Thomas Pickering blends approachable narration with well-presented information in a welcome reminder of the Michael Moore method
Here is an ebullient, confident campaign documentary from Thomas Pickering, the kind of punchy and straightforward film-making that we used to see all the time in the 00s that was effectively made popular by Michael Moore. Clear ideas, sympathetic (if choir-preaching) interviews, approachable narration and presentation, strong graphics – and all of it leading to a website on the final credits where you can go to get involved and find out more.
Pickering is a vegan who was brought up by vegans and sets out to answer the anti-vegan remarks he hears from his friends all the time; they could never go vegan because meat is too delicious, or because climate change isn’t real, or because plant-based diets don’t deliver the protein, or because these days free range or organic meat industries make animals’ lives better.
Here is an ebullient, confident campaign documentary from Thomas Pickering, the kind of punchy and straightforward film-making that we used to see all the time in the 00s that was effectively made popular by Michael Moore. Clear ideas, sympathetic (if choir-preaching) interviews, approachable narration and presentation, strong graphics – and all of it leading to a website on the final credits where you can go to get involved and find out more.
Pickering is a vegan who was brought up by vegans and sets out to answer the anti-vegan remarks he hears from his friends all the time; they could never go vegan because meat is too delicious, or because climate change isn’t real, or because plant-based diets don’t deliver the protein, or because these days free range or organic meat industries make animals’ lives better.
- 4/18/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Netflix documentary on the impact of commercial fishing has received celebrity endorsements and a huge audience around the world, but it has also attracted criticism from experts who accuse it of making misleading claims
The Netflix documentary Seaspiracy, made by the team behind the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy, critiques the idea of sustainable fishing and accuses the industry of using slave labour and other human rights abuses.
The 90-minute film is one of the 10 most watched Netflix programmes and has been praised by celebrities including Bryan Adams. The Guardian’s George Monbiot is among those interviewed in the film, and he tells Anushka Asthana that it shines a light on some of the murkiest aspects of the fishing industry that have been under-reported in the media.
The Netflix documentary Seaspiracy, made by the team behind the award-winning 2014 film Cowspiracy, critiques the idea of sustainable fishing and accuses the industry of using slave labour and other human rights abuses.
The 90-minute film is one of the 10 most watched Netflix programmes and has been praised by celebrities including Bryan Adams. The Guardian’s George Monbiot is among those interviewed in the film, and he tells Anushka Asthana that it shines a light on some of the murkiest aspects of the fishing industry that have been under-reported in the media.
- 4/26/2021
- by Presented by Anushka Asthana with George Monbiot and Bryce Stewart; produced by Alex Atack and Axel Kacoutié; execed by Lucy Greenwell; executive producers Nicole Jackson and Phil Maynard
- The Guardian - Film News
The Great British Bake Off hopeful Ian Cumming has just set the internet alight - by revealing that he eats roadkill.
Ian made the revelation while explaining the inspiration for his Victorian Week game pie: a dead hare.
"The inspiration of this pie was shortly after I moved to Cambridgeshire I came across a hare on the road, and I just thought, 'I can't let this go to waste'," he announced.
"Thus began my passion, really, for picking up animals that had been bumped on the road - they hadn't been pancaked."
Pancaked.
Just to ram home his point, Ian decided to name his signature dish "Roadkill Pie". We assume it doesn't contain actual roadkill on this occasion.
Of course, Twitter was fascinated by Ian's revelation:
Did anyone have roadkill in the shape of the Creme Egg chicken in the Ian's wild ideas sweepstake this week? Take a drink if...
Ian made the revelation while explaining the inspiration for his Victorian Week game pie: a dead hare.
"The inspiration of this pie was shortly after I moved to Cambridgeshire I came across a hare on the road, and I just thought, 'I can't let this go to waste'," he announced.
"Thus began my passion, really, for picking up animals that had been bumped on the road - they hadn't been pancaked."
Pancaked.
Just to ram home his point, Ian decided to name his signature dish "Roadkill Pie". We assume it doesn't contain actual roadkill on this occasion.
Of course, Twitter was fascinated by Ian's revelation:
Did anyone have roadkill in the shape of the Creme Egg chicken in the Ian's wild ideas sweepstake this week? Take a drink if...
- 9/16/2015
- Digital Spy
Environmentalist George Monbiot has sparked debate by skinning, butchering, cooking and eating a squirrel on live TV.
The Guardian columnist attracted criticism after revealing that he had eaten a roadkill squirrel, and later wrote a 2,360-word piece in the newspaper justifying his actions.
"There are millions of squirrels, rabbits, pigeons, deer that are killed every year, and a lot of them are landfilled," Monbiot said on the BBC's Newsnight as he butchered a squirrel bought from a farm shop.
"It doesn't have to be. It's not very nice! But meat production isn't. But at least there's no further ethical problem here."
George Monbiot taking an axe to a squirrel during an earnest #newsnight discussion is straight out of Brass Eye. pic.twitter.com/pcDHqrJdMj
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) August 27, 2015
He continued: "I'm just cutting through the tail vertebrae - the tail bone in other words - but not the skin. It's quite a delicate operation,...
The Guardian columnist attracted criticism after revealing that he had eaten a roadkill squirrel, and later wrote a 2,360-word piece in the newspaper justifying his actions.
"There are millions of squirrels, rabbits, pigeons, deer that are killed every year, and a lot of them are landfilled," Monbiot said on the BBC's Newsnight as he butchered a squirrel bought from a farm shop.
"It doesn't have to be. It's not very nice! But meat production isn't. But at least there's no further ethical problem here."
George Monbiot taking an axe to a squirrel during an earnest #newsnight discussion is straight out of Brass Eye. pic.twitter.com/pcDHqrJdMj
— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) August 27, 2015
He continued: "I'm just cutting through the tail vertebrae - the tail bone in other words - but not the skin. It's quite a delicate operation,...
- 8/28/2015
- Digital Spy
From new voices like NoViolet Bulawayo to rediscovered old voices like James Salter, from Dave Eggers's satire to David Thomson's history of film, writers, Observer critics and others pick their favourite reads of 2013. And they tell us what they hope to find under the tree …
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
Curtis Sittenfeld
Novelist
My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...
- 11/24/2013
- by Ali Smith, Robert McCrum, Tim Adams, Kate Kellaway, Rachel Cooke, Sebastian Faulks, Jackie Kay
- The Guardian - Film News
Should we learn to stop worrying and love nuclear? This film makes the green case for the controversial energy source
The environmentalist case for nuclear power? For most progressives, it's like hearing "the liberal case for the death penalty". A contradiction in terms, surely? Well, readers of this paper will already know about the new ideas being ventilated on this issue from George Monbiot's writings. This documentary, from Robert Stone, sets out to think the unthinkable and ask the unaskable: should we learn to stop worrying and love nuclear energy?
Stone's case is that it has been massively misunderstood and misrepresented by a 60s generation of environmentalists: he argues that nuclear is a hugely efficient and relatively clean energy source that is now vitally needed as billions of people in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil are hungry for power. Wind turbines and solar panels, he says,...
The environmentalist case for nuclear power? For most progressives, it's like hearing "the liberal case for the death penalty". A contradiction in terms, surely? Well, readers of this paper will already know about the new ideas being ventilated on this issue from George Monbiot's writings. This documentary, from Robert Stone, sets out to think the unthinkable and ask the unaskable: should we learn to stop worrying and love nuclear energy?
Stone's case is that it has been massively misunderstood and misrepresented by a 60s generation of environmentalists: he argues that nuclear is a hugely efficient and relatively clean energy source that is now vitally needed as billions of people in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil are hungry for power. Wind turbines and solar panels, he says,...
- 11/8/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
This Spurlock-esque attempt to tear kids away from their iPads and get them to embrace nature is entertaining and wholly admirable
David Bond's engaging and thoroughly admirable film is a record of his attempt to reconnect his own children – and indeed all of Britain's children – with nature. Today's young people stay indoors, unlike their parents and grandparents, who as children loved to roam free. A new generation is addicted to iPads and consoles, getting obese and insidiously depressed in the process, and parents are letting it happen.And more than that, we increasingly assume the outdoors to be dangerous, pointless and irrelevant. "We think we've outgrown nature," says Bond, and wonders if the way is to promote nature as a brand, so the kids can "get" it and"choose" it; with boyish enthusiasm, he devises wacky ad strategies through billboards and social media to spread the good word, and...
David Bond's engaging and thoroughly admirable film is a record of his attempt to reconnect his own children – and indeed all of Britain's children – with nature. Today's young people stay indoors, unlike their parents and grandparents, who as children loved to roam free. A new generation is addicted to iPads and consoles, getting obese and insidiously depressed in the process, and parents are letting it happen.And more than that, we increasingly assume the outdoors to be dangerous, pointless and irrelevant. "We think we've outgrown nature," says Bond, and wonders if the way is to promote nature as a brand, so the kids can "get" it and"choose" it; with boyish enthusiasm, he devises wacky ad strategies through billboards and social media to spread the good word, and...
- 10/24/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
International Climbing Arena, Ratho; Royal Lyceum; King's, Edinburgh
Technology has been the watchword at Edinburgh, with varying fortunes for a large-scale sci-fi adventure, a hi-tech Hamlet – and one man dressed as Kafka's bug
The theme of this year's festival is "the way technology seizes and shifts our perceptions". I wish it weren't. It's a notion that has a glazing effect. Subtle artists begin behaving like six-year-olds in front of a PlayStation.
Look what has happened to the important company Grid Iron, which on the fringe lit up so much of the city by staging dramas in unexpected places. Three years ago they were looking for ideas for a large-scale new venture. They considered Finn Family Moomintroll, as well as a Scandi thriller and a piece by George Monbiot about the wasting of the Earth's resources.
They settled on the most rousing notion, the last, and from it writer-directors Catrin...
Technology has been the watchword at Edinburgh, with varying fortunes for a large-scale sci-fi adventure, a hi-tech Hamlet – and one man dressed as Kafka's bug
The theme of this year's festival is "the way technology seizes and shifts our perceptions". I wish it weren't. It's a notion that has a glazing effect. Subtle artists begin behaving like six-year-olds in front of a PlayStation.
Look what has happened to the important company Grid Iron, which on the fringe lit up so much of the city by staging dramas in unexpected places. Three years ago they were looking for ideas for a large-scale new venture. They considered Finn Family Moomintroll, as well as a Scandi thriller and a piece by George Monbiot about the wasting of the Earth's resources.
They settled on the most rousing notion, the last, and from it writer-directors Catrin...
- 8/17/2013
- by Susannah Clapp
- The Guardian - Film News
There were no black ties and no fawning, but an impressive number of entries that have changed the world for the better
The Oscars pull you up short. "Does anyone else find the wall-to-wall coverage repellent? Vapid fawning over celebrities masquerading as news," tweeted the Guardian's fulminator-in-chief, George Monbiot. Quite right. Too many designer dresses; too much hollow harrumphing over this year's presenter and off-colour jokes; too little honesty in an ocean of puff stuff. Plus a feeling, yet again, that Hollywood has made us all bit players in a media world where power – and markets and money – homogenise lives.
How did British actors get so good at American accents, even at playing iconic American presidents? Because that's where the paycheques are. Watch our TV stars beat the path to Beverly Hills. Why do some of the most dynamic on- and offline newspapers cross the Atlantic at a bound, so...
The Oscars pull you up short. "Does anyone else find the wall-to-wall coverage repellent? Vapid fawning over celebrities masquerading as news," tweeted the Guardian's fulminator-in-chief, George Monbiot. Quite right. Too many designer dresses; too much hollow harrumphing over this year's presenter and off-colour jokes; too little honesty in an ocean of puff stuff. Plus a feeling, yet again, that Hollywood has made us all bit players in a media world where power – and markets and money – homogenise lives.
How did British actors get so good at American accents, even at playing iconic American presidents? Because that's where the paycheques are. Watch our TV stars beat the path to Beverly Hills. Why do some of the most dynamic on- and offline newspapers cross the Atlantic at a bound, so...
- 3/3/2013
- by Peter Preston
- The Guardian - Film News
From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
- 1/5/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
George Monbiot (The rich world's smugness will melt along with the ice, 28 August) is right to draw attention to the impending disaster of climate change heralded by the melting of the Arctic sea ice. He is also right to place the responsibility firmly on our shoulders. So when will someone in a position of authority and influence have the courage to point to the true reason for this – an unwillingness to limit the size of our families?
Every human being that is born in the developed world grows up wanting a car, a centrally heated (or air-conditioned) house full of electrical appliances, cheap flights to holidays abroad and a new mobile phone every couple of years.
Most of the young women I know regard it as unsatisfactory to have one child – many are on their second or third pregnancy. Yet we smile and congratulate them as if they have done...
Every human being that is born in the developed world grows up wanting a car, a centrally heated (or air-conditioned) house full of electrical appliances, cheap flights to holidays abroad and a new mobile phone every couple of years.
Most of the young women I know regard it as unsatisfactory to have one child – many are on their second or third pregnancy. Yet we smile and congratulate them as if they have done...
- 8/28/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
A Japanese cartoon seeks to explain the Fukushima nuclear power plant to children
With several million YouTube views in Japanese and translated versions (above), the Nuclear boy cartoon has become possibly the world's most viewed ever exploring the metaphor of a boy with a sick stomach to represent a stricken nuclear power plant.
It may sound kooky, perhaps excessively so, but when you put it in the context its creators intended - to explain the crisis at Fukushima to Japanese children who may not understand spent fuel pools and containment vessels - such concerns fade away. The Nuclear boy character was created by Japanese artist Hachiya Kazuhiko. He posted it to Twitter, where one follower turned it into a comic strip that a third person then animated, according to reports.
The story is quite simple: Nuclear boy is sick and people are worried he is going to have a really...
With several million YouTube views in Japanese and translated versions (above), the Nuclear boy cartoon has become possibly the world's most viewed ever exploring the metaphor of a boy with a sick stomach to represent a stricken nuclear power plant.
It may sound kooky, perhaps excessively so, but when you put it in the context its creators intended - to explain the crisis at Fukushima to Japanese children who may not understand spent fuel pools and containment vessels - such concerns fade away. The Nuclear boy character was created by Japanese artist Hachiya Kazuhiko. He posted it to Twitter, where one follower turned it into a comic strip that a third person then animated, according to reports.
The story is quite simple: Nuclear boy is sick and people are worried he is going to have a really...
- 3/24/2011
- by Simon Jeffery
- The Guardian - Film News
Britain's got a new prime minister, Conservative David Cameron; a new deputy prime minister, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg; and an odd new governing coalition kludged together with both of their parties. The new government has released its platform, saying "The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to fulfill our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy."
Items of note from the environment section:
The establishment of a high-speed rail network.The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow International Airport.The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters.The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity--as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs.The creation of a green investment bank.The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.Measures to encourage marine energy [wave and tidal power].The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent...
Items of note from the environment section:
The establishment of a high-speed rail network.The cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow International Airport.The establishment of a smart grid and the roll-out of smart meters.The full establishment of feed-in tariff systems in electricity--as well as the maintenance of banded ROCs.The creation of a green investment bank.The provision of home energy improvement paid for by the savings from lower energy bills.Measures to encourage marine energy [wave and tidal power].The establishment of an emissions performance standard that will prevent...
- 5/13/2010
- by Grist Staff
- Fast Company
Almost two-dozen designers are donating their time, to create an animated film about global warming.
Over at Good, Jesse Ashlock points us to a remarkable experiment in crowd-souring for social good: For two years, British Animator Simon Robson has been working an animated manifesto, which aims to get people fired up about fighting climate change.
Robson, who works under the name Knife party, has a specialty in creating "issue animation," with themes borrowed from figures such as lefty stalwart Naomi Klein and global-warming expert George Monbiot. His newest project, Coalition of the Willing, began as a script written with Tim Rayner, an Australian philosopher. The theme: how corporate marketers co-opted 1960's individualism and turned it into wanton consumerism. (For example, Mastercard's "Priceless" campaign, which suggests that no matter how much something costs, the fulfillment from it is immeasurable.) And moreover, how that same activist spirit might be marshaled to fight global warming.
Over at Good, Jesse Ashlock points us to a remarkable experiment in crowd-souring for social good: For two years, British Animator Simon Robson has been working an animated manifesto, which aims to get people fired up about fighting climate change.
Robson, who works under the name Knife party, has a specialty in creating "issue animation," with themes borrowed from figures such as lefty stalwart Naomi Klein and global-warming expert George Monbiot. His newest project, Coalition of the Willing, began as a script written with Tim Rayner, an Australian philosopher. The theme: how corporate marketers co-opted 1960's individualism and turned it into wanton consumerism. (For example, Mastercard's "Priceless" campaign, which suggests that no matter how much something costs, the fulfillment from it is immeasurable.) And moreover, how that same activist spirit might be marshaled to fight global warming.
- 3/27/2010
- by Cliff Kuang
- Fast Company
From trashing the Terminator to praising the baboon – here's a selection of the stories you chose as your favourite in 2009
Anything by Lucy Mangan, because of the hooting hilarity that invariably ensues (Wookey Hole wants to hire a witch. Well, I can cackle ... G2 shortcuts, 9 July) – Sadie Clifford, Stockport
The greatest named place in Britain is inviting applicants for possibly the country's greatest job – to become the modern-day counterpart to the legendary witch of Wookey Hole.
The Somerset caves have long been home to a witch turned to stone in the middle ages by a Benedictine monk with a flair for that kind of thing called Father Bernard. Now, however, the popular tourist attraction is in need of someone with a wider skill set than that possessed by the average vaguely person-shaped rocky outcropping, and is advertising for a living witch to take up residence in the caves at weekends,...
Anything by Lucy Mangan, because of the hooting hilarity that invariably ensues (Wookey Hole wants to hire a witch. Well, I can cackle ... G2 shortcuts, 9 July) – Sadie Clifford, Stockport
The greatest named place in Britain is inviting applicants for possibly the country's greatest job – to become the modern-day counterpart to the legendary witch of Wookey Hole.
The Somerset caves have long been home to a witch turned to stone in the middle ages by a Benedictine monk with a flair for that kind of thing called Father Bernard. Now, however, the popular tourist attraction is in need of someone with a wider skill set than that possessed by the average vaguely person-shaped rocky outcropping, and is advertising for a living witch to take up residence in the caves at weekends,...
- 12/29/2009
- by Guardian readers
- The Guardian - Film News
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