Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore's

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Davis Guggenheim and Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth (Paramount Classics, 5.26), which I saw for the second time last night, is, I strongly suspect, going to win the Best Feature Documentary Oscar in March '07. It may or may not emerge as the year's finest doc (nobody has a clue about anything at this stage), but what it says is so damned important and vital for the survival of the planet, and it makes its case so persuasively, that any Academy member with a smidgen of concern about the perils of global warming is going to want to give it the Oscar so that more people browsing in video stores will be inclined to rent or buy it. (Let's face it -- Truth is too much of a straight education piece to become a huge theatrical success.) Two people (an actress and an attorney) told me last weekend they didn't want to see this film when I mentioned Monday night's screening..."not my thing," "naah, don't think so." That's a problem...average Joe's going from denial ("the science isn't in yet") to despair in a single lunge. But there's a road beyond despair, and Gore's film is a constructive attempt to show the way. On top of which Gore's pitch -- his "performance" -- is very captivating and persuasive in this thing (much more than it was during the 2000 campaign), and he's famous for having been a techno-geek type from way back...he's pro-business and wants everyone to be flush (his non-Mahatma Gandhi physique tells you he's not that radically into self-denial). Like I said last January, I'm starting to think that Gore's entire political career, which culiminated with his run for the White House six years ago, has been about getting people to see and fully consider this slide- show lecture movie about global warming. An Inconvenient Truth is his crowning achievement...the summation of his life...the reason he was put on this earth to become a politican and a stirrer-upper and influencer of public opinion. Because if people see Truth in sufficient numbers, Gore will have done more to save this planet from ruination than anyone in his realm has ever managed. Oh, and as far as linking together the movie's website with that Climate Crisis website that is mentioned at the end of the film, I'm told that everything will be harmonized within a couple of weeks, along with a big re-design of the Paramount Classics site.