GasLand

This movie was very informative. I live above the Marcellus Shale in NYS and drilling hasn't started yet but there's a lot of support for it, primarily because our rural areas are financially strapped and lots of cash is being promised by the drilling companies. I think this movie should be required viewing before anyone signs a gas lease. If our groundwater and the environment becomes contaminated, it has the potential to not only harm those living in the region but the entire watershed, which involves millions of people in NYC, Philadelphia, NJ and DC. New York and Pennsylvania better get it right or there will be massive amounts of people facing potentially life threatening illnesses.

I liked the way Mr. Fox laid out the film. He used interviews, visits to drilling sites and he didn't grandstand to get the viewer's attention. I get the impression that this is his first film and he's to be commended for such a comprehensive and informative documentary. He's performed a great service to the region; I just hope it's viewed by many. Those who see it need to become proactive and write their elected representatives to assure that safeguards are required and that they are enforced - or the drilling should not be done.

Thank you Mr. Fox.

Allow me to alleviate your initial trepidation. "GasLand" is not another documentary about the oil industry. You're on the right track, but first-time feature director Josh Fox has his sights set not on the gas you pump into your car, but the so called "natural gas" extracted from beneath your feet through the process of hydraulic fracturing known colloquially as "fracking."

Issue films, like "Food, Inc." or "An Inconvenient Truth" are notoriously dry, and Fox takes a welcome page from the Michael Moore book of documentary film-making, without the hard leftist political grandstanding. Rather, he adopts the format of painting himself a protagonist of sorts, though more justifiably than Moore. "GasLand" begins with an intimate history of the Fox family and their home, which lies just off of an artery to the Delaware River.

Positioned above the Marcellus Shale, a subterranean formation that stretches from New York through Pennsylvania to Virginia, and as far west as Ohio, the Fox home receives a lease offer for their land, a constituent slice of what energy companies have dubbed the "Saudi Arabia of natural gas," and so Fox embarks for some first hand reconnaissance on the communities already tapped by hydraulic fracturing, and his findings are nothing short of alarming.

The chemicals used in the fracking process seep into the soil and water supply, leaving many families with bizarre aberrations like flammable tap water. Uh oh. And as Fox makes his way across the country, into dozens of areas crippled by decade-past drilling efforts, he collects bottles of yellow-brown water like postcards in some macabre travel diary.

If there is a problem with "GasLand," it's that as a story, it becomes a little redundant as we watch family after family set fire to their sinks, but perhaps all the more resonant for it. From a film-making standpoint, the effect is marginalized, but in making something so shocking feel almost normal, Fox underscores the breadth of the issue. This is happening everywhere, and with such clear evidence of the immediate health hazards, the question is, why?

Fox's intimate approach and genuine stake in the issue is "GasLand's" greatest asset. He never has to rely on talking heads or PowerPoint presentations, and even at nearly two hours, the film is positively gripping. His story comes full circle as he returns home, faced with the "speculative" fracking of the Delaware watershed, which provides water to rural towns, suburbs, and cities. The implication is truly disquieting, and Fox can only ask that the public make themselves aware of the issue and take a stand before it's too late.

His film is an excellent place to start, and manages to entertain while outlining the severity of the problem, and to do so without an over-reliance on the pitfalls of so many of its contemporaries. "GasLand" is just about everything you could hope for from a documentary of its type, and its Sundance special jury prize is testament to its impact.

The film has yet to see general release, but a distribution deal is reportedly immanent. Interested parties can join the mailing list and watch a potent 15 clip at www.gaslandthemovie.com.

Ignore that initial trepidation. "GasLand" isn't another documentary about the oil industry, but it's just as important, if not more so.

This documentary shows how corporate greed, without any concern for anything other than making a profit, is destroying one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world: the United States.

As another reviewer said, it's not about gas as in gasoline, but about how oil and gas companies are polluting the environment through a process called hydraulic fracturing, used in the extraction of natural gas.

The film is filled with unmistakable and undeniable evidence that this process is in fact forever altering not only the landscape in several states, but also their wild life as well as the health of regular individuals permanently. The images and testimonies shown will blow you away and you'll come out with a very different awareness level on what it means to be "enviromentally conscious".

I found it really gut-wrenching and I guarantee you you won't be able to get through to the end of it without wanting to go and do something about it.

We've seen in a number of different films how powerful industries will do anything to protect their interests and keep people quiet about their lies and methods for keeping the general public deceived about what they really do. What's really striking here is that is happening for real, in congress, and not in a movie.

The other aspect I found really positive is that the filmmaker tried hard to remain as objective as possible, which is more than I can say about any Michael Moore documentary.Everyone is given a chance to tell their part of the story and the audience is left to decide what to make of everything being said and shown.

I highly recommend it. You'll need a strong constitution to get through it; it's not for the faint of heart. But it'll be a very rewarding experience and hopefully one that will make you cringe every time you see a gas drill across your front yard.

Provided with much details on the fracking of the oil industry and much opinions on the subject, GasLand succeeded of trying to inform the audience yet entertain them at the same time.

Although laws have been passed to get rid of this issue, hydraulic drilling is still a concern for people in the certain states. This documentary sets in Pennsylvania, a state in which a lot of people are drinking dirty water because of this crisis. Josh Fox directs and narrates the film with a devastating voice and real emotions. The audience were shocked by the reality and entertained by the burning water. GasLand is the better documentaries of the year.

OscarBuzz: Best Documentary (good chance of making it to the top 5)

I've watched many documentaries and I've appreciated almost all of them. They are usually wake up calls to the public. They inform people, like myself, of harms or dangers we were not aware of. A good documentarian will be that thorn in the side of governments, corporations, or otherwise as they dig and dig to uncover the hidden truth.

Josh Fox wanted to do that here. He wanted to uncover the truth about hydraulic fracturing aka fracking for natural gas. Fracking is a process of drilling and using a high pressure chemical water mixture to release natural gas from where it's deposited in the Earth's crust. The energy companies claim that fracking has no negative impact upon water sources, about a few dozen people that Josh spoke to will say differently. He showed brown water, yellow water, and water that was flammable--yes! Flammable. All of the water came from the wells or drinking sources for regular folks.

The material of "Gasland" was excellent. The narration of the documentary was not. Josh's low, barely audible, monotone voice didn't exactly make one's ears perk up in attention. Perhaps he should've borrowed from the Michael Moore style of lively comedic sarcasm to keep the audience awake. It's clear that Josh was a novice at this documentary thing, so I'll give him a pass.