Sunday evening is fast becoming the best part of the week for TV thanks to Chanel 5* here - in the past four weeks at this time they've been showing nothing but top class movies I'd never heard of before. First it was Killer Flood (Imdb: 3.8), then it was NYC:Tornado Terror (Imdb: 3.6), then Polar Storm (with that guy from Heroes and which actually managed to make the Core look sophisticated) (Imdb: 3.8), followed by Tornado Warning (which managed to feature both aliens and electric tornadoes!) (Imdb: 3.0), and most recently Ice Twisters (Imdb: 4.1). They've really been giving the Movie Mix channel a run for their money. That channel happened to be showing Meteor Storm (Imdb: 3.6) at the same time (a change from a lineup made exclusively of sequels to the movie Sniper - none of which I needed to know exist). These beautiful examples of cinematic majesty often feature middle shelf Canadian actors with Vancouver and its environs standing in for New York, Chicago and just about anywhere else. They do magic with their minimal budgets and minimal acting talent, often constructing some sort of crisis situation room, be it NASA headquarters or Army command, from about 5 people (probably half the cast) and 2 computers. In particular I wish I'd known the Guardian had been live tweeting a broadcast of Tornado warning: ...running away from an electrical tornado. Again, if you're not watching this, imagine a toilet roll made of clingfilm with a string of Poundland Christmas lights inside it. That is exactly what an electrical tornado looks like. So what fantastic made-for-tv disaster movie featuring the worst tornado special effects will there be next week? Can't wait.. Update: Well they really pulled out the stops for this one - Tidal Wave : No Escape (Imdb: 4.0) It promised a lot when it started with titles that looked like something from my Amiga 20 years ago. And the main star - Corbin Bernsen! Well, at that stage it looked so good I had to just turn it off right there.

Very cool blog full of just a couple of frames from movies shown as goold ol' animated gifs, giving this weird almost 3d effect. Lots more like the Dude below here via mefi

Seeing as how I tired of seeing posters everywhere of Julia Roberts with an ice cream spoon in her mouth, here's a nice snarky review of Eat, Pray, Love here, and how bad people would think it is if was actually written by a guy.. link I'm glad to know the movie is as bad (or worse) than I imagined it would be.

See also: Forrest Gump (1949), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1951) via metafilter

The premiere of Australia is tonight - Baz Luhrmann's new "epic" flick about this country, set around World War II or thereabouts, which is going to serve as national tourist adverts - both indirectly and directly. There's a big lavish celebrity showing outside the main cinema in Sydney CBD. The place certainly doesn't look that lavish normally - they'll really have to cover over the dirty Hungry Jacks just next door, as well as the discount athletic gear place downstairs. I realised I haven't actually seen any Baz Luhrmann films yet - don't know if this one is going to make me go; so far I'm feeling a bit meh about the whole thing.

When I think of 80's movies like Lethal Weapon, they still feel somewhat up to date, not ridiculously dated (setting aside that HUGE phone). That film is from 1986, but the same amount of time has passed since then as had passed in 1986 since the release of Goldfinger in 1964 - that seems like a huge difference. I can't imagine in 1986 people felt that 1964 was as close as 1986 feels to me. Does it just seem that way because of my age or is there something more to it. If I think of films from the 80's on, plenty still seem to be set in a noticeably modern world, whereas going back further into the 70's and 60's, everything gets exponentially older. Anyway before I got to espouse any theories, Kottke.org has gone and done just that, complete with fancy graphics. So at least I know its not all in my head.