Out of Balance (2007)

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Directed by Tom Jackson.

Starring Tom Jackson.

An open critique of ExxonMobil and the oil industry as a whole, the documentary Out of Balance investigates how the use of fossil fuels continues to send the planet's temperature further and further out of balance, while oil companies like ExxonMobil continue to exert disproportionate influence in all areas of industry, the media, and governments all over the world. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

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Reviews and discussions

Evil hidden within great beauty.
by tadiv in tadiv Blog

lost interest.

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"City Lights Pictures, in association with Whitest Pouring Films and Kilo Films, presents Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), a film by Jason Kohn. The film runs 85 minutes and is not rated by the MPAA. Based upon some of the hostage video content, this film would likely be rated NC-17 by the MPAA. Manda Bala is a documentary film covering several social and economic issues in modern Brazil. These issues include political corruption, the kidnapping of the wealthy by the poor, and resulting industries such as frog farming, specialized plastic surgery, Helicopter taxi service, and the retrofitting of automobiles to make them more or less bullet-proof.Very well photographed and cleanly edited, Manda Bala, to a great extent, lacks a central theme. This picture has a good, complimenting soundtrack. Because of a mixture of translation and subtitles, the presentation is at times awkward for the viewer. Manda Bala greatly benefits from stunning cinematography. However, while watching this film ... " [More]

Put Down That Frog and Step Awa ...
by joem18b in joem18b Blog

hasn't rated it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Before dealing with the end of the world as we know it, which this movie does not explicitly mention but which is lurking there in the unspoken background - before dealing with that, it being a pet peeve of mine, let me mention first an equally annoying pet peeve: many podcasters, the Spout podcasters occasionally among them, use the expression "begs the question" when they actually mean "raises the question." This error of diction has become so common in the U.S. today that it's probably useless to even mention it here, but since I heard it again on FilmCouch recently, let me remind those who might be unaware of it that "begging the question" is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. Thank you. Meanwhile, back in the day, if you hated documentaries but had to write a paper on one, you could head down to Ninth and Trawler and catch The Nudist Story at the Jewel Box. The Nudist Story is the film where eve ... " [More]

Mixed Messages
by minerwerks in minerwerks Blog

is neutral about it.

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"The overdue reviews of two DVDs sent to me by Spout: "Out of Balance" and "Africa Unite." At a recent film screening I attended, an audience questioned the cast and crew, "Was that a movie or a message?"The surprisingly appropriate reply from an actor was, "What is a movie BUT a message?" In recent years, we have seen the venues for self-expression blossom, and among the various clutter out there, determined people with a message have found ways to break through. Two documentaries I viewed rely to some extent on the portable camera to collect material for their stories.The first of these is "Out of Balance," subtitled as "ExxonMobil's Impact on Climate Change." Writer/Director/Narrator Tom Jackson takes viewers through the basics of climate science and global warming before moving on to the corporate actions of ExxonMobil to vaunt public image and profits over public responsibility. The documentary relies on the modern approach epitomized by the works of Michael Moore, with the d ... " [More]

Woof
by joem18b in joem18b Blog

hasn't rated it.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful. [What do you think?]
"Before beginning this review, a tip of the hat to sun dogs, aka parhelia, those common bright circular spots on a solar halo. Sun dogs are "an atmospheric optical phenomenon primarily associated with the reflection or refraction of sunlight by small ice crystals making up cirrus or cirrostratus clouds."Also, a little love for the Arizona Sundogs in the Central Hockey League and for a few favorite dog movies: snow dogs, rain dogs, desert dogs, moon dogs, straw dogs, stray dogs, reservoir dogs, dish dogs, lawn dogs, dead dogs, rabid dogs, chilly dogs, sleeping dogs, miracle dogs, road dogs, old dogs, dealing dogs, tap dogs, angry dogs, war dogs, catwalk dogs, deck dogs, top dogs, lost dogs, trinity dogs, urinoir dogs, bad dogs, barking dogs, fence dogs, devil dogs, gift dogs, good dogs, hot dogs, performing dogs, sea dogs, restricted dogs, society dogs, trained dogs, tokyo dogs, training dogs, wild dogs, zombie dogs, prairie dogs, and a dog's dog.And to note that Kingst ... " [More]

Mediocre Doc, Big Message
by slipofthetongue in SlipOfTheTongue Blog

is neutral about it.

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"OUT OF BALANCE (a rather mediocre title by the way) is a documentary which cries out to the heavens about global warming. It points a stiff finger at ExxonMobil, claiming them to be complicit in delaying the U.S. response to this incredibly urgent problem. This is an interesting but hardly groundbreaking documentary and it feels a little light on the implicating evidence. I'm going to fess up to not having seen An Inconvenient Truth so I don't have another doc on this subject to compare it to but OUT OF BALANCE feels home grown and a bit too personal to be taken seriously as either filmmaking or journalism. I did find much of what is put forth in the film to be credible but this doc wants to blaze trails and that just doesn't happen. We all know that major corporations (whether tobacco companies, oil companies, or auto manufacturers) use deceptive advertising and phony p.r. to steer the American people away from any feelings of righteous indignation when it comes t ... " [More]

Tom Jackson is no Michael Moore...
by vhsparrow in vhsparrow Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"And that's just about the only place where this film falls flat. 'Out of Balance' is a concise, thoughtful condensation of the Climate Change issue that makes creative, if not authoritative use of interviews and stock footage to make the case for Global Warming and the damage than man has done to the Earth's climate. Tom Jackson has managed to package the science, politics and business concerns related to climate change into a coherent and persuasive film that's fully accessible to a general audience. In particular, Jackson tracks the history and growth of Exxon/Mobil, the largest publicall-traded oil company, taking account of it's failures, specifically that of the Exxon Valdez tragedy and the corporation's efforts to control and manipulate the social and ecological damage done by that accident. 'Balance' is a fine informational documentary replete with many valuable interviews with scientists, reserchers and stakeholders, etc. The film' ... " [More]

Spout Mavens Disc #7: Out of Ba ...
by rik_tod in The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost

is neutral about it.

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"There has been much discussion lately about whether a film marked primarily with the label "documentary" has a certain responsibility to present a balanced detailing of the particulars surrounding a subject, representing opinions on both or multiple sides of a debatable issue. Certainly, Michael Moore is due a certain amount of blame for this discussion. His films are unfailingly one-sided, and yes, he does have a tendency to push things in his favor; some even go so far to say he creates situations to lead to such a result. I couldn't care less for two reasons. The first is that I am, without any doubt, squarely on his side on all of the issues upon which he has has planted his weighted camera lens, even if he is a bit of a tad of a not-even-sort-of a dickhead. So, don't come crying to me if you feel he treated Charlton Heston in much the same manner that Heston chewed his merciless way through script after script over the years; if you take a very public positio ... " [More]

Out of Balance: ExxonMobil's Im ...
by analogzombie in analogzombie Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"These days you can throw a rock and hit any number of anti-Bush, anti-corporation, or environmentally conscious documentaries. Some are better than others, but most are completely horrid. Out of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change falls somewhere in the middle. The film attempts to tackle an extremely huge issue by focusing on one company’s history of irresponsible and often abhorrent business practices. The central point of Tom Jackson’s film is that Exxon is so mega-large that they alone have the industrial might to negatively affect the entire Earth. What’s even worse is that the corporation actively seeks to block environmental legislation and fund pseudo-scientists to act as the voice of skepticism on the issue. The film makes some large claims and assertions about just how evil Exxon truly is and, for the most part, they ring true. Jackson trots out the familiar torrent of scientists, authors, and politicos to help explain the s ... " [More]

Power Means Not Having to Respond
by QFLW in QFLW Blog

liked it.

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"Out of Balance: ExxonMobil’s Impact on Climate Change Written, directed and narrated by Tom JacksonI put off watching this film because I guessed (correctly) that it would outrage and depress me further regarding Big Oil’s sway over the planet. I was pleased, however, to see that despite the gloomy, alarming cover artwork, the documentary is calm and clear, presenting its information rationally, without stooping very much (as far as I could tell) to the rhetoric or histrionics of propaganda.The film’s primary focus is in disclosing ExxonMobil’s steady campaign to confuse the public, keep us from understanding that the current changes in global climate are unnatural and are definitely a solvable problem. For of course, as the world’s largest corporation and largest oil company, if public and governmental opinion were to go against it, that would cut into its enormous profits. The corporation is so pervasively powerful and wealthy that it has pretty ... " [More]

Out of Balance
by joem18b in joem18b Blog

hasn't rated it.

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"Out of Balancethe world is going to hell. you can stop reading now - you already know it."out of balance: exxonmobil's impact on climate change" provides 60 minutes of bad news, none of it new news. unless, that is, you yourself don't believe that the world is going to hell or are somehow not aware otherwise of the fact that it is, in which case you're wasting your time reading this and you won't be sitting through this movie either, unless you're too drunk or lazy to change the channel, in which case it will have no more effect on you than the shopping channel does, or, no, less.why was this film made? perhaps the director received a grant. also, existentially speaking, before the end of the world we'll want a library of cassandra-like warnings like this on dvd, which everyone ignores until it's too late (now, in other words). also, every rhinoceros needs an ox-pecker on its back.who was this film made for? in it, a crowd of sweet-tempered rat ... " [More]

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Tags: documentary , GLOBAL , warming , exxon , climate-change
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