Birdboy’s Interconnected Pollution
Writing about animation provides me the opportunity to probe the minds of brave filmmakers working against stereotype and industry. That struggle found an apotheosis in the surreal fever dream of Birdboy.
cli-fi
Fox And The Whale’s Metafictional Immersion
Earth is inspiring, even in the midst of failure. This is an important lesson I learned after interviewing director Robin Joseph about his stunning animated short, Fox and the Whale, a homemade, hand-drawn cli-fi fable debuting, to Oscar acclaim, in a world on fire.
Ultimate Expression Of Hope: Interview With The Breadwinner’s Nora Twomey and Saara Chaudry
I’ve been looking forward to interviewing Nora Twomey, especially now that her empowering adaptation of The Breadwinner has arrived, with the aid of Angelina Jolie, to shine a light back on Afghanistan, still in the crosshairs of the longest war in American history.
We Can’t Separate Food From Politics
One of our most persistent fictions of climate change is that the food industry, whose waste and emissions must be brought under immediate control if we are to survive the Anthropocene, can live without immigrants, whose existence puts the lie to nations and nationalism.
Quartz Joins My Civil Resistance
Call it syndication, or call it the sharing economy. It feels good to see your hard work spread across the spectrum. So thanks to Quartz for picking up my Civil Eats explainer on the Farm Bill’s doom.
Say It Loud and Proud, Oscars: Animation Is Film
As the establishment continues to reject toxic industry, the movement to place our attention on issues worth the public’s time is reaching critical mass. And that movement will likely sweep The Breadwinner into awards season.
Farmers Markets Come Under Presidential Fire
My latest investigation for Civil Eats is not so much alarming as predictable. The current presidential administration, already an international laughingstock, has targeted farmers markets for elimination. The punishment? Death by pointless cuts.
Feeding The Resistance
In a globally warming, warring world where Americans throw away half the food they grow, nourishing activism with a heart and mind in service of renewable peace is paramount. Enter author Julia Turshen, who I profiled for Civil Eats.
What Is Organic? Depends On Who’s Asking
This investigation for Civil Eats is about the terminology we take for granted so that billions of dollars can exchange hands in the organic market, as we throw away over a third of the food we ask our burning Earth to provide us.
Cli-Fi: 75 Years Later, Bambi Terrorizes
Written by an immigrant Jew hounded by Hitler, and envisioned by a Chinese immigrant dreaming of America, Walt Disney’s Bambi remains an unheeded warning of terror and terraformation, sadly forgotten by a burning world careening into an exponential apocalypse.
Nuclear Cinema: In This Corner of the World
This expressive war epic from the assistant director of Kiki’s Delivery Service handles the toughest of topics with art, skill and grace. I spoke with director Sunao Katabuchi for Cartoon Brew.
Cli-Fi: The Dead Zone, Mass Extinction Edition
Stephen King’s horror novel never saw this real-time nightmare coming. A state-sized dead zone at the bottom of the South, which is so deprived of oxygen it might as well be deep space — which is, recalling Alien, where no one can hear you scream.
Chasing Ice And Coral, Running Out of Time
It is my honor to be writing for the Center for Biological Diversity’s shiny new publication, The Revelator. My first piece is an interview with the fearless Jeff Orlowski, director of Chasing Ice, and now, Chasing Coral.
Cli-Fi: Soundgarden’s Fourth of July
For me, there’s only one song that explains the United States of America falling apart in the 21st century, and it is probably no cosmological accident that it is written by the late, great Chris Cornell and Soundgarden.
Bong Joon Ho’s Okja Animates Cli-Fi
Revolutionary filmmakers are shaping the future of cinema by analyzing our destabilized planet. Snowpiercer director Bong Joon Ho’s new vision Okja, out today from Netflix, was inspired by biodiversity at the mercy of capitalization and extinction.
The Girl Without Hands (Re)Draws The Line
Sebastien Laudenbach’s The Girl Without Hands will likely confound artistic and cultural convention, even though it’s based on a tale from The Brothers Grimm.
Cornell’s Promise Works to Protect Human Rights
Few artists have soundtracked my life like Chris Cornell. Now, from beyond an early, tragic grave, he warns Earth to rid itself of war before it is too late.
Cli-Fi: Coral Vs. Ice, We Lose
We are slaves to fossil fuels, Chasing Ice director Jeff Orlowski once told me. His new film, Chasing Coral, may find that we have also broken our (food) chains.
It’s Hard To Be A Utopian!
When I first learned that Matthew Rankin was crafting a surreal short about Nikola Tesla, I knew I soon would be picking his fertile brain about free energy, bird love, and why dystopians are marching to the sixth mass extinction.
Ron Finley Rewilds South Central
My latest piece for Civil Eats chronicles the victory of sanity over nonsense, Earth over concrete, regeneration over regression. It was an honor to write, and even more brilliant to witness in person.
Cli-Fi: Tesla, Reanimated
The National Film Board of Canada is responsible for some of the finest animation the world has ever seen. It has also created world-changing documentaries exploring and analyzing how and why our world changes as it does, for better and worse.
Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth to Power
Al Gore once famously asked, “Well, what can you do?”
Here’s what.
Solar Farming For Everyone!
One of the great things about writing for Civil Eats is that I get a chance to explore several existential concerns at once. For my second piece, I was lucky enough to analyze and evangelize solarization, decarbonization and an agricultural infrastructure with a future.
Cartoon Saloon Schools St. Patrick’s Day
From director Tomm Moore’s Oscar-nominated masterpieces The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, to director Nora Twomey’s The Breadwinner and beyond into the great unknown, the indie studio that was once international animation’s best-kept secret is a secret no longer.
Seed Takes Root In The Sixth Mass Extinction
Earth seeds itself. Then we get involved. Then you get what we have, right now: An extinction. From the makers of Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us?, another exploration of an apocalypse we manufactured with our own hearts and minds.