LiveScience just released a pretty cool top 10: History’s 10 greatest explosions

If you’re lazy, here’s the list:

1. The Farthest Recorded Explosion
2. Shadow Casting Supernova
3. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (comet hitting Jupiter)
4. The K-T Extinction Impact Event
5. Mount Tambora (largest volcanic blast ever)
6. Tunguska (a comet hitting siberia)
7. The Trinity Blast (first a-bomb)
8. Chernobyl
9. The Halifax Explosion (cargo ship filled with explosives blowing up)
10. The Texas City Disaster (another cargo ship)

You have to read the list backwards to get a good ranking for disaster movie titles.  That suggests there is an optimal explosion size for disaster movies (you can’t make much of a movie about a supernova).

I would personally like to nominate The Halifax Explosion for the Hollwood treatment.  Here’s why:

• Happened in WWI, which means cool costumes and the like
• The explosion created a tsunami, which means the movie could pull off the rare double genre of Accidental Disaster and Natural Disaster
• Scientists and historians agree that: “Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed.” (courtesy the almighty Wikipedia)
• There was a blizzard the next day, adding to the drama

I’d pay to see that.  I should mention that a miniseries was already made, but we all know that’s just not the same.

-Jim

With his blank stares and receding hairline, Nicolas Cage is an easy target for living room movie critics. I, however, happen to like Face/Off and National Treasure, so I generally try and play devil’s advocate and stick up for the guy. Sadly, I find myself agreeing with the masses when it comes to his new Disaster movie Knowing.  The preview got my hopes up, but the movie just couldn’t come through.  Check out the review here before going to see this one…

My box set of natural disaster B-movies finally came from Amazon.  Like any true B-movies, these ones have loads of stock footage, corny lines, and terrible special effects.  Gotta love it.  Check out the reviews below.

Tidal Wave: No Escape

Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York

Stay tuned, because next up are a few Natural Disaster miniseries.

Now that it is officially fall, I figured it was time to preview the biggest disaster movie of this holiday season: The Day the Earth Stood Still.  They took a play straight out of the War of the Worlds and I am Legend playbooks on this one.  Take a early 1950s sci fi disaster flick, add a Hollywood star with blockbuster experience, and put them together with a big budget and cross your fingers.  The problem is, Keanu Reeves can’t carry a movie like Tom Cruise  or Will Smith can which has me a little bit worried.  The effects are cool, but the bad guys seem to be a giant spherical version of that wispy black smoke thing from Lost.  I don’t want to give the wrong impression cause I’m still probably gonna see it opening weekend, but I’m just a little worried about this one.  I’ll let you judge for yourself:

Quick note: I’m quite sensitive to shitty domain names.  You can imagine my reaction when I saw that this one is dtessmovie.com.  How is a person supposed to remember that?  “Ok so I don’t use the first ‘the’ but I do use the second one in the acronym…” bah

Today I am proud to announce the relaunch of the THE Disaster Movie Website.  We’ve got a new logo, new design, and (drumroll please…) a new background color.  I plan on adding many new reviews in the coming weeks and months, so get excited.  As always, I welcome any and all disaster movie exceptions at jimplamb@gmail.com

The new logo:

DisasterFlicks Logo

Whenever news stories straight out of disaster movie scripts come around, I get excited. I was particularly excited when I heard that a U.S. satellite loaded with deadly chemicals with bad ass names like Hydrazine was falling to Earth. The Navy quickly decided to launch an enormous rocket to blow it into thousands of tiny harmless little pieces. The story only gets juicier when allegations that we were only doing this to show off some military muscle to China, who had apparently shot a missile at their own dying satellite a year ago. If this mini disaster scenario doesn’t sound like the intro into a sweet movie, I don’t know what does. Who knows what was realllly on that satellite. Maybe vat full of smallpox or a big ‘ol laser pointed at North Korea Strangelove Style. How convenient that the Navy is destroying the evidence before it gets back to Earth…

Fortunately (I guess…), the missile hit the satellite and apparently the whole crisis had been averted. Damn

Stumbled upon a sweet list of 10 ways humanity could be wiped out.  A solid mix of self-inflicted, astronomical, and supernatural ways we might just screw things up.  Also reads as a pretty solid list of science fiction disaster movies.  Here’s the list if you’re really that lazy:

1. Particle accelerators

2. Rogue black holes

3. Gamma ray burst

4. Omega Point

5. Bubble Nucleation

6. Divine Intervention

7. Solar Activity

8. Aliens attack the earth

9. Global war

10. Ecosystem collapse

In a last gasp before succumbing to the writer’s strike, Desperate Housewives certainly went out with a bang with one of the only sitcom/drama natural disaster episodes that I’m aware of. The giant tornado that tore apart Wisteria Lane was no Twister, but it actually looked pretty good considering they were on a TV budget. A surprising impalement by a white picket fence was definitely the highlight of the episode.

The best part of all of this is that it seems this episode may be the start of a new trend. Entertainment Weekly highlights a few recent disaster episodes here. With any luck, we’ll get a hurricane on CSI: Miami and maybe a couple earthquakes on Entourage in the near future.

ah the magic of Google Analytics…

Since DisasterFlicks.com is still a fledgling site, we can’t compete with the IMDBs and Wikipedias of the world when it comes to getting search engine traffic for the big terms.  Basically, we get left with the obscure scraps that we happen to rank for.  Painstaking (sortof) analysis of our traffic shows that people out there are trying to find the President’s speech from Independence Day check the analytics below.

Up until now, these people were leaving the site disappointed.  Today I’m pleased to announce the full transcript of the speech is now available on our site.  Expect this to be just the first of many inspirational speeches posted.  My psychic tells me of a Top 10 list in the future…

This is the first of a series of entries here at the disaster movies blog highlighting those historical events which badly need the true Hollywood treatment. The studios’ love affair with historical war epics sadly has not spilled over into the disaster movies genre, and with Pompeii pushed back indefinitely it doesn’t look like that is changing any time soon.

Part 1 in the series is about one of the sweetest eruptions of all time: Krakatoa in 1883. Not is the name sweet and fun to say, but this would make a seriously good movie, here’s why:

1. Small eruptions and earthquakes started years earlier…talk about a dramatic crescendo
2. Relations between Dutch colonists and natives would give the film cultural weight the critics love
3. Resultant tsunamis were some of the largest ever witnessed
4. Explosion was the loudest noise in human history
5. After the explosion, the entire island of Krakatoa was gone…forever…

Maybe I’m wrong, but I see serious potential in this one. The only Krakatoa films in the past have been documentaries and small time stuff. Docs are all well and good, but I say the most violent eruption in modern history deserves a little better than a made for TV budget