Search - The 11th Hour on DVD

One word: Dissapointment ...

Steffan Piper | Palm Desert, CA | 05/15/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"
Let me just give you some pros and cons, as that's what seems to work best in reviews for things like this:



Pro's:



1. Well written, well produced. This is a pretty slick presentation.

2. The running time is long enough to make a strong argument, but short enough to not put a casual viewer to sleep.

3. The soundtrack was gentle, austere and not too over-dramatic which would've obscured the telling of the narrative.

4. Leonardo DiCaprio, surprisingly, has a good voice for narration which isn't that bad to listen to, unlike other productions which can just turn a person away.

5. A lot of the diagrams, charts and animations are incredibly overwhelming and informative. This is a cleaner presentation than what was done in 'An Inconvenient Truth'.

6. The story presented flows well and is educational to anyone who hasn't yet heard any of this information.

7. $4.99 at Target was a fantastic price. Nice touch.



Con's:



1. The strong endorsement of Biofuels, which is now a dead issue makes this DVD Documentary outdated, antiquated and seemingly foolish to have released without editing out. This drastically cuts into the credibility of this Documentary and thus a lower Amazon star rating. Leo is more of a victim of early adoption than anything, which is forgivable, but not something to overlook.

2. Overpopulation is mentioned a few times in the documentary, just to make rebuttal to the other reviewers, but only briefly and in passing. Overpopulation is not something that was focused on, which probably should have been the opening segment. To be fair though, the subject of Overpopulation is not something that the media mentions a lot, so it's not a surprise that Leo would've also overlooked it, as he's more of follower with this production than a leader. And a populist rather than a modern thinker.

3. There are many shots of Leo standing around observing the scenery in different locations throughout the World, which is something Orson Welles was fond of doing in his footage, but it just comes across as 'Where's Waldo', instead of adding to the narrative.





There it is in a nutshell. Hopefully that helps. I was able to get through to the end, where I was greeted by Coldplay, but I doubt I'd watch it again. Maybe his next effort on this subject will be more carefully thought out, but equally crafted.



"

Excellent viewpoint on conservation and ecology.

B. Kline | Palo Alto, CA, USA | 08/31/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are so many nasty comments about this before it even comes out, what kind of people want to attack ideas before they even know what they are?



I wanted to see this movie ever since I have seen the previews of it almost a year ago.



This movie follows in the format of the documentary "The Corporation" in that is has brief interview excerpts from lots of very bright people all talking about what humanity is doing to the Earth.



One focus in on temperature. Global Warming, Climate Change call it what you will, the concensus is explained to people in a way non-scientists can understand by scientists. One example is how the polar ice caps function to reflect some of the heat radiation from the Sun away from Earth out into space. As we warm the planet the polar ice caps melt and we lose this balance so that not only do we not reflect heat to space, we actually absorb more heat causing a positive feedback look. This system can push us past a tipping point from our nice comfortable zone of termperate stability into an unknown weather system that could conceivably take up to the extreme of our other to solar neighbors, Mars or Venus.



Another focus of this movie is human population which we all know is a problem. The problem is explored in terms of the net energy use by our species and the need to "mine" stored solar energy in the form of oil/coal since we surpassed the number of humans the Earth can comfortably support living on current solar energy the way we used to live in non-technological times.



Then some solutions are explored, and new terminology is explained. I have been familiar with these ideas and terms for a long time, but I was glad to see a well done popular explanation of them in documentary form that was not a political diatribe and in fact almost had a spiritual twist to it. Because that is what is going to be needed because as most scientists agree not only are we in the 11th hour, we are at the 59th minute of that hour and counting.



Humanity has to move fast, and it has to do something it has never done before and may not be capable of doing, and that is to change our nature and act like the intelligent creatures we purport to be rather than the unthining animals who foul their nests and destroy their habitat.

"