Page 33 - 200911 - The 'X' Chronicles newspaper - November 2009

november2009_june_july_2009.qxd 23/11/2009 4:37 PM Page 33 33 From The ‘X’ Zone Newsroom 33 From The ‘X’ Zone Newsroom '12th Planet' author gives '12th Planet' author gives different date for different date for apocalypse apocalypse Buzz up!By Michael Machosky, TRIBUNE-REVIEW Zecharia Sitchin, 88, gets a lot of the credit -- or blame -- for the whole 2012- doomsday connection. Sitchin has written 13 best-selling books about -- among other things - - alien contact, an undiscovered planet and their connection to Sumerian, Mayan and other ancient prophecies. He doesn't buy into the 2012 hysteria, either. Rather, he believes the apocalypse is coming -- but the calculations are all wrong. He claims it will really happen in 2087. The problem is that most 2012 calculations are based on a 365 1/4-day year, not the correct 360-day year, which pushes Earth's sell-by date back to 2087. "What is expected under these three calendars is the return of the Mesoamerican god," says Sitchin, on the phone from his home in Manhattan. Sitchin sees parallels between this belief and prophecies in almost all other major religions. "My main specialty, the Sumerian civilization -- I'm one of the few who can read Apocalyptic Fantasies Are Marshall Fine of HollywoodandFine.com 'It's Apocalyptic Fantasies Are the clay tablets left from 6,000 years ago," the issue of control — that we want it and, for the Rage Sitchin says. "All the prophecies -- not just the the Rage whatever reason, suddenly find out we don't Mayans' -- (have) the expectation of the Return, have it.' the second coming. In all the nations, there's this Lewis Beale 'You don't have to be a scientist to know Lewis Beale expectation that God, the gods, the Creator, the Newsday that if we don't change our ways, the end of the Newsday Benefactor who left, will come back. So, if world is here,' says Harald Kloser, co-writer and anything is to be expected, (it's) the return of the producer of '2012.' 'The end of the world is not gods. Whether the return is beneficial or they The movie 'The Road' opens with the a fiction if we don't change real soon. And the come to punish us, frankly, I don't know. It's not sound of explosions and the vision of a fire that question is, have we passed the point of no clear." obliterates the sky. Is it a nuclear holocaust? return?' According to Sitchin, the "movie Planetwide environmental disaster? Rogue Hollywood, never afraid to plug into the people" based a lot of their end-of-the-world comet? The thing about the post-apocalyptic zeitgeist, picked up on the End Times mentality scenario on his book, "The 12th Planet" (1978), wasteland in the film, which opens Nov. 25, is pretty quickly. The 1936 film 'Things to Come,' which claims that a mysterious planet on a long, that whatever turned Earth into a pestilential written by H.G. Wells, pictures a prenuclear elliptical orbit returns to Earth's vicinity every wasteland is never really specified. world destroyed by a catastrophic war. Pictures 3,600 years -- something known to many So, as a father and son (played by Viggo like 'Panic in Year Zero' (1962) and 'On the ancient astronomers, but not to us. Mortensen and newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) Beach' (1959) dealt with the aftermath of "The whole scenario of a catastrophe is make their way across a bombed-out landscape, nuclear terror. 'Silent Running' (1972) and 'The built around it," Sitchin says. "The catastrophe, trying to avoid cannibals, thieves and other Omega Man' (1971 — remade in 2007 as 'I Am at one time, was the Biblical flood, the deluge. subhuman life-forms, 'The Road' mirrors the Legend') channeled environmental and That's one of the catastrophes that happened concerns of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Cormac biological fears. when this planet came back to our vicinity -- the McCarthy novel on which it is based: What is 'There's always something that's scaring gravitational pull, the magnetic pull, there was a important isn't why things happened, but what people, which can be used as an overlay on reversal of the Earth's axis. All sorts of things happens afterward. And how the bond between movies with a disaster or threat at their center,' happen when a large celestial body comes near a father and son can triumph over adversity. Fine says. 'Communism, nuclear war, terrorism, us." 'The Road' is not the only film to ask this global warming — there are plenty of things But don't look for it in 2012.[] question. In fact, apocalyptic fantasies seem to that have or will make us worry about the world be all the rage these days. The animated feature '9,' released last summer, is about a group of coming to an end that movies can exploit to automatons dealing with an Earth in which make a buck.' [] humans have died off. '2012,' opening Friday, is a cosmic disaster flick based on Mayan prophecy that alleges the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012. And 'The Book of Eli,' opening in January, stars Denzel Washington as a hero who carries a book that could save a post-apocalyptic society. These films are about 'our lack of control over our own destiny — our fear that larger forces are at work that we know nothing about or that we have no say in,' says critic