What, per se, qualifies me to sit in judgment regarding this
chatty, direct-address documentary offering about the world’s economic problems?
Quite simply, nothing. The global economy, made up as it is of myriad smaller
parts, is a fantastically complicated thing, and so any macro, birds-eye view assessment
of it is bound to be on some level an exercise in tedium. Expectation meets an execution
dictated by subject matter, then, in Where
is the World Going, Mr. Stiglitz?

Sarasin (I’ll Sing for
You, the forthcoming On the Rumba
River) obviously feels deeply about globalization and the industrialized
world’s skewed relationships with developing nations, and I share many of his interests
and concerns. To say that unfair trade and other foreign policy decisions by the
United States
have had no role in shaping the rest of the world’s view of us is, well, silly,
to put in nicely. Still, while there’s a powerful social conscience here, a lot
of the pearls get lost in a sludgy mixture of staid delivery. Hate as I do to
take the easy point of comparison, Sarasin and/or Stiglitz could stand to learn
a thing or two from former vice president Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Sure, that film was at its core a PowerPoint presentation, but this film needs some
of David Guggenheim’s smart Inconvenient
framing mechanisms, or at the very least an outline that can be followed and
digested with more ease. Extra footage blended in with the tightly framed talking-head material would give the movie not only visual depth, but help illustrate the points its subject is making.

Look, obviously I can’t parse Stiglitz’s credibility, nor am
I trying to; the man’s credits and intelligence are unimpeachable. Recognized
around the world as a leading economic educator, Stiglitz’s résumé includes stints
as Chairman of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors; Chief Economist at
the World Bank; professorships at Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Stanford and Columbia
University; and work as a private consultant to several world leaders (how do
you get that gig?). His books — including
the worldwide bestseller Globalization
and Its Discontents and its newly released follow-up, Making Globalization Work — have been translated into more than 35 languages.
So with all that experience and specialization, it would stand to reason that there
is legitimate insight that follows. For every concise metaphor or savvy extrapolation,
however, Where is the World Going, Mr.
Stiglitz?, also features a yawning, over-the-shoulder introduction or
set-up. For these reasons, some of the causal relationships and complexities of
globalization dance still just out of reach, at least for an audience of
laypersons.

Spread out over two discs and housed in a regular Amray case
with a snap-in tray, Where is the World
Going, Mr. Stiglitz? includes as supplemental bonus features downloadable
audio files for MP3 players as well as brief biographies on both its creator and citizen-star. To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. To purchase the film via Half.com, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Thanks in large measure to the efforts of former Vice President
Al Gore,
global warming is becoming less of a partisan politics chew toy, and more and
more a matter of recognized fact. For those who found a voracious interest and appetite
on the matter awakened by Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, as well as those that for whatever reason
were predisposed to skip that film, viewing it as a cult of personality-type release,
this timely, interesting NOVA documentary tackles the subject of the Earth’s climate future
with a fair-minded and even-keeled tone and responsibility.

From deadly flooding and catastrophic hurricanes to melting
polar icecaps and soaring record high temperatures worldwide, the global
climate seems to be experiencing calamities at every turn. The question, of
course, is to what degree these are natural, temporary glitches, or more the devastating
and worsening product of decades of international environmental neglect.

The fact is that man-made carbon dioxide has overloaded
the Earth’s atmosphere with dangerous levels of greenhouse gasses, so named for
their warming effect. And with demand for fossil fuels increasing daily, almost
all experts agree that emission levels will basically triple in the next 100 years. Yet
this so-called “greenhouse effect” remains the subject of some heated debate (ha
— gallows humor!) among scientists, climatologists and futurists. Some believe
the Earth’s temperature will rise by nearly 10 degrees, melting arctic icecaps
and sending sea levels surging, destroying low-lying coastal areas and touching
off famine and drought in other portions of the world. Others believe the
weather will stay relatively normal. Who’s right? Decide for yourself with this
riveting documentary special, which crunches some data and takes a fascinatingly
speculative look at the forecast for the future.

The somewhat cheekily titled Global Warming: What’s Up with the Weather? is a bit pedantic, yes,
and at 112 minutes certainly longer than any number of flashier short-form
entries designed to catch the roving eye of a more down-market crowd. Part of the
problem is that it lacks the upwards-tracking emotional arc of An Inconvenient Truth,
and thus at least the partial optimism if not sociopolitical empowerment that that
movie gives off. Still, though, Global
Warming is an interesting and unassailably researched title, and certainly
worth a look for younger scholastic audiences or those with an unquenched interest
in the subject matter.

Ever since its launch back in the days of VHS, WGBH Boston
Video has released many critically acclaimed public television programs,
including the Emmy Award-winning The
Miracle of Life, plus bestsellers like The
Elegant Universe, The Jane Eyre Masterpiece
Theatre Collection, Commanding
Heights: The Battle for the World Economy, Evolution and Africans in
America. Alongside this full-screen presentation of Global Warming, recent releases include The Hidden Epidemic: Heart Disease in America,
Percy Julian: Forgotten Genius and Kaboom!, a chronological history of the
history of pyrotechnics, from ninth century China
to 19th century industrialist Alfred Nobel and legendary physicist Robert Oppenheimer. Global Warming‘s DVD supplemental materials consist of printable materials for educators. To
order this title or any other DVD release from WGBH Boston Video, phone (800)
949-8670 or visit their eponymous Web site’s
shop by clicking here. B (Movie) C (Disc)

All the King’s Men
holds a special place in the heart for me, foremost because Robert Penn Warren’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 novel was assigned reading in my 11th grade honors English
class. My teacher was a real battleaxe in all the classic, stereotypical
strokes — pretentious accent, imperious stare and a wardrobe consisting wholly of
browns and greys.

She announced with a certain dark relish the first week the
difficulty of securing an “A” in her class, and a nine-point grading scale on
quizzes and essays that made it mathematically impossible to attain a 100%
score on any given assignment bore out this assertion. I think this was
supposed to be a masterful stroke of motivation. My response, though — instead
of busting hump for one of the four quarterly “A”s she doled out the entire
year — was to put myself on announced autopilot. I could pull a “B,” which
would still rate out at a 4.0 for college transcripts, with ease, so why put forth an emotional
investment that would unduly darken my disposition when grades were all too
predictably meted out?

This mindset colored my effort, certainly, as I devoted more
time to both extracurricular activities and endeavors in other classes where I
was perhaps less naturally gifted or suited. (Translation: stupid math!) I
would sometimes lag behind a bit in assigned reading, and when we had in-class,
pop quiz, short-form essays I would dress up my deficiencies in florid style —
an extended Top 10 list, for instance, on the symbolism of green light in F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.
My teacher would sometimes cluck disapprovingly, but I always graded out well
enough to hold onto my “B,” and besides, I think she secretly appreciated the
novelty and creativity involved, maybe even begrudgingly respected my adherence
to formula, namely: tackle the big exams, but don’t sweat the small stuff.

All the King’s Men
was assigned reading in the fall, and with other commitments and interests (why hello, ladies…), I read enough to get the gist of it, did the awful but
obligatory perusing of Cliffs Notes,
and consulted with a few friends on the text. Toward the end of the year — the
last week of class, I believe it was — I saw my teacher after school one day,
and bragged/confessed that I hadn’t finished reading All the King’s Men, or even really reached its halfway point. She
ran the traditional smack about me “cheating myself,” but I assured her it
wasn’t laziness that waylaid me, but rather a busy schedule. I would finish it
over the summer, I told her, and tell her what I really thought next fall.

All of this brings us to Academy Award winner Steven
Zaillian’s film adaptation, which I’m certain helped at least a few thousand
kids skip out on a reading assignment this past fall, and will — during its
long life on DVD — help tens of thousands more. A ruminative, well designed
work about the death of innocence and the corrosive nature of power, the film
suffers a bit from a bumpy opening — its main point of entry and flashback into
the story — as well as some marble-mouthed dialogue, but is an otherwise solid
and engaging telling of Warren’s classic tale of political corruption and
personal distortion. It captures with perspicacity altered form — how
character, like a runaway river, bends to pressure and frequently takes the
path of least resistance.

For those who similarly abandoned high school assignments
and never again took up Warren’s swampy text — rooted in the real-life story of
the larger-than-life Huey P. Long — Sean Penn stars as Willie Stark, an
idealistic, small town Louisiana politician who gets drafted into a run for
governor as part of a vote-splitting scheme by Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini),
but eventually starts connecting with the blue-collar people of the extremely
poor state. Newspaper reporter Jack Burden (Jude Law) is initially assigned to
cover him, but falls under his charismatic sway, and eventually goes to work
for Stark when he wins his gubernatorial bid. In labyrinthine fashion, this
reconnects Jack with childhood friends Adam and Anne Stanton (Mark Ruffalo and
Kate Winslet, respectively) — well-heeled children of a political dynasty — and
also puts him at odds with his former father figure and mentor, the
well-respected Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins). The political framework is used
to explore some of the more profound dilemmas of human existence — sin,
forgiveness, guilt, betrayal, romance and redemption.

With his guttural rumble and wild, oratorical
gesticulations, Penn is a scenery-chewing delight, but it’s all in service of
the story, and the rest of the legitimately all-star cast — a phrase frequently
deployed in erroneous fashion — is quite solid as well, particularly Hopkins,
Gandolfini and Patricia Clarkson. Zaillian, meanwhile, nails the pent-up pathos
of Stark, best captured in a scene between the at-odds Penn and Hopkins which
culminates in the line, “I go more in pain than in wrath.” If there’s a knock,
it’s that the movie is dipped in mood and gloom to such a degree that it
prevents modern mainstream audiences without a predisposition for political
cloak-and-dagger tales from quickly picking up on the more basic conflicts in
the movie.

Presented in an Amray case, All the King’s Men comes with a nice, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
transfer, buoyed by solid blacks are clear detail. There are no problems with
grain or edge enhancement. Audio comes in a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, with a
French language Dolby surround track also available, as well as optional English
and French subtitles. A smattering of featurettes kicks off the supplemental
fare, including a six-minute making-of clip-fest, comprised of chats with cast
and crew, as well as inimitable executive producer James Carville.

Next up is a 13-minute look at Warren’s
book, entitled “An American Classic,” as well as a 23-minute mini-doc on the
aforementioned Huey P. Long. These are edifying, invaluable inclusions, nicely rooting
the film in the history of the text and its non-fiction roots. A location featurette,
detailing the shooting locale of Louisiana,
rounds things out on this front, along with a 10-minute, more overt look at the
movie’s themes of corruption. Three deleted scenes, including an alternate
ending, clock in at more than 20 minutes, and provide much more shading and
depth for Stark, and the bureaucratic corruption he encounters and to which he eventually
succumbs. For those feeling a bit shortchanged at his diminishment of
character, a few answers lie herein. Oh, and yes, I did finish reading Warren’s book, and tell my teacher about it; I highly recommend it. Maybe I’ll send her a heads up on this film as well. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Few films of the past year have provoked in me quite a response like Chris Paine’s documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, which stirs both thought and blood-boiling outrage about moral responsibility as it relates to our environment in detailing, as it does, in
compelling case study form, the great premium placed on the maintenance of the constipated
status quo — on protections for corporate profit over public interest.

The story centers on one of the fastest, most efficient
production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no emissions and catapulted
nascent American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The
lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why, in a systematic act
of automotive ethnic cleansing, did General Motors recall its entire fleet of leased
EV1 electric vehicles, in one case refuse an aggregate consumer purchase offer
of more than $115,000 per vehicle and eventually destroy the cars in secret in the
Arizona desert?

To understand that is go back more than 15 years. In 1990,
with smog alerts threatening public health and daily quality of life in one of
the country’s most populated states, the California Air Resources Board (or CARB, for short) targeted the chief source of that problem: auto exhaust. Inspired by a recent
announcement from General Motors about an electric vehicle prototype, the Zero
Emissions Mandate was born, requiring two percent of all new vehicles sold in California
to be emissions-free by 1998, and 10 percent by 2003.

What followed was a carefully plotted murder by numbers. Cognizant
that a frontal assault would not only come across as unseemly but also likely
wouldn’t work, General Motors and a variety of other big business interests —
with no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers and rare brake upkeep, one can see how
the vehicle was a threat to the multibillion dollar automotive maintenance
industry — colluded to quietly snuff the most radical smog-fighting mandate
since the catalytic converter.

How? By everything from rolling out low-end product and
marketing it in elliptical fashion to purchasing a controlling interest in
revolutionary battery technology that would extend radius capability and then
sitting on its promotion and implementation. Essentially by paying lip service
to the notion of change while working behind the scenes to help perpetuate the
false impression of electric vehicles as undersized, underpowered and
inconvenient, and thus help foster the appearance of muted consumer demand. With
that in hand, Big Auto could argue the law was an unfair business restriction,
which they did. When the federal government, under the Bush administration,
joined a lawsuit against CARB and the state of California,
the writing was on the wall. The law was repealed, and billions of dollars in
federal money instead diverted to hydrogen fuel cell research that is 15-20
years off, instead of hybrid-electric technology that could manufacture cars
getting 100-plus miles per gallon today. (Angry yet?)

While admittedly canted, Who
Killed the Electric Car? doesn’t pin the blame on just General Motors or a
single villain; it’s equally an indictment of a corrupted and corroded system.
To this end, the film includes an impressive roster of interviewees, including former
Carter administration energy advisor S. David Freeman, former GM board member
Tom Everhart, the American Petroleum Institute’s Edward Murphy, ex-CIA Director
James Woolsey, authors Paul Roberts and Joseph Romm, consumer advocate Ralph
Nader, Los Angeles Times auto critic
Dan Neil, former CARB chairman Alan Lloyd — a divisive figure — and celebrity EV
drivers Mel Gibson, Alexandra Paul and Peter Horton. One of its most
plaintively convincing voices, however, might be former EV1 sales specialist
turned activist Chelsea Sexton, who in clear-eyed and detailed fashion relates
the compromised launch of the electric car.

In examining the brief life and death of EV1, its cultural
and economic ripple effects and how they reverberated through the halls of
government and big business, Who Killed
the Electric Car? emerges as an emblematic tale of the disincentivization
of technology, and how consumers are strung along like junkies. After all, for
how long now have we been hearing about radical fuel economy improvements “in
the next five to 10 years”?

Many of the important safety standards and other automotive
improvements we have and take for granted today — seat belts, airbags, fuel
economy standards — all had to be rammed through via legislation. We currently
have political leadership — fueled by complicit consumer silence on this issue
— that has abdicated its responsibility on this front and become a lapdog of
industry. While it may be casually and wrongheadedly derided by those with contrary financial
investment as agitprop, Who Killed the
Electric Car? piercingly demonstrates how technological advancement occurs only when it aligns with monied
interests, and argues persuasively for the idea that we all deserve better.

Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, Who Killed the
Electric Car? comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional subtitles in French. Documentaries with any sort of interview component forces hard choices about what to cut, and Paine turned in a trim theatrical cut, at just a whisker over an hour and a half. The twelve deleted scenes here, then, offer interviewees a bit more time to pontificate, and they’re certainly welcome inclusions, even if one chat devolves into a snake-eating-its-own-tail conversation about EV “pollution.” A  short companion doc, Jump-Starting the Future, takes a look at independent alternative fuel research and other technology innovation, and though it only scratches the surface, it definitely makes you want to lobby for more government funding on this key issue. From the shameful-waste-of-space file, meanwhile, comes a music video for Meeky Rosie’s “Forever” and trailers for other Sony releases. While solid, this title could have used a little more participatory heft, thus boosting its educational value. As is… A (Movie) B (Disc)