Volcano
Short description
An earthquake interrupts a Los Angeles morning and sends heat and steam rising through the streets. Mike Roark, who heads the city's emergency management office, had planned time with his daughter Kelly, but the strange readings pull him back to work. He turns to Dr. Amy Barnes, a seismologist, and together they come to suspect that molten rock is moving underground beneath the city. When the ground splits open and lava reaches the surface, the two of them must draw on every resource Los Angeles has to keep the eruption from overwhelming the city.
Mick Jackson directed the film, which sits between Clean Slate and The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest in a career that also includes L.A. Story and The Bodyguard. Tommy Lee Jones plays Roark opposite Anne Heche as Barnes, with Gaby Hoffmann, Don Cheadle, Jacqueline Kim and Keith David in supporting roles. Billy Ray and Jerome Armstrong wrote the screenplay, and Neal H. Moritz and Andrew Z. Davis produced.
Released in April 1997, the film had a budget of about 90 million dollars and took in roughly 123 million dollars worldwide, a modest return on its cost. On IMDb it holds 5.6 out of 10 from around 87,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6 out of 10 from far fewer votes, suggesting a limited but slightly warmer response there. A critics' score of 5.4 out of 10 from 46 reviews places it close to the audience ratings.
What's left behind the scenes
- Visual and computer effects were used in more than 250 scenes in the film, with a large number of companies and special effects artists working on them.
- Filming took place on the streets of Los Angeles, in the Mojave Desert, and in the California town of Torrance.
- Almost all of the scenes on Wilshire Boulevard were shot using sets in a large pavilion, which were an exact, slightly smaller copy of the street with houses that had no roofs, which were “completed” using computer graphics. The explosions, however, were real and were carried out using propane gas.
- The lava was made from methylcellulose – a special reagent used to thicken instant milk, and the volcanic ash falling from the sky – from small scraps of grey newspaper.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
