Word: tornadoed
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Scientists love to swap these stories almost as much as they enjoy debunking oft-repeated twister myths (like the one about tornadoes driving bits of straw through fence posts--what may actually happen, scientists suggest, is that a sudden drop in air pressure forces the wood to expand, allowing the straw to lodge in newly opened cracks). But even with all they've learned about the physical forces that power the creation of twisters, meteorologists still cannot say beforehand what path a particular tornado is likely to take or how much damage it is likely to do. That's what...
...know a movie is in trouble when a cow provides its only moment of authentic human interest. In Twister, as a team of meteorologists races toward a tornado, a terrified Holstein, mooing madly, blows by their windshield, then blows back again...
Worse, when action is never shown to have deadly or pitiable consequences, it tends toward abstraction. Pretty soon you're not tornado watching, you're special-effects watching. These are, to be sure, excellent, a seamless blend of digital wizardry and mechanical stunts supervised by the masterful John Frazier. Excellent too is Jack N. Green's cinematography, stubbornly trying to supply the moods and textures missing from the script. In the end, though, Twister proves what everyone already knows--that great visual effects alone cannot carry a picture to anything but insane profitability. And that Michael Crichton has never...
...grew up in Kansas City, in the middle of Tornado Alley, so I know tornadoes. Or at least tornado warnings. My childhood experience with killer storms consisted mainly of trekking over to our next-door neighbors' basement (my family, tempting the gods, didn't have one) on those spring and summer evenings when the weather bulletins got ominous. Usually the excitement would be over in a half an hour or so, and we'd trudge back home, vaguely disappointed that the only twister spotted did nothing more than flatten a gas station near Osawatomie...
...People run screaming from rooms rocked by earthquakes. And in video shot by professional storm chasers and plucky amateurs, funnel clouds whirl forebodingly, kick up a storm of debris and move menacingly closer. Sometimes too close. In one oft-seen clip, a family scrambles for shelter as a tornado bears down on their living room: "Tree just blew over...Get away from the windows...