Gore's Choice

The New Yorker has a glowing review of the documentary on Gore's attempt to drum up the global warming scare.

“An Inconvenient Truth” is not likely to displace the boffo numbers of “Ice Age” in Variety’s weekly grosses. It is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone—or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room—for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.

Lest you think that this is an unbiased review, check out this bit:

If you are inclined to think that the unjustly awarded election of 2000 led to one of the worst Presidencies of this or any other era, it is not easy to look at Al Gore. He is the living reminder of all that might not have happened in the past six years (and of what might still happen in the coming two).

Unjustly awarded how? In fact, the only injustice is that the networks unjustly awarded Florida to Gore early in the evening, creating the bogus meme that Gore won, but the election was somehow stolen from him. Never mind that under the recount Gore requested, or the recount that the Florida Supreme Court ordered, Bush would have won. It's still unjust to David Remnick, because his man lost.

Those inclined to be irritated by Gore all over again will not be entirely disappointed by “An Inconvenient Truth.” It can be argued that at times the film becomes “Death of a Salesman,” with Gore as global warming’s Willy Loman, wheeling his bag down one more airport walkway. There are some awkward jokes, a silly cartoon, a few self-regarding sequences, and, now and then, echoes of the cringe-making moments in his old campaign speeches when personal tragedy was put to questionable use. (To illustrate the need to change one’s mind when hard reality intrudes, he recalls helping his father farm tobacco as a youth and then his sister’s death from lung cancer.)

Hmmm, is that an illustration of Gore's need to change his mind, or his need to pander to different crowds?

Posted by pat at 05:30 PM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

King Kong--King Dud?

OK, time for some fluff. Who wants to see the upcoming King Kong movie?

Variety quotes a bigwig from Universal as saying it's "brilliant." Well of course she'll say that...she wants people to buy tickets. After all, it's costing $207 million to make and distribute. That's a lot of shamoola.

Still, I'm leery of any movie remake, especially a movie that is already a classic in its own right. Think of all the rehashes we've seen in the past couple of years: the Dukes of Hazzard, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Honeymooners, Charlie's Angels, Bewitched, and so on. Can't Hollywood come up with any new ideas?

And, three hours of a big ape climbing the Empire State Building being buzz bombed by airplanes sounds rather tedious. (Speaking of apes around the Empire State Building, I saw a guy in a gorilla suit running around near the main entrance to the ESB last week...some kind of promotional thing. Wish I'd had a camera.)

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And King Kong is pretty big. Does anyone out there want to see it? Do you think my prediction is off base?

Posted by Pam at 09:09 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack