Who Killed The Electric Car?

Warning: This film will raise your blood pressure and after watching it, it is quite likely that in the unlikely event you ever meet someone who says "Hi, I work for General Motors", you may well punch his lights out.

This is a documentary, narrated by the reassuringly soothing voice of Martin Sheen, about the birth and untimely death of the Californian Electric Car, the EV-1. This was a General Motors vehicle, designed to meet the state's zero emission vehicle targets. Owners (well, renters actually), included Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks and Alexandra Paul (the only Baywatch star who wasn't "silicon enhanced" and is a huge environmental activist).

The EV-1 was an electric car with a range of about 60 miles between charges. It is important to remember this, as there will be a test later. With a range of 60 miles, the car was perfect for most commuters living in a city.

General Motors marketing strategy was brilliant. First they produced the car by hand, so they were expensive. OK, so they were experimental, so that's maybe forgivable.

Secondly they only leased the cars, you couldn't buy one.

Thirdly they made the leasing process cumbersome and difficult.
: "The questions they were asking, I mean....Have you ever had a proctoscope inserted up your.....well, no... I mean, it was specific."

Fourthly, they advertised the product without ever showing the product. The car was always slightly off screen, or blurred, or in the far distance.

Fifthly, when someone wanted to lease one, the sales person had to go through all the drawbacks of the car.
: "Not once did you see the car in an advert with a half naked woman draped across it, or an attractive person sitting in it. And then we had to tell people the bad things about the car before leasing it. This is not the way to sell a car!"

Eventually GM sued California's Air Resources Board to repeal the law, were joined in the fight by the federal government (who then introduced tax breaks that "favoured" gas guzzling SUVs), and got the law revoked. At the meeting, GM, Ford, and Chrysler representatives were given almost unlimited air time to talk. EV-1 ownerships representatives, environmentalists and other "pro-electric" supporters were given about 3 minutes each.

: "Well some are being donated to university campuses, others will end up in museums and technology testing centres and some are in private hands. I mean, we're not going to just crush these cars and dump them in landfill."

In fact, only one EV-1 is known to still exist. It is in a museum, not even on display, but stuck in their basement. And it doesn't even run, because GM disabled it.

I really like this documentary. Whereas Fahrenheit 9/11 showed us that George W. Bush is an idiot, this films shows that's he's also a corporate puppet. After the electric vehicle "failed due to lack of demand", even though thousands on Californians were on waiting lists for them when the car was withdrawn, GM announced that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were the way of the future and would be available in 10-15 years.

: "Yeah, we said that 10-15 years ago"

I particularly liked his part about the "Five Miracles Needed for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars To Work"

1. Fuel cell cars cost about $1,000,000. That price has to drop.
2. o material known to man can hold enough hydrogen to give the car the range between filling stations that consumers require.
3. Hydrogen is expensive. It costs at least 3 times as much (in monetary terms) for the same distance travelled compared with plugging into the mains. The hydrogen also costs (in energy terms) three times the amount of energy that direct electricity costs.
4. There's no infrastructure. Everyone in the US has electricity, there are about 150,000 petrol stations. But very few hydrogen and you'd need at least 20,000 stations before consumers would bother switching to hydrogen.
5. You'd better pray that your competitors (petrol, hybrid, electric) don't improve the efficiency of their vehicles before you can get to market, because if they do, you're stuffed.

This doesn't even include my two favourites:

1. Hydrogen Is Explosive! I've underlined that because I think it's important. Petrol burns. Contrary to what you've seen in movies, petrol does not explode. Fuel-air mixtures of petrol can explode but they require an enclosed environment to build up the gas beforehand.
2. You think CFCs were bad for the ozone layer? You've obviously never seen hydrogen at work.

Score: N/A It's a documentary and not really scorable on the Saxon Film Scale (SFS). It is very enlightening and well worth a watch. It will get you fuming mad though, particularly at GM, Bush, CARB and Ronald Regan (whose first act in the White House was to remove the solar panels on the roof that Jimmy Carter had installed).

OQ: From a man speaking at the "funeral" for the EV-1: "It is true what General Motors say. The EV-1 is not for everyone, as it can only meet the needs of about 90% of consumers."

OOQ: We've got General Motors saying they know what's best for Americans and acting like Uncle Sam. We don't need another Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam is Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam is acting like it's General Motors!

OOOQ: Text:

GM bought Hummer from AM Motors: March 2004
GM cancelled EV-1 project and the scrapped cars: April 2004

The Good Shepherd (2006)

How do you sum up a film like this in one sentence? The Good Shepherd recounts the birth of the CIA, but more importantly it is the story of one man very slowly selling his soul. Matt Damon delivers a very powerful performance in Robert De Niro's film. I loved the way Damon's character slowly descends from principled to patriotic. He disposes of his conscience, dismantles his moral compass and betrays his most cherished values, and all in the name of his country.

The film is actually shot very well, several beautiful shots, and the grainy monochrome fading into colour is fantastic to see. It makes the stock footage feel like part of the movie, not tagged on. De Niro's work as a director is really impressive to see. Apparently this film has been De Niro's pet project for the last ten years.

If you're in to cerebral movies, I really urge you to go and see this. I had misgivings about it, actually I probably wouldn't have gone if I didn't have the Cineworld unlimited card, but it really is a spectacular movie.
Can I sell it any more?......Ooh, it's got Matt Damon dress as a woman! Not that I'm interested in such things, you understand.

If anyone tells you Matt Damon can't act, then please slap them with a wet fish, preferably a kipper or a herring. Angelina Jolie puts in a good performance as his wife. Alec Baldwin yet again plays a trump card and delivers a great couple of scenes as a minor character. And there's a couple of other faces to spot, like Keir Dullea (Mr. "Open the pod bay doors Hal") as Angelina's father. Michael Gambon plays Michael Gambon, but does it very well.

Score: A. Bloody good.

OQ: Someone once asked me, Why don't they put a 'the' in front of CIA? And I said to him, do you put a 'the' in front of God?

Norbit

It's really hard of me to be overly critical of an Eddie Murphy movie, since I'm a big fan of his work. This, coming from someone who absolutely loved Pluto Nash, a film that made the biggest financial loss in cinematic history (yes, even bigger than The Core). Being harsh on his work, for me, is like kicking a sickly puppy. This pre-amble is just to emphasise how hard it is for me to write this review.

Having said that, this film is not good. It's formulaic, dull and not that funny really.

This romantic comedy revolves around an orphan Norbit (Murphy), who is adopted by Mr Wang (also Murphy) then loses the love of his life as a child, is bullied into marrying Rasputia (Murphy again) and then finds out his childhood sweetheart is moving back to town. If you have a checklist of everything you'd expect in a typical rom-com, Norbit checks all the boxes, often in red ink and pressing down extra hard.

Cuba Gooding Jr is completely wasted in this movie, as is Thandie Newton, and since it's mostly them and Eddie Murphy on screen for the majority of the time, this is a real annoyance. The reviews I read after seeing it all asked the same question: Why did Norbit marry Rasputia since she's so repellant? I would ask why she married Norbit as he has no redeeming qualities. He's portrayed as a wimpy nerd, which the begs the question: why would Kate (Thandie Newton) like him?

Eddie Griffin and Katt Williams play pimps, which I am told is about as original a casting for them as having Kevin Saxon play Kevin Saxon in 'The Kevin Saxon Story' (coming December 2007).

Other Reviews

This film was (according to reviews) butchered to move it from a R rating to a PG-13 (like moving a 15 to a 12A). I get the impression that the 15 version would have been a lot funnier, as the editing is really slap shod. Continuity errors abound, especially Rasputia's hair style. It goes from straight cut black dyed with highlights to browny grey afro and back again for no readily explainable reason. People disappear completely in reverse shots, or shift position.

There was one review on IMDB that summed up the film far better than I ever could.

"The entire film is based on repeating the same joke over and over and over. And it wasn't funny to start with."

I know what you're thinking (especially you Jackie. Put James Spader down and step away from the maple syrup and dairy whip) ; why didn't I read reviews before going to see the film. Well there are three reasons why I never read reviews before seeing a film.

1. I want to make my own mind up about a film, not base my opinion on someone else's opinion.
2. Most reviews contain spoilers for the plot.
3. If I did, I'd never watch any movies, because there's always someone who says "This was utter tosh."

Fat Flack

This film has also taken a lot of flack for being in the "anti fat camp". Now I don't know what the anti-fat camp looks like, but I don't think there's any overtures of that in the movie. The Nutty Professor was, if anything, pro-fat. Here, Rasputia is not unpleasant because she's fat. She's fat because she's unpleasant, if that makes sense.

The fat suit technology has come on bounds, and a great deal of care has been taken to make sure that the child actor playing Norbit and Eddie Murphy both look very similar. However, this was a completely wasted effort, since the child actor playing Kate looks nothing like Thandie Newton.

There's also some people saying that Eddie Murphy is a racist (no really, there are) because he always portrays darker skinned african american as the bad guys and lighter skinned african american as the good guys. Personally I think that's the biggest pile of twaddle I've ever heard.

Summary

A rather disappointing Eddie Murphy film that looked so much better in the trailer. The water slide sequence is great, but not enough to save it.

OQ: "How YOU doin'?" Repeated ad nauseam.

Score: D- Any lower and it would have to have been scored on the Catwoman scale.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1993)

Believe it or not, I actually watched a worse movie than Norbit this weekend.

This "re-working" of Jules Verne's classic was on TV over the weekend and I had the misfortune to watch it. There are three words that describe the experience:

Sweet Zombie Jesus.

How bad is it? Weeeeell.....let's put it this way. It was made in 1993, and IMDB has no memorable quotes, trivia or goofs listed for it. So I'll give you them all now:

Memorable quotes: There are none. Everyone is playing characters whose motivation can be explained through interpretive mime and/or Duplo blocks.

Trivia: Kevin Saxon survived watching this by knawing his own arm off.

Goofs: So many. So so many..... I seriously doubt there's a single scene that doesn't contain a technical error, a scientific fallacy or a craped up special effect. Here's the highlights:

• They blow up the same lip of the volcano crater twice.
• They have switches labelled "Vales Open" and "Valves Closed" sitting next to each other and every command on board requires both of them to be pressed at the same time.
• Landing the "flying submarine" is a reversed effect of taking off. This of course means that the jet engines, instead of expelling their mighty thrust in the form of smoke to lift the behemoth off the ground, are in fact sucking smoke into their outlet openings like there's no tomorrow, much like a junkie with a bong.
• The same holographic image is used to plot the craft's position and destination several times. The craft never seems to move any closer to it's target.

General Annoyances

The protagonist is never really revealed, nor are his motives nor for that matter his origins. His obsession with the artifact the crew have is only explained in the last five minutes of the film, he toys with them for no reason at all and while being very fragile away from his life support system, the scriptwriters apparently decided to kill him by dropping him into lava, just to be sure.

The main hero doesn't do what any sane person would do. Ever. At any point in the movie. Seriously. When the billionaire financing the project steals his design for the machine, any sane person would sue his ass, or at least knock him into the middle of next week. His choice of crew consists of a collection of volatile personalities who don't get on (quel surprise!).
At one point he announces that he wants to find out who has been on their back since they landed, meaning the protagonist, and while we the audience know he exists, there's not logical reason why the character should know or even suspect anyone has been after them.

No-one dies. I know, I know, but it's a journey to the centre of the Earth! Someone's supposed to die. It's a rule!

They introduce an AI computer (with a female appearance, naturally.) for no good reason. She fulfils no plot point, and only serves to annoy when it is "proclaimed" that the pilot has faster reflexes than she does. To steal a phrase from Star Wars (since the film steals a lot of its dialogue): Good against the living's one thing, but good against a computer? I thought she looked a little like Justina Vail, who played Olga, the Russian expert on Seven Days and then quit acting, until I looked it up and found out it was in fact Justina Vail.

They introduce the concept of a universal translator to understand a creature they find, a device which was never mentioned before this and is disposed of in about five minutes when the creature learns English. I nearly had a surprise visit from my breakfast at this point.

The plot has no direction. Things happen for no reason, plot points are forgotten five minutes after they're mentioned. One character exists solely for a spelunking scene, and I honestly think the scriptwriter forgot about her for the rest of the film, because she has precious few other lines.

They get lost down there in the end! They have a sonic blaster on the nose of the craft, a weapon we are assured (and shown) can blast through anything. Why the smeg they don't just aim up and start blastin' is anyone's guess. And if you're thinking that maybe they're worried about falling debris or damaging a structure at the surface, then don't. It isn't that sort of film.
It seems to be a set up for a TV series which, thank the maker, never got made.

Redeeming features

One and a half. It contains the very hot Farrah Forke, who played Mason Drake in "The New Adventures of Superman" . Why Clark ever chose Lois over Mason is beyond me. Mason was hotter, smarter, more committed to a relationship with him and less high maintenance. Plus I'm pretty sure she would have put out.
Ahem....I seem to have wandered a little off topic.

And the other half point goes to seeing what Tim Russ did before being Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager (although he's also played bit parts in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, sort of like how all the actors on CSI: Miami and CSI: New York turn up in repeats of CSI.)

Scored on the Catwoman scale:
A wonking 9/10

Yes, that bad. I honestly can't understand why anyone would make this movie.

OQ:
We can't trust him. What if he's a man eater?
I'm a vegetarian.
That's even worse...

Just to give you an idea of how bad the dialogue is.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth (1993)

Believe it or not, I actually watched a worse movie than Norbit this weekend.

This "re-working" of Jules Verne's classic was on TV over the weekend and I had the misfortune to watch it. There are three words that describe the experience:

Sweet Zombie Jesus.

How bad is it? Weeeeell.....let's put it this way. It was made in 1993, and IMDB has no memorable quotes, trivia or goofs listed for it. So I'll give you them all now:

Memorable quotes: There are none. Everyone is playing characters whose motivation can be explained through interpretive mime and/or Duplo blocks.

Trivia: Kevin Saxon survived watching this by knawing his own arm off.

Goofs: So many. So so many..... I seriously doubt there's a single scene that doesn't contain a technical error, a scientific fallacy or a craped up special effect. Here's the highlights:

• They blow up the same lip of the volcano crater twice.
• They have switches labelled "Vales Open" and "Valves Closed" sitting next to each other and every command on board requires both of them to be pressed at the same time.
• Landing the "flying submarine" is a reversed effect of taking off. This of course means that the jet engines, instead of expelling their mighty thrust in the form of smoke to lift the behemoth off the ground, are in fact sucking smoke into their outlet openings like there's no tomorrow, much like a junkie with a bong.
• The same holographic image is used to plot the craft's position and destination several times. The craft never seems to move any closer to it's target.

General Annoyances

The protagonist is never really revealed, nor are his motives nor for that matter his origins. His obsession with the artifact the crew have is only explained in the last five minutes of the film, he toys with them for no reason at all and while being very fragile away from his life support system, the scriptwriters apparently decided to kill him by dropping him into lava, just to be sure.

The main hero doesn't do what any sane person would do. Ever. At any point in the movie. Seriously. When the billionaire financing the project steals his design for the machine, any sane person would sue his ass, or at least knock him into the middle of next week. His choice of crew consists of a collection of volatile personalities who don't get on (quel surprise!).
At one point he announces that he wants to find out who has been on their back since they landed, meaning the protagonist, and while we the audience know he exists, there's not logical reason why the character should know or even suspect anyone has been after them.

No-one dies. I know, I know, but it's a journey to the centre of the Earth! Someone's supposed to die. It's a rule!

They introduce an AI computer (with a female appearance, naturally.) for no good reason. She fulfils no plot point, and only serves to annoy when it is "proclaimed" that the pilot has faster reflexes than she does. To steal a phrase from Star Wars (since the film steals a lot of its dialogue): Good against the living's one thing, but good against a computer? I thought she looked a little like Justina Vail, who played Olga, the Russian expert on Seven Days and then quit acting, until I looked it up and found out it was in fact Justina Vail.

They introduce the concept of a universal translator to understand a creature they find, a device which was never mentioned before this and is disposed of in about five minutes when the creature learns English. I nearly had a surprise visit from my breakfast at this point.

The plot has no direction. Things happen for no reason, plot points are forgotten five minutes after they're mentioned. One character exists solely for a spelunking scene, and I honestly think the scriptwriter forgot about her for the rest of the film, because she has precious few other lines.

They get lost down there in the end! They have a sonic blaster on the nose of the craft, a weapon we are assured (and shown) can blast through anything. Why the smeg they don't just aim up and start blastin' is anyone's guess. And if you're thinking that maybe they're worried about falling debris or damaging a structure at the surface, then don't. It isn't that sort of film.
It seems to be a set up for a TV series which, thank the maker, never got made.

Redeeming features

One and a half. It contains the very hot Farrah Forke, who played Mason Drake in "The New Adventures of Superman" . Why Clark ever chose Lois over Mason is beyond me. Mason was hotter, smarter, more committed to a relationship with him and less high maintenance. Plus I'm pretty sure she would have put out.
Ahem....I seem to have wandered a little off topic.

And the other half point goes to seeing what Tim Russ did before being Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager (although he's also played bit parts in The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, sort of like how all the actors on CSI: Miami and CSI: New York turn up in repeats of CSI.)

Scored on the Catwoman scale:
A wonking 9/10

Yes, that bad. I honestly can't understand why anyone would make this movie.

OQ:
We can't trust him. What if he's a man eater?
I'm a vegetarian.
That's even worse...

Just to give you an idea of how bad the dialogue is.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Only caught the last part of this on BBC Four last night, but it was bloody interesting. It's a documentary all about the MPAA in the US who give films their ratings. One man makes a film about the MPAA rating system and tries to get it a rating. I don't doubt that like most docs, it's been edited to show the viewpoint the presenter wants to get across, but even with this pinch of salt, this was scathing. He gets an NC-17 rating, and tries to find out why and how he can lower it to an R. MPAA Guy: "You can't compare scenes in your film with similar scenes in other films." Doc guy: "What can I compare them with?" MPAA Guy: "If you compare scenes in your film with another film, I will cut you off." Doc Guy: "You'll cut me off if I compare scenes in my film with scenes in another film?" MPAA Guy: "I will cut you off." Doc Guy: "Can you tell me what scenes I should cut or edit to get the film an R rating?" MPAA Lady: "We don't do that." Doc Guy: "Can you tell me which types of sexual activity in my film caused you to give the film the NC-17 rating?" MPAA Lady: "We don't do that." If you're wondering, this is THE film that got the MPAA into trouble, as they (allegedly, says my lawyer) copied the film without permission and distributed it (again, allegedly) to the MPAA employees who featured in it. From Wikipedia: The MPAA admitted to making copies of the film contrary to Dick's [the documentarian] wishes although they contend that doing so did not constitute copyright infringement or a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They say that the privacy of the raters themselves might have been violated by Dick. Since no complaint has been filed against Dick and since the DMCA addresses the act of subverting access control and not copying, it is unclear whether the MPAA's justification is sound. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_film_is_not_yet_rated Score: B It's very entertaining and a real treat for anyone who loves films and has ever wondered how the rating system works. I'm actually beginning to like not having Sky One. How weird is that? But without it, I'm surfing a lot more between the channels and I'm finding all sorts of hidden gems, like this and the sadly finished-for-the-season Charlie Broker's Screenwipe. Haven't laughed that hard in years.