To me, this movie is perfection.

Really Surprised!

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Well, I finally got around to watching the film, though it hadn't been one of those films that had really been on my radar all that much, at least until I read about it in Naomi' Klien's book 'This Changes Everything'. I guess the main reason that spurred me on to watching this film was when Klein talks about the scene where people set their faucets on fire and I have to admit that was something that I really wanted to see (and it's pretty disturbing when you actually see them do this).I remember when fracking became all the rage back in the lead up to the Global Financial Crisis. Basically the price of oil had gone through the roof and all of a suddenly there was this rush to look for alternate means of generating energy. While renewables were on the cards, when the extractive industry developed a new way of getting gas out of the ground, all of the sudden the idea of using the sun and the wind to generate our energy literally went out the window. Obviously this has now had an opposite effect resulting in the price of crude going through the floor since the world is now awash in natural gas.Industry promotes gas as a new, cleaner fuel that doesn't produce the carbon that petroleum does, however what Fox sets out to do in this film is to demonstrate that while the use of gas may be a lot cleaner than petroleum, the means of getting it out of the ground, and to process it, isn't. In fact what he pushes throughout the film is how one of the nasty byproducts of this process is that the water supplies are poisoned, and people who live near fracking wells are no longer able to drink the ground water.The thing with shale gas is that there are huge reservoirs located under the United States, which means that by extracting this energy source means that they no longer have to rely upon foreign sources of oil, much of which is located in some of the most unstable regions in the world. However Fox argues that the catch is that the process to extract the gas is far from being clean, and much of the byproduct is not only kept hidden from the world, but there is little to no regulation forcing the companies to dispose of the waste in a clean manner. In fact the residents who do complain about the toxic waste are either thrown up against an army of lawyers, or are paid to remain silent about the whole process.Certainly a confronting movie, though I probably should get around to watching Fracknation just to see what the opposing view is.

With a look at all the negative reviews here, that just focus on one or two attackable things presented in this documentary, I have to give all stars to this documentary.It seems to me, that there is a big lobby behind the whole topic -- it is nearly as awful as the climate topic, where near religious wars wage. When I read, that at least two films where made as response from the other side to this film -- this is a huge indicator that the film has hit the target.There are so many facts presented, that should make everybody with a brain to think, but the critics like to focus more on the weak spots, but on the whole mass of facts. Even, when you delete all the weak spots, there are enough facts left, that speak a clear language. Of course, the other side can make 10 further films (and they have the money for it) against it, but I doubt, that they can prove that their is no problem.It is really sad, what people are ready to do, just to have cheap energy (or for sheer profits).This documentary is not the best made, but it is an eye opener to everybody that is ready to think about the facts and not just wants to have his own opinions confirmed.People can put their fingers in their ears and hold their hands in front their eyes, they even can train their brains to negate the truths -- but one day, also the last one will find out, that money can not be eaten.

"Gasland" is loaded with misinformation about a decades-old, proved-safe technique that has been used over a million times in the USA (with virtually no adverse environmental effects). Gasland is pure propaganda. For a comprehensive exposure of this fact, watch the documentary "FrackNation" by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.To qualify as a "documentary" a film should at least attempt to honestly present its subject. "Gasland" does exactly the opposite. It's blatantly dishonest."Gasland" is a crock - a crockumentary.

It's a 'game changer'. After years when America's reserves of fossil fuels have been dwindling, an enormous new source of energy has become available: shale gas. Enough exploitable natural gas - 1,000 trillion cubic feet - has been found under states like Pennsylvania to supply US needs for 45 years. In Europe, there are 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. No drilling in deep water, no nasty oil spewing out, and substantially lower carbon emissions than you get from burning coal. Isn't this good news all round?Apparently not. And there has been no higher-profile effort to present the good news about shale gas as a disaster than the documentary Gasland. The film starts at director Josh Fox's home in rural Pennsylvania. A gas company has offered him nearly $100,000 to drill for shale gas on his 19-acre property. That's a nice little payday for basically doing nothing. Should he take the cash?First, a quick explanation of what's different about shale gas. The existence of stores of methane thousands of feet underground locked inside rock has been known about for a long time. What hasn't existed until recent years is the means to exploit these reserves. A pipe is drilled into these gas-containing rocks, then charges are exploded along its length to open up the rock. Then, a mixture of water, sand and a small percentage of chemicals is forced into the rock to open up fissures and free the stored gas. The process is called hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking'.Yet what should be an interesting opportunity to explore some longstanding questions - like what balance we strike between the interests of a relatively small number of rural residents and those of wider society - is missed. It becomes a black-and-white tale of little people against malevolent corporations. By starting from his own situation, Fox might think he is providing human interest, but it felt more like he was saying: 'I've got this rural idyll, how dare you screw it up.' With his smug manner, I was less inclined to sympathise with Fox than fantasise about punching him.The possible problems associated with fracking represent a serious enough story without Fox reaching for hyperbole and scaremongering, but he does that anyway. By throwing up a few liberal dog-whistle ideas - like 'chemicals' and 'Dick Cheney' - Fox tries to turn problems with a new technology that need to be sorted out into a wider suggestion that 'fracking' is fundamentally unsafe. And hey, if you don't care about Fox's water, he throws in the idea that shale-gas drilling could ultimately poison the watershed that supplies New York and New Jersey's water. Scary enough for you now?It would be naive to ignore the fact that energy companies have a trillion-dollar reason to downplay problems related to shale gas. But in many respects, that's as much a consequence of Americans' bad habit of solving every problem by litigation, and a wider culture of risk aversion where anything new is treated with suspicion. In principle, fracking is a safe way of producing energy. Where companies screw up, they should learn the lessons, clean up the problem and compensate those affected.What's missing from Gasland is the equally pertinent observation that environmentalists are desperately trying to find a reason to scare people away from a cheap new source of energy that isn't renewable or zero-carbon. If shale gas takes off, as it seems to be doing, the pressure from scares about 'peak oil' and the dangers of deepwater drilling for energy won't have the same purchase in the public's mind.As one analyst wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year: 'I have been studying the energy markets for 30 years, and I am convinced that shale gas will revolutionise the industry—and change the world—in the coming decades. It will prevent the rise of any new cartels. It will alter geopolitics. And it will slow the transition to renewable energy.'For Britain, this debate is now playing out closer to home. In 2010, test drilling started in north-west England on shale gas deposits there. With supplies from the North Sea declining and dependence on gas from overseas growing, a new domestic source of gas would be welcome. Yet there have been calls by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, in a report funded by the Co-operative, to halt work on exploiting these reserves. (The Co-operative is also backing Gasland in the UK.)This seems mad, even in environmental terms. When UK carbon emissions fell in the 1990s, it wasn't because of concern about the climate, but because of the so-called 'dash to gas' as a wave of gas-fuelled power stations were built to replace coal-fired plants. Because gas contains a higher proportion of hydrogen to carbon, burning gas is regarded as 'cleaner' in climate-change terms. Encouraging gas usage would seem like a good way, therefore, of reducing carbon emissions while still getting affordable, reliable energy - something wind, solar and other renewable energy sources are failing to provide right now.Gasland has been nominated for the Oscar for best documentary, much to the gas industry's dismay. Rather like a previous winner of that award, Al Gore's global warming diatribe An Inconvenient Truth, Gasland cranks up alarmism at the expense of a balanced discussion of an important issue.