Movie directors are ramping up ‘cli-fi’ movies for climate-anxious audiences: November 2014

UPDATE: The annual Cli Fi Movie Awards has launched worldwide with the 2014 winners listed below. The list will go public with major media headlines on February 15, 2015, a week before the Oscars. But the soft rollout here now is the real thing. SPREAD THE WORD!

There are now enough cli-fi films being made that we are curating an Oscars-type award to honor and draw attention to the top movies in the genre. By top movies, we mean “most engaging and meaningful” as cli-fi cinema.

about glitz or glamour or movie stars. They are about the very future of our planet. Hollywood has a big role to play and indie movies, too.

AWARD ''STATUETTE'' PHOTO:

http://thefutureofreading101.blogspot.tw/2014/08/the-2015-cli-fi-movie-awards-aka.html

AMONG THE FINALISTS THIS YEAR WERE: [hat tip to you know who for partial movie summaries...and thanks!]

SNOWPIERCER

This innovative cli fi film by South Korean director Bong Joon-ho is based on a French graphic novel; it takes place entirely on a long, long train. When an experiment to forestall global warming goes horribly wrong, it creates a modern-day Ice Age. With the Earth frozen over, the last remaining human inhabitants are congregated aboard the Snowpiercer, a perpetual-motion train that travels the global wasteland smashing through ice and snow. Stars include Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer.

INTO THE STORM

School buses, barns and airplanes are sent spinning into oblivion when an onslaught of tornadoes touches down. Special effects are skillfully wrought, scary and exciting. As a meteorologist in this summer of 2014 cli fi movie put it, nothing has been quite the same since Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. “While the words “climate change” are never uttered — most likely for fear of turning off non-believers and limiting box office potential — the concept hangs over the movie like the darkest of clouds,” the USA TODAY movie critic Claudia Puig noted.

NOAH

Darren Aronofsky’s visually mesmerizing cli fi saga based on the ancient and mythical Hebrew scriptures. Genesis was not a true story nor is this movie, but as a cli fi drama, there is a strong wake up call to viewers to pay more attention to what we are doing to the Earth. Starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins.

THE ROVER

From Australia, director David Michôd’s crime drama features a hardened loner who pursues the men who stole his only possession, across a drought-plagued landscape 10 years after a global economic collapse. Climate changte and man-mad globarl warming are not front and center but they are in the background, if you pay attention. Starring Guy Pierce and Robert Pattinson.

YOUNG ONES

Jake Paltrow’s cli fi story about a teenage boy who sets out to protect his family is set in a future where water is hard to find. Filmed in a very dry region of South Africa. Starring Nicholas Hoult, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Shannon and Elle Fanning.

INTERSTELLAR -- (''HUMOR note'': ONLY THE FIRST THIRD OF THE MOVIE WAS NOMINATED IN THE ''CLI FI'' CATEGORY, alas)

Christopher Nolan’s mesmerizing space cowboy epic could have been a powerful cli fi movie if only it had just focused on the first third of the story, the first act, so to speak. So only the first third of the movie was nominated for the best cli fi movie of the year (2014). Can we do that? Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine.

COMMENTS? EMAIL US AT :

THECLIFFIES2015@GMAIL.COM

THE CLIFFIES THEME SONG FOR 2014 PRESENTATION:

"LIBERATED CARBON" -- a song written and composed by New York state musician Andy Revkin -- and a longtime friend and student of Pete Seeger -- is to be the ''theme music'' song of THE CLIFFIES -- the cli fi movie awards program -- on February 22, 2014 - [PREVIEW HERE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzZ_M4rnD48

Note: upon request, Andy kindly and generously donated the song to the movie awards event. Here is his song. Perfect music for THE CLIFFIES. Listen to it while you are reading this page!

NEWS LINK TO CLIFFIES BACKSTORY"
http://korgw101.blogspot.tw/2014/08/cliffies-will-award-climate-change.html

FINE PRINT: The Cli Fi Movie Awards are made possible by a generous grant from the Bernie Bloom Never Give Up Foundation (Avenue J, Brooklyn).
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BEST CLI FI MOVIE OF THE YEAR (winners in red below)
This category is for the cli fi movie that was the most engaging and meaningful and released in 2014.