SHARKNADO!

"What's wrong?" "Your son wants to go in a helicopter and drop a bomb into a tornado."

Well, there's a whole lot more wrong with the movie... or, at least, the science part of the movie. Otherwise, Syfy's attempt to make the quintessential B-movie went very, very beautifully right.

Anyone who lives in LA can tell you that one of the most ridiculous parts of the movie - aside from the idea that these sharks aren't too disoriented by being thrown around by a tornado to still eat people - is the amount of LA that's covered in water. If you're not familiar, the term for rising waters caused by a hurricane hitting the land is called "storm surge."

So first of all, the storm surge is causing flooding Santa Monica. While this may be plausible for the most low-lying beach residences, anyone who's been in town knows that "ground level" for anything that's not on the sand is pretty high: This awesome website gives us an elevation of 16 meters, or 54 feet, at the location where Colorado Blvd and Ocean Blvd cross over the PCH. Anyways, this remarkably high storm surge causes someone to worry about his ex-wife and child, who are over six miles inland, and probably at least a hundred feet higher.

Someone helpfully gives us a reference for where the next scenes will take place, by saying "Take the 10 to the 405, that's almost to Beverly Hills, and there's no way the storm has gone that far inland." But, we see that that character is wrong, and the waves are crashing over the 405.

So how far has the storm surge risen by now? According to that handy elevation website, the elevation where the 10 crossed the 405 is 49 meters, or 160 feet. According to Google Maps, this is between 3.5 and 4 miles directly from the beach.

It gets even better a little later, when someone says "We have to go to Van Nuys to get Matt!" Going back to that amazing GPS website, that helps us determine that the Van Nuys airport is a whole 235 meters (or 771 feet) above sea level.

Why did I choose the airport? Well, when they find Matt, someone explains "Instead of letting live sharks rain down on people, we're going to get into the chopper, and drop BOMBS into the tornado!" because something about cold and warm air and "maybe bombs will equalize that." What. That's just too much for me to get into right now.

So how ridiculous is that level of storm surge?

In NOAA's website about storm surge, most of the heights appear to be between 10-20 feet, with the higher ones reaching well over 20 feet. The highest in the US happened during Hurricane Katrina at 27.8 feet, and the highest in the world has been estimated at potentially up to 48 feet, although this figure is disputed as it was calculated over 100 years ago, and the highest measured in recent years was only 34.8 feet.

So while the water reaching Santa Monica could be *almost* plausible in a super-hurricane-disaster movie, the idea of it flooding Westwood/Beverly Hills is very far off.

And, just because I don't get a lot of opportunities to post non-copyrighted photos on here, here's one that yours truly took while stopping at Savannah, GA during spring break one year:

"That's a tiger shark!" "How do you know that?" "Shark Week."

More New TV!

So, this is gonna be super-brief because my life is chaos now. And because there's only been one episode.

Graceland: USA, Thursdays 10/9C
Anyways, the premise is that this brand-new FBI agent gets stuck in a beach house for undercover FBI, DEA, and CBP (or ICE? They weren't clear, they just said "customs") agents, code-named "Graceland." This beach house is in an undisclosed location in southern California Venice Beach and all kinds of hilarious run-ins with the locals ensue, and the show definitely has some local LA humor - my roommate and I were dying at the "movie" bit - but looks like it could go in some pretty intense and dark directions.

This is one I'm definitely going to start DVRing.

Primeval: New World: Syfy, Saturdays 10/9C
I'm DVRing this, too! You might already know, but I love the original Primeval series - I just want to catch up on it before starting the new one.

Orphan Black: BBC America, on hiatus
Yeah, I wrote a post about it recently. But I finished the season and I'm actually more amazed. Tatiana Maslany needs not just all the Best Actress awards, but like 3 of each Best Supporting Actress award. I've never seen a show go from starting off slow to having a holy-sh!t-what-the-F*CK finale like that one, and it's taken a turn into a much more sci-fi kind of territory. (Although if you've read Next by Micheal Crichton you might guess where it's going) and I completely can not wait for next season!

And one remarkable thing about the Emmy buzz is that this isn't a BBC show that's re-airing on BBC America or PBS, thus making it eligible; This is a BBC America original series, meaning it was their production house (which makes what, maybe one or two shows of its own) and their tiny budget and not the BBC and their slightly less tiny budget that made it - and on top of it being a cable channel, this is a cable channel based around the idea of broadcasting existing programming in a new market, not so much around having original programming or (much) syndication like USA or TNT might have. So it'd be really interesting to see how this might affect TV production by cable channels if it wins any awards.

ETA: Any more awards - as I was writing this, it turns out that Maslany won a Critics' Choice Award

Syfy original movie: Stonehenge Apocalypse!

So I couldn't resist when I saw the title on the screen. And then it turned out that this also involves Misha Collins

It starts with Syfy forgetting completely that a) you can't walk inside Stonehenge, or take guided tours in there and b) that some of the rocks there have fallen over. The stones begin rotating, and quite predictably, everyone nearby gets killed.

Although, five minutes in, Misha Collins is not wearing a very tiny toga, unlike some other actors from Supernatural in their Syfy movie debuts... but he is sneaking around some bushes taking photos of Stonehenge, and saying something about an "underground current."

Tori Higginson, of Stargate Atlantis, also shows up, and then Stonehenge kills a whole lot more people, and then for some inexplicable reason, a volcano erupts out of a Mayan pyramid!

(And I swear, I'm sober. This is only the first commercial break!)

At some point, someone says "50-ton stones don't move themselves" which is very obvious. However, he goes on to say "I don't think it's Merlin waving his magic wand" but he's in a Syfy movie so that actually could be the explanation for all of this.

Then. Misha Collins has some kind of device that's showing something that looks like the X-Men movies. And utters the line "Top of the morning." And then there's something about radio waves cycling and electromagnetism changing the structure of organic molecules in the soil or something. Hey, this is less inaccurate than Ancient Aliens! And somehow they determine it's a countdown with 37 seconds left!

But they find out that Misha Collins' papers have a "planetary energy grid" which they promptly, and correctly, denounce as psuedoscience. But, alas! It's shortlived. And it turns out that they can't say "NASA" onscreen so they keep saying "The US Space Agency."  This is priceless!

Also, this is all happening in a high school. Although obviously it's because Syfy didn't have the budget to film anywhere fancier than an empty high school, I'm trying to imagine what in-universe reason was given for this: Were they broke, and attempting to save the UK government money, like how the notorious and now defunct Detroit crime lab ended up in an elementary school? Or is this their attempt at being covert? Or was it simply the nearest structure with internet access and a coffee maker?

(Electromagnetic currents don't criss-cross!) and he claims that ancient civilizations knew about energy grids and built pyramids, and stonehenge, on top of the places where they crossed. And also that there's an undiscovered "ancient site" in Maine.

And apparently the soil around the stones is turning purple because of bacteria. The scientists try to lower something from a helicopter to read an energy field in the middle of stonehenge. But, rather than having a helicopter with a piece of equipment on a winch or something, the equipment is just stuck on the bottom of it and the entire helicopter goes lower. Predictably, it explodes.

(and there's a commercial with William Shatner doing some kind of Syfy original series that involves him being "weird." I'm almost afraid to look)

Strangely enough, this event is being handled by the US military. I don't even know if they bothered to try to explain it. And the soldier says line like, "In my world, when something counts down, it goes boom." Therefore, the US military decides it wants to demolish Stonehenge. With explosives.

Unsurprisingly, this only causes the stones to make lots of electromagnetism again. Meanwhile.... I can't even keep track of what's going on, but we see the thing that looks like the X-Men logo again, and they're talking about a "key" and "advanced technology" and apparently Misha Collins' token non-white friends are doing something somewhere else that's related.

(disclaimer: I may or may not be multitasking and cooking mac and cheese and assembling my new Iron Man 3 legos right now)

This time, a volcanic eruption has "flattened" Indonesia, and they said that there's a "planetary military" that "requires a global military response." Oh, so is the US government finally going to let the British government's military get involved in what's going on in their own country? Anyways, this is at the point that they decide to listen to Misha Collins. But the military people think that the "joint council" (IDK, the UN?) is going to order them to nuke stonehenge. And then they want to use a radio telescope to try to jam the EM signals stonehenge is making in order to prevent it from being nuked.

At some point, Misha Collins asks what the bacteria were, and decides that Earth is being terraformed. Or reverse terraformed. Or whatever. And then someone says "the stone's wavelength is approaching visible light" and then uses the phrase "going gamma" and then says "gamma waves are atomic." This, apparently, is an excuse to CGI pretty things around stonehenge, and make the stones glow.

So, somehow, Misha Collins & co are in a museum in NY. Maybe all of this has been headquartered and happening in the US to begin with? But they see a "relic" that's got the X-Men logo on it, too. And it starts to glow, too. And they end up deciding to steal it, just at the same time that someone else does and starts shooting up the place. It now also appears that this movie may have been filmed using solely whatever lighting was already existing on location.

It turns out that the person doing the shooting was the Token Black Friend (way to go, writers!) and apparently he was in Egypt, and the X-Men thing can "activate" some kind of buried pyramid that will be safe from the apocalypse. Seriously, did they just take random words from Ancient Aliens and make them into a screenplay? Also, Misha Collins is apparently supposed to be angry, or passionate about saving the human race or something, and he's talking in his Castiel voice now.

(Now I'm eating mac and cheese. And consuming certain adult drinks. And putting together my Iron Man 3 legos)

The next 10-hour countdown is almost over, and they've said "It's going to be a bigger bang." This time, the volcano is under the Great Pyramids, to nobody's surprise, and apparently this causes the Mediterranean sea to flood into Egypt. Then, they decide not only to evacuate all pyramid-like sites, and to nuke stonehenge after all.

Also, Misha Collins mocks his Token Friend of Color's belief that Earth goes through cycles of destruction and rebirth. Like the theory about Merlin, that's not really any more weird than the "correct" theory. One also has to wonder how much Syfy is paying these actors for this movie... their entire budgets can't be more than 1-2 million, so deduct salaries for the crew and filming permits alone... I'm not an expert on film financing, but some of the actors have got to be doing this for the pure fun of it.

So our antagonist puts the X-Men stone on the altar, stuff is happening, and someone says "Holy Crap!" and a giant pyramid is rising out of the ground in Mexico.

And, apparently, it was an American military base that was over near stonehenge. Because once the order to nuke it was given, and therefore the order to evacuate, everyone runs and climbs over stuff like the building is on fire. Because I guess whoever's got their fingers on that red button can't wait twenty minutes to allow everyone to exit in a calm and orderly fashion?

For some strange reason, once they get into the pyramid, it turns out the guy with the stone has... activated that pyramid and run away? Why? Back where the scientists are, they say that the stones are "sucking up the entire planet's electromagnetic energy." What?

Misha Collins chases his ex-friend/antagonist through the woods of vancouver maine and eventually retrieves the X-Men thing. Meanwhile, the scientists discover that someone is a mole, and they shout at him to get out of the base that's apparently been evacuated or something? But the mole points a gun at them, as if they would be capable of forcing him to leave otherwise, or as if they weren't about to all die anyways.

In the end, Misha Collins' character sacrifices himself to save the planet (in a way I'm still not sure about) and Tori Higginson's character takes over his radio show. And we get two brilliant newspaper headlines: One calling his character a "fringe scientist" making me think of a certain favorite show, and the second, "Death Toll Too High To Count." Not "tens thousands" or "hundreds of thousands" or "estimated at two million," just "too high to count."

TV update!

So, in a post about new midseason shows, I covered a few. Here's what I've been watching that I haven't been relentlessly blogging:

Arrow: (CW, Wednesdays 8 PM) Yes I'm blogging it but just need to say I love this show I love this show I FREAKING LOVE THIS SHOW. And the producers are self-admitted Whovians, which they say is why they got John Barrowman and Alex Kingston in the same episode!

Body of Proof: (ABC, Tuesdays 9 PM) Still an enjoyable forensics show. 

Bones: (Fox, Mondays 8 PM) Meh. Nothing particularly interesting lately, and it's been getting a bit like CSI: After-School Specials, it feels.

Continuum: (Syfy, return TBA) I'm actually really, really liking this series. Things get very interesting in the last few episodes of the first season!

Criminal Minds: (CBS, Wednesdays 9 PM) This is alternating between being like almost-softcore-torture-porn, and having some really, really interesting episodes with unexpected endings.

Cult: (CW, um... when?) I think the only positive point of this show is just how genre-savvy it is - it mercilessly makes fun of the industry. But that's enough to keep me watching. It's been shuffled around time slots, because it used to be Thursday, but then a week and a half ago I found it in the Friday Night Death Slot, so I'm guessing it's doomed. Unless the fact that a lot of it is filmed using the WB lot as "on location" happens to make it worth the few viewers it brings in.

Elementary: (CBS, Thursdays 10 PM) So much love for this show, and it just keeps getting better. If you don't already, watch it. 'Nuff said.

Glee: (Fox, Thursdays 9 PM) Somehow, this show went from over-the-top satire, to confusion, and now it's surprisingly good and has a more diverse cast than ever. Plus, they have been doing some truly amazing songs - including a rendition of "In Your Eyes" complete with a boombox, and a wonderful mashup of "Bye Bye Bye" and "I Want It That Way." 

Grimm: (NBC, Fridays 9 PM) The plot is really, really picking up and I'm really liking it. Also, this show is doing a good job of surviving the Friday Night Death Slot, as some SF shows do - and probably with an increased audience now that Fringe (RIP) is off the air.

Haven: (Syfy, returns fall 2013) I love this show. I started it after one of my friends who watched Fringe liked it. The first season was very, very reminiscent of old-school X-Files. (There was a guy whose shadow killed people in one episode, I know for sure. But they solved it by surrounding him with ambient light)

Law & Order: SVU: (NBC, Wednesdays 9 PM) Still full of ripped-from-the-headlines cases, as usual. I'm liking the two new detectives, though.

Project Runway: (Lifetime, Thursdays 9 PM) There's not anyone I love this year, but there was an episode with male stripper. And the team dynamic is really interesting.

The Following: (Fox, Mondays 9 PM) This is a lot better than I expected. Granted, Kevin Bacon's character likes to go alone into places where he knows that there are serial killers, a lot. The story is moving, and it's actually not going down the apparently obvious plot lines.

My DVR: Not Deleted Yet

These are shows that were cancelled or ended. Sometimes, I was too sentimental to delete it from my DVR; in other cases, I had given up, or had finished watching, and simply ended up deleting any remaining episodes when I needed the space but not deleted the "series recording" thing on my DVR itself. Note the preponderance of sci-fi series that were either on Fox or BBC America here.

Torchwood (BBC America)
Oh, the Doctor Who spin-off that went from "dark, funny, and sexy" to "darker, sexy, and kind of tragic" to "really dark, kind of twisted, and tragic" to "really, really, dark and super f*cking messed up." Despite all of this, I'm still kind of attached. 

Fringe (Fox)
Let's just refer to this post, and I don't want to admit that it's over by deleting the series recording. Because it's IMO one of the best sci-fi TV shows ever, and certainly my absolute favorite. Plus, put "Fringe" into Google images and you'll see an endless stream of gorgeous photos. 

Primeval (BBC America)
Gorgeous British people chase around dinosaurs and futuristic monsters, and sometimes getting killed, but only to be replaced by even more gorgeous British people chasing around dinosaurs. This show is pure eye candy, no matter which gender(s) you prefer. And, it's an ITV series, not BBC, for those of you who care. 

Alcatraz (Fox)
So very promising! And yet, Fox wasn't about to give us a second season of Alcatraz and a fifth season of Fringe... so the sharply dropping ratings of this one meant it got axed less ceremoniously. And this was one of those shows that left the main character(s) in the limbo of a cliffhanger ending. This is where the line between "sentimental" and "too lazy to delete this" lies.

The River (ABC)
Oh, god, what a mess. This would've been the perfect show to be fodder for this blog. The synopsis of this was something like "A missing scientist's family looks for him in an obscure branch of the Amazon and strange things happen" but it could be better described as "A white guy tries to mess with magic on an obscure branch of the Amazon and then his family and a camera crew goes looking for him and doing the most stupid-white-people things that they could think of when confronted by probably magical things." It was an absolute train wreck of mediocre production, unremarkable acting, cultural appropriation, and the characters making the absolute worst decisions possible in order to provide plots for the episode... but like a train wreck, you just can't stop watching! Also, much like Alcatraz, it has a finale leaving the character(s) in limbo. 

Terra Nova (Fox)
In which the transportation of mid-22nd century people into a prehistoric, dinosaur-filled era is not as notable as the transportation of mid-20th century "family values" into the mid-22nd century. Also, all of the black or dark-skinned non-white people are bad guys. I didn't even finish this one. 

Prime Suspect (CBS?)
I loved this show, even though they were constantly filming outside my apartment, or setting up base camp in the nearby parking lot, either of which made it hard to get to my car. Jane Timmoney was just awesome! 

Outcasts (BBC America)
A one-season BBC series featuring Jamie Bamber and some other people. A bit slow at first, but things get exciting near the season one finale. Which also turns out to be the series finale. And sort of is in a little bit of limbo, but not as bad as it could've been. Sensing a trend here? 

Sanctuary (Syfy)
It could be bad, bordering on awful, sometimes even "you kind of hope the characters all die in a hole because it'll be more interesting than this" awful on occasions. But, it was a lot of fun, so I still watched it from time to time. 

The Finder (Fox)
So I never really did understand the premise of the show, but it was a lot of fun to watch. This is the one series I'm actually OK with having been cancelled so early, because I don't think they could've replaced Micheal Clarke Duncan. 

Last Resort (ABC)
Gave up on this after I discovered it wasn't very much like Lost.

Unforgettable (CBS)
Tried watching it when it said the detective was from Syracuse. I gave up quickly, and sometime after that it got cancelled. And, apparently, it's been un-cancelled for some reason.

My DVR: Cable & Foreign Shows

OK, so in this case, "DVR" may be a bit flexible, if the foreign shows aren't being imported sufficiently quickly. I'm also not quite up on what day these are on, so they'll just be listed by network:

Doctor Who (BBC America)
Oh, that classic BBC show. I've made many friends over it, and converted many more friends, and now you can go to Target and see people wearing Doctor Who t-shirts. And this year is the 50th anniversary! 

The Hour (BBC America)
It's like Mad Men meets The Newsroom, about a young woman who's made a producer of a new BBC news program in the 1950's. Plus, you get to laugh at Ben Wishaw's character (pre-Skyfall) constantly referring to the female lead as "Moneypenny." 

Mythbusters (Discovery)
If you need to know why I DVR this, you probably not only haven't seen it before, you probably don't even know what it's about.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (Hub)
Yep, I watch it. But, for the record, it's really cute, and has super awesome lessons that even I sometimes need to hear repeated. 

Project Runway (Lifetime)
I was introduced to this my first week after moving into the dorms freshman year of college, during its 3rd season. I've been sewing for ages, and I love pretty dresses, so I've kept watching! 

Teen Wolf (MTV)
It's my new addiction! And I blog extensively about this one, if you can't tell ;-)

Continuum (Syfy)
As an earlier post mentioned, I've only just started watching this, so I can't really say a lot one way or another. 

Warehouse 13 (Syfy)
I started watching it because I loved the premise - when I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, I always spent so much time wondering what else was filling up that warehouse, and thought the idea was so cool - and stayed for the characters, hilarious references to history and literature, and the heartbreak and emotional drama that the writers put us all through. 

Rizzoli & Isles (TNT)
My very favorite detective/forensics show ever, not the least because it features some really awesome female characters. Yay! Also, they're basically me and my roommate: I'm the blond socially awkward Irish girl, and she's the brunette part Italian Boston native.

New midseason TV!

Now that Fringe is over... OK, I still haven't gotten over Fringe, and there's now an empty Fringe-shaped space in my heart on Friday nights. OK, there haven't been any Friday nights yet, but there will be.

New shows that sound interesting are Continuum (Syfy), Defiance (Syfy), Cult (CW), and The Following (Fox). Then there's Zero Hour (ABC), which looks like it might be compatible with my Ancient Aliens (or Dan Brown or National Treasure) bingo cards.

First of all, the pilots of Cult and Zero Hour won't air for another month or so.

I saw the pilot of The Following last night, and unlike when I saw it at Comic-Con, I saw it from the start. It has Kevin Bacon, making the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon even easier now, and one Shawn Ashmore, the twin brother of Aaron Ashmore who I liked on Warehouse 13 (Oh, hey there's two of them! I can live with that ;-) Plot-wise, it so far seems like there's a non-zero number of characters who will, sooner or later, end up doing stupid things that will result in me yelling at the screen. Oh, and it's about this retired FBI agent who is apparently now consulting (something that retired FBI employees get asked to do both frequently and for good pay, in a rare glimpse of realism on television. It's less realistic that they get paid to consult on catching serial killers). 

Defiance has Jaime Murray from Warehouse 13 (yep, I love that show) and also has a cool-looking MMO. Unfortunately, it does not have a cool-looking MMO that's compatible with Mac OS or Ubuntu Linux. Maybe the little things that are available On Demand will catch me up on what's going on? And there's this really neat website you can mouse around and check out. No, really. Sadly, we'll have to wait for April to see it. (And then it will be back-to-back with Warehouse 13. Yay!)

Also watched the pilot of Continuum, which is apparently Syfy's next entry in its (now) long and storied tradition of just straight-up importing stuff because Canadians are the only people actually making new scifi right now. Future cop winds up chasing down future terrorists in 2012 (really? Did they know they weren't even airing this until 2013?) but this seems like it'll raise a lot of interesting paradoxes about time travel and things, especially considering that Future Cop can't stop a present-day character from seeing glimpses into the future and knowing that they're going to be important and famous.

Slightly spoilery speculation for Continuum behind the cut...