SOLO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Competence rules the day. Low budget Canuck thriller opens theatrically.

Solo (2013) **
Dir. Isaac Cravit
Starring: Annie Clark, Daniel Kash, Richard Clarkin,
Stephen Love, Alyssa Capriotti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A teen babe with "issues" takes a job as a summer camp counsellor. Part of the required initiation is for new employees to spend two nights alone on a remote island. The island in question was the site of a tragedy many years ago. It is purportedly haunted. Weird shit happens. Those whom you think are psychotic are not. Those whom you think are nice are psychotic. Confrontations occur. Good people die. Some good people are rescued. The evil entity is killed. The teen babe is safe. Movie Finished. 83 precious minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

There you have it. Solo in a nutshell. There's no real reason to see it now.

You see, debut feature films like Solo put me in a really foul mood. Some of these first long form efforts are blessed with an immediate, explosive announcement to the universe that we are dealing with a filmmaker who is endowed with the greatest gift a director can bestow upon the world of cinema - a voice, a distinctive style, an unmistakeable point of view, a sense that this is who the filmmaker really is. Then there's a second category - debut features so awful you might as well have shoved a gun into your mouth and pulled the trigger instead of watching it.

Solo, the debut feature film written and directed by Isaac Cravit is in neither of those categories. It holds a very special place in the pantheon of celluloid dreams - it's bereft of dreams. It has neither an original voice nor one of mind numbing ineptitude. Both have their virtues since both make an audience feel something. Not so for Solo (and so many, many others of its ilk). These are movies which allow you to leave their meagre clasp feeling absolutely nothing. It is the third and perhaps most horrendous category of all debut features. Solo, joins this unenviable pinnacle of competence with all the eagerness of a dog about to get a Milk Bone.

When filmmakers enter the fray with a first feature that actually excites you - not only because of the film itself, but what you sense this director will deliver in the future. Their declarations feel like the following:

The Soska Sisters (Dead Hooker in a Trunk):
"We're going to fuck your ass with a red-hot poker, but you'll enjoy it. We promise."

John Paizs (Crime Wave):
"Laughs derived from silence are golden."

David Lynch (Eraserhead):
"In Heaven, everything is fine..."

John Carpenter (Dark Star):
"I love movies more than life itself - have a fuckin' beer."

Guy Maddin: (Tales From The Gimli Hospital):
"I'm a dreamer, aren't we all?"

Kevin Smith: (Clerks):
"Fuck."

All are unique declarations (mediated through my own interpretive imagination, of course) and I could spend a few hundred more words doing the same for a myriad of debut features that declare themselves with complete originality on the part of the filmmaker.

There is, however, one declaration that depresses me even more than whatever the aforementioned incompetents of the second category of debut works might declare via their sheer inability to make movies. It is a declaration I see and hear far too often these days - especially since filmmaking has been embraced by so many marginally talented, though competent, by-the-numbers types as an - ugh! - career choice (as opposed to a genuine calling). Every single one of these filmmakers in the dreaded third category announces the same thing. They never waiver from it. They are presenting to the world their - double ugh! - calling card.

With Solo, Canadian director Isaac Cravit joins the club of voice-free directors when he declare (by virtue of his debut film):

"Look. I can use a dolly. Look. I can shoot coverage. Look. I am ready to direct series television drama and straight to V.O.D. and home video product for indiscriminating audiences looking to fill their worthless lives with content as opposed to something exceptional."

There's absolutely nothing new, surprising or exciting about this pallid genre effort save for its competence. Solo is blessed with some superb production value, to be sure. The locations are perfect, they're nicely shot by Stephen Chung and the combination of on-location sound and overall mixing and design seems much more exquisite and artful than the movie deserves. The cutting by Adam Locke-Norton, given the dullness of the coverage, manages to keep the proceedings moving at a nice clip. The score by Todor Kobakov is especially superb - rich, dense and one that enhances the film - again - much further beyond the movie's narrow scope. (There's one four note riff in the score that should have been excised by the filmmakers at a very early juncture, but save for that, it's a winner in all respects.)

The small cast is also superb. Thank God they're in the film since they're really one of the few things that do make the otherwise forgettable affair worth seeing.

The camera loves leading lady Annie Clark and she's clearly a fine actress - she makes the most of a hackneyed been-there-done-that babe-in-peril role. Two of Canada's finest character actors - Daniel Kash and Richard Clarkin are always worth looking at. They've got expressive, malleable mugs and like the best of the best, they rise well above the dull competence of the movie.

I especially enjoyed Stephen Love's performance and hope to see more of him - he's got very nice offbeat good looks, a sense of humour, a touch of malevolence and he frankly looks and feels like a young Canuck James Franco.

Is the movie well made? Hell yes! Is it anything special? Will you leave the theatre soaring? Will you even remember it two minutes after you see it? The answer to all those questions is a resounding "No."

Are we all supposed to rejoice and dance a jig just because someone got a movie made?

I'll let you answer that yourself.

"Solo" begins its limited theatrical run February 28 via Indie-Can at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinema in Toronto. Daily showtimes at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Q&A's with Directer Isaac Cravitt and Cast following the Friday and Sat 7:00 p.m. and Sunday 2:00 p.m. shows.

Here are direct links to purchase books about great Canadian low budget films and then, find a selection of direct links to a bunch of terrific low budget Canadian feature films that you can also purchase directly from this site.

A similar scene to the one experienced by Jim Jarmusch and others in New York during the 70s and 80s and captured in the documentary BLANK CITY as well as many other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" series was happening in Winnipeg. A very cool explosion in indie underground cinema that I and many colleagues and friends were involved with was spawned during these halcyon days. This period, coined by film critic Geoff Pevere as Prairie Post-Modernism included the works of John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Greg Hanec and many others.

A great selection of early Guy Maddin, many of which that I produced and were written by George Toles, can be secured directly through the following links:



Another great film from Winnipeg during this period is Greg Hanec's extraordinary DOWNTIME which has the distinction of being a parallel cinematic universe to Jim Jarmusch's "STRANGER THAN PARADISE". Both films were made at the same time in two completely different cities and scenes and both Hanec and Jarmusch premiered their films at the same time at the Berlin Film Festival. One's famous, the other isn't - but now that the "lost" and "found" DOWNTIME has been remastered from original elements to DVD, it can now be purchased directly online.

Order DOWNTIME directly from the film's new website by clicking HERE

Perhaps the greatest Canadian independent underground filmmaker of all-time is Winnipeg's John Paizs. It's virtually impossible to secure copies of his astounding work which, frankly, is responsible for influencing the work of Guy Maddin, David Lynch, Bruce McDonald and an endless number of great indie filmmakers the world over. Paizs' great short film SPRINGTIME IN GREENLAND is available for purchase in a beautiful remastered edition from a fan website, the inimitable Frank Norman. Norman has Paizs' blessing to provide copies of the film, so feel free to directly make your request to Mr. Norman by clicking HERE.

Visit Frank Norman's CRIME WAVE
fan site by clicking HERE

Alas, it's super-impossible to get a copy of Paizs' masterpiece CRIME WAVE (not to be confused with the super-awful Coen Bros/Sam Raimi film of the same name that was released the same year Paizs' film was NOT released properly by its scumbag Canadian distributor Norstar Releasing, which eventually became Alliance Films (where the boneheads sat on the film and turned down several excellent offers from small indie companies to release the film properly on DVD in super-deluxe special editions because they lazily purported to be negotiating a massive package deal on its catalogue titles with some tiny scumbag public domain company that, as far as I can tell, has neither purchased nor released the film). This truly great and highly influential film is, no doubt, languishing in some boneheaded distribution purgatory within the deep anal cavities of the new owner of Alliance Films, a humungous mega-corporation called E-One. Feel free to repeatedly bug their stinking asses and demand a proper release. In the meantime, VHS copies of CRIME WAVE can still be found with the ludicrous title THE BIG CRIME WAVE. Here's a copy available on Amazon:

BLANK CITY and other works in the "Forgotten Winnipeg" Series can be accessed here:

SEX AFTER KIDS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Fine Cast Wasted in Lame Bourgeois Feature Length TV Sitcom

Sex After Kids (2013) *½
Dir. Jeremy Lalonde
Starring: Gordon Pinsent, Zoie Palmer, Paul Amos, Mary Krohnert, Kate Hewlett, Jay Brazeau, Mimi Kuzyk, Katie Boland, Kris Holden-Ried, Amanda Brugel, Peter Keleghan, Shannon Beckner, Ennis Esmer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've said it before, I'll say it again: "Who wants to go to the movies to watch TV?" Sadly, there have been any number of lame comedies released during the new millennium - both indie and studio - that are little more than feature-length TV sitcoms and sadder yet, some of them actually do decent numbers at the box-office. This Canadian feature film is probably not the worst, nor especially egregious example of this - Lord knows some of the more disgraceful efforts in this genre of inconsequence have come from entities that should know better.

Some of the all-time worst seem to star the revolting Sarah Jessica Parker - films like Failure to Launch, Did You Hear About the Morgans and, of course, both loathsome Sex and the City movies have rubbed our noses in the dog doo-doo that is the woefully galumphing creature of the equine persuasion who, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen in Sex After Kids, but oddly, about the best that can be said for this trifle of a movie is that one could imagine a bigger budget version of it starring that toothy, horrendous version of Old Paint on two legs.

There is a clearly attractive and talented cast of terrific Canadian actors in this ensemble piece and while it is mildly pleasing to see some of them do their best with the sitcom dialogue to the point where one could imagine some of it being funny, the fact remains that none of it ever is.

The series of stories here all deal with the problems bourgeois couples face in the sack after they have kids. Tying it all together is the almost-funny presence of the wonderful Gordon Pinsent as a sex therapist. I say, "almost" funny only because the idea of the stalwart Canuck having to talk about various sex acts is a lot more amusing than the execution. It's not Pinsent's fault that the funniest thing for me is imagining him use sex terms adorned in his RCMP outfit from "Forest Rangers", but the writing here is generally sub-par - even by the standards of - ahem - CBC-TV comedy. Pinsent gives it the old CBC-try, but I'd frankly rather watch him in The Rowdyman for the umpteenth glorious time.

Basically, what we get here is a clutch of couples post-birth, struggling through the dilemmas of keeping the old-boink-flames going. We have a lesbian couple, various straight couples, single moms, Lothario-types, oldsters with the empty nest syndrome, etc. and we watch them go through the ropes and tropes of their flawed sex lives as the picture grinds away in its by-the-numbers fashion that reminds one of a feature length pilot for a Canadian version of "Love American Style".

And gosh golly gee, they all learn to spice things up and/or get the passion and lovin' back in their inconsequential lives.

That the world pictured is so offensively bourgeois is bad enough, but that we have to see so many good actors wasted is borderline sickening. Given that the movie was made for a crowd-funded pittance makes me feel like I'm kicking a cripple by dumping on it, but the bottom line is that the movie was made, it's out there in the world and it's really not very good.

That said, I reiterate my aforementioned point that the movie is so inconsequential that it might stand a decent enough chance to have the remake rights sold to a studio and then we can get an even more empty version not unlike one of those awful Working Title sitcoms with the likes of Hugh Grant traipsing through the silliness for female audiences comprised of steno-girls, mall workers and their suffering dates. Then they too can get all warm and cuddly, get some boinking in, get married, have their loathsome children and then have the same sex-after-kids problems afflicting the characters of this TV movie.

"Sex After Kids" is inexplicably playing in theatrical venues via Indie-Can Entertainment. Look forward to it on pay-per-view if you miss it on the big screen and maybe, just maybe, we'll see a long-running series on CBC and maybe even a Working Title version with Liam Neeson in the Gordon Pinsent role. I can imagine it now - "You folks better get boinking or I'm going to find you and I'm going to kill you."

MOURNING HAS BROKEN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Death, Denial and the Decimation of Dreams: Astonishing Robert Nolan Perf in superb Ingrid Veninger-produced 1K-Wave entry

Mourning Has Broken (2014) ****
Dir. Brett M. Butler, Jason G. Butler
Starring: Robert Nolan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There aren't many actors in Canada these days who are as intense, versatile and blessed with a wonderful sexy-ugly 70s-style screen presence as the criminally underused Robert Nolan. He is, however, quickly becoming the go-to guy for Canadian filmmakers of the TRULY independent persuasion.

In another time and place, Nolan would have been a bonafide star - not in the pretty boy mould, but rather in the chiseled and alternately tough and sensitive manner of a Gene Hackman, a Ron Leibman or even a Harvey Keitel. He's got leading man sensibilities, but the kind that would lead to what I like to think of as starring character roles. And yes, he's got the stuff, obviously, to be a great character actor in supporting roles, but he's proven thus far to be so goddamn good, I want to see as much of the guy onscreen as possible.

That's no problem in Mourning Has Broken, the Butler (Brett and Jason) Brothers' chilling, funny and heartbreaking contemporary equivalent to the grand tradition of American existential male angst and the Canadian beautiful loser genres of the 70s. Nolan, as a grieving husband is onscreen from beginning to end and pretty much provides the film's sole point of view. In this sense, it's impossible to take your eyes off him, but most importantly, you don't want to.

The Butlers have created a compelling and mature dramatic rendering of one man's denial of his wife's death and his refusal to accept how his simple dreams have been decimated by a callous world of ignorance, stupidity, selfishness, mean-spiritedness and - perhaps worst of all - mediocrity. He's as mad as Howard Beale in Lumet and Chayefsky's Network - psychologically unhinged, to be sure, but mostly, he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore.

The film follows the Husband on a day of mourning. Well, it should be a day of mourning, but he has a list of errands, activities and basic desires to plough through and it's his refusal to pause and consider the loss of his beloved wife that is, ultimately, how he mourns and how we, as the audience, share his grief. At first, though, it's a grief worth sharing. Along with the husband, we suffer through every horrendous scrap of white-bread existence - obnoxious neighbours, rude clerks, asshole drivers, moronic small talk, bombastic bullies and creepy booze hounds. God help the wicked. Our hero is in no mood to take shit.

An obvious comparison point might be the mediocre, overrated Falling Down, but for me, Mourning Has Broken comes a bit closer to the savage satire of Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America. It never explodes into the extremities of Goldthwait's film, but it does explode with considerable force since it's a film that always feels like it's roiling just below the surface. Nolan's understated performance keeps us completely glued to the proceedings and though we know he'll become truly unhinged, it's in the tiny, almost invisible details where we feel tense. When the Husband explodes, it comes when we least expect it.

The film's sense of time, place and character seems so beautifully captured and so delicately subtle, I wish the sibling directors had placed more faith in their milieu and miss-en-scene (and Nolan) and refrained from including the mediocre score. The film's soundscape is so delicate and beautifully wrought, the cheesy guitar riffs, blarts and dum-dum-wanh-wanh moments telegraph or assert or reiterate emotions and actions in such obvious ways, and finally, it annoys in all the wrong ways. The only necessary music in the entire picture is during a haunting record store sequence and a terrific montage of the film's pop-music namesake during the end titles. If there was a film that could have lived without score and instead built on the expert use of sound, this was it.

Given how dreadful most English Canadian films are, I think it's worth pointing out that Mourning Has Broken carried the hefty price tag of $1000 via Ingrid Veninger and Stacey Donens' 1-K Wave. Most filmmakers in English Canada need only look at the invention and humanity on display here and rightfully feel the shame they most richly deserve.

"Mourning Has Broken" is in theatrical release via Indie-Can and unveiling first-run at Toronto's Royal Theatre.

OIL SANDS KARAOKE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Documentary Puts Human Face To Environmental Devastation

Director Charles Wilkinson and producer Tina Schliessler return to the subject of energy and environmental devastation in their engaging and surprisingly buoyant followup to the powerful "PEACE OUT". This time, the energy is Oil Sands workers letting off steam in a local karaoke joint. The environment continues to be assaulted, but this time, the filmmakers put a genuinely human face to the devastation of the planet. It's an entertaining, poignant AND important film - an unbeatable combination.

Oil Sands Karaoke (2013) dir. Charles Wilkinson ****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

One of the most devastating assaults upon Canada's environment continues to take place in the Alberta Oil Sands. For the faceless corporations lining the deep pockets of the very few, one of the largest deposits of petroleum on our fair planet is in - you guessed it - the Alberta Oil Sands. Fort McMurray, Alberta used to be a city until it was amalgamated with a good chunk of the region of the Oil Sands once referred to as (don't laugh, I'm not kidding) an Improvement District. Once the city and the nameless district became one, the city of Fort McMurray was no longer a city, but rather (again, don't laugh, I'm really not kidding) an urban service area.

It seems tax dollars were hard at work coming up with all that in order to more adequately serve the interests of oil companies that would find it more convenient to strip the land of its natural beauty if they only had to deal with one civic bureaucracy. Fort McMurray and surrounding areas are, you see, a major cash cow.

This area is alone responsible for generating two million barrels of oil every single day. This isn't a bad haul considering the world uses 90 million barrels of oil a day.

It is Fort McMurray where Director Charles Wilkinson and Producer Tina Schliessler, the makers of Peace Out, last year's stunning, award-winning documentary on energy consumption, have aimed their lenses. This time, the subjects are not corporate CEOs and environmental specialists, but rather, the people - the real people of Fort McMurray. Including migrant workers, the population of the amalgamated R.M. can hit heights of well over 70,000 and most of them either work in the oil business or are beholden to it with their own non-oil toils.

Corporations often think about their scads of employees as faceless hordes, but Oil Sands Karaoke seeks to give faces and names to those who break their backs out in the oil fields - haul truck drivers, small business owners and scaffolders to name but a few.

This is a movie about people, the people - working people.

Wilkinson's film treats all of them with the respect corporations don't. Focusing on five primary individuals, Wilkinson's camera eye captures who they are, where they came from, what their work is and what they hope their futures hold. Most of all, it captures their one true passion.

Bailey's Pub is a popular magnet for oil workers. It's a Karaoke Bar where the backbone of the oil industry, the hard labourers, come to express themselves through song, through music, through fellowship and camaraderie - Karaoke!

Bailey's bartender puts it simply and best - the working people of the oil industry come there for a small section of limelight, to focus themselves on pure musical (and in a sense, spiritual) expression. "It's a big escape from reality," the bartender states succinctly.

Escaping the reality of toil in the Oil Sands might be the only thing to maintain one's sense of self-worth. Yes, the wages are great, but Wilkinson cannily displays the working conditions. On the surface, all seems fine - state of the art equipment, an accent on workplace safety and the ability to learn and work a trade to the best of one's ability.

This is all, however, skin deep.

Wilkinson uses shots of the land itself as both transition points in the narrative, but to also expose the ruination of the environment, the bleak, manmade hell that is the Oil Sands. Land scorched and scraped beyond recognition, a hazy treeless wasteland and worst of all, endless smokestacks belching clouds of filth into the air are what comprise the world these workers must live in.

It ain't pretty, but every night in the karaoke bar, all that changes. With lights in their eyes and the sounds of genuinely appreciative audiences, the workers who partake of the nightly forays into musical expression get to experience the thrill of connecting with others using their innate talents to perform.

Life transforms into a thing of genuine beauty.

We've had our share of fictional renderings of this phenomenon - whether it be John Travolta's Tony Manero tripping the light fantastic on the disco floors of Saturday Night Fever or Jennifer Beals gyrating ever-so artistically to Michael Sembello singing "Maniac" in Flashdance - but with Oil Sands Karaoke we get the real thing.

Seeing these genuinely decent working class heroes spilling out their innermost dreams through song and knowing they are the real thing - not a construct of imagination, but rather, what and who they are in life - is what provides the sort of resonance that fiction can't always deliver. Sometimes you just need to train your lens on reality.

This is what Wilkinson does so expertly and poignantly.

And yes, he tells a story. The narrative arc involves an upcoming karaoke contest at Bailey's - an event that grips Fort McMurray by the veritable short hairs - especially those who will participate in it.

One of the revelations in Oil Sands Karaoke is the alluring, passionate and genuinely talented Iceis Rain. By day, a small business owner, but by night a chanteuse of the highest order. He claims to have been the first gay person in Fort McMurray to come out and though he might, in other similar working class towns in other countries - oh, let's say, the United States - he might well be taking his life in his hands. As we come to know and love those who patronize Bailey's, he's in good hands (most of the time) - surrounded by warmth and good cheer.

All that aside, Iceis (pronounced like "Isis") Rain delivers one show-stopper after another. By the time we get to the big Karaoke contest, Iceis knocks us completely on our collective asses. The performance is infused with a strange blend of sadness and elation - a kind of melancholy that has the power to lift our spirits to the Heavens - and does so with a virtuosity that captures it so indelibly that many will be moved to tears. I know I was.

Oil Sands Karaoke is quite unlike any documentary about the environment that you'll ever see. It's about the people. And as is my wont when compelled, I'm always happy to paraphrase that great line Jimmy Stewart has in It's a Wonderful Life. With taste and genuine emotion, Wilkinson sheds light upon all those "who do most of the living and dying in this town."

It can't get more environmental than that.

"Oil Sands Karaoke" launches on a limited theatrical run beginning in Toronto November 8 (4pm and 9pm daily) at the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas via Avi Federgreen's Indie-Can. Free to visit the Carlton Cinema website directly by clicking HERE.


HERE ARE SOME FANTASTIC DOCUMENTARIES YOU CAN PURCHASE DIRECTLY FROM HERE (AND SUPPORT THE MAINTENANCE OF THIS SITE) BY CLICKING THE HANDY AMAZON LINKS BELOW:

SOLO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013 - Competence is always a dirty word.

Solo (2013) **
Dir. Isaac Cravit
Starring: Annie Clark, Daniel Kash, Richard Clarkin,
Stephen Love, Alyssa Capriotti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A teen babe with "issues" takes a job as a summer camp counsellor. Part of the required initiation is for new employees to spend two nights alone on a remote island. The island in question was the site of a tragedy many years ago. It is purportedly haunted. Weird shit happens. Those whom you think are psychotic are not. Those whom you think are nice are psychotic. Confrontations occur. Good people die. Some good people are rescued. The evil entity is killed. The teen babe is safe. Movie Finished. 83 precious minutes of your life that you'll never get back.

There you have it. Solo in a nutshell. There's no real reason to see it now. Just go home and watch John Carpenter's Halloween for the umpteenth billionth time. It's so good you'll think you've never seen it before.

You see, debut feature films like Solo put me in a really foul mood. Some of these first long form efforts are blessed with an immediate, explosive announcement to the universe that we are dealing with a filmmaker who is endowed with the greatest gift a director can bestow upon the world of cinema - a voice, a distinctive style, an unmistakeable point of view, a sense that this is who the filmmaker really is. Then there's a second category - debut features so awful you might as well have shoved a gun into your mouth and pulled the trigger instead of watching it.

Solo, the debut feature film written and directed by Isaac Cravit is in neither of those categories. It holds a very special place in the pantheon of celluloid dreams - it's bereft of dreams. It has neither an original voice nor one of mind numbing ineptitude. Both have their virtues since both make an audience feel something. Not so for Solo (and so many, many others of its ilk). These are movies which allow you to leave their meagre clasp feeling absolutely nothing. It is the third and perhaps most horrendous category of all debut features. Solo, joins this unenviable pinnacle of competence with all the eagerness of a dog about to get a Milk Bone.

When filmmakers enter the fray with a first feature that actually excites you - not only because of the film itself, but what you sense this director will deliver in the future. Their declarations feel like the following:

The Soska Sisters (Dead Hooker in a Trunk):
"We're going to fuck your ass with a red-hot poker, but you'll enjoy it. We promise."

John Paizs (Crime Wave):
"Laughs derived from silence are golden."

David Lynch (Eraserhead):
"In Heaven, everything is fine..."

John Carpenter (Dark Star):
"I love movies more than life itself - have a fuckin' beer."

Guy Maddin: (Tales From The Gimli Hospital):
"I'm a dreamer, aren't we all?"

Kevin Smith: (Clerks):
"Fuck."

All are unique declarations (mediated through my own interpretive imagination, of course) and I could spend a few hundred more words doing the same for a myriad of debut features that declare themselves with complete originality on the part of the filmmaker.

There is, however, one declaration that depresses me even more than whatever the aforementioned incompetents of the second category of debut works might declare via their sheer inability to make movies. It is a declaration I see and hear far too often these days - especially since filmmaking has been embraced by so many marginally talented, though competent, by-the-numbers types as an - ugh! - career choice (as opposed to a genuine calling). Every single one of these filmmakers in the dreaded third category announces the same thing. They never waiver from it. They are presenting to the world their - double ugh! - calling card.

With Solo, Canadian director Isaac Cravit joins the club of voice-free directors when he declare (by virtue of his debut film):

"Look. I can use a dolly. Look. I can shoot coverage. Look. I am ready to direct series television drama and straight to V.O.D. and home video product for indiscriminating audiences looking to fill their worthless lives with content as opposed to something exceptional."

There's absolutely nothing new, surprising or exciting about this pallid genre effort save for its competence. Solo is blessed with some superb production value, to be sure. The locations are perfect, they're nicely shot by Stephen Chung and the combination of on-location sound and overall mixing and design seems much more exquisite and artful than the movie deserves. The cutting by Adam Locke-Norton, given the dullness of the coverage, manages to keep the proceedings moving at a nice clip. The score by Todor Kobakov is especially superb - rich, dense and one that enhances the film - again - much further beyond the movie's narrow scope. (There's one four note riff in the score that should have been excised by the filmmakers at a very early juncture, but save for that, it's a winner in all respects.)

The small cast is also superb. Thank God they're in the film since they're really one of the few things that do make the otherwise forgettable affair worth seeing.

The camera loves leading lady Annie Clark and she's clearly a fine actress - she makes the most of a hackneyed been-there-done-that babe-in-peril role. Two of Canada's finest character actors - Daniel Kash and Richard Clarkin are always worth looking at. They've got expressive, malleable mugs and like the best of the best, they rise well above the dull competence of the movie.

I especially enjoyed Stephen Love's performance and hope to see more of him - he's got very nice offbeat good looks, a sense of humour, a touch of malevolence and he frankly looks and feels like a young Canuck James Franco.

Is the movie well made? Hell yes! Is it anything special? Will you leave the theatre soaring? Will you even remember it two minutes after you see it? The answer to all those questions is a resounding "No." Sadly, most audiences these days are perfectly happy with competence. To them, I say, knock yourself out, losers.

The rest of us can cherish the memories of great work and look forward to the next film endowed with both a voice and more delectable frissons than you can shake a stick at.

"Solo" is playing at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2013. Visit the website HERE. It's inexplicably distributed by Indie-Can Entertainment, a visionary young company with some very powerful and important works on its slate. Ah well, even visionaries need to score some quick easy dough. If anything, "Solo" has that written all over it and I'm sure we'll see more of the same from its - ahem - auteur.

THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE - Review By Greg Klymkiw (with added material) as it continues a successful run across Canada at the BYTOWNE CINEMA in Ottawa September 23rd to 25th, CINÉMA DU PARC, Montreal September 29th to October 3rd, REGINA PUBLIC LIBRARY THEATRE, Regina on October 3rd and PRINCESS CINEMA, Waterloo on October 3rd.

These are the GHOSTS in OUR MACHINE

THE GHOSTS IN OUR MACHINE by Liz Marshall and featuring animal photographer and activist Jo-Anne McArthur, continues its successful run across Canada and can next be seen at the BYTOWNE CINEMA in Ottawa September 23rd to 25th, CINÉMA DU PARC, Montreal September 29th to October 3rd, REGINA PUBLIC LIBRARY THEATRE, Regina on October 3rd and PRINCESS CINEMA, Waterloo on October 3rd.

If you have not seen it, SEE IT!

If you have seen it, SEE IT AGAIN!

I cannot begin to stress the beauty, craft and most notably, the IMPORTANCE of this film. For me, the most astonishing element is how much emphasis it places on the individual spirits and personalities animals have and as such, are no different that humans when subjected to abuse. Since accidentally and now fervently becoming a rescuer of farm animals from abuse and certain death, I've seen things out there in the world that have sickened me beyond belief and I've furthermore experienced - first-hand - what it's like to discover diverse personalities in a variety of animals in my family's care. Seeing Liz Marshall's film worked as both an eye-opener and corroboration of my own experiences. It's a **** picture with ***** subject matter that will both contribute to its shelf life and masterpiece potential.

Pumpkin's Story: We Love them.
They love us back. The love is real.
Believe it!

Just recently, we were at a country livestock auction and happily purchased five more chickens that had almost never seen the light of day and lived exclusively in tiny, dirty coops. Even more horrifically, to see how many foul and poultry were shoved into tiny cages and forced to stay there for hours in the stifling heat until the auction was over instilled this desire to buy all of them for the highest price imaginable to save them from this suffering. Well, we saved five. That was all we could afford.

At this same auction, there is an attached flea market replete with puppy mill purveyors selling a variety of dogs - all shoved into horribly cramped surroundings. It's absolutely revolting.

Close to my heart were these sick, poor ponies trussed to a turnstile and forced to walk endlessly in circles with kids on their backs in blazing sun with nary a sign of water and most certainly no food. THESE ANIMALS HAVE SPIRITS AND PERSONALITIES, but looking at them shuffling round and round, they all shared the same expression: MISERY.

It's this notion of stabling equines and feeding them only twice a day that really pisses me off. These animals are being abused because it's the way things are done because it's convenient for the horsemen to do so. Fucking assholes!

All equines have delicate digestive systems and need to be feeding and digesting almost constantly. They need to graze and be free as much as possible - preferably in woodlands, NOT wide open spaces under hot sun with no shade.

And here were six poor ponies working their equine butts off, not being fed, nor being given fresh water or even a proper rest between pony back rides for kids. Seeing the tiny trailer these ponies would have been crammed into to endure a three-hour-long two-way trip from their stable to the flea market in addition to the aforementioned cruelties was heartbreaking beyond belief.

ANIMAL TORTURE RUNNING RAMPANT!

Don't miss the aforementioned opportunities to see The Ghosts in Our Machine.

For those who have yet to read it, the following is a cut and paste (but with new, added material) of my original review from the film's first platform of theatrical release.

"[At] the San Fernando Valley ranch of the late [Western superstar of over 300 films] Tom Mix...the most famous horse since Pegasus stood in the mildness of his last few moments alive... Tony was in no sense a trick horse. But he was intelligent and had what Tom called 'a genius for acting'... Now Tony was very old (39). Most of his teeth were gone...Since Tom Mix's death two years ago, there had been a vacant look in Tony's eyes."

- James Agee, "Exit Tony", Time Magazine, Oct 19,1942

The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013) ****
Dir. Liz Marshall
Review By Greg Klymkiw

The following is an expanded revision of a piece that was originally published before the film's world premiere during the Hot Docs 2013 Film Festival.

Okay, so something funny happened on the way to my home in the country. My wife and child, both being inveterate tree-huggers, got the craziest idea. What they wanted to do sounded like one hell of a lot of work. They promised I would not have to avail my services upon any aspect of their venture. Well, good intentions and all that, but now I find I'm not only a gentleman farmer, but involved in the rescue of animals living in horrid conditions and headed for inevitable slaughter.

I'm certainly no anti-environmental redneck, but some might think I am when I admit I'm not fond of nature. Yet, I do love living in the country. What I love most about it is not the great outdoors, but sitting in my dark office, smoking cigarettes, watching movies and writing. I occasionally step over to the window, part the curtains briefly and look outside to acknowledge - Ah yes, nature! I then happily return to my prodigious activities.

You see, prior to becoming a gentleman farmer, I liked the IDEA of nature, the IDEA of being in deep bush, the IDEA of living off-grid on solar energy. Well, more than the ideas, really, since I did enjoy all of the above in practice, but in my own way.

Now, I have animals. Shitloads of them that my wife, daughter and eventually I rescued from misery with the assistance of a super-cool Amish dude.

Needless to say, when watching Liz Marshall's film The Ghosts In Our Machine, I was completely blown away. You see, having experienced the joy of coming to know a variety of animals, I eventually realized that all of God's creatures I mistook for being little more than blobs of meat with nothing resembling character, spirit or intelligence was just downright stupid. I've always had dogs and THEY certainly have character, spirit and intelligence - so why NOT chickens? Or donkeys? Or hell, even bees. And, as I learned, they ALL are imbued with the stuff we have. Marshall's film, aside from it being a brave, superbly crafted piece of work is special because it exposes that very fact to those who might never know what I and others who are surrounded by animals came to know.

In presenting this notion of the individuality and spirit of all animals, The Ghosts In Our Machine does so by focusing upon someone I'd have to classify as a saint.

Photographer Jo-Anne McArthur is not only an astounding artist of the highest order, but by restricting her activities to mostly photographing animals in the most horrendous captivity, she's risked both her life and mental health. Given my recently-acquired predilection for animal rights, I watched Marshall's film three times. Yes, on a first viewing I was far too emotionally wound up to keep my cap of critical detachment on, but after additional screenings that I used to temper my visceral response I'm perfectly convinced of the film's importance in terms of both subject AND cinema.

It's a finely wrought piece of work that takes huge risks on so many levels in order to present a stunningly etched portrait of the heroic McArthur and HER subjects - all those animals being tortured to fill the bellies of ignoramuses and line the pockets of corporate criminals. (Not that I'm planning to go Vegan anytime soon, but I do believe that ANYONE who consumes any animal product derived from cruel meat factories as opposed to natural free-range is no better than a torturer and murderer.)

Not kidding about that, either.

What you see in this film will shock you. There is no denying what both Marshall and McArthur see and capture with their respective cameras. Creatures with individual souls and personalities are being hunted, incarcerated in conditions akin to concentration camps and/or bred in captivity and tortured until they are slaughtered. Equally frustrating are the corporate boneheads in a variety of publishing industries devoted to generating purported journalism. Her meetings with literary agents are astoundingly frustrating to watch.

The agents clearly love her photographs, realize their importance and recognize their artistry, but they must bear the bad news that the work will be a tough sell. It will sell, but placing it will take time and diligence which, the agents appear happy to do. The difficulty with which McArthur must additionally suffer to get her work published and to bring attention to these atrocities gets me so magma-headed I need to almost be physically restrained from going "postal". Readers, purportedly need the right time and place to be delivered this material and the corporate pigs of the publishing industry at all levels display trepidation over exposing such materials to their readers.

Seeing the problems of getting great important work to market is especially important within the context of what, ultimately, the film accomplishes by bringing the entire issue of animal rights to the fore by using McArthur's photographs to present the irrefutable proof that all of God's creatures are individuals.

And yes, the film achieves what some might think is impossible - it makes us see and believe that animals have souls and that the pain, suffering and torture most of them are put through is, akin to the atrocities mankind dares perpetrate against members of its own species. There's an overwhelming feeling throughout the movie that if what's already been done (and continues to be done) to other human animals BY human animals, how far will the culling go? This feeling, this question, is rooted in the eyes of the animals we see through both McArthur and Marshall's lenses.

One of the most terrifying and harrowing things you'll see on film is a sequence where Marshall follows McArthur deep into a hidden breeding farm where animals are held. We fear, not only for our human subjects, but eventually we're brought face to face with the torture through incarceration and neglect of creatures that have been put on this Earth for one sole purpose - DEATH. And yes, perhaps one looks at the eyes of these sickly creatures with that of our own human perception and intellect that infuses us with this feeling, but the fact remains that what we see is horrendous.

Most indelibly, what we experience is what it's like to look into the eyes of living creatures who, by pain and instinct, KNOW that they're in a place they shouldn't be, that KNOW something horrible will happen, that KNOW they will die. This is what ultimately reminds us of what it would be like to look into the eyes of human beings, human animals - for that's what we are, no more, no less - and have a glimpse into the hearts, minds and very souls of all those forcibly incarcerated, beaten, tortured and exterminated.

Simple shots of livestock trucks with pigs going to slaughter, horribly squeezed into these cages on wheels and some of the "lucky" ones being able to stick their snouts out through the air holes and twitching furiously for both oxygen and their last sniffs of life have an effect that's almost beyond powerful.

It's sickening.

This is what we do to animals and to humans. It's one and the same. We're one and the same. So many well-meaning Liberals will go out of their way to boycott goods produced by child labour, but how many of them boycott food and/or goods created by the systematic torture and slaughter of innocent animals? How many of them have looked into the eyes of chickens squeezed together by the thousands into corporate farms, seldom seeing (if ever) the real light of day? How many of these same people eating this poultry have given one thought to how their meal has been delivered by keeping a creature in subhuman conditions with 24-hour lights on them (many need light to eventually lay eggs) and no medical care when so many of them acquire painful sores and deformities from their incarceration?

Mankind has blood on its hands - the Crusades, Auschwitz, the Holodomor, Vietnam, Afghanistan - the list goes on. And that's the blood of human beings. The torture, incarceration and slaughter of animals more than rivals this.

As for those chickens, I keep thinking about our own free-range chickens - rescued by us from places where they were raised to be slaughtered. Now they live out their lives in peace. They wander about the grounds with freedom. They lay eggs everyday. But what's even more powerful is how each one of these chickens have individual PERSONALITIES. One is a big, fat, cuddly and friendly little goof that cries for our attention and calms right down when it's picked up and held. Another is a tough-minded devil-may-care, no-nonsense gal who keeps the others in line. Then, there's the weak one - she's picked on by the other chickens and lives the life of a loner.

Recently she disappeared and we, my family and I, were heartbroken. Deep down we knew she was taken out by either a fisher, a hawk, an eagle or an owl - maybe a coyote, wolf or even a bear taking an early sojourn from its den. What we also knew is that our little chicken was outside, wandering freely through a beautiful forest, the rays of sun filtering through the leaves upon it. Yes, it died. But it's death would have been swift - an instant predatory kill. It was not forced to live in a cage with lights beaming on it constantly, developing sores and infections while it popped out eggs until its egg-laying feed would be changed to "finishing" feed. That's what it's called. Imagine: FINISHING FEED. Pumped with all the nutrients AND chemicals necessary to fatten it up before slaughter.

Yes, nature has given us a food chain that involves animals being killed for food by other animals, so while we were sad about losing our chicken, we knew it had had a good, full life with care and love - if not from its "colleagues", by us. And now it was gone. Naturally. In the way it had been intended to leave this Earth.

This is a luxury most poultry is not afforded. Yet we eat it, many of us knowing what suffering it's gone through.

Happily, there was an extra-special surprise in store for us. Many hours later, our missing chicken was not dead after all and came, poking and pecking its way out of the deep bush.

Sadly, several days later, it disappeared into the woods again. We like to think it found a wild rooster. That it lives somewhere out there with its mate and chicks. We know how unlikely this is, but it's a fantasy we know is impossible to fuel for all those poor chickens crammed into laying farms - forced to generate eggs for a year, then sent to slaughter.

I'll admit these are things that enrich The Ghosts In Our Machine, at least for me, but I think for those who have not quite experienced this revelation - that animals are indeed distinct individuals - it will be a powerful and deeply moving eye-opener.

You must see this movie.

It presents a truth that so many are willing to ignore or refute. If you're a coward, loser and/or asshole and don't want to see the truth, then fuck you!

"The Ghosts In Our Machine" is currently in limited theatrical release via Indie-Can Entertainment.

BLACKFISH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - They're stolen from their mothers, held captive and forced to submit.

Blackfish (2013) ****
Dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Imagine a world where your child is ripped from your clutches before your very eyes and you can do nothing about it. Imagine that same child then being held captive for the rest of its life in the most abominable conditions. Imagine your child being tortured, deprived of food as punishment and forced to engage in all manner of humiliating, unnatural acts for the foul, perverse edification of those who get off on it. Imagine your child's unending sorrow, frustration and pain - both physical and psychological.

Imagine a point where your child, when given a chance, lashes out at its captors and savagely kills them. Would you blame your child for taking the life of one of its captors? Of course not. If given half a chance you'd tear the sons of bitches to pieces yourself.

Who wouldn't?

The problem here is that this particular pervert, this aberrant, pus-swilling scum-bucket of slime is not your average garden variety serial killer. No, this pile of rancid excrement is amongst the foulest of them all.

Not unlike the Dole corporation that was properly eviscerated by Fredrik Gertten in his groundbreaking Big Boys Gone Bananas and all the corporate filth that torture animals as seen in Liz Marshall's extraordinary The Ghosts in Our Machine, we're talking specifically about the Florida-based SeaWorld, a corporate entity that reeks of the vilest lucre, like any vat of raw sewage would - raking in billions of dollars at the expense of Orcas and other harmless creatures that are stolen from their natural habitats and/or bred against their nature in captivity, then tortured.

By extension, this includes ANY water park that houses ANY creatures of the oceans for the edification of drooling inbred humanoids and their snot-nosed, brain-bereft progeny (including Canada's disgusting Niagara Falls attraction MarineLand with its sickeningly offensive TV commercial jingle "Everyone Loves MarineLand"). No, we do not love MarineLand. Everytime the commercial comes on television, my own little girl used to cry and now that she's a bit older, she tosses whatever she can in disgust at the TV screen.

"The Orca brain just screams out, 'INTELLIGENCE!'" - Blackfish interviewee Lori Marino, neuroscientist

With Blackfish, filmmaker Gabriella Cowperthwaite fashions an eminently compulsive big-screen experience. Structured like a procedural cop thriller, we follow the mystery involving Tilikum, a 5000-kilo Orca - responsible for killing two of its trainers and indirectly, the death of another in three different water parks.

Using an expert selection of archival footage, all brand-new interviews and illustrated reconstructions of data and court proceedings, this is a superbly edited film that initially seems to point its finger at the Orca itself, but as the film proceeds it brilliantly morphs its villain from Tilikum to the amusement parks that house sea creatures for aquatic performances and in particular, SeaWorld.

This is filmmaking of the highest order.

On a journalistic level, it digs deep to expose the truth and on a narrative level, it mines its subject for greater truths. Again, it's proof positive, at least to me, the importance of documentary - not so much a form, but rather, a genre of cinema in and of itself, and as such, delineating the differences between documentary work that is dull and information-based (most TV doc series) with that which goes the distance - using every resource of film as an art to create a work of both scope and profundity.

Even more fascinating is the film's perspective in a journalistic sense. There is no clear (or in the case of a lot of bad films, a sledgehammer) to deliver a Western Union-like "message" to its audience. Certainly in the case of Tilikum's plight (and that of all the poor creatures abused and tortured in such parks), the film could have effectively been structured as a plea to save these animals and end the existence of such parks, but this approach was absolutely not necessary since Cowperthwaite's integrity as a journalist and artistry as a filmmaker allows her to assemble "just the facts, M'am" - giving voice to those whose voices have been stifled for far too long.

The overall effect of presenting factual information in this fashion (wherein the seams of the film's expert craft are invisible) allows audiences to formulate their own response which, for most reasonable and intelligent audiences will be a mixture of anger and sadness that we, as a species, continue to work well beyond the scope of our place in the food chain, to exploit, subjugate and in many cases threaten complete genocidal annihilation of other living creatures (and by extension, our own).

The movie is finally not a WHOdunnit, but rather a bit of a HOWdunnit and a whole lot of WHYdunnit.

Cowperthwaite presents the factual story with the capture of Tilikum off the shores of Iceland on behalf of SeaLand, the grim and thankfully now-defunct Canadian marine park in Victoria, British Columbia. During this segment, we learn that Tilikum was only 4-years-old when it was snatched from its Mother.

Doing the math on that means this: Female Orcas can live up to 100-years-old in the wild, and even though males live traditionally fewer years - an Orca at the age of four is, for all intents and purposes, "a child". It not only needs its Mother, but she in turn is still there to nurture, love and protect.

It's been scientifically proven that whales and dolphins have a part of their brain that not even humans possess - one that allows these animals an extremely rich emotional life - a sense of family, of caring and love are not only inherent in these creatures, but the intensity of these emotions is so extreme it makes the human equivalent pale in comparison.

One Orca fisherman is interviewed about what it was like to capture an Orca toddler from its mother. What he describes - in support of the aforementioned intensity inherent in Orcas - will not only evoke tears from the audience, but is, in fact, something that, in the telling, has the fisherman himself on the verge of breaking down emotionally.

The film describes the physical and emotional trauma to Tilikum due to its kidnapping and subsequent incarceration in the tiniest space imaginable at the wretched SeaLand. It's here where Tilikum kills his first human, a trainer who slipped into the water with him.

Her death was not a pretty sight - especially not to the shocked customers who witnessed the woman's death, yet none of whom were ever contacted by any authority to present their eyewitness testimony. Luckily, Cowperthwaite captures it for the film,

SeaLand in Florida - knowing all too well that Tilikum had killed a trainer in B.C. - bought the Orca. Supposedly it was for breeding purposes only, but eventually it was enlisted to perform in the SeaLand show. Yes, Tilikum's sperm is used for breeding, but the manner in which this is done is presented in the film as clearly painful and cruel for the beleaguered Orca.

It was at SeaLand where Tilikum killed again - this time, a very experienced and beloved trainer who, among other indignities, was scalped, had her arm ripped off to be enjoyed as an Orca snack. The official State agency for health and safety in the workplace took SeaLand to court over this and won a decision to keep trainers and whales separated.

SeaLand is, however, appealing this decision. This is clearly their LEGAL right, but one wonders if it is a MORALLY reasonable right. Corporations are, however, not human. They have no sense of morals, nor do they distinguish between right and wrong in their single-minded hunger to make money.

They are entities unto themselves.

The important feature documentary The Corporation by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan (a companion piece to Bakan's book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power") offer perhaps the most astonishing exploration of corporate mentality in recent ddecades. On the film's website we get some excellent background on both the book and film's contentions:

". . . law professor and legal theorist Joel Bakan contends the modern business corporation is created by law to function like a psychopathic personality. [. . .]Corporations are required by law to elevate their own interests above those of others, making them prone to prey upon and exploit others without regard for legal rules or moral limits. Corporate social responsibility, though sometimes yielding positive results, most often serves to mask the corporation's true character, not to change it. [. . .] The corporation's unbridled self interest victimizes individuals, the environment, and even shareholders . . . Despite its flawed character, governments have freed the corporation from legal constraints through deregulation, and granted it ever greater power over society . . ."

Well, shut my mouth! As we see in Cowperthwaite's film, SeaLand's response to pretty much everything discussed in the aforementioned position taken by The Corporation.

Who is blamed for this woman's death? The corporation? Nope. They, certainly won't take the rap.

Uh, Tilikum? Uh, well . . . he is the Orca who chowed down on her, but the spin won't place the blame on the animal (as well, ultimately, it shouldn't).

In the film, we see clearly that the burden of responsibility in terms of SeaWorld's media spin and legal defense is foisted upon the trainer who, of course, is dead and unable to defend herself. (It's kind of like the Orcas. They can't speak "human" and are unable to defend themselves against the indignities they suffer.)

What's even more appalling are the outright lies and inaccuracies shoved into the brains of staff at the aquatic park. Time after time, Cowperthwaite's film delivers a litany of straight-faced ignorance on the part of the park's employees - much of it flying in the face of genuinely expert testimony on the part of other trainers, scientists and researchers the film interviews.

Tilikum is not responsible for the third death we're shown in the film. His sperm is, though. Four of his progeny are sold to a notoriously irresponsible Spanish water park where one of the Mini-Me Orcas dines on another experienced trainer.

By the way, some of the nicest people in the film are all the former trainers interviewed who genuinely display love for these great creatures, but have to sadly admit how they were duped (sometimes even by their own emotions) into believing both corporate spin, outright falsehoods and/or withheld information.

Hilariously and predictably, SeaWorld is going out of its way to attack Cowperthwaite and her film on the eve of its theatrical release. Her film, however, makes it very clear that SeaWorld was given numerous opportunities to present their side of the story in the film, but chose not to.

They can attack the film all they like.

Who in their right mind - save for the boobs who fill such amusement parks with their spawn - will even begin to believe SeaWorld's claims of Cowperthwaite's "unfair" portrait?

Please see this movie! Please see it with your children and discuss it with them! Teachers should urge their media buyers to secure this film and then make sure children see it. They will be less likely to demand their parents take them to these places. Hopefully, a whole new generation of kids can be inspired by this film (and others like Liz Marshall's Ghosts in Our Machine).

Hopefully after seeing this film, audiences will NEVER AGAIN patronize aquatic parks like SeaWorld, MarineLand and all others of the same ilk. Giving money to these corporate entities is to allow them to profit from the torture of animals - all in the guise of entertainment and education.

Sea creatures belong in the sea - not in grubby tanks where they're forced to perform tricks before morons who cough up their hard-earned dough to be entertained by this. There's enough garbage already generated by Hollywood to fulfill the needs of the Great Unwashed for mindless stimulation.

There's no need to torture real animals for that.

"Blackfish" is being released via Kinosmith and will begin its theatrical run at the TIFF Bell Lightbox

Oh, and if you actually do go to one of these aquatic clip joints, and notice that the dorsal fins of the not-so-happy sea creatures are flopped over, please enjoy the following links handily available on the wonderful Ocean Advocate website to YouTube clips posted by Heather Murphy and Jeffrey Ventre that will provide two explanations for this. The first is from SeaWorld. They have many "interesting" explanations for Dorsal Fin Collapse:



However, if the SeaWorld explanation doesn't cut it for you, perhaps you'd be better off with the excellent paper by Wende Alexandra Evans HERE

Or you might also enjoy the following clip (posted by Jeffrey Ventre on YouTube) which features a conversation on the matter with an actual expert in Orca study, Dr. Astrid van Ginneken:



To read my review of Liz Marshall's brilliant, heartbreaking and poignant The Ghosts in Our Machine from Indie-Can Entertainment, please click HERE.

To read my review of Fredrik Gertten's powerful portrait of corporate greed and corruption Big Boys Gone Bananas (including an interview with Gerrten), pleese click HERE.

For more information on The Corporation, visit HERE.