FrackNation (2013)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Phelim McAleer in "FrackNation" provides a well researched, thorough, entertaining, and scientific rebuttal to the emotional pleas provided in Josh Fox's "GasLand." Opponents of hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) would have us believe that the human push-and-pull of fueling civilization versus conserving the biosphere is a left-versus-right or climate change supporter versus denier phenomenon; in fact it is a conflict of science versus emotion. This is the genius of "GasLand": we want to get emotionally angry over a cause. "FrackNation," however, tosses some ice onto those smoldering embers with cold facts.Nothing is more damaging to the platform of "GasLand" supporters than Fox's multiple refusals to answer pointed questions from McAleer:McAleer: "Isn't it true that decades before fracking started, that there was methane in the water there?" (regarding the flammable tap water) Fox: "Can you identify yourself?" McAleer: "My name is Philem McAleer." Fox: "Okay, where are you from?" McAleer: "I'm a journalist."Fox: "Journalist from where?" McAleer: "From Ireland." Fox: "From Ireland?" McAleer: "Yes. Isn't it true..." Fox: "You're concerned about the fracking going on in Ireland?" McAleer: "No, I'm concerned about the accuracy of the documentary."Fox: "You're a journalist for what paper?"On the surface, a cause's champion refusing to answer the opposition is unsettling but it goes further; Fox's thinly veiled attempts to impugn the credentials of McAleer--even his nationality--and his absolute refusal to respond to challenges to "GasLand's" documentary authenticity leave the watcher mentally ticking off points in McAleer's column. But there's more.At another point, Fox repeatedly refuses to engage MacAleer in conversation at an event held at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Eventually McAleer and his director are ejected from the event... scientific dialog indeed. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, McAleer obtains video from the US Government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the largest environmental regulatory body in the world. In this video, the Sautner family--the champions of "GasLand"--were presented with the results of an EPA sampling of their well water, demonstrating that the well water was not contaminated. The Sautners react with emotion: the wife storms out, the husband demanding the results are false, and the EPA representative stating "we found no contaminants."Scientific and methodical thinking people of the entire political spectrum are forced by this film to consider the evidence of the hydraulic fracturing issue and see the opponents reacting with emotional pleas and the supporters providing clear and well documented science. --oversoul

Speaking now as a less extreme environmentalist - this director is professional and not scared to confront opponents head-on sometimes reminding me of Michael Moore. He also uncovers a great deal of misinformation. His "investigation" spans all the way from Western Europe, thru New England, down to Texas and finally to California. Sorry I did not see this one a long time ago......it helped me to get a clearer understanding of the real issues because it references very reliable and reputable sources and solid scientific data. I could only find one piece of misinformation in the documentary......For those whose motto is... "My mind is made up so don't try to confuse me with facts"..... do not watch this documentary.... it will just exacerbate your state of confusion!

FrackNation sets out to discredit the claims made in the feature length documentary film Gasland and does so quite effectively, using mostly the same journalistic techniques as Gasland itself: cherry picking evidence, cynical editing of interviews and conversations to show detractors in a negative light, misdirection etc. For example, there's a particularly irrelevant sequence in which a poor Polish grandmother speaks about the hardship she faces in paying her energy bills. It has nothing to do with objective debate about fracking whatsoever, but cynically manipulates the viewer's emotional response to the film's message (Gasland uses the same trick with sob stories of lost property values and health woes, unsubstantiated by evidence). It's curious that the majority of popular feature length documentaries follow the same basic formula: a highly persuasive attack on some phenomena or other drenched in enough ideological bias to make the editors at Fox News blush.As is fairly typical for documentary films on such emotive subjects, people who agree with the filmmaker's point of view rate it highly and rave about the film's objectivity while those who are predisposed against that point of view disparage it as industry propaganda and attack the credibility of the filmmakers. If like me to start with no pre-formed opinions on the subject of Fracking, you may find yourself very much persuaded by watching either Gasland or FrackNation, but even if you watch both, you will not have received much in the way of balanced and objective information on the subject. To get that, you need to check other, less biased sources of information. I read articles on the subject from Wikipedia, New Scientist, the United States Geological Survey and a variety of news organisations and watched both movies, and the opinion I formed was as follows: the jury is still out. There isn't very much reliable evidence that fracking causes water contamination, earthquakes or any of the other things it is blamed for, but it does appear to also be true that there are some regulatory shortcomings and independent research doesn't seem to have caught up with the pace of development in the industry. In other words, fracking is probably a good thing but we need to do more to prove that scientifically.I rated FrackNation 6/10 based on the fact that it made me think about the issues it raised and helped me to form an opinion on it's chosen subject, but in a way that was incomplete and in some ways unhelpful. It was fairly interesting to watch, but I strongly encourage anyone interested in this subject to consult sources of differing viewpoints.

When I happened across this movie 20 minutes into it, I thought, "How clever of Big Energy, hiring this humble filmmaker to create pro-fracking propaganda for them." But the longer I watched, the clearer it became to me that McAleer wasn't advocating fracking, just pursuing facts and not pushing anything. I came away with a realization that yeah! there really is another side to the "conventional wisdom." I'm guessing the majority of people who have even heard of fracking are against it because of what they've been fed by "green" types helped by media that are more lazy than biased. I hope McAleer's message will somehow reach people whose attitude is, "Don't confuse me with facts."