A few minutes' worth of informational carefully expanded into a warm and self-congratulating narrative of nearly two hours length, most of which concerns a truck and a whole lot of used cooking oil. The narrator dances well clear of the inconvenient truths about bio-diesel and who is backing it with the deftness of the born shill. Relatively few clichés are spared or misplaced and the usual indictment of Republican Big Oil is dutifully followed with the right amount of obeisance to Democrat Big Oil. It's inspiring to know that if only we had the right visionary leader we would be saved. Kennedy would have given utopia by now. In his revisionist history, the US had somehow consumed less oil under Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, Carter or Obama. Ignored is the absolute bipartisanship of Big Oil's capacious pockets and the ample human capitol it commands both sides of the aisle.
Near the middle cracks start to appear and the narrator seems to be losing his nerve. He seems desperate to change direction away from bio- diesel and toward something viable, but the attempt flounders, not for lack of going in every possible direction. Evidently, well into the 11- year filming, the world's media inconveniently began to explore the genocidal and factual aspects of bio-fuels, namely: in a world fraught with starvation it makes little sense to convert massive amounts of agriculture into fuel and chemical intensive carbon production, thus starving tens of millions of *additional* brown people (in order that we can feel good about driving our truck--all over the place, for 11 years). But these nearly-emergent nasty facts don't achieve true sunlight or get to taste air. After short while, as the narrator smiles and warms our hearts, they stop struggling and sink back down. Not mentioned are the tens of thousands of people (but pretty much only just brown ones) that are dispossessed en masse to make way for vast, inedible, bio-hazardous tracts of BT corn steeped in hundreds of millions of gallons of roundup, insecticide, and liquid nitrogen (i.e. from oil refining). He drives everywhere you can think of, except not the places where you might see hundreds of thousands of starving kids or notice trillions of missing honeybees. Nor does take us where the soil has been so industrially overworked that you can't even grow BT Corn there anymore, or even ranch on it. Rather, we hear a lot about the virtues of used cooking oil, implying that if only we could build seventy our eighty fast food joints per square mile we'd be ready to go, ready to take on the corporations.
A subtle collectivist undertone pervades. Europe is nearly perfect and the US is nearly perfectly evil. Beneath the happiness and joy lurks the usual cognitively dissonant meme that we humans ourselves are the enemy and maybe some of us need to suck it up in that most ultimate way--thus all the awards no doubt. The narrator has sugar coated the intended "no human cost is high enough" corporate meme with such a rare shrewdness and warmth that Monsanto reps world-wide are probably drafting brand new pacts with the devil to see if they get a piece of that action.
For sheer entertainment value it could be worse. Admittedly, a nice fiction can be restoring. If you like warm fuzzies, celebrity shots and selection bias, but hate raw data and science nearly as much as you hate human beings ourselves (and honey bees) then this is your kind of movie. You will be happy, content, and obedient, sure in the knowledge that our future will be glorious once we vote for the right visionary leader who will team up with BP, Monsanto and Union Carbide to save all of us from BP, Monsanto and Union Carbide. Well, just a few of us in the first world will be saved, and unfortunately no bees, but that's just the necessary cost of properly loving our mother earth.
Near the middle cracks start to appear and the narrator seems to be losing his nerve. He seems desperate to change direction away from bio- diesel and toward something viable, but the attempt flounders, not for lack of going in every possible direction. Evidently, well into the 11- year filming, the world's media inconveniently began to explore the genocidal and factual aspects of bio-fuels, namely: in a world fraught with starvation it makes little sense to convert massive amounts of agriculture into fuel and chemical intensive carbon production, thus starving tens of millions of *additional* brown people (in order that we can feel good about driving our truck--all over the place, for 11 years). But these nearly-emergent nasty facts don't achieve true sunlight or get to taste air. After short while, as the narrator smiles and warms our hearts, they stop struggling and sink back down. Not mentioned are the tens of thousands of people (but pretty much only just brown ones) that are dispossessed en masse to make way for vast, inedible, bio-hazardous tracts of BT corn steeped in hundreds of millions of gallons of roundup, insecticide, and liquid nitrogen (i.e. from oil refining). He drives everywhere you can think of, except not the places where you might see hundreds of thousands of starving kids or notice trillions of missing honeybees. Nor does take us where the soil has been so industrially overworked that you can't even grow BT Corn there anymore, or even ranch on it. Rather, we hear a lot about the virtues of used cooking oil, implying that if only we could build seventy our eighty fast food joints per square mile we'd be ready to go, ready to take on the corporations.
A subtle collectivist undertone pervades. Europe is nearly perfect and the US is nearly perfectly evil. Beneath the happiness and joy lurks the usual cognitively dissonant meme that we humans ourselves are the enemy and maybe some of us need to suck it up in that most ultimate way--thus all the awards no doubt. The narrator has sugar coated the intended "no human cost is high enough" corporate meme with such a rare shrewdness and warmth that Monsanto reps world-wide are probably drafting brand new pacts with the devil to see if they get a piece of that action.
For sheer entertainment value it could be worse. Admittedly, a nice fiction can be restoring. If you like warm fuzzies, celebrity shots and selection bias, but hate raw data and science nearly as much as you hate human beings ourselves (and honey bees) then this is your kind of movie. You will be happy, content, and obedient, sure in the knowledge that our future will be glorious once we vote for the right visionary leader who will team up with BP, Monsanto and Union Carbide to save all of us from BP, Monsanto and Union Carbide. Well, just a few of us in the first world will be saved, and unfortunately no bees, but that's just the necessary cost of properly loving our mother earth.