of town. The reasoning is, of course, that if a comet is going to strike, they might as well be out in some scenic rural location. And, amusingly, the highway is spotted with people in U-Haul trucks. I'm sure it's comforting to know that, even though the world's ending in a matter of minutes, the U-Haul people are doing the most business of their lives. Visit the Movie Critic at Large homepage at http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html Close to 1,000 reviews with a comedic flair... From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 29 10:53:59 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Berge Garabedian" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 28 Jun 1998 19:28:10 GMT Organization: None Lines: 80 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6n65ga$18r8$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: NNTP-Posting-Host: homer07.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 899062090 41832 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12951 Keywords: author=garabedian X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer07.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12142 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1946 DEEP IMPACT RATING: 6.5 / 10 --> So-so Review Date: June 11, 1998 Director: Mimi Leder Writers: Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin Producers: David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck Actors: Morgan Freeman as President Beck Téa Leoni as Jenny Lerner Robert Duvall as Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner Elijah Wood as Leo Biederman Genre: Drama / Science-Fiction Year of Release: 1998 Mimi Leder's follow-up to the Dreamworks studio's first ever cinematic feature, THE PEACEMAKER (5.5/10), leads the twin set of comet movies set to hit the theatres in the summer of 1998. ARMAGEDDON with Bruce Willis will follow this early-riser in late July. PLOT: A gigantic comet is set to strike Earth within the next year. A sextet of qualified personnel are sent into space to blow the comet up before it smashes into ground zero and annihilates all of mankind. Meanwhile, all of the inhabitants of dear planet Earth must begin to deal with the not-too-unrealistic approach of Doomsday. Panic and suspense ensues. CRITIQUE: Mostly interesting, flawed, piece about the circumstances that would follow an end of the world scenario such as this. The special effects are great (especially near the end of the film), but overall the film plays more like a drama than any kind of special effect or science-fiction extravaganza. For the most part, I didn't really "get into" the characters' personal lives, as they would have liked us to, but I must admit that these characters are a little more developed than your basic summer special-effect blockbuster (Mrs. JoBlo on the other hand, heartily felt for the characters, as displayed by her excessive unleashing of tears through most of the second half of this flick.) The actors in the movie were also pretty good, with Freeman and Duvall showing up with the strongest performances. Leoni didn't really impress me in her role as the feisty, yet sensitive, reporter, but the crew of the "Messiah" (the spaceship sent up to destroy the comet) were genuinely tough and believable. Of course, I hold a special place in my heart for John Favreau, who wrote and starred in my favourite picture of 1996, SWINGERS (8.5/10). All in all, if you're in the mood for a decent time at the movie theatre, with some great special effects (when needed), I would suggest you go see this film but without too many high expectations. If you're into character development and believable personalities, I recommend you skip this sucker and go straight to your nearest video store for the latest in your "wear-care-and-tear" movies. The movie does run close to two hours, but you won't really feel it, because it does move at quite a rapid pace. Overall, a decent improvement for Ms. Leder from the dismal PEACEMAKER, but still, nothing to write home about. Oh, and one more piece of advice for Ms. Leder: try to sprinkle your films with a slight touch of humour once in a while, and things might not seem so grim to the audience. Both of her films lack highly in this regard. Little Known Facts: Téa Leoni's real name is Téa Pantleoni (Téa means Goddess). She was born in New York and stands 5"7. She married X-files star David Duchovny in 1997, and has been quoted as saying, ""I don't do T&A very well because I haven't got much of either." She actually auditioned for a Charlie's Angels (1976) remake role (as a dare) and got the part. A writer's strike in Hollywood meant the series was never made, but the pre-publicity was enough to get her noticed. Robert Duvall once said, ""When I started taking theater classes I began to make all As. Before that I didn't even know what an A was." When he first moved to NY to pursue his acting career, he shared an apartment with his older brother and four other aspiring actors, among them a young fellow by the name of Dustin Hoffman. -------------------------------------------- Visit JoBlo's Movie Emporium http://www.microtec.net/~drsuess/ -------------------------------------------- (c) 1998 Berge Garabedian From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 29 10:54:12 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!newsfeed.ecrc.net!news.idt.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: aw220@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Alex Fung) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 29 Jun 1998 04:09:43 GMT Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Lines: 172 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6n7427$uui$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer13.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 899093383 31698 (None) 140.142.64.4 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12963 Keywords: author=fung X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer13.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12152 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1947 DEEP IMPACT (Paramount - 1998) Starring Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Morgan Freeman, Maximilian Schell Screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown Directed by Mimi Leder Running time: 120 minutes ** (out of four stars) Alternate Rating: C Note: Some may consider portions of the following text to be spoilers. Be forewarned. ------------------------------------------------------------- The act of self-sacrifice is one of the most affecting things that can be depicted in a film, and it's something that DEEP IMPACT incessantly attempts to exploit throughout its running time. Blatantly attempting to tug on the heartstrings of its audience, the film wallows in the selflessness of its characters' actions to such an extent that it ultimately chokes upon its own nobility. DEEP IMPACT is the first of 1998's aspiring major summer blockbusters, and a distinct one in that its focus is less on wanton destruction and more on characterization (no surprise when considering that its screenwriters are Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin). The film presents us with the scenario of a newly-discovered comet that's headed on a trajectory bringing it on a collision course with Earth, promising to destroy life as we know it, and then splinters off into three subplots: an enterprising young reporter, Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni), embittered by her father's (Maximilian Schell) divorce of her mother (Vanessa Redgrave, wasted) and subsequent remarriage to a much younger woman; Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood), a high-school amateur astronomer who's the first to discover the comet (which consequently bears, in part, his name), and his sweetheart romance with neighbour Sarah (Leelee Sobieski); and a joint American-Russian space mission to intercept and destroy the interstellar threat, manned by cagey veteran Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) and a team of fresh-faced, media-savvy astronauts. Tying these threads together is U.S. President Beck (Morgan Freeman), who appears intermittently in order to make grave televised announcements to the public and recap what's happened in the film if you stepped out for popcorn. While it's somewhat odd to find an effects-friendly scenario primarily driven by character dramatics rather than visual eye-candy, none of the three major vignettes are particularly compelling, and the treacly uplifting effect clearly desired by director Mimi Leder isn't achieved. The story arcs for each of the threads are laboriously familiar, and there are so many scenes which involve our characters ignoring instincts of self-preservation in order to do the right thing that scenes of poignancy become increasingly ineffective. The weakest of the subplots is that of MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner, who inadvertently stumbles across the news of the comet while investigating another story; the whole ELE political intrigue angle of the film is misguided and plays as a desperate plot device to move the story ahead. It doesn't help matters any that Ms. Leoni's performance is surprisingly lifeless -- she's perpetually shellshocked throughout the film, making her entire thread more distracting than engaging. (A scene which calls upon her to drunkenly cackle at someone's innocuously oblivious comment that "life goes on" is wretched both in its conception and execution.) Hinging upon the audience's involvement with the tenuous relationship between Jenny and her estranged father in the face of impending catastrophe, this subplot falls well short. Similarly, there's much to be desired with Leo Biederman's story, which encapsulates the life-and-death drama of DEEP IMPACT. While President Beck informs the American public that heroic astronauts have been sent to eradicate the comet threat, a backup plan is nearing completion. A network of vast caves have been created to house one million Americans and ensure their survival for up to two years should the comet strike the planet; as well as a list of predesignated personnel, a national lottery, it is announced, will be held to select who will fill the shelters. In reality, of course, this proclamation would wind up being tied up in the courts for years (the clause which deems those over 50 to be automatically excluded from the draw in particular is a real ageism stickler), but no matter -- this is the movies, where people are far more altruistic; those who fail to be picked and are essentially condemned to death mostly stand outside the cave base camps and look mildly irritated. Where DEEP IMPACT makes a bad step is when the young astronomer Leo, selected to go into the caves by virtue of his co-discovery of the comet, proposes to dreamgirl Sarah so that, as his wife, she'll also be given passage to the caves and be able to survive the impending disaster. Backed by a gentle musical interlude, it's a scene that's clearly intended to be sweet and touching, but given her opposition to the idea, I thought it was surprisingly extortionistic, akin to declaring "Marry me or die." The film plays the Leo / Sarah subplot in hokey manner, wavering back and forth on whether or not she'll join him in the survival caves, and hits each note in predictable fashion; in a scene where Leo races around on motorcycle in desperate search of his beloved, there's one shot where he screeches his bike to a halt and tosses his head back to look over his shoulder as the music heroically crescendos which is such a familiar staple that it almost had me groaning aloud. Meanwhile, Spurgeon Tanner and the crew of spacecraft The Messiah are given some artificial conflict of their own to deal with in addition to disabling the lethal potential of the comet. The young astronauts, led by Oren Monash (Ron Eldard), are resentful of Tanner's mere presence on the mission due to his age -- this is a young man's game, they believe. It's a ridiculous plot angle used for no other discernable reason than to spice up the subplot -- is there *any* doubt that the wily veteran will win the respect of his crewmates? -- but Mr. Duvall and Mr. Eldard do what they can to give it a credible spin. There's some obligatory space-bound suspense involving the astronauts navigating a dangerously-unstable comet surface, which is staged nicely but fails to surprise in its aftermath. The one performer which comes out best in the film (other than James Cromwell, whose participation is essentially that of a cameo) is Mr. Freeman. The role is undemanding, but his sheer onscreen presence and the gravity with which he's able to convey his dialogue powers him through questionable material. To a large degree, Mr. Freeman is effective because for the most part his character doesn't interact with any of the film's other characters at all, but directly addresses the audience; essentially isolated, it's as if he's in his own separate (and superior) film. While Ms. Leder depicts a world under siege, it's a shame that DEEP IMPACT chose to underplay the mass chaos and lawlessness that would legitimately accompany the advent of such a catastrophic event. (The fact that the country has been placed under martial law is touched upon, but with the arrival of the end of the world, that would likely mean little.) The film would be a much more visceral and provocative experience had it dared to show society coming apart at its seams, as in Steve De Jarnatt's MIRACLE MILE or in THE TWILIGHT ZONE's "The Shelter" episode. There's also the questionable inclusion of a shot of the Capitol under reconstruction -- it's obviously intended to be uplifting and life-affirming, but it's an odd choice to make when one considers that the destruction of the White House was by far the most popular -- nay, the *centerpiece* -- visual effects shot for Roland Emmerich's blockbuster INDEPENDENCE DAY which left crowds cheering in glee. Since audiences clearly enjoy seeing the landmarks of the American establishment being shredded, one wouldn't necessarily expect that their symbolic reconstruction would be a crowdpleaser. For some reason, the film includes an early sequence in which an astronomer is killed in an automobile accident while scrambling to get the word out on the approaching killer comet. Since the impact of the incident is negligible -- the data ultimately does reach its intended parties -- and the character is never spoken of again, I'm left with the nagging suspicion that it was included primarily so that there'd be at least one explosion during the film's opening hour, but the scene laid the groundwork for something more potentially ironic; the world was left unprepared for the comet because the astronomer's mail server went down. Yeah, I know that feeling. DEEP IMPACT is certainly more of a human drama than it is a disaster film (likely to the consternation of the audience drawn in by the promise of widespread destruction and mayhem) -- indeed, there's essentially only the single apocalyptic sequence which has been heavily featured in its promotional material -- and as a character-driven drama, it fails on that level. - Alex Fung email: aw220@freenet.carleton.ca web : http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/ -- Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca) | http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/ "Unlike you, I'm tolerant of weirdness." - Jennifer Jason Leigh, CROOKED HEARTS From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jun 29 10:54:34 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!newsfeed5.telia.com!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Seth Bookey Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 29 Jun 1998 04:11:24 GMT Organization: None Lines: 90 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6n745c$18o4$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer16.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 899093484 41732 (None) 140.142.64.5 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #12980 Keywords: author=bookey X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer16.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12185 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1954 Deep Impact (1998) Seen on 14 June 1998 by myself for $5.50 at the SONY Loews Showplace I am a real sucker. I cried at this movie. But remember that I cry during everything. If children die, parents die, dogs or cats die, if any of them come back from the other world to haunt and love you, if someone knows they are dying and are having a final farewell, if something selfless and devoted happens, I am there with Kleenex (TM). Heck, I cried during the McDonalds commercial when they make that retarded kid they hired feel important because they let him work there. So I am a big mushpot, okay? I love a good movie and a good cry and it's nice when they coincide but they can be mutually exclusive. Read on... *Deep Impact* knows exactly how to manipulate the emotions. This is essential since there is a variety of problems with the screenplay. The first problem is that there are too many characters. The magic is that they are able to manipulate a great deal of them into emotional situations that an extinction-level event like a meteor hitting Western Canada will bring. Unfortunately, the main reason people go to these movies is to see the destruction and the special effects, so the movie's best scenes appear in commercials and the surprises are at a minimum. For example, the whole beginning of the movie could have had more impact (no pun intended) if they took the tack of MSNBC reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) stumbling onto something big first, and then showed the comet's discovery in flashback. So, we all know a huge comet is coming toward Earth. Luckily, President Beck (Morgan Freeman) is hopeful that the big spaceship Messiah headed by Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall) will be able to implant nuclear warheads in the moving meteor by landing on it (sound pretty impossible, eh?). His backup plan is "The Ark"--a huge cave that will house the best minds in America (Europe apparently is on another planet) and people selected by lottery. [The real sci-fi aspect is this: How did a black man get elected to the Presidency in the present time? I don't expect to see that in my own lifetime, and I'm a young liberal!] It's set in the present, and being an anti-senior nation, no one older than 50 is allowed in the tunnel. This poses a problem to Jenny, as her mother is played by Vanessa Redgrave--a national treasure, for God's sake! It's an outrage! Didn't anyone see Julia? Are we still mad about her PLO affections? Someone should have made an exception. This country was built on making exceptions. Known for her work on the TV series *ER*, director Mimi Leder does a pretty good job with a panoramic script that calls for nationalistic space heroics involving an astronaut crew and their families, a teenage love story and their two families, the reporter and her divorced parents and all her coworkers, and a President who's married to a family we never actually see and all the President's men. There is just way too much going on here. Her successes, however, are the emotional tearjerker scenes, and the scenes involving tension, as seen in the two space missions. These required good direction and editing. The actors do a pretty good job. Redgrave and Duvall are excellent as always. Leoni is pretty good as well, considering this is her first lead role in a summer blockbuster. Elijah Wood and Leelee Sobieski are good as the teenage lovers, considering how little that story was shown. Two more problems: The movie is a commercial for NBC and MSNBC. Those logos are throughout the film. Stars from *ER* and NBC--Ron Eldard and Blair Underwood as two of the astronauts, and Laura Innes as Beth Stanley are here also. The other problem is that the special effects are not all that great. It's about two steps up from NRA Chairman Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments from the 1950s. Plus, knowing a comet is heading to the Atlantic, why was anyone in NYC, much less sitting leisurely reading a paper in Washington Square Park. I guess it's more fun to destroy New York City when you get to see New Yorkers hurt also. The only thing missing was a woman absentmindedly walking her baby in a pram across Broadway while the tsunami wave is bearing down on her. *Deep Impact* is best seen trapped in the theatre, in the full grasp of it's manipulation. You'll laugh (unintentionally), you'll cry, you'll see New York destroyed (again). Just try to pay less than full price. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin. At least that's what they called it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021 sethbook@panix.com; http://www.panix.com/~sethbook More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jul 7 16:13:28 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!masternews.telia.net!news-nyc.telia.net!howland.erols.net!wn3feed!135.173.83.25!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Tim Voon Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 7 Jul 1998 05:29:19 GMT Organization: stirling Lines: 50 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6nsbnf$fci$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer17.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 899789359 15762 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13123 Keywords: author=voon X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer17.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12312 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1978 DEEP IMPACT 1998 A film review by Timothy Voon Copyright 1998 Timothy Voon 2 :-) :-) for heartfelt impact Cast: Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, Morgan Freeman, Leelee Sobieski, James Cromwell Director: Mimi Leder Producers: David Brown, Richard D. Zanuck Screenplay: Michael Tolkin, Bruce Joel Rubin If ever there was ever a disaster movie that focussed more on the emotional issues of love and sacrifice, than the actual special effects of destroying earth, then it will probably be remembered as DEEP IMPACT. Man is on the verge of extinction as a comet plummets towards earth, and like the dinosaurs before us, the human race is about to become fossilised. But unlike the dinosaurs, mankind has a great ability to innovate. With the combined effort between ex-cold war enemies, the US and the USSR, a group of astronauts are assembled to blow up the big rock. If you were expecting to see large tidal waves, rip-apart famous American cities, then your wait will be a long one. Much of the movie focuses on the loneliness of a wannabe famous reporter, with divorced parents. A great scene where a daughter says to her estranged father, ‘It was a perfect day’, and moments later a large wave thumping them into oblivion. An emotionally charged scene, where a mother screams to her daughter escaping on a motorcycle, ‘Take my baby, take my baby!’ This is soon followed by lovers holding each other peacefully, before being blasted into oblivion by the same large wave. Before finally, the first Black American President (Morgan Freeman), giving some tear jerking words post IMPACT, about big waves rolling, cities falling but mankind living on etc. etc. as if this movie was not emotionally packed enough already. The virtually unknown cast, except for some golden oldies (Robert Duvall, Vanessa Redgrave, Maxcimilian Schell), who give this movie some credibility and is a great economical plan for the worth-waiting-for special effects heaped towards the end. Some people will dislike the attempts at mixing a bowl full of thoughtfulness in with a dish full of ‘special effects’, but it really ain’t half bad. Timothy Voon e-mail: stirling@netlink.com.au Movie Archives http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Tim+Voon Hugues Bouclier’s Movies in Melbourne http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~bouclier/week/movies.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jul 13 13:55:47 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.uk.ibm.net!ibm.net!baron.netcom.net.uk!netcom.net.uk!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!woodstock.news.demon.net!demon!newshub.northeast.verio.net!news.idt.net!howland.erols.net!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!135.173.83.24!wn3feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Ted Prigge" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Jul 1998 15:56:42 GMT Organization: None Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6o5djq$tho$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer23.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 900086202 30264 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13201 Keywords: author=prigge X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer23.u.washington.edu Lines: 124 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12382 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1991 DEEP IMPACT (1998) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge Director: Mimi Leder Writers: Bruce Joe Rubin and Michael Tolkin Starring: Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave, Leelee Sobieski, Ron Eldard, Mary McCormack, Blair Underwood, Jon Favreau, Laura Innes, Rya Kihlstedt, Richard Schiff, Betsy Brantley, Derek de Lint, Kurtwood Smith, James Cromwell, Charles Martin Smith With "Deep Impact," what you really have is not only a return-to-form for the "Disaster" Films, which at best were suspense films centered around the various people involved (my personal favorite is the Steve McQueen/Paul Newman/William Holden/O.J. Simpson epic, "The Towering Inferno"), but also a little bit of optimism for future disaster films. After all, haven't we been bombarded with the most inane disaster films as of late (such as "Twister" and "Volcano," neither which had one interesting character)? We sure have, and if anything, "Deep Impact" is a nice try at being something great, as well as a big fresh of air from seeing way too many big special effects become the forefront in films. "Deep Impact" is the first of the two comets-heading-directly-for-earth arriving in theaters this summer (the other being "Armageddon," which is frantically trying to make itself look more human), but the focus isn't even really on the comet itself - it's on the people involved. After all, if a comet was to strike earth, this would really make up for about five to ten minutes of cool special effects when the comet actually hits, and perhaps about ten to fifteen minutes of other special effects when the astronaut team tries to blow it up. There's a whole lot of filling time in there, and "Deep Impact" figures that it shouldn't be about the comet itself but rather its impact on the people it will affect. The film begins with the discovery of the comet, and quickly establishes the measures taken by political offices around the world to deal with it. They decide to send a Russian-American team of astronauts/miners to land on the comet, plant a couple bombs, and then set it off months before it hits earth. Of course, there's a back-up plan, which involves randomly selecting a certain amount of people to live in a cave for a couple years until the dust settles and they can try and repopulate the world (a plan which was thought up in none other than "Dr. Strangelove"). This is all very scary, and luckily, it's handled that way, almost in the same scary way that "Outbreak" dealt with the blocking off of the town so that the virus did not escape. But this is not the real focus of the film: it's main point is to show you the various people it affects, and so we can see a wide variety of people, it choses three chief groups. We have Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood), who was the kid who discovered the comet during a meeting of "The Astronomers Club," and who has to deal with the fact that he may not be able to bring his girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski) along to live in the caves, and if he may, she may not go because her parents may not be able to come along. There's also Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni, who has a very cute neurotic quality), a rising MSNBC anchor (giving the station the most press it has ever had) who not only tries to uncover the comet story when it's still off-grounds to the public, but who finds she has to deal with her feelings for her father (Oscar-winner Maximilian Schell) when he decides to remarry a younger woman instead of getting back together with her mother (Vanessa Redgrave). And we also have the story of the astronauts/miners who are landing on the comet, led by the aging Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall, hot once again off his performance in "The Apostle") after an accident with the other leader (Ron Eldard). As "Armageddom" is making these people the focus of its film, "Deep Impact" makes them an equal to the other two stories, and tries to flesh out their lives to show the pain of having to perhaps be a martyr (one astronaut, played by Mary McCormack, wryly says "If we do this, they'll name high schools after us"). And at the head of it all is the President, played with dignity and grace by Morgan Freeman, who is so good in the role that I'd probably vote for him if he ran in a couple years. Unfortunately very little is done with his character, and one early scene involving him actually harms his persona from that point on, even if in all reality it was only a hoax (you have to see it to understand what I mean). I've been hearing lots of people complaining about the hokiness that this film has, how all of its characters are stereotypes or paper thin, and partially these people are right. This film is corny, and no character is fully fleshed out enough to truly and deeply associate with them. Then again, the same thing could be said about "Titanic," which featured two romantic leads who were hardly fully-realized people (she's rich and he's poor, and they love eachother...that's about it). But like I said with that film, stereotyping and not fully developing characters actually helps here. The people in this film are broad generalizations that only help us to feel for them more and find ourselves in them. We can all (hopefully) associate with Leo when he's worried about parting with his beloved girlfriend, because, hey, we wouldn't want to leave her behind either. And we can all associate with Jenny, because we've all had a grudge against someone that we fear we may have to fess up to if something like this comes along. If these people were more complex, we'd not be able to really find ourselves in them, because the more complex a person is and the more we know about them, the less we can say "Yeah, the same thing happens to me too!" and since that's what this film's big strength is, I can't say it's a big flaw. "Deep Impact" has many many many problems, so many that a big list could be made of them (every twist in the story happens so the conclusion can happen, what's up with Charles Martin Smith being killed for no reason in the beginning, why deal with the cover-up of the comet when it really has nothing to do with the rest of the film, not enough Vanessa Redgrave or Maxmilian Schell to really feel for them completely, how come Elijah can easily climb that mountain, etc, etc, etc.), but if I were to make a list of them and take off points for every thing that went wrong with this film, I'd really be cheating you out of a review. If anything, the real problem with the film is it puts too much into its conclusion and not enough into its exposition. But "Deep Impact" is, after all, more of a sign of optimism for future films than a really great film. With this and "Titanic," we see Hollywood is changing for the better, and that future films won't be as soulless as, say, "Godzilla" or "Twister." We can expect better characters, more interesting plotlines, and much more. If you're having trouble seeing past the cliches, then think of that scene where you see the big tidal wave towards the end about to come down on two main characters, you don't think "Wow! What a cool effect!," but instead think "Oh shit, that wave is going to kill them!" I could easily point out that this scene is cheap because one character had to kill themself to put them there, and that it looks fake, and a couple other things to demean it. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that I cared. MY RATING (out of 4): *** Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jul 13 13:55:47 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.wli.net!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Michael Chen Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 10 Jul 1998 16:07:19 GMT Organization: Telstra Internet Browse Server Lines: 98 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6o5e7n$fue$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer26.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 900086839 16334 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13217 Keywords: author=chen X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer26.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12394 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1997 DEEP IMPACT (1998) Film Review by Michael Chen Rating: *½ (out of ****) Rating: 3.4 (out of 10) Director: Mimi Leder Starring: Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Morgan Freeman Screenplay by: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin Duration: 120 minutes There’re so many things to criticize about I don’t know where to start. Recommendation: turn off your brain - don’t be like me, decreasing the rating everyday because I think about it too much. A comet is about to strike Earth, causing a catastrophe similar to the Extinction Level Event (E.L.E.) that wiped out the dinosaurs. What follows is the story of a President’s bid to think for the good of his people, a rising reporter, the love story of two teenagers (one of whom discovered the comet), and a team of astronauts on the ship “Messiah” to save the world. Firstly, there is nothing outstandingly inferior about the making of the film (nor is there anything outstandingly good about it), but the plot holes make the film corny and stupid. To be honest, I was more moved by the trailer than the film itself (which isn’t saying much). Mimi Leder’s follow-up to “The Peacemaker” is equally incompetent, with all the big stars wasted. (Perhaps I’m just annoyed that the release of “The Peacemaker” in the US overshadowed a far superior thriller, “The Assignment”.) It is very obvious that the title not only represents the big boom that will result from the collision, but also connotes the heavy impact on human lives. However, the film simply fails on that note. The effects are worn-out, the substandard screenplay limited the acting, and the director continued her sad run in terms of good-film-making credentials. She’s still making good money though. Téa Leoni’s unfortunate character, the news reporter, is the foundation of the story and of the cast. But the film suffers from too many characters that do not need to be explored. Robert Duvall’s aging astronaut is lifeless, and Morgan Freeman’s President is restricted to, well, a righteous President (which means he’s not interesting at all). Leoni’s character is the only appealing one, and is played with reasonable conviction (but a rather peculiar showing when reporting for MSNBC), but was definitely undervalued by the director and screenwriters. WARNING: SPOILERS INCLUDED (but a lot of it is irrelevant and predictable anyway). Plot holes, plot holes, plot holes. Now, E.L.E. is threatening to exterminate more than 99% of the human race, and they send eight puny little nuclear bombs up there? Where’s the logic? Leder could have at least made it plausible with 20. And then it turns out that only a few percent of the world population actually perish, and those less selfish ones (the ones that stayed at home) were the victims. The film was almost mocking them, telling them they had died for nothing. I also fail to see how two teenagers, carrying a baby, would be the first to climb up the mountain/hill, even with a motorbike for a head-start. It’s unlikely that the dust will take just two years to settle, but that doesn’t really matter. Building caves was a strategy mentioned in “Dr. Strangelove”, which proposed that people lived underground for one hundred or so years. Now THAT is a more practical use for caves. What IS the point of living in caves? There is no, unlike “Dr. Strangelove”, any radioactivity outside to restrict exposure. How do plants grow? If humans have the technology to keep plants alive in caves, there’s no reason why they can’t do it in the open. The President disclosed that other countries have been preparing their own caves. Obviously this means that the other countries were informed a long time ago, and you can’t be serious to say that nobody leaked the news to the media. In an important mission like that of the “Messiah”, for that matter ANY mission, it is impossible that isn’t sufficient fuel for an extra couple of hundred metres, needless to say tens of kilometres. This is not DEEP Impact – it’s a frivolous CHEAP Impact. But even with all that, some overacting, and a 3.4 rating, it’s still watchable, just don’t think about it. Okay? ****: Classic ***½: Highly recommended; Excellent ***: Recommended **½: Okay; Passable **: Time-Killer *½: Ill-advised cure for boredom *: Keep an alarm clock beside you, also usually suitable to end a relationship ½: Try to restrain yourself from inflicting pain to anything nearby, including yourself and the screen, on realisation of how much time and money you have wasted Zero: No comment Welcome any questions, comments, and criticisms to microchip81@hotmail.com. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 13:20:20 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Choo Eng Aun, Jack" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 25 Jul 1998 16:43:28 GMT Organization: None Lines: 93 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6pd1vg$r38$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer14.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 901385008 27752 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13521 Keywords: author=choo X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer14.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12737 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2059 DEEP IMPACT (1998) Directed by Mimi Leder Starring : Morgan Freeman (President Beck) Tea Leoni (Jenny Lerner) Elijah Wood (Leo Beiderman) Robert Duvall (Spurgeon Tanner) Vanessa Redgrave (Robin Lerner) Maximilian Schell (Jason Lerner) Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin Running Time : 2hrs 10mins A Paramount/Dreamworks SKG Release Rating : ***1/2 out of ***** Reviewed by Jack Choo METEOR THREAT SET TO BLOW AWAY ALL VOLCANOES & TWISTERS! Summer is here again! This season could probably be the most ambitious = season this decade with Hollywood churning out films like DEEP IMPACT, = GODZILLA, THE X-FILES, ARMAGEDDON, THE TRUMAN SHOW, all of which has but = one main aim, to rock the box office. Leading the pack this summer is = DEEP IMPACT, one of the first few film releases from the = Spielberg-Katzenberg-Geffen's Dreamworks production company. Following = the rather dismal showing of their previous two releases; MOUSEHUNT and = AMISTAD, DEEP IMPACT shines with elements which could just make it one = of the biggest movies of the year. DEEP IMPACT begins with the discovery of an Earth bound comet during a = school astronomy outing by Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood) which = subsequently stirred up the political community of the world. Keeping = the information under wraps to prevent widespread panic, President Beck = (Morgan Freeman) took it upon himself and his subordinates to execute a = highly secretive space project to destroy the comet before it hits = earth. While pursuing a sex-scandal story amongst the presidential = ranks, ambitious up and coming reporter, Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) = unfolds the wool that President Beck has pulled over the citizens of the = world. As if the knowledge of the imminent annihilation of mankind is = not enough, Jenny has to come to terms with her father (Maximillian = Schell) leaving the mother for a younger woman.=20 President Beck announces the discovery and preparations to destroy the = comet exactly one-year later, with so much confidence that it left no = trace of panic within the American community. Achieving fame from = announcement of the comet Wolf-Beiderman en-route to Earth (the name of = its discoverers), Leo Beiderman continues life in his small town as a = young celebrity. A team of astronauts, led by the ageing veteran = astronaut Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall), was secretly trained to carry = out the mission to land on the comet and create and explosion with a = nuclear device, with the hope of blowing it out of its current path = towards Earth. Despite him being the most experienced in the team, the = younger generation of astronauts in the team doubts Tanner's ability due = to his age. But these are just problems of individuals. Life on Earth = goes on as any other day, confident that the comet will be destroyed. When the attempt to avert Wolf-Beiderman's path failed and caused the = comet to split into two: Comet Wolf and Comet Beiderman, the President = unfolds his contingency plan to evacuate part of the population, leaving = the rest to die. Citizens are randomly chosen to live underground for 2 = years prior to impact, when the dust due to the impact around earth have = settled, by then all life on the surface would have died. Jenny and Leo = were picked but many of their loved ones were not, only a handful of = Earth's population will be saved from destruction. =20 DEEP IMPACT's moving moments occur in the least special-effect laced = scenes. While the effects are fantastic, they only form a small part of = the film, which indulges itself in the development of its main = characters; Leo, Lerner and Tanner. Leo's struggle when he learns that = his girlfriend is not part of the population to be saved, Lerner's = dwindling relationship with her father and her pain for the mother's = loneliness, Tanner's strive to gain the respect he deserves from his = crew and his ultimate sacrifice, all form the backbone of DEEP IMPACT's = moving moments. DEEP IMPACT smells suspiciously like the previous year = release CONTACT despite vivid differences. I think its probably because = they both delve in a story of global proportions and indulges in the = premise of hope, faith and life itself. Both do not depend heavily on = eye-candy in the form of CGI effects. Director Mimi Leder (who won = numerous awards directing television series, and made her debut with = PEACEKEEPER last year) is definitely a director to watch.=20 Despite this being the first of the two meteor movies this summer (the = other being ARMAGEDDON), I think there will be stark differences in the = approach to the subject matter. While the premise of both may be the = same, execution and focus of the films will in fact show that DEEP = IMPACT has more focus on human elements than ARMAGEDDON, which is done = by the team which brought us BAD BOYS, CRIMSON TIDE and THE ROCK. =20 DEEP IMPACT should be able to satisfy a variety of audiences; from the = most action-craving to those who just want to immerse into its = manipulative but nonetheless dramatic premise. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 13:20:46 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.220.250.21!netnews1.nw.verio.net!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Richard Scheib" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 8 Aug 1998 16:07:54 GMT Organization: None Lines: 91 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6qht4q$vas$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer12.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 902592474 32092 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13789 Keywords: author=scheib X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer12.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12998 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2083 DEEP IMPACT USA. 1998. Director - Mimi Leder, Screenplay - Bruce Joel Rubin & Michael Tolkin, Producers - David Brown & Richard D. Zanuck, Photography - Dietrich Lohmann, Music - James Horner, Visual Effects - Industrial Light and Magic (Supervisors - Scott Farrar & Bill George), Special Effects Supervisor - Michael Lantieri, Production Design - Leslie Dilley. Production Company - Dreamworks SKG/Paramount. Tea Leoni (Jenny Lerner), Robert Duvall (Captain Spurgeon `Fish’ Tanner), Elijah Wood (Leo Beiderman), Morgan Freeman (President Beck), Maximilian Schell (Jason Lerner), Ron Eldard (Oren Monash), Vanessa Redgrave (Robin Lerner), Leelee Sobieski (Sarah Hotchner), Mary McCormack (Andrea Baker), Jon Favreau (Gus Partenza), Dougary Scott (Eric Vennekor), Laura Innes (Beth Stanley), James Cromwell (Alan Rittenhouse), Richard Schiff (Don Beiderman), Gary Werntz (Chuck Hotchner), Blair Underwood (Mark Simon), Charles Martin Smith (Marcus Wolf), Denise Crosby (Mrs Hotchner), Betsy Brantley (Ellen Beiderman) Plot: Investigating what she thinks is a White House sex scandal, a junior tv reporter unwittingly uncovers government plans to avert a comet the size of New York City which is on a collision course with the Earth. As the comet nears, the President launches a manned mission to detonate nuclear warheads and deflect its path while holding a national lottery to select people to be placed in safety in giant underground shelters. Every year studios seem, either by coincidence or a desire to outdo one another, to hit upon a particular theme all at once - in 1997 it was volcano movies, the year before big budget alien invasion films, and in 1998 it is asteroid/meteor collision films what with this and `Armageddon'. Asteroid/meteor collision films have not fared particularly well in the past - remember `Meteor' (1979) and the dire `Asteroid' mini-series (1997), with only the largely forgotten tv movie `A Fire in the Sky' (1978) having been in any way watchable. `Deep Impact' starts out giving some hope that it may reverse the trend. The script comes from Bruce Joel Rubin (who made two afterlife fantasies `Ghost' and `Jacob's Ladder' (both 1990) which both inserted some challengingly new ideas into traditional takes on afterlife themes) and Michael Tolkin (who wrote the intriguing `The Rapture' (1991) and the great `The Player' (1992)). The promising opening almost seems a sly dig at contemporary media obsession with Presidential scandal (even though the film was well into production before Monica Lewinsky was propelled from unknown office worker to household name) with a junior tv reporter thinking she has uncovered a juicy piece of White House scandal-mongering but instead finding she has accidentally uncovered plans to try and avert the disaster. This segues into a, if not scientifically believable, at least a quite exciting sequence involving a manned attempt to land on the comet. And the climax of the film has some really good mass disaster effects sequences. Unfortunately bookended in between them the film falls completely apart. It wants to tell a poignant story about various characters as they meet the impending holocaust but the different dramas it raises - young Elijah Wood's decision to abandon his place in the survival shelter and go back for his girlfriend; Tea Leone’s reconciliation with her estranged father after the suicide of her mother; aging shuttle pilot Robert Duvall coming to regard wounded commander Ron Eldard as the son he never had - have a melodramatic insipidity that is infuriating. And despite the film's two-hour length it only ever skates across the surface of these melodramas - for example one would have expected Wood's journey back to his girlfriend to have been one fraught with dramatic perils but all that one sees is him setting out and then just arriving back home. You sort of get the feeling you have wandered into a disaster movie that has been made by people who have watched too much `Barney' - a disaster movie filled with niceness and nobility and where no untoward sentiment ever encroaches. It almost becomes absurd in its saccharine treatment - looting and increased social disorder is mentioned as one of the effects of the impending holocaust but all that one ever sees of any of this is a big traffic jam on the highway; Vanessa Redgrave commits suicide but the film seems to almost deliberately avoid any mention of the actual words, it all takes place off-screen and is only ever alluded to. After the maddening banality of `Deep Impact', all that `Armageddon' really needed to do to become the better of 1998's two asteroid movies was simply to turn up. (I don't know if it is just my perverted mind or what but for some reason whenever I heard the title of the film it kept making me think more of a 1970s porn film than a mega-budget disaster spectacle. You know:- "She couldn't find sexual satisfaction until she met Joe and discovered fourteen inches ... of `Deep Impact’.") Reviewed by Richard Scheib ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 10 13:26:43 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!news.solace.mh.se!news.ecn.ou.edu!feed2.news.erols.com!erols!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!140.142.64.3!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: "Jerry Bosch" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Reviews: Dark Impact (1998), Armageddon (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 23 Jul 1998 05:03:01 GMT Organization: http://www.supernews.com, The World's Usenet: Discussions Start Here Lines: 94 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6p6g65$110c$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer24.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 901170182 33804 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #13487 Keywords: author=bosch X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer24.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:12721 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2055 THE DEEP IMPACT OF ARMAGEDDON - RANDOM THOUGHTS Warning: spoilers ahead. It is summer and the sky is falling. Hollywood has been deeply impacted and it has met the celestial army head on. When space shuttles are launched from Cape Canaveral hardly anything ever goes wrong but when they are launched from Hollywood we can expect lots of trouble because trouble is what summer blockbusters are about. Impending doom is not enough; you must deliver doom, as in Deep Impact; or experience near doom in the process of avoiding it, as in Armageddon. Deep Impact and Armageddon use different approaches to the problem of delivering disaster. If you are going to have Armageddon, then you must (a) have a flawed plan to avoid it and (b) limit Armageddon to less than Armageddon, since total oblivion is much too bleak for summer fare. That is the case with Deep Impact, which delivers a watered down version of Armageddon. On the other hand, if you are going to avoid Armageddon altogether, as is the case with Armageddon, you must (a) satisfy the disaster expectations with shallow impacts and (b) dedicate yourself to the proposition that every solution has a problem. The world finally survives, but the devil is in saving it. If disbelief is the coin of admission, Armageddon comes at a higher price. Deep Impact can afford to be realistic, because it plans to deliver the goods (Armageddon). Armageddon, however, after getting the minidisasters out the way, must strain credulity to the limit and well beyond in terms of tactical crises as a substitute for Armageddon. In Armageddon you get not one digital countdown but two. Taking both to the last second would have been in terrible taste, so the blue and the green wires, or the red and the yellow or whatever the colors, are cut with 3 seconds to spare in the first case. That significant sacrifice is the price that the screenwriters paid for the indulgence of avoiding the end of the world in the second case by the slim margin of just one second, which is the accepted standard. Both films are curiously faithful to the notion of a sacrificial lamb. I would be loath to accuse Christ of setting a bad precedent, but perhaps out of respect Hollywood refused to spare the world without the sacrifice of a hero. The fact that Hollywood felt compelled to put Christian formula ahead of Hollywood formula may be credibly used by the religious crowd as another example of the deep stronghold of the value-trader ethic in our culture. As a result we have two perfectly good actors, Robert Duvall and Bruce Willis going down in a style completely foreign to the image of the indestructible, infallible summer superhero. Any film in which humanity is bracing itself for imminent death will become a corn field at some point. The poignant good byes in Deep Impact involve characters that we either don’t know or care little for. As a result the sentimental farewells are maudlin and slightly annoying. By contrast, the corresponding scenes in Armageddon are integrated in the story. For the most part they are effective and well acted. In Deep Impact Robert Duvall delivers the competent job that is expected from a veteran of his caliber. Tea Leoni played her part too well for her own good. She was transparent: we saw the character and not the actress, which is good, and she played without Pacino hysterics or Nicholson histrionics, which should also be good. However, Hollywood (read audiences) does not reward that kind of integrity. The character was authentic and unfortunately, as such, not terribly likeable and a little bit dull. Ron Eldard was well behaved but lacked the gravity that is expected from a mission commander. Perhaps it is his voice, or it may be that asking him and us to make the transition from tubal imebecility to wide-screen rocket science is more than he and we could handle. In Armageddon, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, neither of which aspire to make us forget Maurice Evans, communicated surprisingly well the dimensions that should surface when substantial men of action face moral dilemmas. The inevitable father-daughter conflict was dead serious business in Deep Impact. In Armageddon it fluctuated between comedy relief and real emotion. This was just one case of the tongue-in-cheek approach with which Armageddon mollified the core of conflict which was none the less communicated in full measure. Steve Buscemi and Bob Thornton contributed strong performances in Armageddon. Deep Impact’s supporting cast was star studded, some of them burned out and others still (elsewhere) incandescent: Vanessa “The Van” Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell. Good actors with little to do but stay ahead of their creditors or advance the custodial accounts as the case may be. The Oscar however goes to MSNBC, who steals the show with its unseen but pervasive presence. Shades of Rebecca. The chances that any of my readers may let the summer pass without seeing either or both of these films are less than the chances of an asteroid hit on Earth. But if by force of the gravity of unusual circumstances you may find yourself so impacted, don’t go into a deep depression; it is not the end of the world . Raise your arms and head on to the next show. After all, the films are likely to re-orbit. Am I full of rocket exhaust? Yell at me at gp14@usa.net. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Feb 11 16:31:19 1999 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cyclone.news.idirect.com!island.idirect.com!newsfeed.axxsys.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: cbloom@iquest.net (Bob Bloom) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Deep Impact (1998) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 4 Feb 1999 18:14:13 GMT Organization: None Lines: 97 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <79co1l$8e4$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer18.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp3.u.washington.edu 918152053 8644 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #16490 Keywords: author=bloom X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer18.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:15682 rec.arts.sf.reviews:2250 Deep Impact (1998) 2 1/2 stars out of 4 Starring Tea Leoni, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman and Elijah Wood. The writers of Deep Impact framed a good idea. Forget about a special effects extravaganza. Instead, concentrate on the human element, on how people would react if they knew the end of the world was near. That's fine, but screenwriters Michael Tolkin (The Rapture) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) overextend themselves. They've created too many characters and too many subplots, thus some of their protagonists get short shrift and some of their stories go nowhere or merely hit dead ends. Deep Impact opens as Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood), a 14-year-old student and member of his high school astronomy club, discovers a new body in the night sky. His find is sent to Professor Wolf, a noted astronomer who makes the discovery that the body is a comet, which he names Wolf-Beiderman, and that it is on a collision course with Earth. But on his way to transmit the information to higher authorities in Washington, the astronomer is killed. This is a pointless plot device since the story jumps ahead several months and we learn the government knows all about Wolf-Beiderman. We learn this because TV reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) is investigating the suspicious resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury, whom she suspects is having an affair with a woman named "Ellie." When Jenny is kidnapped by the FBI and is taken to meet the president (Morgan Freeman) she learns that "Ellie" is really "E.L.E.," for extinction level event. The film's first reel is wasted on this, before any real action begins. It seems the government is already undertaking a plan to try to destroy or divert the comet by sending a team of astronauts to land on the body, plant nuclear weapons and blow it up. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the populace is told of a lottery in which 1 million people will be housed for two years in deep caverns in Missouri to preserve the human race. Actually, it's only 800,000 people as 200,000 scientists, doctors, artists and other professionals (no lawyers, we hope) already have been notified they will be saved. The rest will be chosen by a random computer selection of Social Security numbers. So, that's the set-up. From here director Mimi Leder pushes the story along. But it is rather slow going, especially here on Earth. The people are too nice, too noble, too stoic. Oh, Leder shows scenes of looting and rioting, but it's scattered and downplayed. For the most part the human race seems to be facing its end like those stiff-upper-lip passengers on the Titanic. Up in space, astronaut Spurgeon (what the heck kind of a name is that?) Tanner (Robert Duvall) and his team succeed only in splitting the seven-mile wide comet into two pieces, and both are still taking dead aim at Earth. We're more than 100 minutes into this two hour drama before the audience gets what it has come to see. The smaller comet strikes in the Atlantic off the East Coast creating gigantic tidal waves that destroy every major American city from Boston to Atlanta. But the filmmakers have been sabotaged in a sense by the studio. The scenes of the tidal wave hitting New York have been shown in television teasers for the movie so frequently that by the time they are seen on the big screen they have lost some of their awe. It is a case of familiarity breeding ennui. No pun intended, but they have lost their impact. The performances in Deep Impact are inconsistent. Duvall is his usual low-key self, playing his heroics in a matter-of-fact professional manner. Freeman as the president brings a weight and authority to the role that makes him a most believable head of state. Wood is exuberant as the youthful astronomer, but the subplot involving him, his girlfriend and their respective families seems a bit padded. Leoni is sincere, but a bit lightweight for a TV anchor. And Oscar-winners Vanessa Redgrave and Maximillian Schell as her estranged parents are given very little to do. This is the first of the summer's earth-meets-heavenly body disaster flicks. The second, Armageddon, opens July 1. Coming from producer Jerry Bruckheimer (The Rock, Con Air) and starring Bruce Willis, one can expect more pyrotechnics and machismo. For now, though, we will have to settle for Deep Impact. It's a flawed feature with noble intentions. Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at cbloom@iquest.net