Tuesday 23 April 2013

Something is Rotten in the State of the World; time to go SEE Revolution!


To cap-off Earth Week 2013, go watch Revolution this weekend; then take a long hard look at the state of your planet, your choices and whether you want “to be or not to be.”

Published by revolutionmovie2012 on Mar 19, 2013 

Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave. Never in the history of this humanity has the phrase, “to be or not to be,” ever been more poignant. And yet, when young Canadian marine biologist, ecological activist, and filmmaker Rob Stewart—a modern day Hamlet if we’ve ever seen one—gives us a call to Revolution, the mainstream state reveals how truly rotten it is.

Rotten Tomatoes, the popular meta-review site, does not even feature Revolution on the homepage despite it still playing in theatres. 

Image: Screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes homepage, captured April 23, 2013
Note the “Find” bar at the bottom of the window. The search term “revolution” highlighted in pink, and the browser’s response: “Phrase Not Found.” Note also the red maple leaf in the logo; the Canadian version of the site. 

Searching Rotten Tomatoes for the film Revolution is no help. It simply doesn’t register. Why not? With the help of a Google search, we did find the following page:

Image: Screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes entry for “Revolution (2013)” captured April 23, 2013.
Note “No Score Yet…” Only 4 Critic Reviews, 3 “Fresh” (positive), 1 “Rotten” (negative), with 100 User Ratings.  Still, there is no “Audience Score” listed, only “75% want to see” which doesn’t reflect all the 4 and 5-star ratings users have been giving the film.
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771317231/ 

What is going on here!? Revolution won awards at the Vancouver, Victoria, Santa Barbara, Atlantic, and Toronto International Film Festivals! Are there not more than four film critics in this country? Where is the media play this film deserves? How about its young, passionate and charismatic director?

IMDb.com lists 9 External Reviews for Revolution. As for User Ratings, IMDb reveals an overwhelming 56.5% of audience members gave the film a score of 10/10. 80% gave it a 7/10 or better. Still, the published “weighted average” comes out to only 5.1 out of 10!? (The actual arithmetic mean is 8.1).


Image: Screenshot of IMDb's User ratings for Revolution (2012/II) captured April 23, 2013

IMBd’s explaination for their weighted average score policy is this:

“Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at 'vote stuffing' by individuals more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it.” 

I guess IMDb doesn’t consider the possibility that a majority of people feel passionately about the film. Are there forces at work aligned against the Revolution we all need to see and take to heart?

Rob Stewart found his funding sources dried up when they discovered what the film was about. Revolution frames the horrors of the tar sands with aboriginal and youth activism. The film shows desperate youth calling for action and reveals the stark silence and callous inaction of governments and big business. Coincidence?  Something smells rotten to PeapodLife…and it’s not tomatoes.

Is the most important documentary on the impacts of climate change since The Inconvenient Truth being muzzled? Swept under the carpet by the powers of State and multinational interests, just as they have done with the toxic pollutants causing the problems in the first place?

Ultimately, it comes down to us: the free-thinkers and doers and the power of the Internet. Watch the Ted-Talk, below. Share this blog entry with all your family & friends. Help them take a cold, deep dive into the state of the oceans, our future, those in control and ask if they want “to be or not to be.”

Let’s not allow this modern-day Hamlet to end in tragedy.

"... In his talk, Rob Stewart speaks about the need for a revolution to challenge the status quos of our political and economic systems to save our environment and ultimately our world. "We are going to make it as a civilization, or break it."
Published by TEDxYouthToronto on Apr 8, 2012


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