More Inconvenient Truth...

...just a few more words about An Inconvenient Truth, which finally came to Mid-Missouri this week. I got a chance to catch it Saturday with a friend of mine who considers himself a "moderate", meaning a) he can see the Right's point of view because he listens to Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly on the radio, b) he can see the Left's point of view because he talks to me on the phone once a week or so, and c) he thinks John McCain is perfect. I've been working on hammering (c) out of him for quite a while now.

In case you're wondering, here are the Box Office numbers for Truth. As of yesterday, it had made about $15 million, which is lovely considering it really hasn't been out all that long. It's not exactly a threat to challenge Fahrenheit 9/11 or March of the Penguins yet, but hopefully it will continue to build momentum. And hey...the summer's only starting to get hot. The friend with whom I watched it pretty much went to see it because he's a movie nerd, and he tries to see all movies that have a chance of being successful, so hopefully there are a lot more of those types out there. But anyway, as for my quick thoughts...

First of all, kudos to Gore for making this as non-political a movie as possible. Granted, no matter what this movie will primarily be red meat for the left (the people who need to see this movie will refuse to as long as possible...at least until Gore's elected President and mandates that every network in the country show it at some point...or something like that...), and he could have taken the easy way out by going as Anti-Bush as possible, but there were only a couple of Dubya mentions at all. He lays out the case as detailed as possible, inserts some emotional bits here and there, reminds people it's not too late, then rests his case. Overall, it's quite well-done (though my movie nerd friend said that as a movie, it was "too dry"...kind of like Tom Brokaw saying it was "too much Al Gore for my tastes" or whatever), and, of course, if you haven't seen it, go see it.

One other quick mention--the accompanying book is great. I bought it for the mother-in-law, who was asking quite a bit of questions about the movie when I got home. Lots of pictures, lots of graphs, and a very clear layout of why global warming exists, what the critics' theories are, why the critics are wrong, and why it's (probably) not too late to do something about it. I almost recommend the book as much as the movie.

For more about the movie, read berlin niebuhr's original post about it from May here.