Tuesday, May 30, 2006

You can call me Al

An Inconvenient Truth is a lecture. As a movie it leaves much to be desired. However, it has the correct instinct of letting the material speak for itself. The material is of course, Albert Gore's travelling slide show about the very real possibility of impending doom due to global warming. Gore is a little less stiff these days. He is not a very charismatic speaker, but his commitment and his intelligence are compelling. And I love his Tennessee accent. It is not put on for show, like you-know-whose. Plus, the data he has to share with his audiences is enough to scare the bejesus out of anybody. One learns many interesting things in this movie.
In order to make the movie less of a filmed lecture, sometimes Gore is seen fiddling around on his computer, or driving a modest car. There is one moment when they show when he WON THE POPULAR VOTE, and then how he eventually lost the Presidency. That footage, of his concession and his applauding as The Calamity We Now Have For a President takes office, is probably the saddest, most stomach-churning thing I have seen in movies in a long time. It just makes you think: what if Al was there now instead of The Decider? You know that the worst Al could ever do would be a zillion times less bad than what we've been through till now. PAINFUL.
The movie is produced by Mrs. Larry David, who is crazy about global warming. At the end they urge you to mend your ways and they tell you exactly how. I found it a bit preachy, but useful. The US wastes more energy than any other nation on Earth. If the Earth melts down, it's going to be mostly our fault. So go see this movie, and turn the ac and the lights out while you are out.

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