La Menace du volcan

Look, when an earthquake or tremor happens it's one thing, but looking at actors talking or walking through debris or on a street THE CAMERA IS TREMORING, it's IRRITATING!

Hey, What's the purpose of having vibration correction of it's shut off and the cameras INTENTIONALLY shaken for some stupid effect!

Try this at home-move your head around while staring at something in the foreground. What MOVES is the background behind the object and the object of your view only changes in perspective: instead of looking straight on at the subject you're at an angle, BUT in the whole process the PICTURE doesn't JERK!!!

WHY CANT THEY DEVISE A CAMERA THAT MOVES BACK AND FORTH A LITTLE, maybe an inch or five, WHILE LOCKED ONTO THE OBJECT OF THE PHOTOGRAPH! The background will move but the subject will stay in the camera's center... NO JERKING!!!

Not a bad plot and acting for a made-for-TV/Cable Miniseries, but the "shaky-cam" is WAY overdone and makes it a pain to watch. Almost every scene (at least the ones I could endure) used this technique, subsequently this was more of an "on in the background while I did other things movie". The constant jittering and jarring, lack of any real time focused on any actor or scene really detracted from the product. Certainly DOES NOT add realism. Too bad for us viewers. As far as scientific accuracy goes, seems about half of it was at least plausible. Most of it was pure Hollywood. The real problem nowadays is too many people are starting to think this stuff is real, as opposed to just fun entertainment.

Ok, environmentalists know best, oil companies are bad. Typical schlock and improbable courses of action and decision making. Way left wing. Totally 'save the planet'. Very one-sided, but, did I mention entertaining? Terry O'Quinn is always a solid performer.

Utter crap, waste of time. The first episode was mildly bad, second one was horrible. The biggest complaint was camera work. I actually got a case of motion sickness from the overly active camera shaking. I think the camera operator had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and had been given a near lethal dose of caffeine. I understand the idea behind it but damn it, come on, there is a thing as too much. And then of course there is the poor acting and terrible "science" behind the story line. Ring of fire left me burning and yearning for a barf bag. A few changes would have made a world of difference but it is was it is. A burning pile of yak squeeze that should never have seen the light of day. Or maybe I'm being mean due to several hours of my life taken from me trying to choke down this horrible excuse for entertainment.

The only real point I want to make in this is to say that the endless field of out-of-focus foreground objects in front of almost every shot is a pointless, annoying distraction.

The camera never stops gliding from side to side in a completely irrelevant manner.

If the 'technique' is an attempt to give a fly-on-the-wall immediacy it fails completely.

In spite of the bad technique, I did stick with it to the end of part one, and overall the storyline was interesting even if it was all very slow paced until the explosions started.

I am not sure I will bother watching part two.