People tell me an action movie is supposed to be stupid. If so, then The Expendables is everything it's supposed to be.
The most amazing thing about The Expendables is that it manages to bring in the audiences, despite it having no story and starring the nearly incoherent Sylvester Stallone. Why do people line up to see him? At his most coherent he sounds like a boxer who's taken one too many blows to the head (which, incidentally, is why Rocky was such a good movie).
The movie is nothing short of one dry, uninteresting action movie cliche after another. It's really hard to imagine a movie with so many explosions and fight scenes being so boring, but there it is. At no time in this painfully long movie did i feel entertained by the overly stereotypical displays of pumping testosterone. And i really can't imagine anyone with any set of objective standards feeling any differently.
The Expendables follows the story of a group of mercenaries with absolutely no endearing personality quirks as they accept a dangerous mission to off a dictatorial general in a fictional island nation. Apparently that's all the plot that seems to be required in order to make a movie like this, because that's all the plot we ever get. It's so shallow, that even the characters who set up the story are only there for cameos.
Of course, i'm told the appeal of this movie is not the story (ya think?), but the, *ahem* "all star" cast of action heroes: Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren... You know, all the washed up action stars from the 80's and 90's? Who wouldn't pay to see that?
The worst thing about this movie is it's not even interesting to make fun of. It knows it's bad - and somehow it's ok with that. It's just this shitty little movie that's supposed to be fun for all the teeny-boppers of the 90's who never quite grew up enough to accept more complex stories or characters. It makes no attempts and tries nothing new. It revels in what it is and what it is is awful.
When i see movies of the calibre of The Expendables, it really reminds me of how low we as a society have sunk in terms of what we accept as entertainment. It's no surprise that Hollywood is out of ideas (and thanks to nepotism, refuses to let in new ones), but when you have to turn to people like Sylvestor Stallone for movie scripts? This should be a sign that you're industry's in trouble.
It's remarkable in and of itself that a movie like this could ever get made. But you want to know the really amazing part? Stallone's already planning a sequel!. How the fuck do you make a sequel of a movie that has no god damned plot, entertainment value or lasting appeal; a movie whose only real selling point is it's B-List cast? Maybe by stacking it with even more washed up talent? Who knows; maybe they'll even get Vanilla Ice to do the sound track. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Great Global Warming Swindle
I walked into this movie knowing i probably wasn't going to like it. Mostly because i've heard a lot of the climate denial points of interest before and i've heard them soundly being refuted. But since i like to think of myself as an open minded type wanting to hear both sides of the issues, i put aside all my skepticism and decided to give Martin Durkin a chance to make the case for the other side. Hey, it's the least he'd do for climatologists, right? Right?
Alas, far from being an honest and frank portrayal of the climate denial ('scuse me, climate SKEPTIC) side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle starts off with an ironically alarmist message warning about the dangers of (you guessed it) alarmist messages.
But ok, so it's a little alarmist in its message. I'm sure Al Gore's movie, which i haven't seen (and have no interest in seeing) isn't any different. And it's not like Durkin did the whole "compare my opponents to dangerous ideologues" dealy.
Oh wait - that's exactly what they did!
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle the environmental movement is little more than a plot by neo-marxists, who trace their roots right to the USSR, to subvert capitalism and promote communism through the UN.
That's right, the same UN that seems utterly impotent when it comes to to stopping things like: the Iraq War, the Rwandan genocide, the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, conflicts in the middle east and countless other wars and territory squabbles is behind the single greatest attempt at total world domination in the history of the world! Even the mighty US, that gladly shrugged off UN resolutions to go into Iraq, is powerless to stop the IPCC and the Climatolomarxistnazis!
Only in Climate Denier land.
The thing with this movie is that while it spends a good deal of time deriding the "evil IPCC" for being biased and full of greedy, money-hungry communists (don't ask), it willingly embraces its own biases, flatly declaring uncontested, unsupported lies as if they were reality.
One of the most glaring examples is their statement that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the factories, cars, planes, etc put together. This is, of course, just demonstrably wrong. And i don't even mean like "kinda wrong" - it's wrong on orders of magnitude, as volcanoes only emit 1/150th of the CO2 as all human sources.
To put this into perspective, that's wrongness on the scale of claiming the US is roughly 30km across from east coast to west (an actual distance of more than 4500km). In other words, really, really wrong.
But, how does one make such a gross miscalculation and then include it into a documentary (that's aimed at criticizing scientists for inaccuracies, remember)? Obviously, they just didn't care.
I should note that Climate Deniers like to think of themselves as skeptics. But i'm sorry: if you fail to fact-check dubious claims simply because the opinion it supports agrees with your political view, you are not a skeptic.
Now, some climate deniers might point out that this is an unfair criticism, as this point was corrected in the theatrical release provided later. But that's completely missing the point! The very fact that this misinformation was ever in your documentary demonstrates how little skepticism you show opinions that already align with your particularly slanted view of the world.
Mind, this isn't even the only piece of bad science in the movie. Oh, there's much more where that came from! But i don't want to bore you with the science... and evidently neither does Martin Durkin; he's much more adept at boring you with lies and spin.
Now, going against the vast amounts of scientific consensus and mountains of scientific journals is a tough job. An honest documentary has to sort out the most important arguments from both sides and weigh the facts and evidence supporting each claim and then demonstrate how the ideas you front are the better options. The Great Global Warming Swindle, however, resorts to your typical strawman fallacy.
"All [climate change] models assume that man made CO2 is the main cause, rather than the sun or the clouds."
All? Really? Every single one?
I'm no climatologist; in fact, i have limited understanding of the field (though evidently, considerably more than the intended audience of this movie), but that's just simply not true. In fact, no climate model claims CO2 is the main influence on climate.
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle, climatologists willfully ignore the influence of the sun on climate. Further, they claim that the sun can account for all the warming we've been noticing. They even give a little graph to show how global temperatures compare to solar activity (sorry for the lousy quality - i just screen capped it).
Well that proves it, doesn't it? The lines match almost perfectly! Case closed! Climate change is a fraud!
But wait. Notice how the orange line stops and the blue line continues on for a bit? Seems like an odd omission. I mean, our record keeping in the past 20 years has gotten better, so it's unlikely our data for average temperature outstrip our data on solar activity by 20+ years.
I wanted to know what the rest of this chart looks like, but since it was painfully clear the climate "skeptics" do not, i would have to do the research on my own. That lead me here. (Note: this guy's actually done quite a few videos explaining the science behind climate change, including at least one video on this very film!)
watch the video, here's the graph we're concerned about (with the more complete data record).
Why, it almost seems like Durkin was deliberately leaving that info out. There's no way he didn't have the corresponding solar activity data for the same 20 year time frame as temperature data. But, if he did have it, why wouldn't he include it?
Isn't it obvious? The neomarxists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had artificially cooled the sun and... no, wait! They used tree rings to... no! The science isn't decided, yet! Except that it's decided that the sun causes global warming.
Well, whatever it is, i'm damn sure Durkin is the guy telling the truth on this one. I mean, who do you trust? A guy just makin' a documentary or the group of commi-scientists at the IPCC? I know where my money is!
Anyway, by this point in the film, i had completely given up any hope for an honest presentation of the material.
But with Durkin's strawmen utterly humiliated and the accusations of bias in the IPCC cast, it was finally time for him to tackle all those unfair "myths" levied at the climate denier side. You know, myths like Climate Deniers getting money from private financers with an agenda. It's absurd.... claims Durkin.
Huh...
That's odd. He can't be serious, right? I'm sure Durkin's heard of groups like: The Cato Institute,The Committe for a Constructive Tomorrow, The Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Heartland Institute. In fact, i know Durkin's heard of these organizations, because half of the damn people in his documentary are involved with them in one way or another.
Each of these organizations are all opposed to the idea of Anthropogenic Climate Change and all of them receive much of their funding from private donors, including those from the energy and car manufacturing sectors. Many also receive money from the tobacco industry and, surprise surprise, they're opposed to the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is harmful. But that's just a coincidence, right?
But is it any wonder that these scientists who are associated with organizations that receive tons of money from companies like Exxon-Mobil have anti-climate change opinions? Or that Durkin would deliberately hide the fact that these organizations exist and are associated with his selection of climate denying scientists?
Now, Durkin might like to say that the source of the money shouldn't matter (and in fact, he does at one point), but he obviously doesn't really believe that. After all, he went out of his way to try and "dispel the myth" of private financing. Not to mention all the effort he puts into making the vast scientific community who hold the consensus views look like they're only in it for the money.
Durkin knows money speaks and he knows the source of the money determines the outcome of the result. He just didn't want you to know it.
Anyway, that's The Great Global Warming Swindle. It's an insultingly anti-intellectual display of lies, half-truths and propaganda designed to make the watcher question the science. I'll stop short of saying it's fronting an agenda, because for all i do know, maybe Durkin really is this ignorant and simply doesn't understand the facts himself. I mean, i doubt that's the case, but it's possible. Even most climate deniers themselves aren't evil, just misinformed... and it's banal shit like The Great Global Warming Swindle that makes sure they stay that way.
Now, it's not to say the movie is complete trash; it's just mostly trash. It does make some good points, particularly for the alarmist media presentation of Climate Change, which is more often wrongheaded, if not explicitly wrong. But what little it gets right is done no service by the lies and blatant propaganda that makes up the remainder of the movie. It's deliberately manipulative, slanderous and full of lies.
But if you don't believe me, just read what Carl Wunsch, a professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT (who was featured in the film) had to say about it.
"Grossly distorted"? "... as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two"?
Well, that seems a little harsh! But, what do you expect; he's just a money-hungry, neo-marxist-commie!
But wait, if this is like WWII propaganda and the climatologists are the commies, i wonder who the climate deniers are?
Don't see this movie. It's not even a good representation of themore intelligent less stupid climate denial criticisms.
Alas, far from being an honest and frank portrayal of the climate denial ('scuse me, climate SKEPTIC) side of the debate, The Great Global Warming Swindle starts off with an ironically alarmist message warning about the dangers of (you guessed it) alarmist messages.
But ok, so it's a little alarmist in its message. I'm sure Al Gore's movie, which i haven't seen (and have no interest in seeing) isn't any different. And it's not like Durkin did the whole "compare my opponents to dangerous ideologues" dealy.
Oh wait - that's exactly what they did!
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle the environmental movement is little more than a plot by neo-marxists, who trace their roots right to the USSR, to subvert capitalism and promote communism through the UN.
That's right, the same UN that seems utterly impotent when it comes to to stopping things like: the Iraq War, the Rwandan genocide, the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, conflicts in the middle east and countless other wars and territory squabbles is behind the single greatest attempt at total world domination in the history of the world! Even the mighty US, that gladly shrugged off UN resolutions to go into Iraq, is powerless to stop the IPCC and the Climatolomarxistnazis!
Only in Climate Denier land.
The thing with this movie is that while it spends a good deal of time deriding the "evil IPCC" for being biased and full of greedy, money-hungry communists (don't ask), it willingly embraces its own biases, flatly declaring uncontested, unsupported lies as if they were reality.
One of the most glaring examples is their statement that volcanoes produce more CO2 than all the factories, cars, planes, etc put together. This is, of course, just demonstrably wrong. And i don't even mean like "kinda wrong" - it's wrong on orders of magnitude, as volcanoes only emit 1/150th of the CO2 as all human sources.
To put this into perspective, that's wrongness on the scale of claiming the US is roughly 30km across from east coast to west (an actual distance of more than 4500km). In other words, really, really wrong.
But, how does one make such a gross miscalculation and then include it into a documentary (that's aimed at criticizing scientists for inaccuracies, remember)? Obviously, they just didn't care.
I should note that Climate Deniers like to think of themselves as skeptics. But i'm sorry: if you fail to fact-check dubious claims simply because the opinion it supports agrees with your political view, you are not a skeptic.
Now, some climate deniers might point out that this is an unfair criticism, as this point was corrected in the theatrical release provided later. But that's completely missing the point! The very fact that this misinformation was ever in your documentary demonstrates how little skepticism you show opinions that already align with your particularly slanted view of the world.
Mind, this isn't even the only piece of bad science in the movie. Oh, there's much more where that came from! But i don't want to bore you with the science... and evidently neither does Martin Durkin; he's much more adept at boring you with lies and spin.
Now, going against the vast amounts of scientific consensus and mountains of scientific journals is a tough job. An honest documentary has to sort out the most important arguments from both sides and weigh the facts and evidence supporting each claim and then demonstrate how the ideas you front are the better options. The Great Global Warming Swindle, however, resorts to your typical strawman fallacy.
"All [climate change] models assume that man made CO2 is the main cause, rather than the sun or the clouds."
All? Really? Every single one?
I'm no climatologist; in fact, i have limited understanding of the field (though evidently, considerably more than the intended audience of this movie), but that's just simply not true. In fact, no climate model claims CO2 is the main influence on climate.
According to The Great Global Warming Swindle, climatologists willfully ignore the influence of the sun on climate. Further, they claim that the sun can account for all the warming we've been noticing. They even give a little graph to show how global temperatures compare to solar activity (sorry for the lousy quality - i just screen capped it).
 |
| See? That orange line is solar activity (right side axis), that blue one is average temperatures (left axis not visible) and x-axis is time in years (not visible). |
Well that proves it, doesn't it? The lines match almost perfectly! Case closed! Climate change is a fraud!
But wait. Notice how the orange line stops and the blue line continues on for a bit? Seems like an odd omission. I mean, our record keeping in the past 20 years has gotten better, so it's unlikely our data for average temperature outstrip our data on solar activity by 20+ years.
I wanted to know what the rest of this chart looks like, but since it was painfully clear the climate "skeptics" do not, i would have to do the research on my own. That lead me here. (Note: this guy's actually done quite a few videos explaining the science behind climate change, including at least one video on this very film!)
watch the video, here's the graph we're concerned about (with the more complete data record).
 |
| Blue line is average temperature, orange line is |
Why, it almost seems like Durkin was deliberately leaving that info out. There's no way he didn't have the corresponding solar activity data for the same 20 year time frame as temperature data. But, if he did have it, why wouldn't he include it?
Isn't it obvious? The neomarxists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had artificially cooled the sun and... no, wait! They used tree rings to... no! The science isn't decided, yet! Except that it's decided that the sun causes global warming.
Well, whatever it is, i'm damn sure Durkin is the guy telling the truth on this one. I mean, who do you trust? A guy just makin' a documentary or the group of commi-scientists at the IPCC? I know where my money is!
Anyway, by this point in the film, i had completely given up any hope for an honest presentation of the material.
But with Durkin's strawmen utterly humiliated and the accusations of bias in the IPCC cast, it was finally time for him to tackle all those unfair "myths" levied at the climate denier side. You know, myths like Climate Deniers getting money from private financers with an agenda. It's absurd.... claims Durkin.
Huh...
That's odd. He can't be serious, right? I'm sure Durkin's heard of groups like: The Cato Institute,The Committe for a Constructive Tomorrow, The Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Heartland Institute. In fact, i know Durkin's heard of these organizations, because half of the damn people in his documentary are involved with them in one way or another.
Each of these organizations are all opposed to the idea of Anthropogenic Climate Change and all of them receive much of their funding from private donors, including those from the energy and car manufacturing sectors. Many also receive money from the tobacco industry and, surprise surprise, they're opposed to the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is harmful. But that's just a coincidence, right?
But is it any wonder that these scientists who are associated with organizations that receive tons of money from companies like Exxon-Mobil have anti-climate change opinions? Or that Durkin would deliberately hide the fact that these organizations exist and are associated with his selection of climate denying scientists?
Now, Durkin might like to say that the source of the money shouldn't matter (and in fact, he does at one point), but he obviously doesn't really believe that. After all, he went out of his way to try and "dispel the myth" of private financing. Not to mention all the effort he puts into making the vast scientific community who hold the consensus views look like they're only in it for the money.
Durkin knows money speaks and he knows the source of the money determines the outcome of the result. He just didn't want you to know it.
Anyway, that's The Great Global Warming Swindle. It's an insultingly anti-intellectual display of lies, half-truths and propaganda designed to make the watcher question the science. I'll stop short of saying it's fronting an agenda, because for all i do know, maybe Durkin really is this ignorant and simply doesn't understand the facts himself. I mean, i doubt that's the case, but it's possible. Even most climate deniers themselves aren't evil, just misinformed... and it's banal shit like The Great Global Warming Swindle that makes sure they stay that way.
Now, it's not to say the movie is complete trash; it's just mostly trash. It does make some good points, particularly for the alarmist media presentation of Climate Change, which is more often wrongheaded, if not explicitly wrong. But what little it gets right is done no service by the lies and blatant propaganda that makes up the remainder of the movie. It's deliberately manipulative, slanderous and full of lies.
But if you don't believe me, just read what Carl Wunsch, a professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT (who was featured in the film) had to say about it.
"Grossly distorted"? "... as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two"?
Well, that seems a little harsh! But, what do you expect; he's just a money-hungry, neo-marxist-commie!
But wait, if this is like WWII propaganda and the climatologists are the commies, i wonder who the climate deniers are?
Don't see this movie. It's not even a good representation of the
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