Jack Nicholson is as good as it gets for crazy in love with life, and Morgan Freeman is as good as it gets for smart, thoughtful, and good to the core.
This movie is one that I got, skimmed through, dismissed, and then sat down and watched all the way through.
It is NOT a depressing movie, nor is it a “joy” movie. It is a lovely mix of suffering, love, fulfillment, discovery, and reconciliation.
This is a very serious movie and I volunteered to appear in it, April 22, 2008
Tommy Chong
I must disclose that I came into this movie at the very end when the brilliant producer realized I could provide a few bits that would bring it all together. I volunteered my time because I felt then–and I feel now–that this film was totally righteous. So I am listed as one of the “actors” but unlike some of them for whom file clips were used, I was taped speaking about this specific situation for this specific movie.
Our government is BROKEN. The civil servants and uniformed personnel are good people trapped in a bad system–a cesspool. Standing above them, hoarding the wealth, the power, and the personal privilege, are “elected” officials and their appointed cronies that have no business at all governing this great nation. They are inept and should be dismissed. We need a Constitutional Convention, an end to the Elctoral College, and deep Electoral, Financial, and National Security Reforms.
I have tagged this DVD with the word treason, because that is what CIA, DEA, the FBI, and the White House are guilty of when they protect drug wholesalers and allow entire neighborhoods to go down the crack drain, not because of Ricky Ross, but because of high crimes and misdemeanors all the way up the chain above him.
In my world, accountability is supposed to start and be enforced from the top down, not the bottom up. I hold John Deutch and later George Tenet accountable for failing to manage all five of the CIAs (the Wall Street CIA, the White House CIA, the front CIA, the paramilitary CIA, and the sodomy Safari Club CIA). I can only imagine the counterparts in DEA and the FBI and other elements of the government with the power to commit treason and get away with it while making a personal profit from the power We the People have assigned to them.
Evokes the Best of America in a Time of Mass Insanity, April 21, 2008
Susan Sarandon
I bought three copies of this, having seen it many years ago.
One copy for a newly married couple that discovered themselves in theater.
One copy for the daughter of a colleague with a big brain and great shyness that is dispelled in amateur theatricals.
The last copy for me, for my permanent collection. Along with DVDs such as I list below, this is an utter classic without a single false note. Indeed, the editorial descriptions above are better than usual. You will not regret this for an instant.
Brilliant, Tedious, Needs a Study Guide or Booklet, April 20, 2008
Elizabeth Vargas
The intelligence that went into creating this movie, and the artistic creabtivity and sheer industry in amassing visual depictions of what goes into making and using things, is absolutely top of the line world class.
Unfortunately, viewed in one sitting this movie becomes tedius and also suffers from throwing out so many numbers that none of them are memorable. I suspect the following terms were uttered sometime during the movie, but the fact that I cannot remember for sure is troubling:
Virtual Water
Carbon Footprint
True Cost
This DVD, if used in a classroom, should be broken up into at least five sessions, no more than three chapters at a time.
I actually think this would be better as a book, the movie aspect is too fleeting for the best possible absorbtion and retention.
Chapters cover:
Human Presence
Diapers and Milk
Meat, Eggs, and Carbs
Sweets, Fruits, and Vegetables
Plastics and Metals
Cleansing and Beauty Products
Water and Solid Waste
Clothing and Textiles
ASlcohol
Housing, Furnishing, and Apppliances
Entertainment Consumption
Transportation
Consumption of Natural Resources
Cell Phones
Shrinking Wildlife
National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World is the better of two, all things considered. This movie I would like to see National Geographic re-issue with a little booklet of facts for each chapter, and also a website in which the complete true costs for all items discussed are presented, and volunteers shown how to do the research to post “true costs” for any given product or service.
I see real value in National Geographic becoming the hub for “true cost” information, something they could easily do in partnership with the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER).
Only one big negative: the DVD pupports to be about the average person but is actually about the average within the billion rich that have an aggregate annual income of one trillion. It teaches us nothing at all about the five billion at the base of the pyramid who have an aggregate income of four trillion. I'd like to see National Geographic rethink its plans, and ultimately come out with short videos on each of the ten high-level threats to Humanity, each of the twelve core policy areas, and each of the eight demographic definers of the future. Somewhere in there they could teach citizens to demand responsible transpartisan policies and balanced transparent budgets.
Very Best Combination of Brains, Images, and Words, April 20, 2008
Leonardo DiCaprio
Unlike National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World and National Geographic: Human Footprint, both of which I recommend, this DVD is a very elegant narrative that blends top ecological activists including Stephen Hawking and Paul Hawkins, speaking for a minute or two each, with historical audio-visuals that have been selected with enormous intelligence and integrity.
If you buy only one film, this is the one, but the issue is so very important I would recommend that each of three families buy one of these, and then start passing them around the neighborhood.
The movie opens with a theme of the planet being sick–two complex systems, one human, one all else, are interacting in pathological ways. Man, in being able to think about the future, while also ignoring the limits to growth and maintaining the fiction of being separate from nature, is committing species suicide.
I have a note to myself, this is stark elegant poetry.
The oceans are discussed in terms of our taking out too much (e.g. over-fishing) and putting in too much (toxins and non-biodegradable matter), and at the same time, toxins get concentrated in the food chain and come right back to us. See Blue Frontier : Saving America's Living Seas
Toward the end we get to the cruz of the matter, that corporate greed and control has gone global, and the legal systems, the political systems, are hostage to that greed. The Earth–nature–has been commoditized, as have humans (never mind the corruption that allows corporations to loot foreign commonwealths at the same time that Exxon externalizes $12 in “true costs” to future generations for each gallon of gas it sells).
One speaker is very capable in pointing out that this is neither a technology crisis nor even an ecological crisis, but rather a crisis of political policy and a process that has broken down completely. The government “bridge” between the commonwealth and the people, and the economy, has falled down. In the next sentence the problem is defined as our CULTURE, with everything else being a symptom. This was for me a defining moment within this DVD. It's not about evil–Exxon does what we let them–it's about what we choose to do or not do as a culture.
Probably citing E. O. Wilson, but without reference to him (he should have appeared in this movie, see his book The Future of Life, one speaker notes that the value of what nature does for us (e.g. bee pollination of crops) has been estimated at 35 trillion dollars a year–vastly more than the 18 trillion that comprises the global economy.
The DVD concludes with an excellent combination of individual statements on how this IS the ecological era, we can reimagine our lives, if we just retrofit all buildings to make them energy efficient it would create 3 million jobs in the US and free us from dependence on foreign oil. We can live with one tenth of the resources we consume now.
[Coincidentally, this was the week that TIME Magazine went green, and while I was watching the movie I was also finishing up Jesse Ventur's book Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! in which he recounts his realization that simply unplugging all the TVs in America when not in use would end US energy shortages.]
Di Caprio closes, and I write in my notes: eloquent, inspriing, statesmanlike, learned. He–and all those associated with this project–have it it out of the park. This is a deeply impressive contribution to the public dialog on our future as a species and as a planet.
See also my varied lists. There are a number of books in the cradle to cradle, sustainable design, green to gold, natural capitalism genre, the one that captures the spirit of this DVD and complements it is, in my view, Paul Hawkin's Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beau, which he describes as the Earth's immune system kicking in.
Spectacular. Professional. Visually Powerful. Life Changing., April 12, 2008
Alec Baldwin
This is a spectacular piece of professional work and so compelling as to be inspirational.
I watched this with my wife with no lights, and decided to take no notes. Here are the highlights from my memory.
1) Brilliant, utterly brilliant, history, photography, personalities (such as the Indian guru that has photographed the source of the Ganges for 50 years) and sequencing. I don't want to overdo it, but this may well be the single most important DVD of the century, and so worthy of both buying, showing to groups, and giving as a gift to others.
2) We are well on our way to 2-3 degrees rise, and if we do not begin to act sensibly now, toward six degrees. I absolutely loved the way this film developed, showing the changes one degree at a time. My wife had to point out the computer simulations, the producers and editors of this film are world class–they should share the Nobel with Herman Daly, Lester Brown, Paul Hawkin, and Anthony Lovin, Gore's Nobel was an ill-advised politicized award, he is in the fourth grade compared to this film and the serious people it focused upon.
3) Oceans as the critical carbon absorbing element, and coral as the “canary in the coal mine” really grabbed me The overall screenplay, photography, voice overs, everything about this is spectacularly professional and rivieting.
4) Amazon as the next most critical element, with riveting views of the Amazon river drying up in 2005, and the potential scenarios of drought, fires, more drought.
5) Increasing destructiveness of weather. Katrina as the first of what could become every month storms, instead of 100 year storms. In passing, the film shows the world-class levies built by the Europeans, and they do not show the downright retarded cement levees of the US Army Corps of Engineers, levees that are the laughing stock of the rest of the (sophisticated) world.
A highlight of the film was its focus on the one man that has figured out the total carbon footprint of the cheeseburger, to include the methane farts of the cows. I am not making this up. This film is AMAZING, it is spectacular, it is professional, it is precisely the kind of well-crafted material that We the People need to begin self-governing rather than entrusting war criminals and and cronies (both parties) who sell us out.
Here are ten links that augment the deep insight and value that this DVD provides to anyone able to see it.
White, Black, Death, Life, Perfect, June 30, 2008
