HOME - what a trip of a movie

[theMark]

Until June 14, there's a film, professionally produced, for free on youtube:
HOME

Wow. It's one and a half hour of aerial video in 720p high-definition, with a narrative voice track that covers just about everything, from the origins of life to the rather ambiguous ways of mankinds's treatment of the planet.

Jungles, both green and asphalt. Burning oil wells. Endless stretches of pre-fab homes and coral reefs. Absolutely smooth pans and zooms, dazzling colors, empty, volcanic landscapes and the equally scarred surfaces of surface mines, a zoom from a single container to the vessel and the ocean it travels on.

The video is almost unreal, synthetic - a constantly moving camera, rock-steady in its movement, gyroscope-stabilized and attached to a helicopter.

Around 29:00 running time, the camera pans over a large U.S. cattle farm - in an interview (in German, Spiegel magazine), the director states he currently doesn't travel to the U.S. since he's got a lawsuit pending there for these 90 seconds of film...

Embedding is disabled. Here's the URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

Oh, and if you feel too depressed, skip to 1h20m to see the uplifting messages and pictures - "It's too late to be a pessimist" :)

[alfaniner]

I caught it on cable yesterday quite by accident, and couldn't turn it off. But only up to the point where it got all "environmental" and stuff.

[theMark]

I caught it on cable yesterday quite by accident, and couldn't turn it off. But only up to the point where it got all "environmental" and stuff.

Oh, I didn't think it was so bad. Of course, just throwing text panels with little reference can be preachy, but it's relatively little, compared to the scenery. The end credits with the landscapes and country names while the credits roll by in the right 1/3 are nice, too. And I liked the closing scenes with the huge solar installations and the endless wind farms. I'm easily swayed by shiny technology :)

Still waiting for nano-particle CIGS panels to get cheaper, though. In the mean time, I'm contemplating adding a small, "good-enough" 20 watts computer to use for all the mail and text and surfing stuff and keep my workstation off until I actually need its horsepower, instead of seeing it idling away at 300 watts while I check my mail...

[Safe-Keeper]

There's a (merged) thread on it already. Basically, I didn't think much of the environmentalist stance, the movie didn't add anything new at all and just recycled what all the "politically correct" people already agrees with. But from a technical viewpoint - wow. Just wow. If there was a version without the narration, just the music and video, I'd watch it all day.

[theMark]

There's a (merged) thread on it already.

Darn. I searched for a while, but didn't find any. :footinmou

[alfaniner]

I kind of saw where it was going when I kept hearing the mantra "Faster, and faster." I too would like one without the narration.

[Safe-Keeper]

I kind of saw where it was going when I kept hearing the mantra "Faster, and faster."The documentary The Tank Man featured Shanghai's rapid construction, too, but in a positive context, and I agree with them - the fact that Home's creators felt the need to portray the building of 3000 skyscrapers in 20 years as a bad thing is just mind-blowing. I punched the numbers into a calculator - 3000 divided by 20 is 150 per year. If they built them one by one, they'd have to fully build one skyscraper every second day.

I too would like one without the narration. Mhm... it's not the message in itself - I, too, am fervently in favour of preventing AGW and all... but being told for one and a half hour how evil we are as a species and how we are destroying the planet is just overkill that's possibly even likely to turn more people off than it attracts.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I want the last hour and 33 minutes of my life back. Not once in the whole production did I hear the words "Nuclear Power".

I can't take these people seriously if they won't give any consideration to the one technology that can solve most of these problems.

[theMark]

I want the last hour and 33 minutes of my life back. Not once in the whole production did I hear the words "Nuclear Power".

I can't take these people seriously if they won't give any consideration to the one technology that can solve most of these problems.

Well, 93 minutes of pretty pictures. That's what I took with me from this movie. No wonder, since the director is known as the photographer of glossy aerial pictorials.

As an aside to nuclear power, you're welcome to visit the German dumping ground "Asse" for a vivid example of what happens after only forty years of nuclear industry and politicians joining in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind waste-burial attempt...
I'd like to believe that people and processes have improved over the last decades.
I'm having a hard time doing so.

Just IMO, of course.

[shadron]

From the cinematographer's point of view, he manages to even make the bad parts look good. Without the narration, the point would surely be lost.

I would say the overall tone is a heavy downer, up till the end. The idea, like in Al Gore's video, is to get people to start thinking. It doesn't mention possible resolutions because that is not the point. I think it works admirably for what it aims to do, but like Gore's film, I don't need to watch it (or, in this case, hear it, because it is marvelous eye candy) again.

[ugot2bekidding]

I thought this movie was amazing, visually. Immediately after watching it, I put it on again with the sound off as a sort-of screen saver lol.

I would highly recommend Home to anyone that loves seeing beautiful scenes ( "even the bad stuff looks good", to quote a poster above).

I can't really comment on the narration (I don't know enough about environmentalism to critique their assertions), other than the word 'miracle' made me wince on occasion.

ps: anyone remember Koyaanisqatsi?

[HawaiiBigSis]

ps: anyone remember Koyaanisqatsi?
Yep. Another visually entertaining movie. They made a second one, which wasn't as beautiful, IIRC.

[sackett]

Maybe because I'm reading Paul Johnstone's The Sea-Craft of Prehistory, I was struck by all those boats on African rivers. Who builds them? Are they expanded dugouts? Plank-built? Classy, classy small craft in any case.

Otherwise, the comparison to Koyaanisqatsi is apt. Except that one at least didn't numb you with a priggish narrative.

[ugot2bekidding]

Maybe because I'm reading Paul Johnstone's The Sea-Craft of Prehistory, I was struck by all those boats on African rivers. Who builds them? Are they expanded dugouts? Plank-built? Classy, classy small craft in any case.


I thought the shot of the boats was one of the coolest in the movie. It struck me as a nice picture to frame and hang in my rec-room.