DawnWatch: The Cove, film on dolphin slaughter, coved in Salon 1/22/08

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free newsletter for those interested.....- DawnWatch Thursday, January 22, 2009 1:07 AMDawnWatch: "The Cove," film on dolphin slaughter, coved in Salon 1/22/08The Cove, a new film about the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan, got a lot of buzz at Sundance this year and is getting some great press. Andrew O'Hehir's blog about Indie film, "Beyond the Multiplex," in the online magazine Salon, currently features "The Cove" in a piece headed "Who Killed Flipper?"O'Hehir interviews Ric O'Barry and Louie Psihoyos at the Sundance film festival. He writes, "one-time dolphin trainer O'Barry and former National Geographic photographer Psihoyos are here in the Utah mountains with a devastating and highly engaging documentary called 'The Cove,' which has played to standing ovations at Sundance and is likely to change what you think about humanity's relationship to the oceans. As O'Barry puts it, after you see 'The Cove' you may never buy a ticket to a captive dolphin performance at an aquarium again."He writes that "director Psihoyos' central subject is the exciting and unlikely 'Ocean's Eleven'-style raid he and O'Barry lead into a secluded coastal cove in Taiji, Japan, that holds a terrible secret. Hundreds of dolphins are corralled by local fishermen and herded into the cove, where the finest physical specimens are collected and sold to trainers at prices up to $150,000 each or more. What happens to the others?"As O'Barry had known for years, the dolphins not picked for export were being slaughtered by the thousands, butchered and sold for meat in Japanese markets (often falsely labeled as another kind of seafood). From his perspective, this was a senseless massacre perpetrated against a highly intelligent, self-aware species. It was also a potential crime against humanity. As predators at the top of the food chain, dolphins are the unhappy recipients of the worst heavy-metal pollution in the world's oceans. Dolphin meat that was being routinely fed to Japanese schoolchildren, for instance, tested many times -- sometimes hundreds of times -- above the legal limit for mercury."Using clandestine equipment, some of it planted by free-divers in a midnight raid, Psihoyos captures on film what happens in that Taiji cove. I saw the film at a pre-Sundance screening for New York film critics -- pretty much the most jaded audience you could imagine -- and we sat and watched that footage in dead, haunted silence. Beautifully photographed and highly entertaining as it is, 'The Cove' is also one of the most wrenching movies you'll ever see. It raises troubling questions about how badly we have befouled the 70 percent of our planet that's covered with water, and about why we have treated the species closest to us in intelligence with such cruelty and contempt."The piece includes an interview with O'Barry and Psihoyos, which you can read or listen to online. It opens with O'Barry saying:"I spent the last 40 years working on that obscure issue and it's very difficult because you have to define the problem first. There doesn't appear to be a problem with dolphins in captivity. You see dolphins in a beautiful blue pool and the music's playing, the sun's out, and you're with your family. What's wrong with this picture? Unless you're hitting the dolphin with a baseball bat, you can't see the problem. The movie changes all of that."The interview is delightful. And it sounds like the film is a must-see. During the interview O'Hehir says about it:"If you're expecting some sort of dry, issues-dominated nature documentary, what you're getting is something a little bit more like a James Bond film that ends with atrocity footage at a certain point. It's extremely dramatic."You'll find the blog and interview on line at http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/01/22/dolphins_sundance/Check it out. You can leave comments right after the article on the web page, so please do, thanking O'Hehir for giving the film and issue such great coverage.You can learn more about the issue at www.SaveJapanDolphins.orgYours and the animals',Karen Dawn(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)Please go to http://tinyurl.com/9mve9r if you would like to see an NBC news piece on Karen Dawn's new book, "Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals" or go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com for reviews and a fun celeb-studded promo video. Wed Jan 21 23:04:36 2009 «¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»Paranormal_Research - Scientific Data, Health Conspiracies & Anything Strange Paranormal_ResearchSubscribe:... Paranormal_Research-