Temple Grandin...Best Movie of the Year

I just saw what I think was truly the best movie of the year over the weekend...Temple Grandin. It is an HBO film done as a biopic of the life of Temple Grandin.

The role of Temple was brilliantly played by Claire Danes. She was spot on. Her acting was really amazing.

The story is both inspirational and touching. Temple Grandin was born with Autism in a time where little was know about the disease. She grew up knowing that she was "different, not less". She used those differences to revolutionize the cattle industry. That is all I am going to say about the plot, because you really HAVE to see this movie.

Again, one of the things I find so moving about this story is that Temple is able to see problems in a special way. But instead of leaving them there, or simply researching the problem, she finds and implements solutions. Awesome.

Some one REALLY DOES something!!

I just watched the movie Crude last night. It is not a really crude movie, it is actually a documentary about a legal battle going on between people in Ecuador and the company Texaco/Chevron. Basically the people there were exploited for their natural resources and abandoned to the toxic waste and damaged environment. They now drink and bathe in polluted waters. Their food comes out of these waters too, or drinks the water, and is thus also poisoned. I won't do into all the details, because you can watch the movie for yourself, but it a really sad tale of greed on one hand, politics, and people who were not involved with the initial crime who are now in charge of the company that was. It actually makes for a much more complicated moral play than you might think. That is to say, it is easy to simply blame the big company who has lots of money and try to take their money just because they have it. But it truly is not as simple as that. Corruption between the government and the company was rampent, I am sure, and for the last 15 years a government run oil company has taken over for Texaco. So it is hard to tell where the blame for damage in specific locations should fall.

But the environmental damage is clear. And it certainly can be traced back to Texaco's arrival on the scene. The kind of devastation left behind would NEVER be allowed here in the states. The suffering of the children there is horrendous.

As I watched I asked myself, "WHY?" Why do mothers keep bathing their children in the polluted waters? Why do men continue to drink from the streams? Why are all the clothing and the animals washed there too? Even an unpolluted stream can make someone sick, let alone one that makes its way through oil waste! And if all else fails, why don't these people leave and head to safer ground?

But for the poverty stricken people of that place, options are few. They are living on ancestral lands, and there is no indoor plumbing, let alone bottled water or purification systems...

And this is where the best part of the story comes in. The legal fight regarding Texaco's payment to the people may go on for a long time still...10 or 15 years, but Tudie Styler, wife of the singer Sting, didn't think the people should wait that long. She decided to act. She helped set up rain water collection and purification systems for the people in affected areas of Ecuador. She brought them clean water!! What a gift in a world where the water is literally killing you.

It doesn't solve all the problems, but it takes a big leap toward solving one of the problems, and that is a start. Check out the link below to read about this story. It is really great.

UNICEF National Ambassador Trudie Styler brings clean water project to Ecuador

NEW YORK, USA, 15 June 2009 – UNICEF National Ambassador Trudie Styler has been a long-standing supporter of humanitarian causes. In 2005, the film producer and actress received the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award for her longstanding commitment to UNICEF.