Gasland: Oh-My-God watch this movie, then pray

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - The movie Gasland should not be listed in the documentary section of videos on Netflix or at video stores. Instead, it might better be placed alongside all those disaster movies like Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow, and The Day After.

Those movies, of course, were works of fiction.

Gasland is not, which makes it sooooo much more frightening. And kind of sickening, too.

It's a tale of an out-of-control gas drilling industry, greed, corporate (and government) corruption and real suffering. The real suffering is not on the part of the corporations or gas drilling industry, of course. It's the people who live where the gas drilling - frequently referred to as 'fracking' - are having their well-water and air poisoned.

If the air you breathe and the water you drink make you sick, that's suffering.



Gasland is the work of independent filmmaker Josh Fox, who lives in the Delaware River basin near where gas drilling companies are getting ready to frack the countryside. In the process, the movie makes it obvious the ground water will be polluted with enough cancer-causing chemicals to make it unsafe to even use to wash a car. Fox had been approached by a gas company, wanting to lease his land to drill.

He had questions. And he made a movie about the answers.

The science is simple. Millions of gallons of water, laced with hundreds of nasty sounding chemicals, are injected into the ground (where shale rock formations exist) to create mini-earthquakes which release natural gas. The gas, in turn, is captured by the drilling companies, and sold as a product. The problems? Jaysus, where to begin?

The gas doesn't all go back up neatly into the collection wells, sometimes it bubbles up right through the ground, poisoning steams and water wells.

The water pumped in - under huge pressures - is toxic and remains so. It too leaches into ground water and even if most of it is recaptured, it has to be trucked away and disposed of. Check your local wastewater facilities and see if fracking water is being dumped there. If it is, try to stop it. Municipal wastewater facilities can't possibly deal with the toxic chemicals in the water. So the chemicals just come out and enter the water system. Your water system.

And what are those toxic chemicals?

Hard to say, exactly.

 In 2005, President George Bush, at the urging of (wait for it, here it comes) Vice President Dick Cheney, signed a bill that exempted gas companies from the various environmental laws that would have required them to disclose what they were pumping into the ground.

It was called the Halliburton loophole, a paean to Cheney's years as CEO of that company. Halliburton is big in the gas drilling industry. Very big.

Various agencies and individuals have analyzed fracking water samples and discovered why the gas companies wanted the exemption so much. The toxic-chemical stew is soooooo awful, so ridden with cancer causing chemicals, it should never be used.

Never.

As soon as the 2005 federal law was signed, it touched off of wild rush to drill across the U.S., the results of which are documented very well in the movie.

Gasland is a must-see movie: Where else can you watch people light the water coming out of their kitchen taps on fire.

Really... check this out:

'Henry Poole is here' - a movie full of miracles

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The film 'Henry Poole is here' is one of those sad-funny-happy-tragic pieces that come along all-too rarely.

Of course, if all movies were as good as this one, all I would ever do is watch movies.

But this film is not to be missed.

Luke Wilson plays the title role and does a fabulous job as a man with a serious problem. He is rarely off screen during the whole movie, but never tiring.

His interactions with his many neighbors, the local Catholic priest - even a young incredibly myopic young woman in a grocery store - are fun and sad, simultaneously.

Definitely a movie that requires a box of Kleenex nearby. Maybe two.

Here are several photos - plus the official trailer at the bottom. Like all movie trailers, it gives away a little too much of the key scenes - which I tried not to do here. But it does not give away the real punch line of the movie, which surprised me.


Henry Poole with his neighbors


With neighbor Esperanza


A lighter moment in the movie

'The Visitor' - a dramatic tale about immigration

NEW YORK, New York, USA - The film "The Visitor," starring Richards Jenkins, at first looks like its a simple tale about a depressed college professor who is having trouble getting excited about anything, which predictably would lead to his getting, well, interested in something.

And he does. But it turns out to be way different from what you imagine at the beginning of the movie. And it is anything but simple in Jenkins' performance.

The Visitor turns out to be a stinging indictment of U.S. immigration policies, with enough carefully understated - and damning - scenes to make almost any American's blood boil at the mindless police-state tactics that the film shows the U.S. government employing.


Richard Jenkins takes up the drums

The acting in the movie is superb and I won't spoil the intrigue of what happens by giving away the plot twists and turns.

Suffice it to say that after seeing it, my original idea for a literary journalism piece about immigration has moved way up on the story list. I've heard stories that mirror what the film shows.

Real people here - and outside the U.S. - are caught up in a weird web that is so Kafkaesque, few people want to believe it is real.


Danai Jekesai Gurira and Hiam Abbass


Hiam Abbass

The Visitor - destined to be an American classic?

Maybe.

Hunter S. Thompson movie has all the 'right stuff'

WOODY CREEK, Colorado, USA - The new movie about Hunter S. Thompson is as good - maybe better - than the reviewers have said it is. If you blinked and missed it in the theaters, check it out on DVD in a few months.


A young Hunter S. Thompson

The Admiral and I watched it at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento last night with a crowd of, well, maybe 10 people, all of who seemed to be afficionados of the writer, laughing at all the right spots, crying at others.

For non-HST fans, the movie might not be too charming and it certainly would be somewhat confusing in spots.

But it focuses on Hunter's early career and answers one big question: What the heck happened to him?

It turns out (at least according to the film) that after he totally blew his assignment to write about the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali in Zaire, he lost his ability to write and create for years afterward. It wasn't necessarily that he missed the assignment, the film hints, he might have burned out right about that time.

His ex-wife, who is prominent in the film talking about Hunter, gives a pretty straightforward assessment of what happened then as well as insights into his personality and how he may have ended up trapped in the caricature he created for himself and of himself.

One of the highlights of the film is getting to hear Ralph Steadman, the British artist who accompanied HST on many of his adventures, talking about what it was like to be out on assignment with him.

Total Gonzo, of course.


Ralph Steadman portrait of Hunter S. Thompson

Movie 'Stardust' made for the hopelessly romantic

MOVIELAND, Earth - I watched the movie Stardust tonight, featuring Clare Danes, Charlie Cox, Robert DeNiro and a raft of other excellent actors.

Michelle Pfeiffer is, well, unbelievably good - as a witch.

My recommendation?

If you have an ounce of the romantic in you, watch it... The plot is pretty straightforward, the acting excellent, and the humor? Well it's dry and exceedingly funny at times. It's not science fiction, it's fairy-tale style fantasy. But the action moves so fast it won't let you step away without hitting the pause button for fear of missing some detail.

In a world so full of despair, this movie should make you forget it all for awhile. Maybe even give you a little hope. Magic and all that. I'll be looking at the stars in a new way from now on.

Here's a couple of photos from the film and a Youtube music video that gives quite a few film highlights. Of course, like all trailers, it gives away waaaay too much of what's in the movie. But the song is worth hearing.

Clare Danes, Robert DeNiro and Charlie Cox

Charlie & Clare