The recent “No Pressure” video by 10:10 triggered my curiosity about “The Age of Stupid”. I somehow missed that when it came out. It may have aired in Chicago proper, but there were no free screenings near me. No way was I going to drive into the city and pay for parking to watch it!
Turn out, I can now watch it for free. I have a subscription with Netflix, and can download it. Have any of you watched it? It might be fun if several of us could watch it and decide what we think of the movie that few seem to have watched.
The blurb at Netflix describes the movie as
In the desolate future of 2055, an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) combs through a vast collection of videos to learn what went wrong with the planet. His research points to the first decade of the century, when humans blithely ignored the warning signs of climate change. The footage he views is actually culled from real-life interviews conducted by the filmmaker, whose sharp — and darkly funny — insights populate this sobering documentary.
The director is Franny Armstrong. It’s only 89 minutes long. Netflix tell me “Our best guess for lucia: 2.0 stars Average of 11,037 ratings: 3.4 stars”.
Sounds like Netflix thinks I’m not going to like this. . . What do you guys think. Should I risk it?
“the warning signs of climate change”
Lucia,
I say watch it, and give us a full report because I’m interested in what the movie concluded the Warning Signs were supposed to be.
Andrew
The key warning sign is flattening or decline of Ocean Heat Content 2004 through present. (/sarc off).
I have developed a 2 line response for acquaintances that ask for my view of Global Warming/ AGW / CAGW.
1. I think that sensitivity has been overestimated and it is likely that the temperature rise will be only 1/2 that predicted by IPCC.
2. AGW is real, but the negative effects of warming have been overestimated, while any positive effects have been ignored.
Should I risk it?
= = = = = = = = =
No, its rubbish. Patronising tosh.
This Netflix guesses your preferences from your previous downloads?
I’m watching it now.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it 79%. I usually find that’s a pretty good indication. I’m going to give it a go on long call tomorrow if I get some time.
I’d never gone to Rotten Tomatoes. I gave it a test by entering truly bad movies. Here are results from the tomato meter:
* “The Station Agent”. It says 95%. That movie is agonizing. This suggests “rotten” will be pretty rotten as a rating guide.
* “My dinner with Andre”, the tomato meter says 89%. So, another boring unwatchable gets a fairly high mark.
* “Shoot the Piano Player”. As bad as “My dinner with Andre” got 95%. (The audience gave it 58%.)
* “Barry Lyndon”= 94% from the tomato meter. Really horrid movie. I had to sit through the whole thing on a first date. I decided right then there would be no second date with anyone who could sit through Barry Lyndon.
* “Plan 9 from outer space” gets 63%. That’s a classic bad movie, but no where near as bad as “The Station Agent”.
* Conan the Barbarian got 76%. This is just about as bad as Barry Lyndon, but in a different way. I also had to sit through this on a first date. Unfortunately, I’d lost my senses with age and didn’t resolve to not go on a second date with a guy who sat through truly horrible movies. (This was a mistake. )
So, lots of truly bad movies get good ratings from the tomato meter. But some bad movies get fairly low ratings. I noticed some good movies do get good ratings.
Will Age of Stupid be about as bad as Conan the Barbarian? I guess I’ll learn tomorrow. Tonight, Jim and I are going to watch “The Train” (1964).
EW
Yes. Also from ratings. I sometimes remember to rate. When I do, that makes their guesses more accurate.
Luica,
You may be a glutton for punishment; I walk out of the room (or the theater) when the movie is really garbage. I leave about 25% of the time. The nice thing about Netflix is that you haven’t wasted too much time/money when it is really bad, which makes you feel better when you turn it off.
I say watch it, but then I liked Conan. It may give you some insight into the minds of the 10:10 crowd. Best bit for me was Postlethwaite. It’s not great, and the signs are misleading to say the least. First sign is Katrina, and goes down hill from there.
You just spent more time analyzing if you’d like it or not. Now you’ve invested that much time, it’d almost seem a waste to not watch it.
So… I think that you should just watch it. If it starts to annoy you, just down a couple of glasses of wine – that’ll start to take the edge off and possibly make it bearable.
Lucia,
I know you like making brownies, so perhpas a little brownie parody will be allowed regarding the 10:10 group?
—————–
Entering the Parody Zone:
The Early 21st Century Classics in Ideological Environmentalism Humor.
Episode #2 – From old Eugenie, Franny, Daniel, Lizzie and the whole 10:10 team
Welcome everyone, sorry our first episode blew up on us, but onward and upward.
Today, we are excited to present how we promote brownies in a way that actually reduces the carbon footprint of the planet. Yummy and good for the planet.
Step one – buy 2 lbs of powdered cocoa unsweetened, the quality is irrelevant since we are just going to bury it in the ground. There, doesn’t that make us feel good already? Ohhhhhhh, tingley.
Step two – About the milk and butter for the brownies, take your crossbow out to your neighbor’s dairy farm (don’t use guns, the ammunition is sooooo carbon rich) and shoot a dairy cow. Yep, you got it. Just bury it in the ground. Tingley, tingley feeling.
Step three – well, you can see the general process . . . . repeat with the normal brownie ingredients in any old recipe.
Step four – go the 10:10 website and start a program with a high quality local brownie baking shop. Get them to donate free brownies with a contribution for making a promotional film about the brownie carbon footprint reduction program. Ohhhhh, how clever we are. The kiddies will love it sooooo much.
Step five – eat the brownies, yummy.
See, wasn’t that fun. And we sure hope this video turns out better than that last one; probably have Walt Disney Productions do it instead of that edgy Curtis dude.
Exiting the Parody Zone.
John
Re: Atomic Hairdryer, I like Postlethwaite as an actor. Scripts and direction always matter though.
Don’t do it Lucia!
3.4 is the number of IQ points the average Netflix member will lose per minute watching the movie, you may only lose 2.0 IQ points per minute because of your superior intellect, but I don’t think you really want to play such hazard with you intelligence. We need you, we need your analysis, we need your haiku! [we need you Quatloos too!]
On a more serious note, you’ve already seen what kind of work Franny Armstrong does, do you really expect something that is intellectually more honest?? Do you REALLY want to contribute to her financially? – which is exactly what you will be doing [it’s free to you but she or her production company will likely be getting some kind of royalty]. Myself I plan to let her career go down the deep dark hole she dug for herself completely unimpeded by me.
There are so many GREAT movies available on Netflix both fiction and documentary, life’s short, don’t waste your time.
If you want a pic for a documentary try: Blind Spot, Hitler’s Secretary, an interview with Traudl Junge, Hilter’s personal secretary [Netflix synopsis below] it should be REQUIRED VIEWING for every human being. If you have seen “Downfall” or “Sophie Scholl, the final days” already you will need to see this. Not for instant download, but put it in your queue now and it should be there for Thursday tops.
“Documentarians Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer turn their camera on 81-year-old Traudl Junge, who served as Adolf Hitler’s secretary from 1942 to 1945, and allow her to speak about her experiences. Junge sheds light on life in the Third Reich and the days leading up to Hitler’s death in the famed bunker, where Junge recorded Hitler’s last will and testament. Her gripping account is nothing short of mesmerizing.” – from the Netflix site
~ Ná Elbereth veria le, ná elenath dÃn sÃla erin rád o chuil lÃn,
Atani
Re: lucia,
Postlethwaite does very nicely in this role. Probably couldn’t find a better actor. But his character is nothing compared to Mr. Kobayashi!
I don’t intend to watch it, but I give this review two thumbs up (from a WUWT commenter):
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/6359/
Have to go with dorlomin above: ‘No, its rubbish. Patronising tosh.’
The problem is of course the director, Franny Armstrong, who is, in her way, quite mad (in the British, not American sense).
She is also almost unbelievably irritating. See here for a little insight:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/06/the-age-of-the-age-of-stupid.html
and
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/09/010-for-1010.html
You may have read her quoting the claim that climate change is killing 300,000 people a year – it’s a favorite of hers – remember the GHF Human Impacts report from before COP15 last year? See here for more:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/06/the-illusion-and-politics-of-necessity.html
I wonder what she’ll get up to next?
Lucia,
I do hope you enjoyed “The Train”, I did, but that was the first time around!
I recall it as being a bit of a difficult film, part comic romp, part dark tragedy, and ulitimately absurdist nightmare.
I recall it as B&W and that it seemed bleak, cold, rainy and dark. But it was a long while ago and a different age and memory plays tricks. Perspectives change. “The Train” was made for an audience that had either endured the war or had perhaps spent its childhood playing in bomb shelters and bombed out buildings (that would be I).
I doubt I will watch “The Age of Stupid†but there may be a trivial parallel, in that “The Train” also dealt with an apsect of the consequences of an existential threat, and one that seemed like it might overwhelm liberal democracy partly due to the inability of democracies to deal with a rising menace until it seemed almost too late.
But history is mutable and subject to revision. I have heard it said recently that the competence of that threat was exagerated and that the outcome was inevitable provided the great powers kept their nerve.
Perhaps global warming is an existential threat but perhaps once we can taste it we will do what is necessary. The price for staring down the axis was the destruction of much of Europe and the mobilisation of the masses to a single cause, the waste of a generation but it was achieved, but like the end of “The Train” it was not a noble victory but it was the meaningless end of a nightmare.
Oh Dear, I am becoming a sad old git.
Alex
Alex–
I loved The Train. Jim had seen it as a child and downloaded when it was available on Netflix. It is and odd movie. Lots of trouble and death and the material objective is to keep art work from being shipped out of France to Germany.
Breaking News Scoop here for The Blackboard:
Sony, 10:10’s leading corporate supporter (they even had their own page on the 10:10 website), has given a ZERO-stars rating to Franny’s and Richard’s “No Pressure” video. This email just arrived from Sony’s UK PR manager:
“Thank you for your email concerning the video released by the 10:10 climate change campaign group. Sony has supported the 10:10 climate change campaign because we share its objective to reduce carbon emissions. However, we strongly condemn the “No Pressure” video, which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony.
The company considers the video to be ill-conceived and tasteless. We also believe this video risks undermining the work of the many thousands of members of the public, schools and universities, local authorities and many businesses, of which Sony is one, who support the long-term aims of the 10:10 movement and who are actively working towards the reduction of carbon emissions.
As a result we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time.”
This incident will serve as a PR case study into the dangers of associating with political pressure groups for image enhancement purposes (i.e., greenwashing). If anything, the one positive conclusion that can be drawn from the “No Pressure” video is that groupthink can be dangerous to one’s health…and one’s company.
Wow this is funny, I just watched Age of Stupid last 2 nights ago and I can tell you its probably about as good as an Inconvient Truth, which I did not see. First of all, the year is supposed to be 2055…I want to start betting people real money on this crap. So 2055 and the world is falling apart and hes in this big control room using a high powered computer thats probably burning coal by the ton and he leads off with a video of a mudslide then he starts talking about hurricane katrina. This is the point I turned the movie off. Most of the people who stayed in New Orleans had the ability to leave, and instead lied and said they didn’t.
Lucia, Conan the Barbarian is an amazing movie, its a very technical movie that only the smartest men can comprehend. It is at least much more realistic and entertaining than age of stupid. Honestly, there is more historical accuracy in Conan than there is in this hack’s movie.
Actually, Conan The Barbarian was a great movie. Whomever saw it and didn’t like it, didn’t ‘get it’. 😉
Andrew
If I could stomach Potemkin, you’ll survive watching this, Lucia. That being said, I doubt anyone particularly intelligent will find it very good.
BTW, I watched Potemkin for the insights in filmography, not the dated communist propaganda. Soviet Montage is overrated though.
Interesting list of movies. What would be a the top list of the movies you did like?
Conan is amazing, the bad guys are awesome in it. Conan the Destroyer is also amazing because theres that crazy wizard in the tower in the lake and he has a bunch of special mirrors everywhere. In fact, I believe they were Arnold’s 2 best movies. Age of Stupid is for people stupid enough to believe in global warming.
BarryW–
First, I don’t count a movie as “really like” unless I would intentionally watch it twice, do so and continue to like it. The list is dominated by older films and, not surprisingly, American films. So, off the top of my head: “Gone with the Wind”, “Casablanca”,”True Grit”, “Star Wars”, all episodes of “The Lord of the Rings”, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, “Seven Samurai”, “The Magnificent 7”, “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Dreamgirls”, most Alfred Hitchcock films (but not The Birds).
I tend to like movies where things actually happen and that don’t make you think, “huh?” at the end. (The Birds is a “huh?” movie). I also like music, but often those don’t make the list of “best”. I also like the movies we named some of our cats from (Alien, True Grit and Bell Book and Candle.)
“Age of Stupid is for people stupid enough to believe in global warming.”
Dr. Shoosh,
Age of Stupid is indeed one of those titles that is meaningful, although not the way the makers intended.
It’s like when your buddy tells a joke, and people laugh… but it’s because his fly is down, not because of the joke.
Andrew
> Most of the people who stayed in New Orleans had the ability to leave, and instead lied and said they didn’t.
Somewhat off-topic, but… Hurricane Katrina was a tragedy in many ways, mostly unrelated to climate change. Not “tragedy” in the Greek sense, which concerns heroes brought low by their all-too-human flawed nature, and their clashing with the gods or fates. More like an unfunny black comedy. The incompetence in levee maintenance, and in the preparation and post-hit responses of city, state, and Federal governments. Reliance on an evacuation plan that could not work: it was more theater than realistic contingency planning. And so on. If one insists on (re)building a city below sea level–not a great idea to begin with–these things aren’t in the how-to manual.
If I was a poor homeowner or renter in a bad NOLA neighborhood, I would have declined to be evacuated many days beforehand, looking at it this way. Katrina was unlikely to hit NOLA directly. In the event of a miss, the criminal element would likely have a field day, looting and trashing the unoccupied homes. By staying put, I could protect what little property I had. By the time forecasts had Katrina almost-certainly giving a glancing blow, the window for evacuation had mostly closed. Even then, the city wouldn’t have flooded, if the levees had functioned to the admittedly-low standards that the authorities claimed for them.
So I think that systemic failures combined with social pathologies to turn Katrina into a disaster. I don’t fault the city’s citizens for weighing their individual options, with many staying put.
AMac:
It wasn’t just incompetence.
It was channeling monies that were intended for levee reconstruction into tourism.
It was the refusal of the locals to address flood protection in side canals by adding flood gates to them (“not in my back yard”) and the refusal to put in earthen dams instead of the less-unsightly concrete walls.
It was the callous decision to not allow full aid to reach the people at the Superdome (“they might decide to stay”).
And it was one of American media’s lowest points, in terms of the general lack of accuracy in reporting.
Then there was that rescue boat full of Shawn Penn and his entourage and film crew, no room for rescuees, that they forgot to put the drain plug in before launching.
Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it was flyover country for a president and the “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. Now about that padded resume…” moment.
Re: Carrick (Oct 5 08:54) — Yep.
Carrick (Comment#53461)-“Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it was flyover country for a president and the “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job. Now about that padded resume…†moment.”
This is just ludicrous. The fact of the matter is that the things FEMA “failed” to do WERE NOT IT’S RESPONSIBILITIES. The problem with FEMA is that people in Louisiana thought that the Federal government was going to take care of everything for them. Here in Florida, we know exactly what OUR responsibilities for disaster relief are and what falls to the Federal government. And our State, hit with several hurricanes, met it’s responsibilities. The State and local governments in Louisiana neglected their responsibilities, and then blamed the Federal government. THEY were the ones not doing their job, FEMA actually did it’s job. The slack was picked up by WALMART etc.
I have had it with this Bush bashing crap.
If you can get it free, then you will not have paid too much.
I love watching propaganda films like AIT, the Day After Tomorrow, etc. etc. etc.- especially if I can watch them at zero cost. Preferably in a way that makes sure the promoters get no money at all.
What is funny is how they tout it as a ‘documentary’. A documentary style, maybe. A ‘documentary’ of a future that ahs not happened?
That is simply science fiction.
And I have higher tastes and standards for my sf than this pos dressed up as a serious discussion.
AMac,
Katrin had zip to do with global warming, except in its contribution to the ignorant, vile and misleading journalists who lied about it.
Andrew_FL:
Andrew, regardless of what job you think FEMA did or didn’t do, you’d have to admit 1) Bush didn’t do himself any favors with the way he handled it (his handling was a PR disaster), 2) whether you think that should matter, it does matter, and 3) Brown did lie/pad his resume and eventually was fired over it.
While I do think that Bush was given an unfair rap, the buck stops with him (even now, if you listen to Obama), I’m not going to defend anybody out of some misguided partisan sense of loyalty.
Andrew_FL:
Nobody really needs to bash George W Bush. He made a series of bad policy choices that do the bashing pretty well, with no help needed.
Did he do some good things? Sure. But he also made policy decisions where he abandoned his own professed beliefs (the steel import tariff disaster, never vetoed absurd pork barrel projects, for two good examples) to placate certain constituencies. Honestly Andrew, Bush seemed to me a rather intellectually limited president who made a lot of very doubtful decisions… maybe not as intellectually limited as Jimmy Carter, but close. And he too often sold out his professed principles for political advantage.
Lucia, sorry this is so off topic… snip if you want.
SteveF– Given thetopic it’s hard to complain about people being off topic!
Hunter
I just watched it. Most of the film clips is the recent past. As something that is supposed to be ‘about’ climate change it’s a bit diffuse. Long segments seem to worry more about the crappiness of plastic toys, (mentioning they break and fill land fills) general over consumption, the economic unfairness in corrupt countries like Niger. Admittedly, things get connected to oil, but it’s not clear exactly how the lack of good water in Niger specifically connects to climate change.
Postlethwaite is good. The natural sad look of his face is useful. I’ll write more later though.
Amac and Andrew, both extremely impressive analysis’. Lucia, any way you can dig up Postlethwaite’s email? I would like to point out to him that the peach from “James and the Giant Peach” would never have grown so big unless co2 was plentiful. In fact, the insects also grew very big and needed co2.
Andrew, I’ve formulated the perfect question for Bush Bashers. When they start on the “oh Obama inherited this and that this and that” I simply say, “How many times to George Bush say if Bill Clinton hadn’t done this…” Bush never blamed Clinton for anything. Furthermore, simply because Obama inherited a deficit does not mean he has the moral highground to far outspend Bush, like all of his supporters claim. I hope we get some real conservatives elected to the federal government because that will mean the cutting and gutting of useless programs. Today, I discovered there is a “Bereavment Center” near my town that is a “non profit”. When one sees the words non profit, “scam” comes to mind. The federal government is now in the business of inventing problems. Take healthcare for example, look at the enrollment rates for pre existing condition plans. The enrollment rates suck because the majority of people who do not have healthcare do not want it. These would be young, college aged people and illegals.
Shoosh–
Me? Dig up Postlethwaite’s email? So you can email him? Uhmm… I’m no better at digging up actors’ emails than you and I doubt I’d do it even if I were. If you want to find people’s emails to lecture them about James and the Giant Peach, your on your own.
SteveF:
I agree. Of course I wasn’t bashing him by pointing out his PR gaffes.
I do think that FEMA did a terrible job during Katrina, and I do blame Brown (and his boss by extension) for the ineptitude of that. Do I really need to go into Brown’s execrable behavior in the days after Katrina hit the Gulf coast?
In Mississippi, we set up a separate transportation line that bypassed FEMA due to their bureaucratic incompetence. (Of course, Trent Lott caught lots of hell from the RNC higher-ups…it was making FEMA look bad and all of that, clearly a more important consideration than any purported humanitarian mission.)
To be specific, it was clear at the time that FEMA was ill-prepared in terms of their policies. For example, if you wanted to ship an emergency generator from FEMA, you needed a street address for where it was going, according to then-existing FEMA policy.
Apparently it never occurred to those knuckleheads at FEMA that there may not be a house to ship to.
Ok, that second list gives me a good idea of where you’re coming from. You might like Ford’s films like “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” and “The Searchers” which are two of my re-watch films. Doubt if you’d like something like “A Lion in Winter” though.
Lucia,
Next time my wife is away, I will make a point of watching the movie (she will not watch really bad movies. I am a glutton for them, however).
Cannot agree more about Barry Lyndon, btw, It disillusioned me for the director, Stanley Kubrick. I thought of all the poor celluloid trees sacrificed to make that long winded pretentious excuse of a movie.
As to Katrina, I suggest a good place to start is to look at the actual time line of the event.
Bush blew the PR big time, but I think he underestimated the cynical lying viciousness of the media and those who actually dropped the ball. My personal view is that Katrina marked a point where Bush disengaged from everything except fighting the war and keeping terrorists out.
Which would be a terrible choice for any President to make, by the way.
To address Lucia’s question, To See or Not to See?
Let us conduct a meta-analysis of the blurb in an attempt to determine in advance of actually screening the film, whether or not a reasonable person of rational and scientific inclination might find this film worth watching as a way to inform herself about the possible consequences of inaction regarding the possible changes of earth’s climate in the next 45 years. Here are a few points of analysis to consider.
[The complete text to the blurb appears at the top of the page.]
First off, before we even get to the discussion of the blurb we have to realize that this is not actually a DOCUMENTARY, it’s at minimum a hybrid of documentary and FICTION, the interview footage may be real but the premise and presentation is a FABRICATION in much the same way that Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance, is a fiction in that is the footage [much of it archival footage] has been artfully assembled in just such a way as to create an unspoken narrative designed specifically to subvert the audience’s rational intellect and instead implant a desired [conditioned] emotional feeling state.
The FIRST sentence.
1. “In the desolate future…” This “desolate” future is of course a FICTION at best, a prediction masquerading as fact, but is it even a prediction based upon a coherent best guess of a single scientist’s [or team of scientists] view about what COULD possibly happen in the next 45 years, OR, it this an ASSEMBLAGE, a collage, of all the most extreme and paranoid predictions that the Franny Armstrong could pull together and collate within the context of a 90 minute video that matches her particular flavor of paranoia.
2. “…of 2055…” – Not 2255 or even 2155? We are just supposed to SWALLOW WHOLE the notion that environmental Armageddon will have come and gone within the next 45 years and we will be looking back at that mysterious lost age [today] like we now look back at the Older Dryas? This is just pain nutty; which would suggest we are dealing here with NUTS, people who have lost the capacity to furnish themselves with a set of facts congruent with the even the broader range of what is being debated in the SCIENCE. If there were a purpose to watching this film other than say – to laugh at imbecility [in poor taste] – or to work yourself up into [some kind of] a hysteria, one would hope that it didn’t involve having to compromise all judgment in the first six words of the paragraph. If your thesis were to be that it will ALL already be over in 45 years, one would hope that statement would come at the END, after you have presented all of your facts and science based reasoning. I reject as “documentary” anything that requires you to accept an unproven [or unprovable] premise as an entry condition. This is intellectually dishonest. This is propaganda.
3. “An archivist (Pete Postlethwaite)…” – Our intrepid hero is an archivist not a scientist, JUST the sort of fellow [as opposed to a Fellow of the Royal Society] you go to discover what happened to a complex, dynamical, non-linear, chaotic system – someone who’s expertise is in cataloging and preserving media [hopefully a linear and non-chaotic system]. And of course our archivist isn’t actually a REAL archivist either, he’s an ACTOR [one of the most scientifically deficient professions there is] enacting a CHARACTER created by an environmental ACTIVIST [not much better than actors, maybe because so many environmentalist activists are actors]. Even a real archivist would be expected to know something about data structures, have some programming experience as well as some of the chemistry and physics of archival technologies.
4. “…combs… ” And what exactly was the search parameter, what was the super powerful algorithm? find all videos created by a single, non-expert film maker, and search no further, do not search for data other than video interviews, do not search for data that might reveal any hidden biases or shortcomings that the video producers might have had, let’s just keep this search strictly in the realm of FANTASY and magical thinking.
5. “…through a vast collection of videos to learn what went wrong with the planet.” – Perfect way to arrive at the truth about the PHYSICAL WORLD conduct a MEDIA search. Don’t go out into the field to collect data, don’t develop a testable hypothesis, don’t go into the laboratory and test it, don’t use every bit of you intelligence and energy to DISPROVE that hypothesis so that finally after years and countless iterations of THE METHOD [and I don’t mean Lee Strasberg’s [faulty] method] you are left with such an improved version of your hypothesis that it has resisted all attempts to destroy it, so that finally it can be elevated to that noble and loft rank of… THEORY.
Sentence TWO
1. “His research points to the first decade of the century,” So our Archivist’s bold research plan to discover what it is that went so fatally wrong in that tumultuous epoch 45 years ago, casts his gaze [remember he’s not actually measuring anything, he’s watching videos] back a further aeon, [ten years] to discover the source of it all. Well we should CERTAINLY answer the question using THAT method. – Geesh… I’m starting to run out of hip and clever ways [ok, maybe not hip] of expressing shock, amazement and dumbfoundment, and we’re only onto the second sentence.
2. “… When humans blithely ignored…” If Franny Armstrong hasn’t noticed, or maybe she is just shutting it out, there is a vigorous debate going on the scientific world about WHAT IS REALLY going on. Who cares what is going on the political world, the political world is not were truth is approached, only dissimulated.
3. “…the warning signs of climate change.” This is were the device of fictitious story subverts rational understanding by concealing the ASSUMPTION of that the film makers [paranoid] predictions about the future “climate change” are already known to be factual and correct.
Sentence THREE
1. “The footage he views is actually culled from real-life interviews conducted by the filmmaker,” Here have an admission of what the real method is, which at least superficially resembles the documentary film makers method, but simultaneously and systematically also undermines it. This where the documentary within story trope directly undermines truth. Our fictitious Archivist comes to his conclusion about the situation which just so happens also to be the film makers conclusion, this is a sly way of begging the question [petitio principii]. In other words a conclusion, something that an audience is supposed to reach independently, is built into the structure of the film. This is a pretty damned type of lie.
3. “…whose sharp — and darkly funny — insights populate this sobering documentary.” – The documentarian is not supposed populate the work with his or her own insights, the function of the documentarian is to ask the insightful, penetrating questions, find the right information or persons to answer those questions, and then find a method that presents the information without distorting it and in an interesting and understandable way. The documentarian adds her own analysis, simulation or reenactment only at some hazard to the truth.
What never ceases to amaze me is even intelligent people’s willingness to BUY IN to a premise which seeks to subvert your own rational apprehension of the world and have it replaced with someone else’s paranoid version – for some reason other than amusement. It seems to me that this is no way to discover anything about how nature works, unless the focus or your research is how a paranoid idea can make a progress through the guts of an ideology, [just the sort of thing I might spend my days and nights on].
Question is, is that the way you want to spend YOUR days and nights.
~ your friend Wygart
Andrew’s Kentucky Fried Top-Ten All-Time Favorite Movies
Not In Order
Chariots Of Fire
The Right Stuff
The Duellists
Rocky
The Shawshank Redemption
Field Of Dreams
This Is Spinal Tap
Planes, Trains And Automobiles
The Fellowship Of The Ring
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Andrew
Dr. Shooshmon, phd. (Comment#53448),
Did you really watch the movie or did you just miss the solar panels and wind turbines at the top of the tower?
hunter (Comment#53468),
There is documentary footage almost from the very beginning. The documentary portions follow the lives of six people. One guy is launching India’s third low cost airline. There’s an old French guy who takes people on tours of a nearby glacier that has been melting rapidly. Another guy trying to build a wind farm who meets resistance from the locals. Two Iraqi kids blessed by “freedom” and “democracy” by the U.S. and a Nigerian woman who wants to study medicine but is deeply impoverished despite her country’s oil wealth.
lucia (Comment#53475),
I think the point about the crappiness of plastic toys is how much we waste energy. You put energy into creating something, it’s shipped across the world and ends up in some kid’s hands and 5 minutes later it’s in the garbage about to begin it’s journey across the world to a garbage dump. The issue with Niger is that despite its oil wealth, the country is impoverished and the presence of Shell has been horrible for the environment. One of the woman said that she wished she had the things we have in America. Then there’s that segment showing how many worlds’ worth of resources we’d need for people in the developing world to have the same high consumption lifestyle that we have in the West. To me the connection was obvious. There are billions of people who wish they were as well off as we are. To attain a better material lifestyle requires oil. More oil, more CO2, … But it’s going to run out sooner of later. So all these people are basically going to show up too late to the party and will find the keg is empty. This natually leads us to the guy and his wind turbines. The message is that our modern lifestyle requires energy. That energy supply will run out eventually and continuing to use it endangers our civilization so we need alternative energy. I think a very strong point was made by those opponents of the wind turbine who while they were deeply concerned about climate change, they didn’t want wind turbines in their town. I guess the overall message of that part of the documentary is: “We want to act, but what are we supposed to do?”
SteveF (Comment#53472)-Much of what you say, I agree with. But there are things it makes sense to criticize Bush for, and then there is nonsense.
It is extremely rare that a crazy anarchist like me defends a federal agency, but I really think that the criticism of FEMA is based fundamentally on a misconception about Federal responsibility.
I figured this would happen. The last time Bush came up, there was no end to flak I caught for defending him. It’s a thankless effort so I probably shouldn’t bother given that it makes zero difference to people’s opinions.
BarryW– I like all three of those. There’s plenty of plot movement in Lion in Winter. You can understand individual people’s motivations even if they are selfish and craven. You don’t feel like you have endless unanswered questions in the end. I like nearly everything by John Ford.
Re: Chad ,
Yes and no. I think that was at least part of their intent, but there was grousing about filling land fills and toys breaking. They also specifically used associated the word “crap” with the toys. But having lots of wood toys, fabric stuffed animals or rubber/metal or other types of junk that broke would also fill land fills.
Also, there is a problem that while waste and excess carbon emissions are, in some sense, related, they are also distinct. If we used nukes, we could “waste” a lot “more” and achieve a lower carbon foot print. So, to me, some of the very specific focus on “waste” muddied the message.
Similarly interludes focus seemed to be how war over valuable things is bad. Another seemed to be more about how the war in Iraq was bad more than climate. One interlude seemed to focus on how Africa had been particularly oppressed and fought over because it had mineral resources, oil, and people who could be enslaved. The ending bit seemed to suggest that discovery of oil ended the need for slaves. (I blinked but didn’t rewind.)
So, while I saw how we could connect the dots to climate, the way a few were organized didn’t really seem to focus on that and it was diffuse.
It made me wonder if the film was a mash-up assembled from footage shot for other purposes?
Anyway, was lack of focus on climate bad? I don’t know– just a little diffuse.
Yes. At he very beginning they do mention the fact that Nigers government is very corrupt too.
But this is, again one of the “diffuse” issues. That is to say: The point has very little to do with climate change. The bad water and poverty of the woman in Niger is a bad thing– but the maldistribution of the income from Niger’s oil does not, in and of itself, cause climate change to occur more rapidly. (It may make it occur less rapidly. Fair or not, owing the the combined actions of Shell and the Niger goverment, that Niger woman’s carbon footprint was probably lower than the Cornish wind turbine family. If Niger wealth was more evenly distributed, the carbon foot print of Niger would probably rise. )
I think this was the intended point too.
I also couldn’t help but think I would be more sympathetic to the Cornish wind turbine guy if he had been trying to build a nuclear facility. According to my notes, the wind turbines were going to generate only 13MW. I don’t know if that is peak or average, but it’s pretty small.
So, if the point was that we need non-fossil to sustain our modern lives, I would have preferred to see the show bring us someone trying to install a nuclear plant.
My big “huhs” were other things though. How did that archive actually get there? Were those Easter Island statues really smaller than Michael Angelo’s David? Was Postlewait the last human being on earth? If so, was he also maintaining the wind turbines? Why did stored records have to be on servers? (I swear he said that. Did I mis-hear? Were those servers?!) Also, we saw lots of pictures of scorched earth in 2050. Wasn’t it raining anywhere?
Also, I swear to *** that once they switched to the ‘future’ documentaries near the end, around 2040 a narrator said something like “Reports from the north say the North Sea is boiling.” I rewound twice and it I’m pretty sure it ends with “North sea is boiling”. Boiling? Is that what they said?!
I know in movies the audience is supposed to permit a willing suspension of disbelief. But there were all sorts of pesky questions I couldn’t keep from popping in my head (even in some of the ‘documentary’ parts. )
All in all: Not as bad as Barry Lyndon or My Dinner with Andree. But I’m not surprised it didn’t make my local theater. I think most TV documentaries on climate change are better and result in a much lower “huh?!” factor.
re Chad
I missed the explanation of how they provide power. It’s a bit like Monbiot’s love of The Road in this respect. Post-apocalyptic ash covered landscape that presumably will cover solar panels. Both ‘renewable’ technologies are far more vulnerable to alternates like nuclear, which is easier to weather (or climate) proof. Renewables are a very large gamble in that respect, and we’ve already seen the financial impact in the UK. New windmills have airconditioned nacelles to protect equipment and reduce maintenance, but at increased energy cost. Especially when the wind isn’t blowing.
Not strictly true. During WW2, Germany’s oil ran out so they made synethetic fuels. During apartheid, South Africa did the same thing and still synthesises most of it’s diesel. Oddly enough this is one of the reasons there’s interest in carbon capture. CO2 can be used for enhanced oil recovery, or for synthesising methane, which could then be used to synthesise oil or fuel. That’s linked to the hydrogen economy. Makes no sense for consumers, but does for manufacturing. But only if you have cheap, reliable energy which renewables doesn’t deliver.
The guy building the windmills earns a fortune from subsidies, the neighbours have to put up with the flicker and LF pollution. And pay for it. But NIMBYism also prevents energy recovery from incineration. So instead consumers sort waste, it gets collected, transported, resorted, shipped, reprocessed, transported and hopefully sold. All wasting energy instead of keeping it local and burning it for heat & power. My council won’t collect glass, but does seem to use it instead of sand for bedding paving slabs. Landfill by another name I guess.
And finally, back to Conan. James Earl Jones and his voice, ’nuff said :p
Chad (Comment#53485) October 5th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Says:
[…] our modern lifestyle requires energy. That energy supply will run out eventually and continuing to use it endangers our civilization so we need alternative energy. I think a very strong point was made by those opponents of the wind turbine who while they were deeply concerned about climate change, they didn’t want wind turbines in their town. I guess the overall message of that part of the documentary is: “We want to act, but what are we supposed to do?â€
Build load-following nuclear capacity augmented, when conditions permit, by wind and solar and other marginal yield but low emission generation technologies.
If we accept that CO2 and other AGW from black carbon is a potentially serious problem, then nuclear is the only solution.
But try selling a reactor to Franny and see how far you get!
lucia (Comment#53490)
Postlethwaite wasn’t the last human being. In the beginning you see two people or so at the snowless Alps. You can see a few people walking through the sand in Las Vegas, and there’s what I guess you could describe as a climate refugee camp. Also, at the end, recall all those structures in orbit which I assume are “homes”. Humanity survived, but civilization did not. Yes, he did say “servers”.
Atomic Hairdryer (Comment#53491)
I guess in 2055, solar and wind energy systems have become more advanced and don’t suffer from the same problems modern systems do.
A landfill under your feet!
Carrick (Comment#53480),
I have another story of incompetence post Katrina.
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My company’s production plant is only about 40 miles as the crow flies (or as the boat floats) from New Orleans. When the workers at the plant heard that people were still stranded on rooftops and overpasses, without food or water, a group of them got on their 40 MPH bayou boats and headed for New Orleans to take people over water to safety. They were turned away (at gunpoint) before getting to the city…. they were judged too great a threat by Federal and State officials!
Andrew_FL,
There was plenty enough official incompetence in the aftermath of Katrina to be shared. Yes, the primary responsibility was supposed to have been the city and the State. But the mayor of the city and the governor of the state at the time were both unusually corrupt and incompetent, even by the local standards, which are not very high. The locals got a pass, at least initially, mainly because of low expectations; note that both were thrown out of office in the next election. I think people generally hold Federal Government officials to a higher standard, and expect more competence. Whether this a reasonable expectation is a different question.
Chad
I thought those structures were space garbage. I figured they were picking up on the notion of all the waste– we’d even put up tons of cr*p in space!
Of course, your assumption may be right too. I missed the people in Las Vegas or in a refuge camp. But then, I got a phone call near the beginning so that could explain it.
SteveF
I think you’re wrong about the mayor. Nagin (“New Orleans will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”) got re-elected.
SteveF
I think you’re wrong about the mayor. Nagin (“New Orleans will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”) got re-elected.
BarryW,
You are correct, the mayor was re-elected in a very close race, but is now out of office. Outside of New Orleans, he remains (very vocally) unpopular with the Louisiana voters I have talked with. Governor Blanco withdrew from her re-election bid when it became obvious she could not win.
SteveF:
Of course it’s no secret that a river runs through the middle of New Orleans. Except to our ever inquisitive press corp of course. 😉
We also noticed that they weren’t allowing boat traffic. The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t get them out, it’s they didn’t know what to do with them, when they did. (None of the surrounding parishes wanted anything to do with the “riff raff”.)
Off-topic (kind of, but it gets back to Netflix, so there’s a tenuous connection to the post):
My kids picked this out, and I was dubious, but found it very funny — “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”
There are times when I think that Internet delivery of movies from Netflix is the best development from high-speed computers and networks. (Talk about your instant gratification!) And other times when I think it is another stone we pile onto a wall of inter-personal isolation. Who needs to go to the movie theater when it’s way more comfortable at home, and the butter on the popcorn is real?
HaroldW
FUN!!!
I downloaded it. Jim was dubious. My theory is we can always just stop watching. We both liked it!
I don’t worry about isolation of not going to movie theaters. People don’t interact in movie theaters anyway. Many other out of the house activities are better for interaction (i.e. choir, knitting circle, volunteering, book club etc.)
I thought it was a very silly film and therefore well worth watching, and a nice summary, Lucia.
It also helps understand why they thought the 10:10 No pressure video would be seen as funny. The makers really really believe the ‘huhs’.
Dr Horrible, lovely, watching it now… Glee with goggles!
Oh, I did see those helix style wind turbines but did not notice the solar panels. Either way, the movie is a complete fraud. Does anyone here think that by 2055 there will be all of this destruction? Jim Popsicleweight is a fraudster, he radiated the hell out of those poor bugs in James and the Giant Peach.
Dr. Shooshmon is as wrong about history as he is about climate:
“Bush never blamed Clinton for anything.”
A la contraire: http://money.cnn.com/2002/08/07/news/economy/bush_cheney/
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/200601012_bush_blames_clinton_again/
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/07/28/bush-administration-blames-bill-clinton-for-deficit/
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-how-is-blaming-george-w-bush-any-different-than-blaming-bill-clinton/
And I’m sure you could find many more with a little effort. (I do recommend the Jon Stewart video though)
I can’t remember why, but I didn’t like The Age of Stupid. The idea was good, but somehow they screwed it up. Maybe I’ll watch it again one of these days. When the 10:10 fiasco hit the fan and I heard Frannie Armstrong was behind it, it started to make sense.
If you want a pic for a documentary try: Blind Spot, Hitler’s Secretary,
Make that Blind Spot but without the Hitler stuff. It’s a documentary about things like Peak Oil and consumerism, and even features Jim Hansen for 1 minute. I’ve uploaded a torrent a few months back.
And if you like old movies I might as well recommend my favourite movie of all times: Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise, IMDB. In my opinion it’s even better than Citizen Kane or Casablanca.
Neven–
If you can get it quickly, watch it again and see if you can figure out what you didn’t like. After all, we know you like the message and goal.
I wasn’t offended by it, but I thought there overall it didn’t work.
I’ll try those movies. I have to admit, Citizen Kane is not a favorite of mine. I’ve never figured out why people think it’s great. (I also noticed that when videos first came out, very few places stocked it in their classics sections. Meanwhile, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind etc. were all there. So, my theory is critics like Citizen Kane more than viewers do.)
I’ve never figured out why people think it’s great. (…) My theory is critics like Citizen Kane more than viewers do.
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Your theory is correct in a way. If you place the film in its historical context, cinematographically speaking, it is a truly astounding movie (coincidentally I watched it again last week), due to its innovations on the level of narration, camera techniques, editing. Orson Welles was at his artistic peak.
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If you dig French movies, I can also recommend the more modern Les Amants du Pont Neuf. And if you want to know more about the techniques and moral attitude of the non-existing anti-AGW propaganda machine, you can always watch Thank you for Smoking.
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BTW, a few weeks ago I tried to give My Dinner with Andre another shot, but fell asleep!
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I’ll try and watch Age of Stupid, but there are so many things still to see.
So Age of Stupid contends that cutting C02 emissions, would have prevented all the bad personal and governmental decisions that contributed to the misery of Katrina and aftermath?
and/or
It would have prevented Katrina altogether or significantly reduced it’s impact?
and/or simply, “A hurricane is a warning sign of AGW”?
How about Age of Really Stoopid AGW Propaganda Movies for a documentary title?
Andrew
Age of Really Stoopid AGW Propaganda Movies
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I believe you are referring to the recent 10:10 clip. :-B
Andrew_KY–
Who really know what they contend?
It’s supposed to be a documentary. But it sort of isn’t a documentary. Things are strung together to imply ideas, but they never really say Katrina and the aftermath was caused by CO2. In a real documentary, a narrator would probably tell you whether “they” think Katrina was caused by CO2 or not. Instead, we are just presented with Postlethwaite, an archivist, picking videos with the goal of educating himself about “why it happened”. The implication is that he has made intelligent choices, that the things he views really are signs that global warming was happening.
But a more intelligent interpretation is that he doesn’t have any particular insight permitting him to diagnose which videos are “signs” of global warming. Anyone watching knows at least 1/2 the stuff in the video are not “signs” of global warming.
For example: Most of the issues in Nigeria bits are “signs” that politically corrupt governments are associated with social and economic disintegration and environmental destruction of a non-climate related type.
In fact, if you one becomes curious and google about Nigeria, you fine history of nigeria, which reveals a possible reason why there is so much oil in the water where the impoverished Nigerian woman lives:
It turns out what happens is poor Nigeria’s find stretches of unguarded pipe, and drill holes to drain off petroleum. Sometimes fires occur. I would expect that sometimes petroleum leaks off. Admittedly, this would not occur if oil companies didn’t build the pipelines in the first place, but a real documentary discussing the environmental impact of the oil industry in Nigeria would bring up details of this sort. Then we could place the Nigerian woman’s selling black market crude in context: She is probably selling oil stolen from the oil companies pipelines. Her cottage industry is probably a direct cause of high levels of oil pollution in the waters where she complains that oil kill fish.
Of course, none of this has much to do with climate change. Also, while the video seems to suggest that Nigeria’s problems are caused by the oil. Is that a fair reading? I don’t know. They’ve had a lot of civil strife since gaining independence from the UK. Wikipedia says this “From the outset Nigeria’s ethnic and religious tensions were magnified by the disparities in economic and educational development between the south and the north. ” Ethnic and religious tensions often lead to civil strife even absent a valuable resource like oil.
So, I’m not sure that Nigeria bit gives any viewer much insight into the cause of that Nigerian woman’s poverty, and it certainly gives little insight into why global warming is happening. (We do learn she’d like a better life. Yes. So do people in countries without oil.)
Anyway, to get back to what Age of Stupid ‘contends’, does it “contend” the fish kills in Nigeria caused global warming? Or the civil wars in Nigeria caused global warming? I doubt it. It just shows “stuff” which Postlethwaite seems to think were “signs”. He really doesn’t seem particularly competent at figuring out the “signs” but collects these clips all together and beams them to the universe at the end of the show.
The one thing the show is clear on: In 2055, Pstlethwaite knows the globe warmed and the results were devastating.
Thanks, Lucia, for the thoughtful response. 😉
I went to IMDB and was struck by the first comment…
User Reviews (Review this title)
18 out of 31 people found the following review useful.
The best 2009. film, and in my top ten films ever, 4 November 2009
Author: Ivan Pavicevic (ivanp84) from Serbia
” As a scientist (biochemist) almost every day I feel deep pain in my heart when the news shows frustrating human impact on the nature. Maybe 10 years pass since I joined Greenpeace site, but political instability in my country (Serbia) didn’t let me to join the Greenpeace world protests, but I plan to participate in the future. The plot of this movie is more than realistic , all scientific evidences predicts very black future if global emission of greenhouse gases doesn’t rapidly decrease until 2015. So, plotted 2055. tower whit the Archivist wouldn’t be SF… The film have strong green message, and I am 100% sure that I’ll watch again and recommend the film to my friends.”
This is almost too much. We have someone at least claiming to be a scientist appealing to the authority of science to recommend a bad (by The Blackboard Critics Assoc.) movie! lol
Andrew
lucia (Comment#53509),
Glad you liked Dr. Horrible.
I agree with you that going to the theater, the level of interaction isn’t very high, and certainly nothing at all like the clubby activities you mention. But one is at least among other people. Perhaps I was just having a grouchy day, but it seems that everyone out running or walking has headphones to shut the world out. They (headphones) are becoming more common at work as well. It’s wonderful to be able to listen to the music that pleases you, but it seems to me that there’s a cost there as well.
I hadn’t thought of Netflix in the way that you mentioned — namely that it’s so easy to download a movie that it lowers the bar for sampling. There’s no real cost, actual or opportunity, except the few minutes of actually watching the movie to see if it sparks one’s interest. As opposed to mail-order, in which you have to choose between the iffy movie and one which seems more likely. [Or the old “Blockbuster” model of actually having to pay per movie…doesn’t that already seem quaint?] So far I’ve been mostly downloading movies that I’ve seen and want to see again — e.g., Metropolis, Nosferatu, Plan 9 from Outer Space — or recent pictures which friends have recommended but I hadn’t seen in theaters. I’ll have to be more adventurous in selecting some offbeat titles, and just not finishing them if they don’t appeal upon a few minutes’ viewing.
“The one thing the show is clear on: In 2055, Pstlethwaite knows the globe warmed and the results were devastating.”
Indeed, Lucia. But he prolly believed the globe had warmed, rather than knew. Does he produce any credible science to confirm that the globe had warmed? Was it still warming? 😉
Andrew
Her cottage industry is probably a direct cause of high levels of oil pollution in the waters where she complains that oil kill fish.
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Be careful, or I’ll have to bring out my rape-metaphor again.
Oops, sorry for the html fail.
Re: Neven,
Uhmmm… ok. But I’m not getting your point.
I wasn’t using a metaphor. At the end of the movie, the Nigerian woman is earning quick money selling black market diesel which she obtains from some woman. The exact source of this diesel is mysterious and the Nigerian character in the age of stupid does tell us her business is dangerous.
Wikipedia tells us that locals tap into oil company pipelines, syphon off this petroleum and sell it. This theft if oil is illegal. My educated guess is that the stolen oil is sold on the black market, not a normal, legal market.
Wikipedia also tells us that the tapped lines are sufficiently leaky to result in fires, after which they are discovered.
Once again, my educated guess is that sometimes, lines that are tapped merely leak and don’t cause fires and explosions at least for a time. Those that leak will likely leak into something.
The Niger river valley where she lives is one of the areas where companies have drilled for oil, and where we expect to find oil pipelines, and so, it’s likely the woman’s boss is getting oil from tapping into lines in the same geographic vicinity where the Nigerian woman lives.
So, using no metaphor what-so-ever, I strongly suspect the black market industry she participates in is “a” (not “the” or “the only”) direct cause of high levels of pollution in water where she complains that oil is killing the fish.
How would using applying a rape metaphor to something that is not-rape be comparable to my suggesting that the cottage industry of local people illegally tapping into the big oil’s lines in a way that is known to leak oil and gas in amounts sufficient to cause fires and explosions is probably a direct source of petroleum in the streams and rivers in the near by area?
Will resurrecting your rape metaphor suddenly prevent the illegally tapped lines from being leaky? Will it suddenly reveal a non-illegal source of the black market oil? Or a source of oil that is unlikely to be related to the known leaks from the illegally tapped lines used to steal oil for sale on the black market?
Speaking quite literally: I think the woman involved in the sale of black market oil is probably participating in a cottage industry that results in at least some– if not most– the spilled oil she complains of early in the movie. She tells us oil in the water is killing the fish. She is benefiting financially by selling the oil. My educated guess is that the incremental amount of oil spillage from illegal, stealthy, low-tech, low budget tapping of pipelines is greater than the amount spilled by the oil companies themselves.
I could be wrong, but I think I’m probably right. Her cottage industry probably spills more oil than the oil company.
Neven. look up the word pwnd.
in case you’re wondering what just happened to you.
Just to explain what I meant: you imply that the woman is guilty of the pollution and thus part of her own misery. That sounds to me like calling a rape victim guilty of his/her own rape. Metaphorically.
I would rather say that the high five between the corrupt government and SHELL is playing a very, very big part in the people’s misery in that part of Nigeria. In my metaphor they would be the rapists.
steven mosher, you go and pwn this.
Neven
I don’t imply anything. I am saying something very directly: the black market industry this woman participates in probably is the source of the pollution she complains of. So, yes, the woman’s actions contribute to her own misery.
Now for this:
But there is a difference: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a circumstance where a rape victim is guilty of his/her own rape. The problem when people suggest rape victims are guilty of their own rape is the the victim is not guilty of her own rape.
Here’s the thing: Suppose I made my living by working with toxic chemicals manufactured by “company X” and pour left over on my lot. Suppose in a documentary I mentioned all these chemicals were manufactured by “company X”, and made it seem that the chemicals were on my lot because company X had somehow mishandled them. I then complained that nothing would grow on my lot because of the contamination. I can’t eat my delicious tomatoes any more. The lot is now a hideous barren wasteland. (Cut to shots of Company X logo.”)
Might it be fair for a third party to point out that I, Lucia, was the one who poured all the chemicals on my own lot? And so, the reason I could no longer enjoy delicious home grown tomatoes on my lot, and no longer had any pretty flowers, was, well, partly my own fault?
Consider another possible case where I might be the “victim”. I down a fifth of bourbon and then get behind the wheel of a car. Weighing 135lbs, I am now drunk as a skunk. While driving in the blinding snow, my car goes into a skid and I wrap the car around a tree-trunk. I break my neck and am crippled for life. Some might call me a “victim”, because being crippled is not such a wonderful thing.
Would it be unfair to point out that my actions contributed to my sad plight? Or does the concept of “not blaming the victim” mean that no one is permitted to notice that I and no one else decided to get drunk as a skunk and then drive in a blizzard? Are we supposed to blame the car manufacturer for making cars? Or selling cars that don’t drive themselves? Or, though equipped with four wheel drive and anti-lock brakes, can still go out of control? (After all, if there were no cars, I couldn’t have been driving, right? Or if the brakes and steering were “perfect” even a drunk driver could drive perfectly during blinding snow storms, right? So, they are partially to blame. Right? Cut to haunting photo of Subaru.)
I think it would be perfectly fair to notice that the “victim” (me) is partly to blame in either hypothetical. I think if a ‘victim’ really is a victim of their own bad choices, it is fair to honestly point out the true cause of the problem. Not only is it fair, but it is necessary to correctly identify the problem in order to permit people to figure out how to fix it.
Now enter the “blame the victim” business as applied to rape victims. In the rape scenarios, what we are usually seeing is people suggesting that if a woman dresses attractively for a date and he then her date rapes her….well… it’s her own fault because… well… why didn’t she wear a burqua? Dressing attractively doesn’t “cause” guys to rape anyone. It most particularly does not “cause” guys to rape in the sense remote like that dumping toxic chemicals kills plants or being drunk impairs driving.
So, the problem with blaming the victim in a rape is that it’s not her fault. Blaming the victim takes the burden of guilt off the guilty party– the rapist– and puts it on the not-guilty, the raped woman. In contrast, blaming a drunk driver for their own injuries in a one person accident they caused? That’s just accurate.
So, while you are correct that the two things may share an element of “blame the victim”, they are not the same. Because in one case, the “victim” did contribute to their own misfortune and in the other the victim did not contribute to their own misfortune.
Neven–
So, we learn that Ken Saro-Wiwa existed and he complained of indiscriminate waste dumping by Shell.
But does that mean he was correct to believe the most of the oil was spilled mostly or solely by Shell? Dunno. (Do you?)
Does the fact that Ken Saro-Wiwa complained about Shell mean oil is not spilling as a result of locals tapping into the major pipelines (which is known to happen)? I think it highly unlikely.
It’s clear that at least some of the spilling is due to locals secretively tapping into the pipelines to steal oil and sell on the black market. Black markets being what they are, and knowing that fires and explosions resulting from the illegal tapping are fairly common, I would suspect that a quite large amount of oil is spilled that way. (Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe it’s only drops, while Shell gushes geisers like BP.)
What is true is a real documentary discussing the oil pollution in the area would discuss both dumping by Shell and leakage resulting from the locals tapping into pipelines to steal oil. They would interview people who had studied the problem to discover the relative magnitude of the contributions from both activities to the pollution problem.
A “real” documentary concerned wouldn’t mention only Shell and leave the issue of locals spilling when tapping into pipes to those curious viewers who decide to read the history of Nigeria to discover that it is well known that locals tap into the pipelines to steal oil, causing leakage. Those readers are likely to connect the dots and say.. so… that woman, and others, were selling black market oil. Which came from… where? Probably the same illegal taps that are know to leak oil!
Mind you, I don’t really expect The Age of Stupid to be a “real” documentary and balanced. But this sort of lapse…well… not good.
Re: HaroldW ,
I’ve even downloaded an Indian movie with subtitles. I started watching it and decided the only thing really “wrong” with it is that I had to read the subtitles. This made it inappropriate that particular evening because I was working hairpin lace which requires me to glance frequently at the loom. So, I couldn’t read the subtitles.
Lesson: When working hairpin lace, download movies in English, or possibly in French, but not Hindi. (I can knit simple stitches and read subtitles. I can’t crochet or do hairpin lace and read subtitles because you do have to look at the “hole” you poke the hook through. Simple stitches in knitting can be done entirely by feel.)
Franny Armstrong is a ‘campaigning’ film director not a ‘documentary’ maker as Neven well knows. As such she has to push, as she sees it, all the right buttons even if they bear no relation to the real world situation.
In his heart Neven knows this as well, but as long as the buttons are pushed he can suspend belief.
So, we learn that Ken Saro-Wiwa existed and he complained of indiscriminate waste dumping by Shell. But does that mean he was correct to believe the most of the oil was spilled mostly or solely by Shell? Dunno. (Do you?)
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I do not ‘know’. I had seen the story of Ken Saro-Wiwa in an oil documentary, but couldn’t remember which one (I have watched so many in the last few years). I had to look it up. It’s called ‘Crude Impact. There are several more.
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Frankly, I find it a bit embarrassing to see you invest all that time to play down Shell’s guilt in Nigeria’s ecological and social catastrophe. I’m not really sure why you want to play devil’s advocate on a subject that apparently you know so little about.
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Aside from the relatively irrelevant question who pollutes the most, Shell or the local pipeline-tapping population, I would think that if the people of Nigeria would profit as much as Shell had promised them they would do from the drilling, there would be a lot less pipeline-tapping.
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To keep going on about ‘yes, but the locals cause the pollution themselves!’, I mean, it’s painful to read…
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It makes me tend to think that at least ‘The Age of Stupid’ is a pretty good title.
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BTW, I had forgotten Frannie Armstrong’s first documentary: McLibel. I thought that was a great film and a fantastic story.
McLibel might really appeal to the skeptic type. You know, two little people taking a stand against a Goliath. On the other hand, the Goliath is one of those fantastic corporations that skeptics love so much, as they represent the best aspects of our society and economic system. A bit like Shell. Or Monsanto. Or Halliburton.
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On second thought, maybe it’s not a film skeptics will like.
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When I find a documentary about a multinational that has to wage a Galileo-like battle against a much bigger, violent and dishonest opponent, I’ll let you know. 😛
You did not establish any criteria for what a bad movie is, nor did you enter any good movies, nor did you weigh all the evidence (though you acknowledge that Rotten Tomatoes gets some movies right, you make no effort to quantify this or estimate how often the site is right or wrong.)
In other words, you cherry-picked data to support your mistrust of the consensus and leaned heavily on your intuitive sense of good and bad rather than weighing the facts against any objective standard. Stop me if this sounds like something you’re heard in another context.
What if we tried to be a little more systematic? Rather than pick movies I hate, like you did, or movie I like, let’s take the first dozen or so movies mentioned in Oscar nominations in 2009 (likely to be better than average) and Razzie nominations (likely worse.) Nominees are used rather than winners to give a wider pool. 2009 is the last year nominees for both are available. Results are as follows:
Oscar liked
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 72%
Slumdog millionaire 94%
Forst/nixon 92%
Milk 94%
The reader 61%
The wrestler 98%
Rachel getting married 86%
Changeling 62%
Frozen river 87%
Doubt 78%
The dark knight 93%
Razzie “liked”
Disaster Movie 2%
Meet the Spartans 2%
The Happening 18%
The Hottie & The Nottie 5%
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale 5%
The Love Guru 15%
Witless Protection 4%
Meet Dave 19%
88 Minutes 5%
Righteous Kill 20%
Max Payne 16%
Spot the trend. Rotten tomatoes of course is not going to be better than your personal taste in evaluating which movies you like or don’t like; that’s logically impossible. Prospectively, it is better than chance at identifying movies which are much better or much worse than average.
Play down? I didn’t say they had no guilt. I don’t actually know how much oil Shell spills. Do you?
What I said is that it appears the cottage black market industry in which locals tap into oil pipelines is known to also spill oil. It seems to me this could be quite a lot of oil and probably a (not “the”) direct contributing factor to local pollution and fish kills.
This contributing factor is in no way mentioned in the film– yet we see one of the main characters who complains of oil pollution is involved in this industry.
I don’t think pointing the fact that the black market oil market contributes to the problem is “playing down” whatever Shell’s contribution might be.
The video didn’t actually describe Shells contribution either–they only implied that all the problems were owing to shell by discussing it and mentioning Shell and no one else. So how is a viewer to know how much damage Shell really has done? I can neither play it up or down based on anything I learned in that movie because the movie told us nothing.
I have to parts in my response to this:
A) Do you know what they promised? I don’t. Do you know why they didn’t do whatever they might have promised? According to the video, some facilities were left unfinished owing to the danger of kidnapping. Based on the information at Wikipedia, the threat seems real, and is due in part to the groups associated with Ken Saro-Wiwa.
B) I agree that the economic distribution of profits from the oil in Nigeria seems morally unjust. If their political and economic system was more just, the problem of tapping into the oil would be less likely to occur. It’s not clear this injustice is caused by Shell. I’m sure Shell does not operate like a band of angels from heaven. Still, it seems there has been long time ethnic strife in Nigeria. I would have to know much more about the history of Nigeria to have any notion whose “fault” this is.
T
Keep going on? I mentioned it once. Then you brought up the threat of your rape metaphor. In explaining why discussing the locals contribution is not like blaming a victim in a rape, I continued to discuss this. You are continuing to discuss this, and I am continuuing to respond.
Do you think there is a rule that says, “Well, if it’s painful to Neven to read that the locals cause some pollution themselves, we aren’t allowed to admit this fact even if it’s true?” Maybe you think there is such a rule, but I don’t. So, yes. If you keep discussing it, so will I!
Thanks for letting me know about McLibel. I may have to watch that now!
I would think you’d want some kind of evidence that their actions are significantly contributing to the pollution, rather than just asserting that it is probably the case.
People confronted by harm done to the weak by the strong will often try to find some rationale to place the blame back on the weak themselves. Blaming raping victims for how they dressed or who they had a drink with is probably the most inflammatory example of this one could possibly cite, and deserves an honorary Godwin.
Attribution of responsibility to anybody, whether it’s Shell or locals siphoning oil, should be backed by evidence, not just speculation.
I’m sure Shell does not operate like a band of angels from heaven.
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Why, thanks for mentioning it!
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Thanks for letting me know about McLibel. I may have to watch that now!
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It’s Frannie’s magnum opus. I enjoyed that one.
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And like I said, part of ‘Crude Impact’ is about Nigeria, but I can’t remember if I liked that documentary or not. ‘Blind Spot’ and ‘A Crude Awakening’ were the best I have seen on the subject of Peak Oil. And if you’re into documentaries, ‘the Century of the Self’ by Adam Curtis of the BBC is by far the best documentary series I have ever seen. I could go on, but won’t.
I have just re-watched the first half of ‘McLibel’ on Google Videos and I still think it’s excellent. You’ll love it, Lucia (and others). 🙂
Robert,
This post finishes by telling people that Netflix thinks I won’t like the movie. I am asking people if I should risk watching it. I am not trying to figure out if the public will like it; I want to know if I and likely to enjoy it.
So, with respect to the conversation here:
The sole criterion a movie that I think is bad is “I, Lucia, found it distinctly unenjoyable”
Untrue. I entered good movies (i.e. “movies I, Lucia, enjoyed a lot”), I just didn’t report which or what their ratings were.
You are confused about my goal. I wanted to determine whether Rotten Tomatoes was likely to accurately predict whether I hate a movie. To test this, I wanted to see if it could identify movies I knew I hated.
I was hoping it could predict whether I was likely to enjoy or hate a movie I had not yet seen. That would have some utility for me. A tool the predicts what the public will like is pretty useless to me, though it might be useful for someone who owns a theater and needs to decide which to run.
By the way, Netflix does better than chance at picking which movies I like. It even shows me whether it predicts I will like it. It also tells me how much other people who watched and rated it liked it. Their prediction includes data on movies I have previously orders and movies I previously rated. Rotten Tomatoes doesn’t have that information.
Netflix thought I would give it 2 starts out of 5. The average rating from a person who ordered, watched and rated it was 3.4. (Bear in mind, people who anticipate hating a movie it are generally less likely to order it and rate it. Netflix sort of tries to account for this in their super-secret algorithm.)
Neven,
I googled McLibel and read this story. It’s going to be weird to watch a video about a UK libel case. Their laws have been so much harder on defendants than ours.
Heh. Sounds like the courts sort of ruled that the European court ruled libel laws should be more like American libel laws!
American’s have been saying bad things about McDonalds for ages. It would be very difficult for McDonald’s to win any sort of law suit for people saying things like ‘McDonald’s employees worldwide “do badly in terms of pay and conditions”‘. McD’s would have to prove they don’t do badly in pay and conditions. It’s sort of an opinion anyway.
In the US you can’t sue someone for expressing a negative opinion. Libel has to be about facts.
Don’t read, watch. It’s a fascinating documentary, from many different angles. I just watched the whole bloody thing again, whereas I should be making a deadline.
Speaking of libel cases: Has Monckton sued yet?
Robert
Would you think that? Interesting. Hhmmm….
I was stating my opinion about what seems probable to me given the information at hand. As in nearly all things in life, the evidence I have at hand is incomplete. My guess could be wrong– I’ve said it could be wrong. I also explained why I think what I think so people can judge whether my assessment is based lots of information or little.
I don’t think I need to find more complete evidence to write my interpretation of what is probable, particularly not when giving my impression of the video documentary which gives the strong impression of having done not one iota of research before giving audience the impression that the oil must all be due to Shell, with none from any other source.
If you have evidence about the relative contributions of oil from the two sources, I would be interested in learning it: I would think you would want to share it.
If you have a different opinion of what is probable, I would think you’d want to share your opinion and explain why you hold it.
I would think you would want do either of the above more than you would want tell me that you think I would want to withhold my assessment of the probable contributions.
And yet, despite what I would think you would want to do, you go ahead and do something I would think you wouldn’t want to do. Fancy that?!
I suspect all we are learning is that you aren’t very good at guessing what I would want to do and I’m not very good at guessing what you would want to do. Because we seem to guess wrong, don’t we?
Not that I’ve heard of.
I do plant to watch McLibel. I only read a blurb on what it’s about. What I’m saying is that, as an American, it’s going to be a puzzling thing to watch. Because our libel laws make it so very hard for plaintiffs to win suits. McDonalds would never have won that suit in the US. They probably would never have brought it.
I do not currently have information at hand. The Sun revolves around the Earth.
OK, I’ve looked it up. It’s the other way round.
Not that I’ve heard of.
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Can we draw any conclusions from Monckton threatening to sue, but – of course, as always – not doing it? For example, that he is a pathological liar and bully?
Neven–
Sounds like you’ve done more research than the makers of The Age of Stupid. Get some funding and make a documentary.
Sounds like you’ve done more research than the makers of The Age of Stupid. Get some funding and make a documentary.
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🙂
Neven–
Are you asking permission to draw a conclusion based on incomplete or imperfect evidence? Seems to me that you and many others draw these sorts of conclusions and assesses the probability of conflicting hypotheses based on this amount of evidence rather frequently.
I’ve never told you you aren’t allowed to judge what seems probable based on available evidence nor suggested you don’t get to reveal your opinion to the world. Others may judge differently and discussion will ensue.
I think that’s the way it should be.
Right. In that case I’ll judge he’s a pathological liar and bully and any politician that invited him as a witness or website (WUWT) that prominently featured his shenanigans has a credibility problem. I’d love to hear from people who judge differently, especially why they judge differently.
I apologize for the mini-rants. Haven’t slept for a while. Off to bed now. Good day/evening to everyone.
“I would think you’d want some kind of evidence that their actions are significantly contributing to the pollution, rather than just asserting that it is probably the case…
Attribution of responsibility to anybody, whether it’s Shell or locals siphoning oil, should be backed by evidence, not just speculation.”
Robert,
This obviously leads to the question, “what’s the evidence that there’s a pollution problem?”
Andrew
O boy, this Neven guy is a real whacko. Neven, do you think maybe Shell doesn’t help the local Nigerian community because there are guerilla forces crawling all over the place? Maybe they could hire some private security forces from Blackwater but they probably can’t afford to because they have to pay “stupid” taxes.
Neven, please move to Spain. You can have the pleasure of no air conditioning and paying absurd prices for water. It sounds like a paradise for you.
Shoosh–
Behave. Don’t call other blog visitors “whackos” at all. People aren’t “whackos” merely because they disagree with you.
Here’s an impartial overview of the conflict and pollution in the Niger Delta (impartial = everyone is criticized, even the sainted Saro-Wiwa):
http://www.accord.org.za/publications/occasional-papers/downloads/488-occasional-paper-series-vol-1-no-3-2006.pdf
And here are pictures of Ijaw gangsters/separatists stealing oil (in this instance, simply piping it into small open boats – often the ‘bunkering’ is on a much larger scale) and refining it into diesel (I think it’s obvious why the Nigerian in the film said the business was dangerous):
http://bigpicture.ru/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/229-990×665.jpg
http://bigpicture.ru/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/257-990×585.jpg
http://bigpicture.ru/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/267-990×661.jpg
That particular group of gangsters/separatists (MEND) captured the hostages mentioned in the film.
Dr. Shooshmon, phd. (Comment#53595)
Maybe they could hire some private security forces from Blackwater but they probably can’t afford to because they have to pay “stupid†taxes.
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Shell and other multinationals operating in Africa have a very long and brutal history of hiring mercenaries. Exective Outcomes, largely based around appartheid era South African Defence Force soldiers including the netoriously brutal 52 battalion, have had regular and well paid business in many African states over the past 20 years. Offcourse afer a crack down by the Pretoria government names were changed, offices and addresses moved…. Sandline International, Aegis security and so on. Its a bit of a murky world.
The last time EO was openly working in that market it was in Anglo and Sierra Leon for the likes of Texaco and Cheveron.
During the terror regime of Sani Abacha demonstrations again multination companies operating in the country were subjected to what the old colonial regime would call “rule 0.303”, soldiers opening fire with live ammunition. The more eloquent were arrested and hung (for example Ken Sara Wiwo).
I guess they have come a long way from the days of Bob Denard and Mike Hoare, well so long as you discount sumbags like Maggie Tatchers boy and Simon Mann….
In all likely hood Shell Nigeria will not hire these groups directly but use its own security personel (as it does in Europe) who will be in the amorphous group of people who float between these PCMs. As an example a number of former Shell sub contractors were gunned down in Bolivia last year in an alleged foiled coup attempt. The only reason it gained any international traction was one of them was an Irish citizen who had been subcontracted to Shell in Ireland (Michael Martin Dwyer). Others among them had allegedly worked for Shell in Nigeria. While Shells involvement in that was almost certainly zero, it gives a flavour of the kind of people that float between the legitimate and illegitimate side of “security contractors” and the kind of people multi nats have at their disposal.
Once one steps beyond the borders of the liberal democracies, the rules can get a little different.
What you dont know, wont hurt you.
Sorry 52 battalion should be 32 batallion. My bad.
“amorphous group of people”
Dis is coad wordz for conspiraciez! 😉
Andrew
Now that At the Movies (the lineal descendant of Siskel and Ebert) is no more, are there any decent movie review programs on TV? The few I have skimmed on Reelz channel are uniformly awful (I can’t stand Leonard Maltin for example). Not that I went to see many of the movies they recommended, but it was useful to have at least some knowledge of what was out there.
As for walking out of movies, anyone who walks out of 25% of the movies they went to see hasn’t done their homework. Where money is involved, I would rather err on the side of caution and miss movies I might have liked rather than have to watch even part of something so bad I would not see it through to the end. I do not envy movie critics.
Also it’s Ken Saro-Wiwa, and his death had absolutely nothing to do with his ecological activism, and everything to do with a purge of MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) leadership by the Nigerian government.
Vinny–
I downloaded the pdf. It seems to only be one page,but discusses 5 sections. Do you have links to the other parts?
Thanks for the pictures. Do you have a source?
One More Conan The Barbarian Plug
King Osric has a great quote among the movie’s many great quotes:
“There comes a time, thief, when the jewels cease to sparkle, when the gold loses its luster, when the throne room becomes a prison, and all that is left is a father’s love for his child.”
Andrew
Neven–
I tried to watch McLibel. I stuck it out for about 20 minutes. It’s s_l_o_w. And it didn’t look like I was going to learn anything much from it.
Are (or were) the UK libel laws nutso? I think so: Yes. I already knew that. We’ve discussed those libel laws at The Blackboard before, usually incontext of whether or not people like Phil Jones or other climate scientists were libeled or slandered and what the law would likely say. I’ve always said I prefer American libel laws which put most of the burden of proving libel or slander on the plaintiff.
Is a diet of mostly McD food probably bad for you? I think so, yes.
Will a corporation take advantage of local libel slander laws even if they are nutso, like the UK’s? Yes.
Will some people stand up even when nutso laws put expose them to bad consequences? Yes. Good thing. Has happened in the US all the time. But I usually prefer to read the 2 page brief on the court case instead of a long slow video.
I learn the UK doesn’t provide free legal represetation in civil suits. I’m pretty sure the same applies in the US. I’m not scandalized. Some attorneys stepped forward to help the two food-activists pro-bono. That sort of thing happens here too. Too bad the UK laws are (or were?) so nuts that the whole thing happened. If I were a British citizen, I would push to Americanize their laws. I’m pretty sure I made the view clear when we discussed the issue of legal libel and people criticising IPCC or CRU scientists. I like American laws, not the British system, which I think is ridiculous.
I don’t need to watch a s_l_o_w video to remind me why I prefer our libel laws.
Maybe I’m missing something really splendid by stopping the movie, writing this comment and then going to the gym. But I’d really prefer the “Cliffs Notes” version of that video. Because it’s s_l_o_w. Time to dash off to the gym so I can do squats.
Sorry about the PDF link. Google makes it daftly difficult to extract a useful URL even for precisely identified documents. The one I gave was from the horse’s mouth, so I thought it’d be complete. Try this:
se1.isn.ch/serviceengine/Files/ISN/99765/ipublicationdocument_singledocument/85589F0B-5010-447B-B3D0-F900CA6DFA42/en/op_2006_3.pdf
Photo sources? Several, but none are ideal. The photos are by Veronique de Viguerie but her site …
http://vero-de-viguerie.photoshelter.com/gallery/Niger-Delta/G0000RuFvU4DuJQE/
…doesn’t have the complete set and she supplies only minimal captions. This is perhaps the most useful. It’s a dodgy site, the translation is awful and the captions don’t fit the pix, but it does give some idea of what’s going on:
http://vision02.com/nigerian-oil-pirates/
Lucia, you shouldn’t read a synopsis before watching a film. 😉
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What I particularly liked about McLibel was to see how a large corporation like McDonald’s operates like a psychopath. And most companies are like that, for instance Shell, Exxon or Phillip Morris.
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And those activist-type people aren’t my favourite usually, but I take my hat off to the two who stood up to McDonald’s and completely demolished them.
Neven,
Gosh, Adam Curtis a guy who can see a Western conspiracy in a packet of crisps! (potato chips to you in the US).
Are you sure you’re not Jeff Harvey?
“two who stood up to McDonald’s and completely demolished them”
I always thought The Hamburgler and Mayor McCheese were too big for their britches! 😉
Andrew
Gosh, Adam Curtis a guy who can see a Western conspiracy in a packet of crisps! (potato chips to you in the US).
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Dave, please expand. I’ve seen most of his work (The Trap, The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora’s Box), but I wouldn’t say the various themes all boil down to ‘Western conspiracy’.
Lucia writes: “My dinner with Andreâ€, the tomato meter says 89%. So, another boring unwatchable gets a fairly high mark.
Watching this movie was the only time I have fallen asleep in a theatre. What a boring movie! If RT gave it 89%, then their reviews are questionable at best.
Neven,
As an example, Curtis was quoted in the Guardian on The Power of Nightmares, re Islamic terrorism, thus
“”is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.”
In your lexicon this might not amount to calling it a conspiracy but I disagree.
Thanks for coming back to this, Dave. Have you seen The Power of Nightmares? If you haven’t I can recommend it. The third part will leave you spinning.
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Curtis has made many more documentaries that are mostly historical documents (great footage and very stimulating, especially The Century of the Self, which is my favourite), but I don’t think they fit the characteristic ‘Western conspiracy’ at all. Conspiracy perhaps, but not Western per se.
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The Mayfair Set is about conspiracy by a new type of British entrepreneurs who ignore traditional ways of doing business, buy up old and big family businesses, divide them up and sell the parts (I forgot how that’s called). I think AGW-skeptic Nigel Lawson is in there as well.
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The Trap is not my favourite, but still very interesting. It’s about war games and how influential that guy from ‘A Beautiful Mind’ was on what’s it called, game theory (had to look it up), and how this influenced contemporary thought on the subject of freedom.
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Again, all in all very stimulating stuff and great footage.