Oil Crash Movie

killJOY · Fission Joined: Feb 21, 2005 Posts: 2510 Location: ^NNE^

Im liking this a little more. (why cant I use apostrophes here, by the way???)

Ive just showed it to my class--their sayonara for the semester.

Crude Awakening is more effective on a bigger screen with a better sound system. The DVD players in the classroom are pretty good, and you can project a pretty big picture on the screen.

The DVD allows me to show an edited version: I cut out three of the "chapters" and made a pretty good 1hr 5min movie out of it for class time.

You could hear a pin drop. Its effective for those who are familiar with the issue, such as my students, who have been studying peak oil for three weeks (if theyve been doing their work!).

One of my students really liked the music. I didnt notice the music much while watching on my computer, but in the classroom it really filled some of the scenes with tension
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"By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price

PrairieMule

Netflix delievered it this week and I watched it last night. It's definitely heavier handed than End of Suburbia but gets right to the point.

Good work.
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Hair in my eyes like a highland steer, spring in my step like a white tailed deer. Hitch in my hip like an old sheep dog, puff up my chest like a big bull frog.-Corb Lund

Veritas · Tar Sands Joined: Oct 01, 2006 Posts: 51

I saw this on the documentary channel a few weeks ago and convinced my girlfriend to watch it with me.

For me it was mostly stuff I already knew, and seemed kind of light on the details I was hoping for (was hoping to see some "irrefutable" type of evidence).

On the whole we both agreed it was a pretty bad film. It's soooo slow, there is no narrator (huge problem), and the splicing in of old oil-ads from the 1950s gets tedious after about the first 5 times they do it.

I guess I just imagined it being a lot more professional and coherent, perhaps being a touchstone for the issue of peak oil. I really think not having a narrator and the overuse of 1950s images killed the film.

ColossalContrarian · Intermediate Crude Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 687

I Netflixed it and thought it was good and basic. My original idea was to push it to friends and family since I knew I'd know most of the stuff in it. Unfortunately whenever I mention anything related to oil to friends and family they give me the "Not that Peak Oil Doomer Stuff again" look. So I just shipped it back without sharing...

Needs more action…to soften the blow...

nella · Tar Sands Joined: May 11, 2007 Posts: 57

I happened upon it quite by accident, watching the sundance channel one sleepness night.
I really didn't know anything about PO. Thought it was far enough away in the future that I wouldn't see it in my lifetime.
I thought the information was presented and laid out in a very clear fashion. Factual.
The men talking on the film seemed a cross section and between them all, very believable.
So I had a very strong reaction. Horror.
Since watching, I've looked around on the web, doing alot of reading and accessing my own situation. Still in that process.

Shannymara

Finally saw this tonight (Netflix). Matt Savinar's comments about colonizing Pluto cracked me up. I thought the music during the nuclear power plant scenes was WAY too biased (my kid would call it "monster music"), even though I'm anti-nuke.

Overall I agree with some others that it was slow, but I think it was still a decent intro to the issues. I liked that it was lighter on the 50s cartoonish stuff than End of Suburbia.

Edit: The scenes of the abandoned oil fields made me cry. Very disturbing.
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"Every junkie's like a setting sun..." - Neil Young

Pretorian

when the darn blockbuster will get this movie?

katkinkate

They are showing it on ABC (Australia) later this week (24th I think) and have been pushing it pretty heavily on Radio National since the Science Show on Saturday. The Science Show had a long (20 minutes or so) interview with the maker of the documentary. I think Robyn Williams (the boss of the Science Unit at Radio National) is a closet peaknic. I wouldn't be surprised if he's lurking around here.
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Kind regards, Katkinkate

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
Masanobu Fukuoka

roccman

Excellent!!

Mo' exposure to get folk excited about this stuff!!!

oowolf

I showed this to some folks who have heard nothing about PO except comments from me. While it seems slow to "US", remember, this information takes a while to "sink in". The viewers picked up on these points:
Oil takes millions of years to create.
Oil reserves "run dry".
Despite intensive effort, no major reserves have been found in decades.
Damn near everything in our civilization is made of, or is dependent on, fossil fuel.
This is a recipe for disaster.

When I told them we're only one hurricane away from $5/gal gas, nobody dared to disagree!

OilIsMastery

I just bought this today and watched it for the first time and I have to say it I was somewhat disappointed.

Disappointed because the movie is almost more of a movie about politics than it is about oil.

With the exceptions of M. King Hubbert and Matthew Simmons all of the spokesmen and women came off as having a radical far left political agenda.

My favorite scene of the film was scene 3 called "From Boom To Bust." It showed the actual real world societal and environmental effects of peak oil on three different cities, Baku Azerbaijan, Maracaibo Venezuela, and McCamey Texas. Baku looks like a scene from Road Warrior. Maracaibo looks like a scene from Waterworld. Very scary.

The worst scene is scene 4 directly after that called "A Magnet For War." They found a retarded political science professor who claims that genocide, rape jihad, and forced clitorectomy in Darfur Sudan are caused by oil in the southern part of the country. Obviously they have good dope out there in Stanford. And then they get the former Iraqi oil minister to claim that the Palestinian conflict is over oil LMAO.
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The Lies Of Richard Heinberg

http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/

waegari

Saw it at Belgian national television last night.

A national television station broadcasting it is a plus in se.

Other than that: quite an excellent movie for the uniniated. Though for fairness's sake, some more attention to the Yergin faction might have made it more balanced, without relinquishing the general argument.
The well known cornucopian quote 'the Stone Age didn't end, because we ran out of stones' thereby also sounded a bit void, when refered to as object of criticism.
Though a reference to Sheik Yamani's first use of this simile may have been in the first three or four minutes: I don't know, I missed those.

Impressive indeed the section about abandoned oil fields.
Matt's Pluto remark is equally invaluable.

I do hope that uniniated viewers towards the end have retained those images about the way oil is in anything we do, as shown in the first half hour or so. Though, then again, who would forget the girl at her dressing table? Great choice.

In all, I wonder whether any more PO.com guests have showed up from Belgium or the Netherlands today. Aaron might know. However, if so, it's thanks to this Crude Awakening airing.
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The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Al Bartlett

teky · Coal Joined: Oct 11, 2007 Posts: 5

I heard about this film! I also heard that is coming to the UK next month!! I am looking forward to see it. I am so glad this issue is getting the mainstream attention it deserves because it proves what the so-called’ War on Terror’ is really about. The true reasons for conflict were based on the lack of oil reserves in rich countries and political interests rather than on those which were presented to us.

Grifter

I bought it off LATOC because I felt guilty after Matt had a go at carlhole for not paying for it.

I lent it to a guy from work after he started talking about oil depletion(well kind of). He wants more info now. Must be good. I'm not telling him to visit LATOC though, he might end up like me. Rolling Eyes