It's the end of the world as we know it, and it can't come fast enough for The Unenthusiastic Critic as she endures her first viewing of Michael Bay's Armageddon (1998), starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and Billy Bob Thornton.
For this is the world of Michael Bay, in which oil drillers are somehow smarter than NASA scientists, animal crackers somehow constitute foreplay, and Ben Affleck is somehow a major movie-star. In this world, intellectuals are useless, women and minorities are irrelevant, and neither the laws of narrative nor the laws of physics are enforceable.
All of which is to say that, as this world is threatened with extinction, Nakea is rooting for the asteroid.
Program
0:00: Prologue: from Ben Affleck's commentary on Armageddon
0:36: Cultural Osmosis: Pre-Viewing Discussion
18:24: Interlude: Original Trailer for Armageddon
20:44: The Verdict: Post-Viewing Discussion
1:20:54: Outro and Next Week's Movie
1:21:45: Outtake
Notes and Links
—Movie Reviewed: Armageddon—(dir. Michael Bay, Touchstone Pictures, 1998).
—Prologue from Ben Affleck's commentary on the Criterion Collection edition of Armageddon.
—Articles Referenced: "Armageddon," Jeanine Basinger, Criterion.com; "61 Things We Learned from the Armageddon Commentary," Kate Erbland, Film School Rejects; Blockbuster History: Big Ol' Space Rocks," Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending; "Bay," Jeanne Marie Laskas, Esquire; "Watching Movies With: Michael Bay; A Connoisseur of Illusions," Rick Lyman, New York Times;"An Oral History of Michael Bay," Sean Fennessey, GQ; "Michael Bay, Seriously," David S. Cohen, Variety; "Is Michael Bay the Devil?" David Hochman, Entertainment Weekly; "How Armageddon Became The Ultimate Disaster Movie (In More Ways Than One)," "The Inside Story of Deep Impact vs. Armageddon," Drew Taylor, MovieFone; Sandi Rankaduwa, BuzzFeed; Reviews by: Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com; Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal.
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—"Warm Duck Shuffle" by Arne Huseby is licensed under CC BY 3.0.
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