While I have complained in the past about celebrities and their causes, I thought that this
new program was worth mentioning in a positive way. Strange
Days on Planet Earth is a new series showing soon on the Nat Geo Channel that tries to raise our green awareness.
And Ed Norton, whose attorney father is director of the Nature
Conservancy China Project and played a role in the development of the film, is the host of the series. Norton has
some “credibility heft”, as I like to put it, since he has been an environmenal advocate for a long time and, thanks to
his father, is fairly well-versed in the issues he’s talking about. He’s also a fairly avid outdoorsman.
A few months ago I went to the Explorers Club film
festival and actually got to see several of these films. I also spoke
with Mark Shelley, the Executive Producer
who told me that the films, lavishly produced, were almost like feature films in their complexity and production value.
And to be honest, they are excellent films. Amazingly shot and wonderfully told. You may not agree with the various
theses: that we have serious environmental problems when it comes to global warming, deforestation, etc., but you can’t
deny that the films do a good job making their point. Tivo these shows.