A guide to Roland Emmerich's early work.

2009-11-05 23:00:15

I've had so much fun writing about "2012," I'm almost sad it'll actually be coming out next Friday. Almost. In a fairly amazing recent interview with Roland Emmerich, the schlock auteur explains he could get away with casting John Cusack because "I make movies where the movie itself is the star" and says it's totally cool that "2012" is a whopping 158 minutes because "The ten most successful movies of all time are all around three hours long. My favourite movie, 'Lawrence of Arabia,' is four hours. So there!" Same thing! But what really caught my eye was an allusion to one of his earlier films, "The Noah's Ark Principle," which Emmerich says "was also about morality and what you can and can't do in these situations." Earlier film? I thought he hit the ground running with "Universal Soldier" and "Stargate." How wrong I was. Here, for your edification and...

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