{"id":3878,"date":"2009-08-07T14:23:25","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T19:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3878"},"modified":"2010-07-28T10:13:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T14:13:36","slug":"a-review-and-podcast-on-the-cove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=3878","title":{"rendered":"A review and podcast on The Cove"},"content":{"rendered":"

Below you’ll find a review of Louie Psihoyos’ documentary, The Cove<\/em>. I’m also including a podcast about the film which I conducted with famed dictator Pol Pot, the former Prime Minister of Cambodia.
\nClick the play icon to listen to the podcast.<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Or you can download the podcast here<\/span>.<\/a>
\n(Right-click, Save Link As…)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Actor<\/a>

Actor Jeremy Piven certainly understands the importance of keeping the human population and dolphins mercury-free.<\/p><\/div>\n

The use of the yellow peril stereotype is one of the most effective ways of alienating your audience from your message. Unless, of course, that particular audience hates yellow people.<\/p>\n

Louie Psihoyos\u2019 documentary about dolphin killing in Japan, The Cove<\/em>, doesn\u2019t quite go as far to position the Japanese as backwards, funny-accented, uptight murderers, but it gets peril<\/em>ously close. Certain scenes might as well have the evil Japanese bureaucrats twiddling their yellow mustaches and ordering Flipper genocide (the anti-hero at the center of The Cove, <\/em>Richard O’Barry, was the original dolphin trainer for the Flipper<\/em> TV show, now trying to make amends). This point-of-view is a shame because The Cove<\/em> is filled with horrifying imagery, one shot from below has dying dolphins swimming away in fear and then they are obscured by the blood drenched water.<\/p>\n

\"cove3\"<\/a>The constant stacking of the deck undermines The Cove<\/em>; it gives the shocking moments a different meaning, as if they should be accompanied by insidious voiceover (\u201cthe seas ran red with blood,\u201d references to Evil Dead 2<\/em> are always appropriate). The way that Psihoyos has structured his movie, a self-described Ocean\u2019s Eleven<\/em>-style mission to expose the small fishing village in Taijii, Japan, where the fishermen are selfishly slaughtering dolphins for minimal profits (the cute dolphins are sold to places like Seaworld) and to poison school children (because of the high levels of mercury found in the meat), using Olympic-level divers, sound and camera experts, and an actual special effects wizard from Industrial Light and Magic, makes it seem like he\u2019s positing his group as proof that there\u2019s nothing that American technology and self-righteousness can\u2019t fix.<\/p>\n

Psihoyos\u2019 choice of aping Errol Morris\u2019 style (The Thin Blue Line<\/em>, The Fog of War<\/em>), especially in the use of ponderous, sneaky music score, gets him in trouble, as he\u2019s not nearly the filmmaker Morris is. Psihoyos has a real problem with repetition, as one talking head after another says practically the same exact thing throughout (\u201cif we can\u2019t stop this slaughtering, I don\u2019t know what we\u2019ll do), undermining building much in the way of tension. There\u2019s even footage of the fisherman relaxing with a cigarette directly after their orgiastic killings, laying it on way too thick.<\/p>\n

\"the_cove_008\"<\/a>Even so, The Cove<\/em> is well worth squirming through, to learn about dolphins as creatures (when in captivity, they require constant Maalox for their ulcers), the funny scenes of O\u2019Barry lying directly to the local Taijii police about his reason for being in the area, (they remain on his and his crew\u2019s tail at all times), the spinelessness of bought and paid for representatives of Caribbean countries supporting Japan\u2019s wishes to remove the International Whale Commission\u2019s ban on <\/span>whale killing<\/span><\/a><\/span> (See? Not all the villains are Japanese, some of them are poor and black too!), and the post-credits scene which proves the repeated edict that \u201ceveryone likes balloons.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/cove-podcast.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below you’ll find a review of Louie Psihoyos’ documentary, The Cove. I’m also including a podcast about the film which I conducted with famed dictator Pol Pot, the former Prime Minister of Cambodia. Click the play icon to listen to the podcast. Or you can download the podcast here. (Right-click, Save Link As…) The use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[5188,5081,393,5086,130,5069,5088,3973,435,743,5071,5076,5079,701,5074,5084,789,5075,5078,5072,5073,4600,602,140,688,4993,5089,2806,1684,5189,5082,436,4331,5083,586,5090,5077,3978,5080,5087,5085,259,5070],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}