{"id":7202,"date":"2010-02-12T17:03:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T01:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=7202"},"modified":"2010-02-12T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-13T03:45:00","slug":"the-cove-louie-psihoyos-2009-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=7202","title":{"rendered":"The Cove (Louie Psihoyos, 2009): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at the Lobero, Santa Barbara International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\"\"Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and dolphin advocate Ric O’Barry, were both honored\u00a0Wednesday night with the David Attenborough Award for their joint effort\u00a0on The Cove<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Cove documents O’Barry’s former Hollywood career as the lead dolphin trainer, for the 1960’s hit television show Flipper.\u00a0 The show helped to escalate interest in capturing and training dolphins\u00a0for entertainment purposes, at various amusement parks such as Sea World.\u00a0 When one of Flipper’s dolphin actors (Kathy)\u00a0committed suicide in O’Barry’s arms, he did an about-face and began a movement to protect dolphins and release those\u00a0that were in captivity.<\/p>\n

The film centers around a remote cove inside a\u00a0National Park\u00a0in Taiji Japan, where thousands of dolphins are trapped, selected for captivity,\u00a0with the remainder brutally slaughtered for food consumption each year.\u00a0 Dolphin meat contains high levels of mercury, thus possibly contaminating consumers with mercury poisoning.\u00a0 Not only is the dolphin meat\u00a0misrepresented and\u00a0sold at market, but it was a main staple in the local school lunch program for children (until recently), due to O’Barry’s work.<\/p>\n

O’Barry has seen some positive results once he\u00a0shifted the focus from an animal rights position to a human rights issue,\u00a0pointing\u00a0to the\u00a0lack of informed citizens, government cover-up, and non-freedom of the press.<\/p>\n

The work of filmmaker Louie Psihoyos comes into play when he and O’Barry attempt to\u00a0secretly film from inside\u00a0the cove, which\u00a0is regulated and completely off-limits to outsiders.\u00a0 Psihoyos, a former National Geographic photographer,\u00a0invited a select group of friends (a military guy, a pro-diver, and\u00a0a thrill seeker)\u00a0\u00a0to join him on the covert operation.<\/p>\n

Loaded with heavy equipment such as\u00a0dive gear, camouflage, night-vision goggles (and cameras), they also\u00a0take along fake “hollywood” rocks in which to hide special HD cameras.\u00a0 Red flag warnings\u00a0are set up with the local Japanese authority and Psihoyos and his crew are\u00a0relentlessly followed and harassed.<\/p>\n

Amazingly Psihoyos and his crew manage to infiltrate the heavily guarded cove, and capture footage of\u00a0the\u00a0shocking and disturbing slaying of the beautiful and highly intelligent creatures.<\/p>\n

The Cove is riveting from beginning to end with the VO narrative alternating between O’Barry and Psihoyos.\u00a0 At the final moment when we get a glimpse\u00a0of the goings-on within the cove, Psihoyos shuts off the narrative, and\u00a0allows the visuals to explain – the only word to describe it is HEARTBREAKING.<\/p>\n

The film not only pulls at the heart-strings, but there are also heart-stoppers and moments of humor as well.\u00a0 The title sequence is cleverly seen through the night-vision camera, giving us an idea of the action to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at the Lobero, Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and dolphin advocate Ric O’Barry, were both honored\u00a0Wednesday night with the David Attenborough Award for their joint effort\u00a0on The Cove. The Cove documents O’Barry’s former Hollywood career as the lead dolphin trainer, for the 1960’s hit television show Flipper.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,3,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}