Last night I watched ‘Gasland’ for the first time. ‘Gasland’ was nominated this year for an Oscar along with 5 other documentaries (‘Waiting for Superman’ did not make the cut – apparently criticizing teachers rules you out of consideration.

Gasland is very pretty, the shots are artistic and the editing is slick and attractive. Josh Fox, the film’s director and narrator, has a soft laid back tone that is alluring and soothing. He can play the banjo and he does. He presents himself as a regular guy from Pennsylvania who was offered $100,000 to allow an energy company extract natural gas from his land. He turned them down. Fox says he loves his home and has been hearing bad things about how the gas is extracted.

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Fox sets out to expose the “scandal” of fracking – a process to extract natural gas from shale by using a cocktail of chemicals and a lot of water. By using this method America will get about 100 years worth of energy.

The bad news, according to ‘Gasland,’ is that fracking is killing countless unsuspecting poor people all over the US. Pancreatic cancer, dizziness, loss of sense of taste and smell, ringing in ears, disorientation, coughing, asthma, swelling, tumors and death are all caused by fracking according to the film. This is powerful stuff, compelling. On one side there are the greedy energy companies and on the other poor rural families being poisoned to death.

Incredible that this would happen here in the US. I waited for the killer interview with medical experts in toxicology or pathology and for even one of the of the many cases of illness and death to be closely examined and the evidence of a connection laid bare for all to see. It didn’t come. Why would Josh Fox not investigate the story further? Why would he not interview the kind of experts who would confirm the cause of the illnesses and deaths?

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In October I attended Robert McKee’s critically acclaimed screenwriting course.

It’s pretty expensive, $745 for three days. The seminar was packed. I roughly calculated he cleared about $100,000. The students were all highly motivated and ambitious writers, McKee was happy to boast that some of them had come from as far away as Brazil and Spain.

Before he started he was anxious to set down some housekeeping rules that he required us to follow.

He wouldn’t tolerate any talking or use of Black Berries or any cell phones, I was delighted, I had just forked out a bunch of money and didn’t want any annoying noises.

But then things took an odd course.

McKee explained he likes to curse and if you didn’t like it, you could “fuck off.”

He also explained that he has strong opinions on a whole range of issues not confined to writing and that we’d be getting to hear them. He explained that conservatives have famously thin skins, so if anyone didn’t like his politics they could “fuck off right now.” He helpfully added that he would give people their money back.

He did not address the issue of the travel expenses for those who had arrived from Spain and Brazil and might be having second thoughts. (more…)

I can’t remember the last time I went to see a movie twice in one week. I did just that with Country Strong. 

Country Strong is very good, it’s sincere, it’s sad, it’s funny and the music is toe-tapping, hum-in-your-head-for-days good. It’s also a reminder of what being a movie star is all about. Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance as alcoholic country music star Kelly Canter is believable and heartbreaking and she can belt out a country song like she was born to it. Garrett Hedlund, however, steals the spotlight playing an aspiring singer-song-writer working in a rehab facility who befriends Paltrow. He is the real deal, he can do anything, even make you believe he is a professional singer, which he is not, and boy can he sing and act, brilliant. 

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Country Strong is a morality tale, bad behavior brings serious consequences and the good find hope and happiness, all that morality doesn’t go down well in a Hollywood where the rape of a teenager can be dismissed as not really “rape, rape” and the rapist defended. 

I’ve seen so many appalling films lately, it was truly refreshing to see something with so much heart and soul. It probably didn’t deserve to be seen twice in one week but I felt so low after seeing “How Do You Know” with all it’s dialed in performances. 

I saw Country Strong in Hollywood and when a particularly powerful song was being performed and two American flags were unfurled, some audience members laughed. The NYT reviewer scoffs at another poignant moment when Paltrow kisses a cross she is wearing, they hate Christians almost as much as they hate America. How very smart and clever of them. Unfortunately, the NYT can crush a film.  (more…)

I saw Eat Pray Love over the weekend. I can’t remember the last film I walked out of but I certainly wanted to walk out of this one. I stayed because I want to know what is going in the world. I know now and it’s not good.

The cinema was half full, almost all were women.

The film is deeply depressing. I recently saw Precious, I had avoided it because I thought it would be predictable and depressing. It’s not, even with its subject matter.

However nothing in the cinema this decade has depressed me as much as Eat Pray Love’s hymn to vacuous selfishness. There are 16 year olds who have more profound insights. Talking of 16 year olds, the journey of enlightenment taken by Liz Gilbert (Julia Roberts) in the film is very reminiscent of 16 year old’s experiences; girl meets a boy, falls in love with him, gets bored, chants a bit and meets another boy, bliss.

Back to the story, Eat Pray Love is criminally dull. (more…)

Just like Oliver Stone I have recently returned from a trip to Venezuela.

I have been a journalist in some pretty unusual places that have more than a few security issues. I have investigated some unsavory people in places such as Romania, Uzbekistan,Cambodia and Uganda. I went undercover in Indonesia and ended up ensuring that one particularly cruel and crooked mother and daughter team received lengthy jail sentences in the other Jakarta Hilton.

But out of all these places and scenarios I can honestly say that Caracas is the scariest place I have ever been.

It feels and is lawless. The people have the despair of those who know their lives should be better but are beaten down by the everyday misery of watching their savings and futures disappear. Murders and kidnappings are endemic. There is a small area of Caracas that is safe for foreigners during the day. At night you have to be careful everywhere. Poverty and high prices seem to increase along with the oil revenues that are kept or misspent by the government.

Whilst I was there Hugo Chavez, the country’s president, did one of his regular Sunday broadcasts. These 4 hour homages to himself are a feature of life in Venezuela, that and shortages of things like milk, bottled water and toilet paper. During the broadcast Chavez is seen walking through an old part of Caracas with the local mayor. His red-shirted entourage surround him. He points to a jewelry shop and asks what it is. When he is told he immediately shouts, Expropriate! Expropriate! He goes on to repeat this action on a number of other small jewelry shops in the area before moving on and reminding his audience of how great he is. (more…)

All over the United States taxpayer funded public schools are teaching this little lesson? It’s from a documentary, The Story of Stuff, and it’s about how the developed world, especially America, destroys everything it touches to make stuff no one needs and then dumps it and kills all the animals. 

We’ll start with extraction which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation which is a fancy word for trashing the planet. What this looks like is we chop down trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals. — The Story of Stuff  

This and other ‘teachable moments’ are being brought to a classroom near you by The Story of Stuff. According to the New York Times it has been watched by over 7 million children in the US. Annie Leonard, the filmmaker, says she spent 10 years traveling the globe collecting the information contained in the 20-minute film.  (more…)

“I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads.” –James Cameron 

James Cameron I accept your offer, I’ll even drive myself to your gigantic gated Malibu double mansion to shoot it out.

 It appears some negative comments about the nonsensical politics of “Avatar” by me and others did not go unnoticed by the richest man in Hollywood who described the criticism as “ranting.”

So again James Cameron I accept your invitation and I will participate in a public discussion. I think it’s important for the man who uses 1000% more mined resources than the average American, lives in a home 1000% bigger than the average American and drives/flies 1000% more than the average American to explain how the Average American is destroying the planet.  (more…)

I thought Avatar was a great film, beautiful even.  Cameron is such a good story teller he even had me rooting for the blue rain forest people and wishing death on all the appalling Americans in final battle scene.
 
But seriously, James Cameron grow up.
 
Avatar is an anti-mining, anti resource development rant worthy of a not very clever spotty undergraduate.

 
James Cameron is a self confessed unrepentant greenie, and in the world he creates mining is evil and life in the rain forest is just spiffing. So lets throw a few facts in the way of Cameron’s gorgeous but idiotic narrative.
 
Mining makes everything about James Cameron’s life and our lives in the developed world, beautiful, possible, bearable, majestic, gorgeous and full of promise. The people of the rain forest on the other hand who live the simple, organic, back to nature life so adored by the Hollywood elite such as James Cameron, also have short lives of misery, disease and squalor. They would do anything to have a piece of the James Cameron life and escape their subsistence hunter-gathering nightmare.  (more…)

The Society of Environmental Journalists spent much of their conference in Madison, Wisconsin questioning why mainstream journalism was dying.

Then they answered their own question when they decided it was their role to protect Al Gore from An Inconvenient Question.

Phelim McAleer, the director of Not Evil Just Wrong, asked Al Gore about the British Court Case which found his documentary An Inconvenient Truth had nine significant errors.

McAleer said that given his documentary is being shown in schools – does he accept the errors and has he done anything to correct them?

However, Mr. Gore declined to address the issue and when asked for a straight answer from McAleer – the response of the Society of Enironmental Journalists was not to applaud one of their own for bringing truth to power but instead they cut the mic of a journalist.

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