We saw a screening of Arctic Tale (or Death of the Polar Bears) at the Lloyd Center Cinema 10 here in PDX. I guess it is the finished cut, although the guy asking if we liked it didn't seem to know or care.<br /><br />It seems as though it was shot in high-def and DV and maybe some VHS-C because there is zero consistency in the picture quality even within a given scene. This is no Blue Planet and it is now clear that National Geographic has been completely deposed by the BBC as the reigning champ of these kind of films.<br /><br />We are reminded by the filmmakers who are doubtlessly evolutionary scientists that a jellyfish hasn't changed form for some 650 million years. This little factoid fits nowhere in the narrative, it is simply plugged in among the drowning bears. The jellyfish is perfect and hasn't needed to evolve since the seas were first poured out, the hapless bears, however, have come to rely on the ice that us selfish humans are now using to chill our Budweiser. There is no doubt among any sentient beings that the earth is getting hotter--at the end of an ice age things tend to get a little toasty and barring any asteroid strikes it is likely that these warming trends will continue regardless of what mankind does to accelerate the process. It's going to get hotter and the polar bears will probably die when that happens.<br /><br />But if you're a pure Darwinian evolutionist--who cares about the damn bears? The bears are simply unfit to survive in a warming climate created by us not-so-benevolent primates at our own imperative. People came from apes and we scratched some bones against some rocks and after a few years viola--Chevrolet Suburban! The bears had better learn to swim or grow some gills--really fast. Tough luck bears! You're really cute in Arctic Tale, but frankly you've been known to eat people on occasion and your extinction, sad as it may be, will probably save a few wayward Eskimos.<br /><br />There are also some Walruses? Walrii??--that are also going to croak because I spent and extra two minutes in the shower this morning. I now feel really bad that I have a water heater. I guess like Gil says--all drains really do lead to the ocean. Forget my shower--the cooling system at San Onofre must really be screwing with the walruses. Needless to say, we're going to kill all the creatures that rely on it being really cold or they are going to have to move somewhere colder or something just has to give. I don't know what to do about the bears but if they really require it to be 50 below all the time, how do these ones at the Los Angeles Zoo even stand a chance? I mean it gets well into the 90's down there.<br /><br />I am really confused as to whether the kids finding out that everything is going to die is entertainment or info-tainment or guilt-trip-attainment. Your kids will cry when they find out the bears are going to die. Some bears die in the film and it is very, very sad--thankfully my youngest daughter and I were out taking a leak during the bear death sequence because it might have over-traumatized my little 4-year-old. I wasn't even sure whether or not to flush the toilet lest I kill yet another bear. I'm not sure how much bear death is on my hands..I do drive a Civic, but I also take long showers. I breathe and add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. I've never planted a tree and when I do plant--um--plants they are usually the dark green kind of plants that absorb a lot of sunlight and radiate a ton of heat causing even more global warming.