Energy Task Force, which he would chair. The
group worked in extreme secrecy, and McQuaig
explains the project focused on the problem of
US. dependence on oil. In addition, she explains
that documents received through court orders
revealed the task force met secretly with oil
executives and was especially interested in Iraq’s
oil.

McQuaig is also highly critical of the media,
emphasizing the “unwillingness of the media to
look at the issue of oil” in connection with Iraq,
even after the Bush administration’s alleged
motive (finding weapons of mass destruction)
was discredited. The author goes on to say
while the American government and media
have been misleading citizens by focusing on
“freedom and democracy,” it would have been
significantly more difficult for the administra-

 

tion to sell the war to the American people had
it been framed as a war of aggression, which is
the only way to describe a war for oil.

The book also examines global warming,
claiming that the issue is much more solvable
than we think. Greater efficiency, fuel economy
requirements, and energy-efficient appliances
are among McQuaig’s suggested solutions. A
large component of the oil-dependence prob-
lem is the fact that much of the information
concerning global warming is coming from the
oil corporations themselves. These conglomer-
ates are in the business of selling oil, so why
would they want citizens to reduce consump-
tion? McQuaig also notes the evaporation of
political will, stemming from the 1980s, as
another obstacle in dealing with the global-
warming crisis, adding that SUVs (“gated com-
munities on wheels”) are characteristic of the
typically squandered opportunities with respect
to environmental, political, and regulatory
progress.

Its the Crude, Dude... is intended for a main-
stream audience—for people suspicious of the
war in Iraq. McQuaig uses fact-based arguments
in order to present information and fuel debate.
Much of her success lies in the fact that she is
not only incredibly bright and lively, but she is a
journalist highly critical of mainstream media in
general. With mainstream media being unregu-
lated and owned largely by the business class, it
can become quite independent of public opin-
ion. McQuaig has managed to successfully
separate herself from the mainstream-media
school of thought, while still using the medium
as her chosen forum for discussion.

FEBRUARY 23/2005

 

 

 

 

¥// jf

Violence—More Than Just a Hobby

Production IG combines Hollywood and anime

Walter Shawlee 3.0, The Peak (Simon Fraser University)

BURNABY (CUP)—There’s no real need to extol the
virtues of animation as an art form, since it has been
so badly abused for delivering content that watching it
as such is almost laughable. There are those rare
exceptions, though—works of animation that are
either visually stunning or serve to make some sort of
satiric commentary. In this regard, it differs little from
actual filmmaking. And Production IG, the makers of
Dead Leaves, saw fit to combine the best-selling ele-
ments of Hollywood with the visual commentary of
anime.

The movie itself is short, at only 50 minutes, but
in those few brief moments, there are enough explo-
sions, decapitations, and toilet humour to satisfy even
the most depraved and violence-loving viewer. Almost
every second seems to be packed with a tension that
can come only from having to cram a reasonably com-
plex story into a very short time frame.

While Dead Leaves does not fail to be entertaining
or even hilariously amusing, an obvious trade-off
occurred in it because the ease of a comprehensive
storyline was substituted for unnecessary shortness.
This is particularly noticeable in the simplicity of most
of the story’s events, which can basically be summa-
tized as “two people wake up and remember nothing,
go on a murderous crime spree, get caught, go to
prison, and go on another killing spree.”

Luckily, Production IG, which also did Ghost in the
Shell and the animated sequence in Ki// Bill, saw it fit
to lavish the film with a rich visual quality that is as

 

much social commentary as it is gracefully violent.
The angular crispness of background structure and
the similarity of the everyday people give the anima-
tion a sense of social apathy and conformity. Principle
characters are set apart with great flamboyance, mani-
fested by one of them sporting a colourful eye patch,
and the other, a television for a head. The characters
are designed to transcend the mundane qualities of
everyday life. They live large, and get punished severe-
ly for it, and, in the process, a lot of ammunition is
spent and an inspiring number of dead bodies and
wrecked robots decorate the landscape with sweet car-
nage.

Certainly, the movie itself is uproariously amusing,
but what helped to compensate for its shortness was
some of the amusing extra features included with the
DVD. The features explain why the movie was so
unbelievably deranged. It is hard to decide whether
the movie is more deranged than what the producer
had to do to the production crew to force them into
unveiling their dark production secrets.

Violence and mayhem is one thing, but taking the
crew to a bar and engaging them in drinking-games in
order to have them divulge their secrets—that’s just
mean. The drinks appeared to be of indeterminate
origin, and if the faces the crew made while drinking
them is anything to go by, then the drinks probably
contained either traces of rubbing alcohol or cow

dung, or maybe both.

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