Set the date. The Age of Stupid is coming! LIVE!

You might have heard about this little British movie called “The Age of Stupid.” The brashly titled film injects the viewer into the year 2055 and the lonely, cold world of the last man on Earth. Pete Postlethwaite plays “The Archivist” who chronicles the beginning of the end, so called “The Age of Stupid,” through his computer of videos and images.

The UK premiere kicked off back in March, but on Monday, September 21 the movie will have it’s Global Premiere event.  Simulcast live from a solar tent located in downtown New York to over 400 movie theaters nationwide, the movie clearly intends to build big buzz at a critical time in the world’s history on the eve of the UN General Assembly’s climate session. Also this fall is the Copenhagen talks and the “ACES” bill in the Senate. Regal Cinema at the Shops at Ithaca mall is participating in this global event. Show time starts at 7:30 pm.

The movie has been receiving mixed reviews in scientific, environmental and entertainment world. Whether this tomato is fresh or rotten, there’s no doubt it will spark more conversation at the dinner table about climate change, and our individual and collective impact on the world.

- The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw said the movie’s concept was “touch annoying and teenagery sometimes” but over all it deserves attention:

The passion, urgency and punch of this rough-and-ready film is real enough. It’s refreshing too. The cinema and its attendant media-comment industry appear to have endless space for every sort of smoothly mediocre irrelevancy in fact and fiction. There should be room for an essay on the most screamingly important problem that we all now face.

- The New York Times’ Steven Holden says that epic scope of the problem and the necessary changes in our behavior to overcome climate change may be too much for some theater-goers:

Cynics may assume that the ethic of consumerism is too deeply instilled in us to be changed, as is the faith in capitalism, which depends on continuous growth. If so, we might as well put the coming horrors out of our minds and live for the moment, while hoping for a miracle.

- The New Scientist’s Catherine Brahic says that while isolated weather events are not climate change, grouping them together does provide a powerful narrative:

It is worthy, though not riveting, cinema, but it has a very clever feature: much of the film is a patchwork of real news clips of remarkable single weather events from the early 2000s … By displaying these events side by side, the film compellingly shows that climate change is real, providing 20/20 hindsight while there is still time to act.

- Finally, Treehugger’s Leonora Oppenheim says the movie was a real downer:

After seeing a press screening of The Age of Stupid on Monday night in London I’m wondering if it’s possible to use too much stick? I left the theatre feeling pretty negative, as one couldn’t help to after seeing human kind wiped out with only poor Pete Postlethwaite left, stuck on his own talking to a computer screen. But as Ashok Sinha, Director of Stop Climate Chaos coalition, said after seeing the film, “It is not a film to make you happy. It’s a film to make you sit back and think ‘What is my role on this planet?’”

I’m very excited the see the film either way. It’s been three years since “An Inconvient Truth,” and America’s attention span is worse than a ADHD goldfish. We need another movie to provide that steel-toed boot kick in the ass. I’m hoping it’ll be the kick we need to truly go green.

See the full trailer here:

Film Review: The 11th Hour

Imagine sitting in a classroom of 50 professors, and each one talks for no more than 60 seconds at a time. All the while, a steady stream of semi-related video clips flickers on a screen and a soft mood music of piano and cello flow over the scene. Welcome to The 11th Hour.

The movie premiered tonight in Clarke Lounge in the Campus Center, as a part of the National Teach-In to be held tomorrow. Yesterday, the organizers of the Teach-In screened “An Inconvenient Truth.”   

I realize now why “The 11th Hour,” has been floating around in the atmosphere of bits of conversations and subtle references in blogs and articles. Why I’ve never before tonight sat down to see it. Why it is always compared to “An Inconvenient Truth.” While the movie brings in some big names (Lester Brown, David Suzuki, and Stephen Hawkings) and stabs at some heavy environmental ideas, the entire movie plays out like a college thesis film produced during a caffeine drenched weekend before deadline.

The boring and generic music, coupled with the boring and generic video clips gave it the feeling of a rushed half-produced, half-lucky editing job. There were more interviews with authors, professors, scientists, journalists and directors/founders of advocacy groups than I can count while wearing my shoes. Sometimes the arguments flowed nicely, sometimes they would pop from one area of environmentalism to another like popcorn on the stove.

This isn’t to say that the environmental nerd (like myself) didn’t find everything they are saying fascinating and encouraging. Fascinating in the ways we continue to suicidally destroy our planet. And encouraging in all the fantastic new ways we can fix our planet. From new building designs, cars, roads and cities. From what we eat, what we wear, and what we entertain ourselves with.

“We get to re-imagine every single thing we do,” one interviewee said. “This generation gets to essentially completely change the world.”

If you’ve never watched anything thing like this before, and you’ve never heard of greenhouse gases, deforestation, soil erosion, social justice, food toxins and desertification, then, yeah, watch it. It’s a great crash course in all these things. And if you’re a environmental junkie, like me, yeah, watch it. I mean it’s one of the few green movies out there that has secured a big star like narrator and producer Leonardo diCaprio. And there’s some subtle “Bush Bashing.” And what environmentalist doesn’t like that?

Final Plans for IC’s National Teach-In

Ithaca College Office of Media Relations
SOURCE: Ithaca College Office
of Media Relations

For those of you not in the know, the National Teach-In, which will be focused on climate change and global solutions, will be held exactly a week from today in Emerson Suites. It’s surprising to me how far we’ve come in just two years when The Ithacan ran a front page cover story on “Melting the Myth” in which the IPCC report verified all the claims of scientists for the past decade on global warming.

The National Teach-In will take place on February 5, 2009 in Emerson suites. Different universities, colleges, business and even faith-based groups (which are becoming increasingly eco-friendly - check out the pope!) will be holding a full day of classes, discussions and/or films to discuss. The National Teach-In is the project of a non-profit organization, Education for Global Warming Solutions (EdSolv), in Portland, Oregon. Last year, the teach-in was called Focus the Nation, but sometime afterward, Focus the Nation split.

Last year, Ithaca participated in Focus the Nation with poor results. Students didn’t organize any “teach-in,” and the national web cast was plagued with crappy bandwidth problems.

But that was then. This is now.

In one week in Emerson Suites, Ithaca will host a full day of lectures and discussions, starting at 9:25 and closing with a film screening of “The Carbon Connection,” (check out the video trailer) which will have panel discussion after the film. I think it’s brilliant that the sessions fit into the Thursday class structure. Now students can attend full sessions without leaving early or arriving late, ANNND professors, like the wonderful Todd Shack and Vera Whisman, can take their students to the sessions.

For a full listing of all the day’s events, check out Dave Maley’s post.

I will probably attend every session, except one, because my professor said no :-( But if you have limited time, I recommend these two:

- “Ithaca College’s Plan to Achieve Carbon Neutrality” at 9:25 am - Trust me, it’s worth getting up for. It will have a HUGE impact on our institutions future and our tuition. Plus, it’s the most exciting environmental news on campus since the HSBC grant or compost in the Pub!

- “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)” at 2:35 - Nineteen students traveled to Poland for their “International Environmental Policy” course for the United Nations Forum Convention on Climate Change. Basically, this was the greatest thing ever for these students, and it was enormously important for global policy on climate change. Check out the student’s blogs here.

Go. Mark your calendar now. Tell your professors. Tell you friends. Tell strangers. Tell that guy behind the counter of Sammy’s and the crazy guy walking around the commons. Tell everyone! Go.