I have a list of about 100 movies I've never gotten around to seeing so I know all about putting things off. But even I managed to make time for this 20 minute fast-paced video about stuff.
It sounds like a weird premise but that's literally what it's about. Our stuff. Where it comes from. Where it goes. And why that matters. Cynics will appreciate that there is no emotional or ethical appeal to save our planet, just straight facts in a conversational tone. You will learn a lot in 20 minutes. Trust me. I hated An Inconvenient Truth. But this is the kind of thing everyone would want to see:
Disclosure: This isn't really a disclosure but I just wanted to point out that you're not really doing anything else for the next 20 minutes so just watch it. By the time you come up with something else to do (or say you're gonna do), 20 minutes will have passed.
In the Valley of Elah is a new film from Paul Haggis (director and writer of Crash, writer of Million Dollar Baby, among others).
I should say at outset I am ambivalent about Haggis’s work. In previous films, he tends to write “on the nose,” choppy, emotionally overwrought scenes that shove their message directly at the audience. Crash had some great performances and moments, but breathlessly raced from one emotional payoff to the next in a way that flattened everything. And the plot of Crash was wildly improbable.
Blue State is a movie about a guy who so completely devotes himself to John Kerry’s 2004 campaign because of his hatred of George W. Bush, that he swears to move to Canada if Bush is reelected.
In fairness, An Unreasonable Man offers both perspectives on Ralph Nader; the “wicked”-ly naïve megalomaniac that cost Gore the 2000 election, and the idealist who stands up to government even in unfashionable times. It is not shocking that more screen time is given to the latter.
Who Killed the Electric Car? is pretty much what you’d expect – a 90-minute infomercial about the electric vehicle crossed with a scathing expose of the evil oil and automotive industries. The protagonist of the film is a bright-eyed redhead named Chelsea Sexton, who joined the marketing team for GM’s prototype electric car, EV1, fresh out of college. Other good guys include scruffy-faced celebrities like Peter Horton and Ed Begley, Jr., who you may recall from the Simpsons episode where he drives a go-cart powered by his own sense of self-satisfaction. In this cameo, he eulogizes the EV1 at a staged funeral for the car in 2003, where activists dressed in black placed flowers on the hood.
The film traces the history of the electric car, from its inception at the turn of the 20th century to its demise at the turn of the 21st. The main focus is the cars’ surge in popularity in recent years with the 1990 Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate, and its abrupt disappearance when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) modified the mandate, prompting car companies to recall and destroy all existing electric vehicles. Although there were waitlists for EV1s at the time of the recall, GM claimed that there was little demand, and EV1 drivers were prohibited from purchasing the vehicles, despite their best efforts.
