Gasland (2010)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

With a look at all the negative reviews here, that just focus on one or two attackable things presented in this documentary, I have to give all stars to this documentary.It seems to me, that there is a big lobby behind the whole topic -- it is nearly as awful as the climate topic, where near religious wars wage. When I read, that at least two films where made as response from the other side to this film -- this is a huge indicator that the film has hit the target.There are so many facts presented, that should make everybody with a brain to think, but the critics like to focus more on the weak spots, but on the whole mass of facts. Even, when you delete all the weak spots, there are enough facts left, that speak a clear language. Of course, the other side can make 10 further films (and they have the money for it) against it, but I doubt, that they can prove that their is no problem.It is really sad, what people are ready to do, just to have cheap energy (or for sheer profits).This documentary is not the best made, but it is an eye opener to everybody that is ready to think about the facts and not just wants to have his own opinions confirmed.People can put their fingers in their ears and hold their hands in front their eyes, they even can train their brains to negate the truths -- but one day, also the last one will find out, that money can not be eaten.

The mindless zombies supporting this twaddle are going to tell you everyone who debunks this crap is in the pay of someone with an interest in promoting fracking. They SAY you should just research for yourself, but they will then TELL you that anyone who calls them "fools" is just lying. Ask yourself a simple question: Are there not jobs to be had working for environmental organizations? Is there not a tremendous amount of money in the Green Lobby, as well? So don't buy their garbage that they are any more honorable and forthright than their opposition. They have money and jobs on the line, too. They have an AGENDA, just as much as the oil companies.And DO do your own research. Here's one from a site the anti-frackers deprecate as "in the pay of the oil companies"... http://energyindepth.org/Texas/flaming-water-nobody-acknowledge/Pictures -- yes, PICTURES from BEFORE any of the fracking was started showing that the groundwater there was ALREADY highly flammable... exactly as has been claimed by the companies under attack.

You do realize that none of this film is based on fact, right? Since Fox made "Gasland" he declines to participate in interviews and answer questions about the most pertinent images and "facts" to his documentary. It really is kind of amazing how people just eat up what they are spoon fed through effective lies. If you want the truth watch, counter documentaries like "Truthland" or "FrackNation." A documentary like this has led to drilling bans for multiple counties and states, and I am dumbfounded that the American people can believe a story whose only crutch is complete fiction. The tag-line of the documentary is "Can you light your water on fire?" Fox himself admitted that flammable water is a natural phenomena, that has happened well before fracking. Just get the facts people...

It's a 'game changer'. After years when America's reserves of fossil fuels have been dwindling, an enormous new source of energy has become available: shale gas. Enough exploitable natural gas - 1,000 trillion cubic feet - has been found under states like Pennsylvania to supply US needs for 45 years. In Europe, there are 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. No drilling in deep water, no nasty oil spewing out, and substantially lower carbon emissions than you get from burning coal. Isn't this good news all round?Apparently not. And there has been no higher-profile effort to present the good news about shale gas as a disaster than the documentary Gasland. The film starts at director Josh Fox's home in rural Pennsylvania. A gas company has offered him nearly $100,000 to drill for shale gas on his 19-acre property. That's a nice little payday for basically doing nothing. Should he take the cash?First, a quick explanation of what's different about shale gas. The existence of stores of methane thousands of feet underground locked inside rock has been known about for a long time. What hasn't existed until recent years is the means to exploit these reserves. A pipe is drilled into these gas-containing rocks, then charges are exploded along its length to open up the rock. Then, a mixture of water, sand and a small percentage of chemicals is forced into the rock to open up fissures and free the stored gas. The process is called hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking'.Yet what should be an interesting opportunity to explore some longstanding questions - like what balance we strike between the interests of a relatively small number of rural residents and those of wider society - is missed. It becomes a black-and-white tale of little people against malevolent corporations. By starting from his own situation, Fox might think he is providing human interest, but it felt more like he was saying: 'I've got this rural idyll, how dare you screw it up.' With his smug manner, I was less inclined to sympathise with Fox than fantasise about punching him.The possible problems associated with fracking represent a serious enough story without Fox reaching for hyperbole and scaremongering, but he does that anyway. By throwing up a few liberal dog-whistle ideas - like 'chemicals' and 'Dick Cheney' - Fox tries to turn problems with a new technology that need to be sorted out into a wider suggestion that 'fracking' is fundamentally unsafe. And hey, if you don't care about Fox's water, he throws in the idea that shale-gas drilling could ultimately poison the watershed that supplies New York and New Jersey's water. Scary enough for you now?It would be naive to ignore the fact that energy companies have a trillion-dollar reason to downplay problems related to shale gas. But in many respects, that's as much a consequence of Americans' bad habit of solving every problem by litigation, and a wider culture of risk aversion where anything new is treated with suspicion. In principle, fracking is a safe way of producing energy. Where companies screw up, they should learn the lessons, clean up the problem and compensate those affected.What's missing from Gasland is the equally pertinent observation that environmentalists are desperately trying to find a reason to scare people away from a cheap new source of energy that isn't renewable or zero-carbon. If shale gas takes off, as it seems to be doing, the pressure from scares about 'peak oil' and the dangers of deepwater drilling for energy won't have the same purchase in the public's mind.As one analyst wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year: 'I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionise the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.'For Britain, this debate is now playing out closer to home. In 2010, test drilling started in north-west England on shale gas deposits there. With supplies from the North Sea declining and dependence on gas from overseas growing, a new domestic source of gas would be welcome. Yet there have been calls by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, in a report funded by the Co-operative, to halt work on exploiting these reserves. (The Co-operative is also backing Gasland in the UK.)This seems mad, even in environmental terms. When UK carbon emissions fell in the 1990s, it wasn't because of concern about the climate, but because of the so-called 'dash to gas' as a wave of gas-fuelled power stations were built to replace coal-fired plants. Because gas contains a higher proportion of hydrogen to carbon, burning gas is regarded as 'cleaner' in climate-change terms. Encouraging gas usage would seem like a good way, therefore, of reducing carbon emissions while still getting affordable, reliable energy - something wind, solar and other renewable energy sources are failing to provide right now.Gasland has been nominated for the Oscar for best documentary, much to the gas industry's dismay. Rather like a previous winner of that award, Al Gore's global warming diatribe An Inconvenient Truth, Gasland cranks up alarmism at the expense of a balanced discussion of an important issue.