Just watched the first part of NBC's much hyped "10.5" mini-series. It's awful! The characters are little more than cyphers. The direction and camera work are tiresome. A "jittery" camera style similar to the Battlestar:Galactica mini-series is used. It's an annoying gimmick. The camera is always moving or zooming in and out for no discernable reason.
The effects are nothing we haven't seen before. After last year's "The Core", apparently NBC decided we needed to see the destruction of the Golden Gate Bridge again. Ho-hum.

The dialogue is so pro-American in these post Iraq invasion days. The "President" ( a dim-witted cross between Reagan and G.W.Bush) proudly announces after the quake; "Cancel my appointment with the German Ambassador, my people come first!" Who writes this garbage, an ex-FOX News writer?

Can we have the review without the political commentary, please?

Yes, it was badly written and tediously edited. Some of the special effects were cool. But they even recreated the destruction of the Hollywood sign that was done in 1973's Earthquake. I half expected them to use the shot of the falling of the Capitol Records building. (Does that one still exist? BTW, that shot was also used in the original Battlestar Galactica -- or G:1980 -- in a sequence where the Cylons attacked LA.)

And I hate, hate, hate it when just before the commercial break, they show previews of the important scenes that are going to occur in the next 10 minutes!!. Maybe it's just NBC, but if the story isn't enough to hold me through the commercials, perhaps I should be watching something else. And I sort of wish I had...

BTW -- (\sarcasm mode)did anyone who saw this realize that "Friends" is ending soon? (\sarcasm)

Drew Carey is ending also.

The plot device of an earthquake creating a new California coastline is straight out of 1978's "Superman" (that too, showed a quake damaged Golden Gate Bridge)...so much for originality.
The special effects quake scenes in the second part were a bit more original, though some of the CGI effects were a bit 'fuzzy'.
I thought the scenes of the doctors (standard young good-looking tv 'doctors') were ludicrous. Apparently, for these doctors, heart surgery is the proper time for arguing and working out 'issues'. Who would want a surgeon who doesn't focus on the operation but on extraneous conversation?

Wow, talk about a by-the-numbers disaster flick. Very MiST-worthy:

"Any minute now, there's going to be a tattered Old Glory waving above this camp..."
(OK, so it wasn't exactly tattered. Bonus points for the Overwhelming Human Tragedy camera pullback, though. I swear I saw Vivien Leigh running through that shot.)

'I should've done more. I should have been able to save people' "OK. Cue Small-But-Significant-Human-Victory...three...two...[assistant approaches]...Sustaining Anecdote now."

"Ah, right, here's the Minor Family Angst being resolved, check. Now something's due to go wrong with the Last-Ditch Plan...yep. Now the Grizzled Veteran is going to volunteer...oh, he is SO dead."
(This was about where Mom noticed that Grizzle was not only [a] a direct rip-off of Bruce Willis in Armageddon but also [b] had apparently taken time off from saving the coast to polish up his nice white hard hat.)

Mom: "Should he be talking with his chest crushed?"
Me: "Well, yeah, they have to keep him alive long enough to hit the button at the last moment, remember...oh, and I nearly forgot, time for the Emmy-clip farewell speech."
Mom: "Oh, OK. Did he really just say 'something I should have told you a long time ago'? You'd think emergency workers in these movies would keep better track of this stuff."

'Dad, how are you?!' "Well, y'know, other than having ten tons of nuclear warhead where my chest used to be..."

"No, the Cute Family can't get hurt. The other medic's wife just died, see, they already fulfilled the quota."

'[Sidekick Scientist], c'mon! Gotta keep moving!' "Oh, gee, yeah, almost forgot about the ground opening up beneath my feet! Thanks for the handy tip!"

"Watch, the quake's gonna stop right - at - her - feet...bingo."

'This may have been a tragedy, but it was also a wake-up call...'
"Yeah, but you worked as a team and dealt with it proactively! Sure, there were some negative reductions, but the overall synergy was totally effective!"

Beau Bridges is SO much better than this movie. Kim Delaney...well, at least she handled the technobabble a lot better than she did on CSI: Miami.

But they even recreated the destruction of the Hollywood sign that was done in 1973's Earthquake.

I was trying to figure out where that one came from, thank you. (Is the sign really that flimsy?)

Apparently, for these doctors, heart surgery is the proper time for arguing and working out 'issues'. Who would want a surgeon who doesn't focus on the operation but on extraneous conversation?

I thought so too, but as Mom pointed out, these are good-looking doctors, so they can do angst and operate at the same time.
Incidentally, did anybody else half-expect Alan Alda to show up for some of those 'I'm trying to save a life here!' scenes?

"Beau Bridges is So much better than this movie"?

Huh? I thought he was awful. He may have been aiming for an "inspiring" patriotism, but he came off as a dim-wit. What's with those Breznev eyebrows?

Treklon: Uh, were you paying attention? He said that Bridges was better THAN the moive, not better IN it.

kerrie: Speaking of which, I think you were right about Beau Bridges. I felt the same way about Diane keaton in Something's Gotta Give. I watched it, and all I could think was. "She's great. A shame the movie doesn't deserve her."

I'm still not convinced.
I still think Bridge's acting was awful.

I'm still not convinced.
I still think Bridge's acting was awful in this one and other movies he's been in.

Bridges reminded me of James Brolin impersonating Reagan in the Reagan mini-series last November...same vocal inflections and same fake looking dyed brown hair.

The collapsing land that stops right before it gets to the heroes was very similar to a scene in the "X Files " movie where a collapsing ice flow stops right before it gets to Scully and Mulder. Deep impact had more impressive flooding scenes (although it was a bigger wave in that movie). The cars bouncing off the Golden Gate Bridge were impressive, as was the collpse of the Space Needle (made me think of the similar collapse of the Chyrysler building in "Armagedden").
These disaster flicks sure do seem familiar. Just recycling the same old plots? Earthquake from '74 becomes 10.5 in 2004.

I didn't see this show, but based upon all the descriptions I'm reading here, it sounds kind of like Volcano, but without the lava.

when the earthquake strikes San Fransisco, they showed the inside of a bathroom of (what I presume was) city hall. The mirror shattering/sinks slowly falling over was done in the movie "Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" when the big one hits while a kid was in a school restroom.

I meant "was *also* done". The scene itself was new even if the idea isn't