The new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, is an entertaining and thought-provoking entry in the series. Its use of American action film conventions is both a strength and a weakness, however.
Posts Tagged ‘ environmentalism ’
‘Closer’ Season-Ender Presents Chilling Picture of Radical Environmentalism, Darwinism
Radical environmentalism and an anti-human perversion of Darwinism spark an attempt at mass murder in the season-ending episode of the acclaimed TNT drama series The Closer.
New Film Exposes the “Dark Side of Environmentalism”
The one big advantage environmental activists have is the presumed purity of their motives. They claim they only want to protect the earth from a few particularly greedy people, and they say their efforts benefit everybody. That’s their story, anyway, and they’re sticking to it. The reality is a far different matter, as the acclaimed documentary filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Patricia McElhinney make clear in their film Mine Your Own Business, now available on DVD. The film is billed as presenting “The Dark Side of Environmentalism,” and it succeeds brilliantly. Seldom have Western environmental activists been shown in all their abundant arrogance, smugness, and paternalism.
The Simpsons Movie
If you ever liked the Simpsons TV series, you’ll enjoy The Simspsons Movie. It’s basically a long episode of the series, but the film never becomes boring. The animation looks fine, the characters are as we always knew and enjoyed them, and the humorous dialogue lines are as funny as ever. There’s rather too much Lisa for my taste—Lisa represents the cause-y and sentimental sides of the program, which are the aspects I enjoy the least. Similarly, Bart is given an emotional crisis that takes away from his usual humorous role as a force of nature. He’s nowhere near as funny here as he was during the show’s early years, but Homer replaced Bart as the center of the program a decade and a half ago, so we probably should be used to it by now. But alas, anyway.
Exposing the Dark Side of Environmentalism
Concern for the environment has accomplished wonderful things since the 1940s. Both businesses (not widely acknowledged) and government (given far too much credit for the positive changes and a pass on the negative ones) worked to clean up the nation’s air and water. Our environment is the cleanest it has ever been since the onset of the agricultural/husbandry age more than two millennia ago. That’s great news, right? There’s more that we can accomplish, of course, but exactly what that is and how best to do it are matters of furious contention. It is undeniable that economic growth and technological change have had the strongest effect in reducing pollution: the transition from the industrial age to the postindustrial one has cleaned up our air, land, and seas admirably. Hence, policies that suppress the continued progress of this trend are to be avoided for environmental reasons as well as for their affect in slowing the spread of prosperity to greater numbers of people in this nation and around the world. Many people, however, don’t quite understand these realities and, often with the best of intentions, subvert the cause of human betterment. Over at National Review Online, the site’s newly appointed managing
Recent Comments