2012, not a moment too soon.....

If you think I'm the last person you'd expect to find at the opening night of Roland Emmerich's new end-of-the-earth disaster movie 2012, then you'd be wrong about BobOnARoll. My friend Shu and I joined the hordes at Lincoln Square for the 7:20 show.

I've always loved the genre---you name it: earthquakes, tornadoes, nuclear holocaust, comet impacts. I'm there! If space aliens are in the mix, I'm double there!! Fave childhood movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still. Alright, alright, I'm a dweeb.

Suspension of disbelief, total immersion in a fantastic world of someone else's imagination, great visuals, that's worth the $12 ticket price to me! It's why I loved Scott's Star Trek so much--a far far better film, BTW.

Interestingly, science fiction or space alien type TV series generally bore me. Guess my willingness to suspend disbelief is capped at about 2 hours or less....

Shu, a lovely friend who moved here from Japan a few years ago, has been amazed at my rapid progress in Japanese. Just to show off and impress him, I decided to text message him in Japanese (Romanji) to set up our movie date.

Shu is great. He corrects my grammatical errors--the many !--and teaches me a few 'special' words and phrases that I probably won't be bringing back to class anytime soon. He was delighting me last night with his English language triumphs ordering a sandwich at Subway today. Imagine me trying to pull that off in Japanese: whole wheat or white, long or short baguette, pickles with that? Italian, French, or no dressing? On the side? Sure. American cheese, did you say? We have Swiss, cheddar, and this month's special, gouda. Did you want that heated up? Blahblahblahblah. Omigod. Good for him !

Was explaining and joking with Shu about my passion for disaster movies as we waited in line. Positive spin on implosion of 90 pct of the earth's population: 'gosh, maybe I'll finally be able to get a job'.

Anyway, go see it for the visual treat. No plot, not even one-dimensional as far as character development or dialogue, but dazzling to watch, knowing that the 'horror' of mass annihilation was only a digitized concoction. Any reviewer-- are you listening, Manohla?-- that tries to write about this movie as a serious piece of film-making is missing the whole point.