Sundance Festival Acclaimed Documentary Starring Al Gore?

[Black Dynamite]

http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramo...truth/trailer/

An Inconvenient Truth Is a Documentary Slideshow hosted by Al Gore. The movie was said to have gotten a lil' Acclaim at the Sundance. I'm sure Taymelo already has his ticket.

Synopsis

Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced- a catastrophe of our own making.

If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom -- think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, "An Inconvenient Truth," which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's commitment to expose the myths and misconceptions that surround global warming and inspire actions to prevent it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on an all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his "traveling global warming show," Gore is funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our "planetary emergency" out to ordinary citizens before it's too late.

With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point – and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore's personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective; to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most impassioned cause of his life – convinced that there is still time to make a difference.

With wit, smarts and hope, "An Inconvenient Truth" ultimately brings home Gore's persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue – rather, it is the biggest moral challenge facing our global civilization.

Interview with the Director by Comingsoon.net
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/indie...s.php?id=14646
I thought this part was kinda funny. i'm sure Taymelo will have a field day on it.

CS: Yeah, he was in that episode, it's the one where he talks about his book "Earth in the Balance" and his more popular book "Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth." Hilarious.
Guggenheim: That was part of his slideshow when I saw it, and we had to clear it. We had to get FOX to give it to us, they wanted to charge us lots of money, and then we begged and they finally said yes.

Based on the advertising of Global Warning. I'm guessing that the scare you into watching tactic is now shared by Repubics and DemoCons. Either way i liked Al Gore and thought he woulda' made a good president(technically so did a majority of the population). So i'll check it out.

[Black Dynamite]

scenes from the Documentary.

[Uncle Mxy]

I never really liked Al Gore. He reminds me way too much of a former boss who was a nice guy, but just not a very good boss. (I doubt Gore would've tried to pressure his people to fly less than a week after 9/11, which caused me to lead the way in getting my ex-boss canned, but I digress...)

That said, I thought Gore would've made a better president than George W. Bush. Bush's first, best destiny would've been as the baseball commish. Of course, I thought a whole lot of people would've been a better choice. I am against the Taliban wing of the Republican Party. The fucked-up neocon and relgious right factions -- W.'s base -- have done us no favors, and Democrats haven't known how to play politics since 9/11.

I voted for McCain in the primaries, because he wanted to pay off debt with the budget surplus of the day and not write out checks for later generations to cash. But we live in a world where tons of people max out their credit cards, and the only choice between the two candidates in 2000 was "where would they piss away the excess money". Folks in their 20s and 30s will be paying for Bush's blank checkbook throughout our lifetime.

Fuck, we still hadn't paid off for Vietnam yet. It took Reagan borrowing a few trillion to make the economic fallout from Vietnam go away. He gambled on easy money policies leading to breakthrough results, and that shit worked in an odd way. The emergence of junk bonds fueled the telco and telco-related industries (dot-com, baby!). Just when there was finally enough to get over the hump and -have- a rainy day fund for things like 9/11 and Afghanistan, we get a big spender wanting another new war to make up for what daddy oopsed on.

There's no way that "energy credit trading", Gore's big scheme, will really do us any good. The fallout from Iraq will guarantee that. Too many countries don't like us for us to drive the sort of consensus that's needed to really think globally here. The money to kickstart initiatives like this won't exist. It's not just fucking inconvenient, but disasterous. As our world shrinks, we have more and more global problems, and we need people who can work globally. I remember when the U.S. President was the leader of the free world. Now we have a dumbass who only thinks insularly, who thinks of the rest of the world as a problem and not a reality or opportunity.

[Glenn]

Wow, great post Mxy.

[Black Dynamite]

I never really liked Al Gore. He reminds me way too much of a former boss who was a nice guy, but just not a very good boss. (I doubt Gore would've tried to pressure his people to fly less than a week after 9/11, which caused me to lead the way in getting my ex-boss canned, but I digress)....

i actually agree with all of what you said, except the Al Gore coming across one way. Alot of the time i never got that stuff from him. but i had an opinion of him before the media and his rival had a chance to thrash his image. I honestly thought he spoke well and sounded light years ahead of Bush in answering questions in their debates. yet for some things like that became irrelevent. but i wont say much more than that. i posted this more so because the movie looked interesting. If it gives well informed answers with no bs(which i'm sure Pharoah loves), then its definately worth checking out IMO.

[Glenn]

I like Gore a lot, I'd love to see him take another shot at the Presidency.

Gore/Obama anybody?

It would be nice to return to the days of governing this country with intellect.

[Uncle Mxy]

FWIW...

For a lot of people (including me) their initial introduction to Al Gore was through Tipper Gore and the PMRC in the mid-'80s. Al Gore's first impression beyond his Tennessee constituents was as the husband of that lame-brained loudmouth, especially among who'd be his base later on. Now, had they been introduced to Al Gore as "father of those three hip and hot daughters, one of whom is a big Prince fan", I bet the first impression would've been better.

The next time I really had an "opinion" moment with him was over the Internet It wasn't the bogus and wildly-exaggerated "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." stuff -- I can overlook such hype. No, it was initiatives like the Clipper chip, the '90s era "eavesdrop on everybody" initiative that soured me somewhat more. (Bush should be glad he didn't run on a "I won't spy on you the way Gore wanted to" platform.) Gore didn't really "get" the Internet, but certainly he thought he did. People like that scared me more than luddites.

So by the time he was running for President and I had a mostly-lousy boss that -sounded- just like him at the time, I had something of a dim view. I had an even dimmer view of Bush, though, and Nader just isn't a politician to me, I generally supported Gore.

[Gecko]

The emergence of junk bonds fueled the telco and telco-related industries (dot-com, baby!). Just when there was finally enough to get over the hump and -have- a rainy day fund for things like 9/11 and Afghanistan, we get a big spender wanting another new war to make up for what daddy oopsed on.

Nice post Mxy but this paragraph has some things I wanted to chime in on, but no biggee, doesn't take away from the post.

Junk bonds was not the reason for the dot-com bubble or the fiber optic boom in teleco's.

Second, for anyone that isn't aware the current "deficit" that is constantly being eluded to is now being adjusted down in future years for all the same reasons that it disappeared in the first place before GWB got here. If you now look at the future predictions for the deficit that have been greatley altered in the past 6 months. These are not the gov't predictions but economists predictions and they have to do with one thing and that is Tax Base. Such an under reported story by the media and it's too bad. I saw a figure where the current deficit would be paid down in the next 15 years based on current assumptions and a reduced but still positive future economic expansion.

A lot of people feel that Bush did something horrendous with his tax and spend policies (I am no Bush economic fan btw), but conisder that when he did it, in the short-term, the stimulus provided by the tax cuts appears to have been necessary for the economy at that time. It could have come in the form of tax cuts or as higher government spending; either way, they would have swelled the deficit. A large chunk of the deficit is the result of lower tax receipts from 3 areas:

-The recession he inherited
- from 9/11 which
-declining stock market from the above 2 which resulted in less of a tax base for the gov't to use to pay down debt or save.

The stock market, economy and low interest rates have been great as a result the tax base is way up add to this the tax base off the corporations that are doing well. I think the deficit is over-blown and has been used as a political tool against those who don't know any better.

When talking about Deficits it only matters how they were created. In this case they were created as a stimulus to the economy. Supply side economics - a Regan legacy.

[Hermy]

can you link me to those projections G? I haven't seen any such thing.

[Uncle Mxy]

Junk bonds was not the reason for the dot-com bubble or the fiber optic boom in teleco's

There's a (part of an) Internet economics talk by Hal Varian:

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hal/

that I can't find on his site called "How Michael Milken invented the Internet". He gave the at/around the time that Gore's remarks were prominent and back when he was in Michigan, but that doesn't narrow it down enough and I don't have time. He succinctly traced how Milken's activities in particular directed $ toward "risky" tech stuff that led to key infrastructure for today's Internet and telco services. It was easily the memorable part of a deadly-dull talk. I went away with "Damn, he's right, just follow the money".

Googling around, someone else wrote something about this:

http://www.richmondfed.org/education...dfs/milken.pdf