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

Sunday, May 24, 2015

''Tomorrowland'' has been nominated by fans nationwide for the 2015 Cli-Fi Movie Awards (dubbed "the Cliffies")

Yes, ''Tomorrowland'' has been nominated by fans nationwide for the 2015 Cli-Fi Movie Awards (dubbed "the Cliffies")

korgw101.blogspot.com

Joining other cli fi movies in the nomination process:

CHLOE AND THEO, KINGSMAN, MAD MAX - FURY ROAD...and now TOMORROWLAND

http://korgw101.blogspot.tw/2015/04/cli-fi-movie-chloe-and-theo-nominated.html

THR:

How many [cli-fi] films of recent years have climaxed with anything other than massive conflict and conflagration? Whatever the number, Tomorrowland is one of the few to place far more emphasis on talk than action, which is what will probably contribute to what, for some, will make for a softer experience than the genre norm.

Time Out:

‘Tomorrowland’ is singularly unafraid of weighty concepts, tackling climate change, our ongoing [cli-fi] fascination with the [Climapocalypse] and the very Disney-ish idea of being ‘special’. It does get dry (some scenes feel suspiciously like TED talks) and the script’s fleeting efforts to unpick its dubious Ayn Rand-ish central ideology are completely undermined by a clunky, flat-as-a-pancake finale. [OUCH!]

Variety:

Clooney seems to have been cast as much for his leftist liberal credentials as for his Hollywood Global Village star power, and it’s a choice that can’t help but leave a somewhat smug aftertaste; he’s almost too fitting a spokesman for a cli-fi movie that urges humanity to end all wars, take responsibility for the environment, and foster a greater, more alert engagement with the world around us. All worthy and admirable objectives, to be sure, but they can’t help but feel like platitudes in the absence of an adventure that compels and sustains dramatic interest on its own terms. Even when delivered with the best intentions, a lecture is a wretched substitute for wonder.

—

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Charlize Theron: Cli-fi movie ''Mad Max'' landscape awaits unless we tackle climate change

via the GUARDIAN

The star of the new Mad Max movie, Fury Road, has spoken of the film as a cautionary tale which offers a premonition of a world ravaged by drought and hardship unless global warming is addressed

David Rose and 15 others follow

‏@RichardTol

Theron: Mad Max landscape awaits unless we tackle climate change http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/14/charlize-theron-mad-max-landscape-awaits-unless-we-tackle-climate-change … @manjanam #clifi #wereallgonebechasedbytinaturner

Charlize Theron at the Mad Max: Fury Road press conference. Photograph: IAN LANGSDON/EPA

Catherine Shoard

@catherineshoard

Comments

12,463

The actor Charlize Theron, who takes a leading role in the new Mad Max movie as a one-armed warrior driving five sex slaves to safety, has expressed her fears that a bleak future awaits the planet unless global warming is addressed.

Theron, Miller and Nicholas Hoult talk Mad Max: Fury Road

Hardy is reportedly signed up for three more instalments and a separate live action show is also apparently in the works. But Miller, now 70, suggested a pause might be necessary before work on follow-ups began.
“I feel like a woman who’s just given birth to a really big baby. And then someone says: ‘When are you gonna have your next one?’”

Sunday, April 19, 2015

• cli-fi bullets: random thoughts about cli-fi in 140 characters that first appeared on Twitter

• Cli-fi isn't a marketing term or a bookstore shelving category, and it's more than a literary term. It's a password into the future and those who know it, know.
• Cli-fi is more than a genre term, much more than that: it's a code word, a password, a secret handshake; it is bringing us together as one
• #CliFi is not for you or your children or grandkids, no. It's codeword for future generations, as yet unborn. And born they shall be. In next 30 generations.
• Cli-Fi cannot, will not, save us from what's coming. Too late for that. But it's here, now, always. We have 30 generations to prepare. See?
• In the future, come 30 more generations of man, there will be no #CliFi. By 2500 A.D. (Anthrocenus Deflexus)it will be too late.
• People want cli-fi to offer solutions, comfortable happy fixes. Aint gonna happen. We are ''doomed, doomed'' as a species, and we did it to ourselves.
• Cli-Fi cannot, will not, save us from what's coming. Too late for that. But it's here, now, always. We have 30 generations to prepare. There's time.

• Cli-fi won't make much of a difference either way you define it. It's just here, now, beckoning future writers. It's not sci-fi, never was
• Cli-fi is more than a mere genre: it's a cri de coeur, a warning flare, a pathway to the future before it's too late. See? #CliFi's here now
• If the rising new literary term "cli-fi" makes you 'cringe' at first sight or hearing, don't give up on it yet. With time, you will come to see it for what it is.
• Cli-fi is not sci-fi, it is not eco-fiction, it is not subgenred to anything earlier. #CliFi is a hashtag burning its stamp into our very skin, as we prepare.
• Cli-fi is more than a genre term, much more than that: it's a code word, a password, a secret handshake; it is bringing us together as one.
• Cli-fi wasn't just a case of slapping a new name on an old genre. It's much deeper and existential than that. Think game-changer, new directions.
• We'll never make it out of here alive. That's cli-fi in a nutshell. Man the lifeboats, prepare to test the seas of one season after the next.
• Cli-fi defines a line the sands of time that no man can cross without trepidation or reverence. There's a reason we are here. What is it?
• If cli-fi is one thing, it's a chance to choose our future. One door leads here, another door leads there. Choose wisely: Your descendants are waiting.
• There's a tragic flaw in our genes, a selfish shellfish that doesn't want to share. This DNA will be our downfall. This Earth shall abide.
• Cli-fi doesn't choose sides. We do. Choose your weapon, use it wisely. We are here by the grace of God, and someday we won't be. God knows.
• You could say that in a post-sci-fi world, cli-fi has come to rescue us from oblivion. Not true. No way.
• You might not really be interested in cli-fi, or where it is going. But trust me, cli-fi is interested in you. Why? Becos the End is nigh
• When all is said and done, cli-fi points in only one direction. It's for everyone to find it on their own. ON THE BEACH from 1957 has clues.
• Cli-fi is not about who coined it or who popularized it. It's about much more pressing things, like how many more generations before the End?
• I never met a future I didn't like. No, that can't be true. Some futures spell the end of humankind. It's in the cards. Choose your exit.
• Cli-fi is neither pro nor con. It just is. Take your pick. Choose yr sides. We are at war w/ a future that threatens all futures. Arise!
•
•
• Cli-fi is so much a part of this world that on first hearing the word or seeing it in print, it slips right by, invisble, unnoticed.
•If by some remote chance you find yourself reading a cli-fi novel without realizing it's cli-fi, you have arrived.
• There are are still 30 generations to be born before the real apocalypse begins. This now is just a rehearsal. An audition.
• Cli-fi leads to a meeting of the minds, borderless, rudderless, unconsolable. Will we get there on time?
• If you think time is running out, or has already run out, in terms of the unspeakable cli-fi future we face, you are very close to solving the riddle. Why are we here?
• I don't want to sound pessimistic, as optimism must abound and console us. But listen to the wind, hear the chimes sing, ring.
• Cli-fi has a place in our hearts and minds, now and forever. But forever is no longer forever. We sold the farm.
• Cli-fi can, and will, shine a light on the darkness that is about to befall us. Let's stick together and shoulder the burden.
• You didn't know cli-fi was coming. Nobody did. It's taken us by surprise.
• There will be days when cli-fi is beyond us, unscoutable, undetected. All the more reason to pay attention.
• Cli-fi doesn't mean resignation or giving in to the darkness ahead. To the contrary, it means taking up arms.
• If a time shall come when all else fails, cli-fi may just come to the rescue. Make room.
• Cli-fi cannot answer all our questions or undo the deeds we have done. No. But she can unburden us of our fears.
• There will come a time when there is no time left. That's where, and when, cli-fi comes in.
• Who will write the cli-fi of the future? They will be legion, legends. Welcome them.
• Cli-fi is more than a mere genre term, much more than a literary term. It's a battle cry, a cri decoeur, a shout-out to future generations: "We tried to warn you!"
• Think positive, think cli-fi. Think future generations, think now. Think the end is nigh unless we change our ways.
• There is no way out of here, said the sailors to the sun. Thirty more generations is all we have left. What then?
• Ploddingly, one step at a time, we are marching to future days. Cli-fi cannot stop the deluge, yet we must not surrender. Never.
• With sea levels rising in future times, Nature has been turned on its head. Cli-fi paints a picture, sight unseen.
• If we could see CO2, smell it, know that is there, over-loaded, we might be able to put out the fires. But it is invisible, odorless.
• Whatever generation you belong to, know in your heart that there is no way out of here. Nature has spoken, Earth recoils. Write on.
• To show respect to the Earth, which is our home in the cosmos, please always capitalize the word as ''Earth.'' Earth matters, tell the copy desk. Lowercasing it is beneath us.
• Cli-fi cannot, will not, lead the way. This is a clean-up action, and way too late. But it matters nevertheless.
• One cannot see the future, cli-fi is blind. But the stories we tell will matter, even if it is all for naught.
• Cli-fi, by indirection finds direction out. Your words on the page must be balanced, insistent. Always. And never lose hope.
• Not doomed yet? What will it take to connect the dots? Not doomed yet? Some overly-rosy displays of optimism in print could be seen as pathological.
• As humans, ike all life forms, we are hardwired and programmed to believe that the near future will be similar to the recent past. Our Achilles heel, so to speak.
• Cli-fi won't solve our problems, and can't undo what's done. Fasten your seatbelts. This is a ride to Hell.
• Climate change is more than a fact of life. It is the result of human ingenuity, greed, rapaciousness and fear. Fear not: cli-fi is here. Write it.
• I came to the table naive and unquestioning. I left totally convinced there will be dead people, lots of dead people. That was the genesis of cli-fi.
• You might not want to go down the cli-fi road, and that's okay. It's not a pretty picture, not a happy selfie. It's disaster, writ large.
• In the long and rambling history of humankind, cli-fi will be just a blip on the radar screen. Pay it no heed.
• You weren't born yesterday. Your descendants may not even be born at all, ever. That's how unfathomable cli-fi is.
• If you can manage to fit the personal stories of cli-fi between the covers of a book, do it. With trepidation. Know your audience.
• Cli-fi will have no denouement, no act three, no happy ending, no Greek chorus, no social media take-away. Push send.
• Sorry, but this is how cli-fi is going to be, in the Anthropocene. Just 12 letters spelling doom.
• I wish there was some cli-fi way out of here, but there ain't. Ain't ain't ain't. Ain't ain't ain't times, ten thousand times ain't.

''MAD MAX: Fury Road'': A Cli-Fi Movie for 2015 and nominated for the Cli Fi Movies Awards for best picture and best director:

''MAD MAX: Fury Road'': All Your Darkest Environmental Nightmares Come True
''MAD MAX: Fury Road'': A Cli-Fi Movie for 2015 and nominated for the Cli Fi Movies Awards for best picture and best director: SEE korgw101.blogspot.com

Is there an environmental ''cli-fi'' message at the core of George Miller's new high-octane "Mad Max" film? YES!

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-3-may-june/feature/fury-road-all-your-darkest-environmental-nightmares-come-true

CALL-OUTS from text: the director speaks:

''There is an environmental story, but it's in the subtext. The sad thing is that it doesn't really require much exposition for the audience to buy a degraded world, because we already see evidence of it happening all around us.''

''Yeah, [in the film] we call them toxic storms. But even that's not too far from the truth. In Australia, when the conditions are right, you get these great dust storms moving across the landscape and often into the cities. In the middle of the day, the sun will be eclipsed by this mass of red dust. I've been in a couple of them; most Australians have. We just take it further in the film. But the movie's not trying to chronicle the world's environmental collapse. It's saying, "Here is the world that remains." It's spare and elemental. And within that context, you play out a morality tale.''

Our characters don't just fetishize cars; they worship them as religious artifacts. There's a group of warriors that we call "half-life war boys" who are doomed to die young, and they worship cars because the machines endure when they know they themselves will not. Steering wheels become religious symbols. One character has scarified a whole engine block on his body. They want to become the machines.

''Well, we've taken the fetishizing of cars to a religious point, which is definitely a commentary on car culture. The thing is, I love silent films, which were very much driven by chase and action. I see them as pure cinema. So that's my conflict: I really do like action movies, even though I worry enormously about the degradation of the planet.

''Compared to, say, passenger jets flying across the globe, the carbon footprint of this film isn't all that significant, because it's a relatively brief event. All those cars stacked up on freeways around the world—that's constant. When you film a big explosion, you don't do two takes; it's a one-off event that at most lasts 15 seconds. I remember with Happy Feet, there were people arguing the hypocrisy, because we were using electricity to run our computers to make the animation. I mean, OK, if you wanted to be a purist about it, then you'd do nothing.

''There's an interplay between the two. When you give someone a purely logical argument, you're only involving the intellect. Which is fine in itself, but it's not a story. A story touches the entire human being. It works with the viscera, with the intellect, and with the spirit. If a story is any good, it will follow you out of the theater. It will come back to you, and you will reflect on it. That's my greatest hope as a storyteller, really. In the end, there's no ideological agenda here. I'm just telling a story in response to the way that I perceive the world.''

Thursday, April 16, 2015

Cli-fi movie ''CHLOE AND THEO'' nominated for 2015 CLI-FI MOVIE AWARDS for best movie, best director, best screenplay and best actor

The soon-to-be released cli-fi film "Chloe and Theo" is already in the running for the 2015 CLI-FI MOVIE AWARDS for

best movie,

best director,

best screenplay

and best actor.

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

Directed by Ezna Sands, the climate-themed cli-fi flick stars Dakota Johnson (of "350 PPM Shades of Grey" fame) as a young, homeless girl from New York who befriends an Inuit man, Theo Ikummaq (played by himself). Ikummaq has been sent to New York by his elders on a quest to convince leaders at the United Nations that climate change is real before his home literally melts away.

What makes someone take action could be the power of film, or at least that is the hope of the film's producer, Monica Ord. Ord -- who has a biomedical background and admits that she was not aware of the plight of Arctic people dealing with a warming climate prior to being involved with the film -- was compelled to raise the funds for this film after a friend mentioned listening to the real-life Ikummaq tell a story of the impacts of climate change while visiting Los Angeles.

NOTES from ClimateWire article by Brittany Patterson"

Monday, March 16, 2015

The Cli Fi Movie Awards for 2015 - taking nominations now until December

KINGSMAN: The Secret Service'' is a spy-action-comedy ''cli-fi'' film and has been nominated for a 2015 ''Cliffie''

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a spy action comedy ''cli-fi'' film and has been nominated for Best Cli Fi Movie of 2015 for the annual CLI FI MOVIE AWARDS to be announced next December.
Starring COLIN FIRTH; the ''villain'' is a climate alarmist/eco-terrorist.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

''THE CLIFFIES'' 2014 - Cli Fi Movie Awards -- Winners List -- Awards Program Tagline "Can Cli Fi Movies Save the Planet?"

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).
====================================================

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.