By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky has been awarded a best original screenplay award for his movie Noah by an online, climate-themed movie awards program I am curating called the Cli Fi Movie Awards, dubbed “The Cliffies.”
Aronofsky’s writing partner Ari Handel co-wrote the screenplay and received the award as well. He won the best director nod for the movie as well in balloting by myself and a small group of climate-aware academics and film critics..
Other winners just announced online last week included Tilda Swinton for best actress for her role in Snowpiercer, and Elle Fanning for her role in the Jake Paltrow directed movie Young Ones. Swinton’s performance was over-the-top and surely worthy of an Oscar nod, too. Fanning handed in a superb performance in Paltrow’s rookie movie as a director — and yes, he’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s younger brother and part of a famous Hollywood family. He shot the cli fi drama in one of the driest patches of land in South Africa, with financing from Ireland and South African producers.
Ed Harris got an award for his riveting supporting actor role in Snowpiercer in which he almost went beyond the pale. His performance was that good, and he might also be in the list of Oscar winners next February.
Jake Paltrow, who wrote the screenplay for his movie, was awarded a Cliffie this week for “best new director.”
Best cli fi movie of 2014 went to Snowpiercer, and if you haven’t seen it on DVD yet, by all minds, rent it one day soon. A classic.
In keeping with the Cliffies vision to be an international awards program and to speak to young people as well, a special ”children’s award for best animated cli fi series” went to Taiwanese director Chiu Li-wei for his Weather Boy! animation series DVD box set.
The popular summer movie Into the Storm received two ”below-the-line” type Hollywood-style awards, one for ”best movie that most mirrors current climate science,” and another for ”best PR campaign for a cli fi movie by a Hollywood studio.”
And “Twilight” heartthrob Robert Pattinson received a “best actor” award for his role in Australian director David Michod’s The Rover. Hundreds of tweets from his fans worldwide have already lit up my Twitter feed!
In addition to the above awards, South Korean director Joon-ho Bong and screenwiter Kelly Masterson received a Cliffie for best adapted screenplay, as Snowpiercer was adapted from a French comic book published over 20 years ago.
To see an online list of the Cli Fi Movie Awards nominees and winners, go to: http://korgw101.blogspot.tw/2014/11/the-cliffies-2014-nominations-are-in.html
So what do the current crop of cli fi movies spotlighted here have to say about climate issues and how do they say it?
Snowpiercer, which won for best movie of the year, takes place entirely on a long, long train in a future period when the entire world is in a new Ice Age. It turns out that an experiment to forestall global warming went tragically wrong, and with the Earth frozen over, the last remaining people are aboard the Snowpiercer, a futuristic perpetual-motion train that travels the global wasteland smashing through ice and snow. While the climate science is wrong, and what we need to worry about today is global warming and not a new Ice Age, the movie’s action and ideas are thought-provoking, and that is what cli fi is all about: food for thought.
In Into the Storm, a meteorologist mutters nothing has been quite the same since Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy hit America. And even though the words “climate change” are never uttered in the entire movie at all, the issue is there, front and center. Are these extreme weather events due to climate change? Again, food for thought, as is all cli fi.
Aronofsky’s visually-mesmerizing cli fi Noah saga, based on the ancient Hebrew scriptures, offers viewers a strong wake up call to pay more attention to what we are doing to the Earth. It happened a long time ago, and it could happen again, no?
David Michod’s Australia crime drama, The Rover, takes place some 10 years after a global economic collapse. While climate change and man-made global warming are not front and center in the story, they are in the background, if you pay attention. Pay attention.
In Young Ones, Jake Paltrow’s creates a near future where water is hard to find. Water scarcity is going to be a very big issue in the future, and while the movie is a family drama with a well-written cast of characters, the background is a dry, arid land could very well be America in the next 300 years, if not sooner. Paltrow gives viewers a story worth paying attention to, and the visuals are powerful.
Thirsty? Our descendants might be.
While Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is mostly a deep space cowboy epic, for my money it 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. But it didn’t, alas, so the film is just slightly a cli fi movie but only if you stay for the first 60 minutes only. A missed opportunity, I felt.
In the future, as things progress, the awards program may move to a physical address in Hollywood with stage hosts and an invited.audience. For now, it’s an online show, live now, and social media is carrying the day, as fans of actors like Robert Pattinson (who won a Cliffie for his role as Rey in the Australian cli fi movie The Rover) tweeting and tumblring the news to their hearts desire.
The Cliffies is an idea that evolved last summer, and the current online-only event expresses my hope as a climate activist that as public consciousness and the awards program evolves over the next few years, a more formal nomination and voting process will be set up.
Leslie Miller, a reporter at USA TODAY, wrote a news story about the Cliffies last month before the awards were announced this week, and her editors ran it with the headline “Can cli fi movies save the planet? (Maybe the Cliffies can help).” So the news media has been paying attention.
I hope the annual Cliffies awards will help raise awareness in Hollywood and in the general public about the power of cinema to influence world leaders on vital issues relating to climate change and man-made global warming. In addition to recognizing current movies each year that have a strong climate theme, the Cliffies also intend to push Hollywood movers and shakers to greenlight more climate-themed movies as time goes by. Because time is running out..
Movies have power, and Hollywood holds the key. The Cliffies hope to inspire Hollywood producers and directors to use their resources to fight the most important fight that humanity has ever faced — the fight against runaway climate change and global warming.
Some people say it takes a village to change the world. I say it takes a good Hollywood studio to change the world. Movies can help sound the alarm.
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Bloom, a freelance writer based in Taiwan, is a climate activist and inveterate web surfer. He may be contacted via dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com