Josh Fox's Gasland makes its HBO debut tonight, bringing the battle over the future of the Marcellus Shale into living rooms across America. The Washington Post's Hank Stuever has an entertainingly zippy review:
"Gasland" could push a certain sort of viewer -- me, for example -- into the realm of panic attack. (First the oceans, now the streams and rivers?! And nobody cares about this stuff! Nothing can be done! And, as "Gasland" indicates, Dick Cheney and Halliburton still call the shots! Gaaaah!) We can all just get adjoining padded rooms -- a whole psych ward of neurotics who binge on documentaries and tumble into permanent despair.
Stuever gives Fox props for producing a "mesmerising" film, while gently chiding him for his shortcomings in the investigative-journalism department:
"Gasland" ventures where so many other environmental-outrage documentaries have gone before and returns with more questions than answers. What's different is that Fox makes for a warmhearted and darkly humorous road-trip companion. It's less about inconvenient truths and more of a memoir wrapped around an unfinished "60 Minutes" exposé.
Closer to home, Meredith farmer Ken Jaffe has a letter about Gasland published on the pro-small-farm website Green State Fair:
I am not prone to overstatement about health issues, but it is hard to express the magnitude of this threat in a short email. On a personal level, if gas drilling occurs in our area, I cannot image Slope Farms surviving. We simply will not be able to produce food that you will want to eat because of the toxins in the water that our cattle drink (and my family drinks as well), and the massive pollution of our air. This assessment is shared the many producers of sustainable agricultural products with whom I’ve spoken.
