The End Of Suburbia

Last night I watched the documentary The End Of Suburbia. It's been in a Netflix queue for a long time, but its availability was always "Very Long Wait". I can understand why after seeing it; the film was quite thought provoking. It covers the emergence of the suburbs in North American society then discusses Peak Oil and how it will affect society.

Because so many people list in the suburbs, they are dependent upon cars (often gas-guzzling SUVs) to travel for work, shopping, leisure, etc. Moreover, most of what they consume (food from far away places such as California, Florida, etc.; cheap goods from China; etc.) is also transported long distances by transport trucks (as the North American rail system is not much to speak of). Consequently, when the supply of oil drops in the next few years, the economic upheaval will be massive due to the fact that our way of life requires an unsustainable of energy. Moreover, most homes are heated by natural gas and the electricity for those homes (air conditioners, etc.) often comes from burning natural gas. However, the production of natural gas will also undergo a collapse in supply at some point in the near future, exacerbating the pending energy crisis that has the potential to cause another Depression.

[For more information about Peak Oil, see my post nine months ago, Peak Oil? about an Australian TV documentary that's available free online for viewing].

Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader speaking at the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington.

I spent Sunday in Olympia, the capital of Washington State and an hour south of Seattle, with Dave and Caroline. We watched the documentary An Unreasonable Man, which was about Ralph Nader - his rise to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a consumer advocate, as well as his presidential campaign in 2000. It was in a theatre that reminded me very much of the Princess Cinema in Waterloo.

Later in the evening, Ralph Nader gave a lecture about his new book, The Seventeen Traditions, which describes his upbringing and the family values that were instilled in him. They also gave out copies of the book to everyone in the audience; I'm looking forward to reading it.

I found both his lecture as well as the documentary to be both interesting and informative. (I knew very little about Ralph Nader beforehand).

The Denial Machine

The CBC's Fifth Estate has a great documentary, The Denial Machine, available online (in its entirety without commercials) about how Big Tobacco's PR firms and junk scientists from the 1990's are now on the payroll for Exxon Mobil and other oil and coal companies. They are being paid to deny Global Warming and are busy partnering with the Bush White House to censor science and lie to and manipulate the public.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Who Killed The Electric Car? is a pretty good documentary. Until I saw it, I didn't know that electric cars actually existed. California had a law that car companies had to make zero-emission vehicles, and all the major car makers produced electric cars. They produced 2% of the pollution of a regular car (taking into account the pollution from the power plants that generate their electricity) and the electricity costs one-fifth the cost of gasoline (per mile) - an amazing piece of technology with a lot of potential to only get better.

However, the car companies, Big Oil, and the Bush administration sued California to kill the program and they succeeded. Why? There are a lot of reasons given in the movie; I thought one of the more compelling ones was that the car companies make billions of dollars in car parts and service (oil changes, oil filters, brakes, mufflers, etc.), but the electric cars have almost no parts (as there is no combusion engine) and the parts they do have (e.g. brakes) were designed to be a whole magnitude more efficient, so the don't need to be replaced.

30 Days

Season two of 30 Days premiered last night. Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, gets someone to experience something they generalize oppose for 30 days and films the results. Last night, a gun-toting, border-patrolling Minuteman moved in with a large family of illegal immigrants living below the poverty in LA. It was really good. If the other documentaries in the season are as good then it will give Lost a run for its money as the best current TV show.

The Minuteman's argument for his position was that it's the law of the land and as such it's his duty to go and patrol the border. Certainly laws should be respected, but they are a means and not an end. Moreover, the laws and policies are not always right, so his argument is not convincing - he needs to read Martin Luther King's Letter From Birmingham Jail to get some perspective.

Personally, I don't think the problem will be "sovled" until the root causes are addressed. i.e. Use a little "supply-side economics" and try to address Central America's vast poverty and poor economies. (Also, the American government's indifference to prosecuting employers who hire illegal immigrants also means that that there is a demand to match the supply of illegal labour - I read somewhere a few month ago that only a couple such indictments are handed down per year). Patrolling the border is necessary, but isn't going to stop people from trying to enter the US. i.e. If you are so poor you can't survive and support your family are you any worse off if you get caught at the border and deported? Not really. But there is always a non-zero chance you'll get through and end-up better off. So your expected returns are always positive, regardless of how well the border is patrolled. [It's simple statistics: Pr(Caught) * Punishment + Pr(Not-Caught) * Reward = 0.99 * 0 + 0.01 * 1 = 0.01 > 0].

After watching 30 Days, I watched Life and Debt, which was also good. It's a documentary about how the IMF and World Bank screwed Jamaica.

Peak Oil?

Peak Oil? is an episode of an Australia news journal TV show about how the World is running out of oil. [Via award tour].

An Inconvenient Truth

Last night I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with Dave and Caroline. I thought it was well done and informative. I would recommend seeing it.

An Inconvenient Truth

The documentary An Inconvenient Truth comes out in a couple weeks. I want to go see it. It's about lectures Al Gore has given about climate change and the enviornment. The BBC has a short article about it: Politician Gore appears at Cannes.

Disappointing Movies

I haven't had much luck picking movies the past couple weeks. Everything I've seen has been disappointing.

When I saw a preview for Coffee and Cigarettes at Princess Cinema a couple years ago, it looked novel and full of potential . But it was just a bunch of vacuous and dull vignettes. Nothing in it was compelling. Normally if a movie is bad, I'll still watch it. I thought about turning it off, but instead caught up on my e-mail while it ran to completion.

Uncovered: The War on Iraq wasn't bad. But, nothing in it was new or enlightening and, like most other people, I have fatigue from listen to same Iraq stories over and over. Also, I thought their presentation on certain things could have been a lot stronger. i.e. They showed the clip of the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency stating the Niger uranium documents were "not authentic", but did not mention the date, even though the timeline is very compelling. It was February 2003. One month before the war started and one month after President Bush referenced these documents in his State of the Union address. It was also the same month that the US and UK failed to convince the rest of the Security Council and the World to go to war. It should be clear why the rest of the World was skeptical and it is an obvious demonstration of how the US government and US media mislead the US public prior to the war. But the documentary didn't bring this up.

Domino should have been good - part action, part biography; Keira Knightley is hot. But the story was clearly all made up and it really covered only a couple days. So none of the biographical aspects were there. And making up things like "Hollywood Hostages" and sticking in some 90210 characters is strange and subpar for a B-movie. It's more like C- or D-movie. Also, I am not really a fan of Tony Scott's style, which didn't help. (Aside: I liked Man on Fire. I'll credit Denzel Washington and not Tony Scott for that though).

I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of Nicolas Cage, but he makes his characters interesting and I generally like dramas, so I had great expectations for The Weather Man. The story was novel and a little dark. Nicolas Cage made his character compelling and I liked the Michael Caine character. But the pace of the movie was too slow. Hence, it was only a "3 star" movie, when I had been expecting "4 stars".

The Thin Red Line had great cinematography and decent acting. But there was no context, no plot, and a lot of characters, who never really interacted with each other. Plus it was really long. So I couldn't really get "into" it.

Good Night, and Good Luck is next in my Netflix queue. I have great expectations.

Control Room

I watched the documentary Control Room tonight. It's about Al Jazeera. Specifically, it takes place during the Iraq War (March - May 2003) and is a collection of interviews with employees of Al Jazeera as well as other pressand US military media relations officers in Qatar. The interviews are interleaved with relevant video clips from Al Jazeera (and related news footage).

It had a less context than I expected, since it was focused solely on those few weeks. Also, it was a little more "raw" than I expected. There is no narrator tying the segements together or asking questions and the "interviews" seemed ad hoc - people talking during a smoke break or while they were driving somewhere. I liked the candid feel that came from the footage that was shot while the events where in progress though.

Overall, it definitely illustrated the different perspective that the Al Jazeera journalists (and, by extension, their audience) have. Perhaps one of the more striking perspectives was the contrasting views of integrity of the US government about Al Jazeera and vice versa. Near the middle of the film, there is a clip of Donald Rumsfeld criticizing Al Jazeera. Rumsfeld says that Al Jazeera gathers children and tells them to go and play in a bomb crater, so Al Jazeera can film it - giving the impression that the US is bombing civilians. (And a germane news clip follows). Near the end of the film, one of the Al Jazeera journalists says that the US military setup the scene were Iraqis parade around the square in Baghdad while the statue of Saddam is toppled. He says that he used to live in Iraqi and the "Iraqis" in the square don't really looks like Iraqis, they don't speak like Iraqis, etc. In his view, if the scene was genuine then there would be more people in the square and their ages, genders, etc. would be more diverse (than the handful of young males that were present). The two positions could not be more ironic. I suppose that divergence of opinions helps to explain the current state of the World.

If you're into the whole documentary thing or media/politics than it's worth a view. (On the other hand, if you're not into that then you'd probably find it a little boring).

Best Movies of 2005

I figure that I watched about 80 movies in 2005, mostly from Netflix, but some I saw either in the theatre, on TV, or from DVDs that I bought or borrowed. Here are the best (and worst) movies that I watched in 2005. [All links below go to IMDB].

The Best Movie was The Count of Monte Cristo. An adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel, it's athriller/action/drama movie. A good story, good acting, good cinematography and sets/costumes. (It takes place in Napoleanic France). Amélie, Good Will Hunting, and A Beautiful Mind were also great movies.

The Best Dramas were Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind. Both are about mathematicans. In Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon plays a troubled young man who lives in Boston. He's working as a janitor at MIT and is "discovered" as a math prodigy by a professor there. A Beautiful Mind is a biography of John Nash, a mathematican who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, but the story focuses on his struggle with schizophrenia. (Although, the film has been criticized for inaccuracies and omissions). Both films are deserved winners of Academy Awards. A notable mention goes out Clint Eastwood's critically-acclaimed Million Dollar Baby.

The Best Thriller was The Village. M. Night Shyamalan rocks. I can't wait for his next movie. His cinematography and sets are awesome and his stories are gold. Denzel Washington's John Q and The Manchurian Candidate were also good. Collateral, starring Jamie Foxx as a taxi driver, who picks up an assassin played by Tom Cruise, was also entertaining.

The Best Foreign Film was Amélie. It's a French film by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet which stars Audrey Tautou. The film is a comedy/drama. The story is very good and I love the cinematography/sets. The Brazilian-film City of God about an aspiring photographer who lives in a gang-infested slum of Rio de Janiero was solid.

The Best Comedy I watched was The Whole Nine Yards. Matthew Perry plays a dentist who gets caught up with a hit man played by Bruce Willis. The characters are good, the story keeps your attention, and it was funny. [Sadly, its sequel, The Whole Ten Yards is just plain bad. They must have had a different writer or something]. Notable mentions go out to Ben Stiller's Meet the Fockers and Meet the Parents.

The Best Documentary was Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. It's a critical examination of the Fox News TV channel. i.e. Fox News claims to be "Fair and Balanced", but in reality it is a right-wing tabloid with little substance or informative value.

The Best Science Fiction film was Revenge of the Sith. I thought the final installment of Star Wars had good pace, a decent story, and it exceeded my expectations. [To be fair I am a sucker for Star Wars though]. A notable mention goes out to I, Robot where cop Will Smith chases a robot he suspects of murder in a futurist Chicago. [It also stars Bridget Moynahan, who is hot].

The Best Action Movie was The Last Samurai. Set in circa 1870 Japan, US Civil War veteran Tom Cruise goes to Japan to train and modernize their army, but is captured by rebel samurai. It is, perhaps, a bit too much of drama to be considered an "action" movie, but I don't think I saw any "pure" action movies this year that were great. (All the good action movies I saw could arguably belong to the sci-fi, drama, or thriller genres).

The Best Crime Film was The Untouchables. Kevin Coster plays Eliot Ness as he battles Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Chicago during Prohibition. Sean Connery earned an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. A notable mention goes out to The Usual Suspects, which has a great story about what happens after five criminals are brought together.

The Best Superhero Film was Batman Begins. Fantastic Four was also entertaining (but lacking in substance).

The Best 'Family' Movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Best Unoriginal Movie was National Treasure. Nicolas Cage is treasure hunter in a hokey, but entertaining story. (It's unoriginal because it's a cross between Indiana Jones/Lara Croft and the Da Vinci Code). After The Sunset was also a decent movie (but reminiscent of The Thomas Crown Affair and Ocean's Eleven).

The Best 'B' Movie' was The Day After Tomorrow. Global warming causes the ice caps to melt. Hence, the ocean's currents radically change (no longer warming the nothern hemisphere) and an instant ice age ensures. Dennis Quaid must rescue his son, who is trapped in a frozen New York City.

Some movies that exceeded my expectations were The Fifth Element, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and Phone Booth. None of them is great and perhaps neither good, but they were decent.

The Most Disappiointing movie I saw was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I learned that all Spielberg movies are not masterpieces. (A.I. Artificial Intelligence also sucked). Spiderman 2 also sucked horrendously. I expect sequels to have the same characters and similar stories as their predecessors, but this was crappier remake of Spiderman. I don't think they bothered to come up with a script, they just made a couple changes Spiderman's story. Braveheart (too long and too over-the-top) and The Terminator (too lacking in story, characters, and quality of cinematography) also were disappointing.

The Worst Movie was Daredevil. This was a difficult choice since, in addition to the above disappointing movies, Alexander, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Elektra, and The Truman Show lacked any redeeming qualities and were among the movies I saw in 2005 that warranted a single-star.

A few other good movies I saw that aren't mentioned above include Catch Me If You Can, Chocolat, Garden State, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Terminal.

Movies

Well, here's my first question. Do you think it's kind of dangerous handing out guns at a bank? Bowling for Columbine is a great movie. If you haven't heard about it you must be living under a stone. I think it was the first documentary that I saw. (Since then I've only seen about a half-dozen documentaries. However, about 15% of my Netflix queue are documentaries). It was on CBC tonight and I watched it again. It was just as thought-provoking and profoundly sad the second time.

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching Braveheart and Mel Gibson as the Scottish renegade William Wallace. I was disappointed. As a movie, it is well-implemented (in terms of cinematography, acting, sets/props, etc.). But, it was insanely long. I was watching it on CBC also, so, including commericals, it was over three and half hours long! That's way longer than my attention span! I also found the story to be too decadent. The story dragged on and on, taking obvious liberties with history, and the characters became over-the-top. If much of the last hour of the movie had been left on the ending room floor, a better story (and movie) would have resulted.

The last two movies I rented from Netflix were both good. Last week I saw Chocolat. Perhaps it can best be described as a "warm and fuzzy" movie. (i.e. What you would call an "exploration of the human condition" in English class). Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) is an outsider who moves with her daughter to a French village to open a chocolaterie. She then takes it upon herself to try to help the villagers enjoy life. The story and characters make it worth watching, although there are a few minor oddities with both.

The week before, I watched The Untouchables. Kevin Costner is Elliot Ness, fighting prohibition and Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in Chicago with a small squad of cops (including Sean Connery, who earned an Oscar for his role). I really enjoyed it - the story had good pace and a healthy dose of action. The characters were decent too.

A Long Anticipated Weekend

It's been a long and tiring week. I'm glad that I have a long weekend to rest.

Last weekend I went camping at the Olympic National Park with Nabeel and Suor. On Saturday (after some creative exercises involving getting keys to get other keys to recover keys that were lock into someone's apartment), we took the ferry across Puget Sound to Bainbridge Island then drove to Port Angeles on the Olympic Pennisula. (There is a bridge between Bainbridge Island and the Olympic Pennisula). We hiked up Hurricane Ridge then camped at the Heart O' The Hills campground. The weather was okay, but a little cloudy. There were lots of deer at the top of Hurricane Ridge.

The next day, we went to Second Beach (after a short hike) on the Pacific Ocean. It's a pretty good spot for photos, but it was raining fairly heavily the whole time we were there. (Kind of like last time!). I haven't sorted through all my photos yet, but I'll try to post some later this weekend.

On Tuesday I went to a Lifehouse concert at El Corazón with Suor. The setting was very "intimate". (i.e. Small, crowded, hot, and sweaty). I only recognized a small subset of the songs. (I have their album No Name Face, but have not heard either of their other two albums...well that's a small lie, I've listened to their new album once). Overall the concert was good though. (The opening act was decent (for an opening act) too...but we never figured out who they were).

Since my last post about 30 Days was popular, I guess I'll comment about this week's show too. :-) A (Christian) guy from West Virgina goes to Dearborn, Michigan to spend a month living with Muslim family and observing all of their customs, including, wearing a traditional outfit when he left the airport in West Virgina that made him popular with the airport security. (One third of Dearborn's population is Muslim). It was an interesting story, probably the most interesting of the three episodes that they've shown so far. He struggled with his stereotypes (but was open-minded) and (understandably) had a lot of trouble trying to reconcile the Muslim lifestyle with his Christian beliefs (in particular going to a mosque to pray). Next week's episode sounds very similar in it's approach - a straight guy goes to San Francisco to become a roommate with an openly gay man.

30 Days

Last night I watched the premiere of 30 Days, a TV series by Morgan Spurlock from the famous (or is that infamous?!) documentary Super Size Me. The concept of the show is very similar to Super Size Me - the results of 30 day lifestyle experiment are recorded (and accompanied by a social commentary).

In the first episode, he took his fiancée to Columbus, Ohio and they lived on minimum wage for a month. With the underlying point of the show being that a minimum wage job ($5.15 / hour) is inadequate to support someone, yet alone a family. They actually found jobs that paid slightly more than minimum wage (~$7/h), but had a quite depressing life. Despite living in an ant-infested former crack house (apartment), they ended up earning less than they spent in the month. (Mostly because of ~$1000 in hospital bills - it's kind of hard to pay that off when you only make ~$44/day after taxes)...it makes me grateful to have grown up like I did and to have a decent job.

I think in future episodes other people will be the guinea pigs and Spurlock will just narrate.

Fog of War

I watched Fog of War last night. It is an interview with Robert S. McNamara about eleven "lessons" that he learned from his involvement in World War II with the Air Force as well as the Cuban Missle Crisis and the Vietnam War as Secretary of Defense.

For some reason I thought it was about Henry Kissinger. [How can you rent a documentary and not know who it is about, you ask? Well, it was playing at the Princess Cinema last year, but for some reason I never went even though it looked interesting. I know Ram went and said it was good, so that's sufficent :-)].

I found it to be interesting and thought provoking. It is also fairly topical. (i.e. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to apply what he says to current US foreign policy).

It was good, but listening a single person talk for almost two hours stretched my attention span a little. Overall, I'll give it 3/5 stars. (3.5 if I wasn't limited to an integral amount of stars).

Fahrenheit

Despite the fact that my primary occupation right now is loitering in my parents' basement, I seem to be busy all the time.

Thursday I went to see The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind with some of my friends at the Princess Cinema. The movie was different, but good. I've never really been a Jim Carey fan, but I thought his acting was decent. I'd have to say that it's a film that is worth seeing.

Friday, I finished reading Hegemony Or Survival: America's Quest For Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky. I've never read anything by Chomsky before, but I have heard interesting things about him. I thought he gave compelling arguments for his thesis that America has held the prolonged goal to dominate the World at all cost (while eroding social programs and further enriching the elite). There is no doubt that the Right would describe it as seditious if the US was actually well read. (The National Endowment for the Arts said the other day that 53% of adult Americans don't read books at all). However, Chomsky is equal scathing in his criticism of Democratic presidents as well. (Although the Reagan-Bush-Bush administrations receive the bulk of his attack). Overall, I would say his assessment is a reasonable one. That said, there are a number of aspects where his argument is susceptible to a counter-arguments. (e.g. He scathes Clinton for acting in Kosovo, but also scathes Clinton for not acting in East Timor. If action and inaction are both reprehensible then it is hard not to be condemned). It is definitely a book worth reading as it adds perspective.

Yesterday I saw Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 with some other friends. I thought it was a good documentary. A lot of material was covered, but the current administration can be reproached along many avenues. However, I didn't learn a lot of new facts nor did the movie seem overly damning of Bush. Perhaps, it is because I live outside the US, where the media is not so sycophantic or perhaps it is rather hard to top the degree of criticism reached by Hegemony Or Survival. Or maybe after all the fuss made by the RNC, I expected the movie to be more assaulting. Again, this is worth seeing because it adds perspective. However, it lacks the entertaining moments contained in Bowling For Columbine or Supersize Me, so go expecting a more serious movie.

Busy, Busy

This has been a really busy weekend. Saturday was my convocation. (I'm now a graduate with a Bachelor of Mathematics - Honours Double Combinatorics and Optimization & Computer Science Cooperative Program With Distinction - Dean's Honours List...or something like that). I had a lot of fun seeing my various friends although the ceremony was a little long.

Saturday as dinner with various relatives and Sunday was lunch with various other relatives. e.g. My cousin (who is back from a year of teaching in Iraq) came down from Ottawa with his girlfriend. Sunday night I went out with friends who were in town for Convocation and Friday I went out with other friends who were also in town for Convocation.

On Friday, we saw the movie Supersize Me. I thought it was really good. It is a documentary about a guy who eats nothing but McDonald's for a month. However, it is much more sophisticated than that. Rather than bashing McDonald's, it examines the state of people's health (wrt exercise and diet) in the US. He travels around interviewing various people, e.g. a law professor involved with law suits against McDonald's, a lobbyist for the food industry, a very obese guy who was getting his stomach stapled, the 3 doctors and 1 nutritionist who supervised him, etc. I'd recommend seeing it.

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to a talk at the Fields Institute in Toronto.

I also posted some photos from Liechtenstein and Austria on my digital photo page. Eventually I'll finish adding photos from my trip to Europe and then I'll add some from Convocation.