Entertainment Media
nisbetmc | July 10, 2006Global warming is tapping the cultural zeit geist, with 2006 on track to smash an all-time record for news attention (more on this soon), and various film and TV events trying to raise public attention to the issue. The latest, reports the Washington Post today, is a Discovery Channel documentary slated for 9pm Sunday night, hosted by Tom Brokaw. And if Inconvenient Truth is setting records in terms of revenue for a science film, stay tuned for the fall, when Leonardo DiCaprio releases his 11th Hour documentary on the environment.
nisbetmc | July 10, 2006According to BoxOfficeMojo, the weekend take for Inconvenient Truth dropped to $1.16 million this week, down from $1.597 million last week, $2.016 million two weeks back, and $1.9 million three weeks ago. In total, the film has grossed $15,039,000, placing it fourth all time among documentaries, trailing Fahrenheit 9/11 at $119million, March of the Penguins at $77 million, and Bowling for Columbine at $21 million.
nisbetmc | July 3, 2006It appears that while audiences continue to go see Inconvenient Truth, some of the excitement has worn off. According to BoxOffice Mojo, the film opened in 73 more theaters this weekend, bringing its total to 587, still a tiny number compared to the 3000 screens that blockbusters run on. Across these theaters, the film earned 1.597 million over the weekend, down from the 2.016 million the week before, and the 1.911 million from two weeks back. So far, the film has earned a total of 12.359 million, ranking it fifth all-time among documentaries, just behind Madonna's Truth or Dare
Meanwhile…
nisbetmc | June 29, 2006There are two generalizable findings on influencing behavior change. First, citizens are more likely to get involved politically if they see members of their peer group or social group getting involved. In other words, the choice to participate may be as simple as doing something that everyone else is doing. In this case, there is an element of social pressure exerted, but also witnessing like-minded others "getting active" is a heuristic that the issue merits attention and personal resources. When these peers also start making personal requests to participate, it can be a powerful…
nisbetmc | June 28, 2006One of the critiques of Inconvenient Truth that has emerged is that Gore spends a lot of time warning viewers about global warming, but strays from actually providing concrete suggestions for policy action. Some have argued that this reflects his eye on the Presidential race in 2008, and that candidate Gore wants to avoid locking himself into costly policy proposals that might lose certain key constituencies or that might be used as fodder by opponents.
But in an extensive interview, Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim tells a different side.
The main goal of the movie was to…
nisbetmc | June 27, 2006
I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to see Superman Returns tonight at the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park. Here is the scoop, without spoiling the movie: Superman foils a plot by Luthor to create a new Fortress of Solitude-like continent in the middle of the North Atlantic. As Luthor explains with the aid of maps and visuals, the emergence of a new landmass in the middle of the ocean would displace enough water to flood most of the coastline of N. America, Europe, Africa, and S. America, and in the words of Luthor, "killing billions."
Though climate change is not mentioned in the film,…
nisbetmc | June 27, 2006In the recent issue of The NY Review of Books, James Hansen pens a must-read review of several recent books on climate change, and includes a review of Gore's Inconvenient Truth.
Hansen on the film:
The movie seems to me powerful and the book complements it, adding useful explanations. It is hard to predict how this unusual presentation will be received by the public; but Gore has put together a coherent account of a complex topic that Americans desperately need to understand. The story is scientifically accurate and yet should be understandable to the public, a public that is less and less…
nisbetmc | June 9, 2006
In 2004 when The Day After Tomorrow hit theaters, I wrote this column evaluating its possible impacts. Later, Anthony Leiserowitz followed with a study appearing in Environment magazine assessing the public and media impact of the film.
As other studies have shown with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, and Passion of the Christ, there is a strong self-selection influence, with like-minded citizens attending the film, and coming away with their beliefs reinforced. So, for example, in the case of the Passion of the Christ, the already strongly religious attended the film, and came away with…