Pirates of Silicon Valley

If Big Media insist on behaving like scammers in the name of protecting their intellectual property, they will be the ones to miss out... big time.

For the time being traditional media outlets continue to produce most of the best content that is out there. This may not last but that, my friends, is a conversation for another day. American TV in particular is enjoying a particularly good run of form with series like The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica, The West Wing  making it difficult for even the most committed telly addicts to keep on top of it all. This is great, of course, and long may it continue. 

In the spirit of wanting to see such good works continue and in the name of supporting the artists (as well as the studios) who make such fine works possible, I recently bought a copy of Game of Thrones on Blu-Ray. Purchased from a well known British retailer (apparently one in six pounds are spent in its stores), this handsome high-definition presentation, replete with Dolby mastered 6.1 sound and numerous extras set me back some £31.99 - and very happy I was too. 

As soon as I had finished watching the first two episodes, which I did back to back, I knew that I had bought a bargain, and I was glad I had waited to watch the genuine article. Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage et al's impeccable acting, George R.R Martin's intricate plotting and the glorious landscapes of Scotland, Ireland and northern England were a joy to behold. No digital download I have ever seen could have hoped to rival the clarity, depth or vibrancy of the image. 

I was one happy customer, as they say. Until... (don't tell me you knew there was a twist coming) one day, out of the blue, Power DVD requested that I update the software on my computer. Within seconds the download was complete and the Blu-Ray disks for my lovely new Game of Thrones box set refused to play. 

Like any computer-savvy consumer I immediately turned to the Internet for help. What was this nonsense? Forum after forum described the exact same problem. None offered solutions. 

Maybe I just need to upgrade the software? 

Well, yes and no. Apparently, at some point in the relatively recent past new DRM restrictions on Blu-Ray disks have caused PowerDVD to withdraw Blu-Ray disk support for older versions of the software. Disks that previously worked no longer do. My entire Blu-Ray collection is now unplayable on my computer unless I pay an additional ~£35 to the company that makes PowerDVD, which seemingly has some sort of exclusive license for the HD drivers that convert the digital information encoded on the disks into sounds and video.

I cannot help but notice that this is the exact same 'business model' adopted by malware scammers. 

Personally, it makes me much more disinclined to buy any more Blu-Ray disks. How about you?

Holding up the Mirror

Ghost in the Shell is a highly influential Japanese cyberpunk science-fiction film from 1995.  The film concerns a female cyborg assassin called Major Motoko Kusanagi, the leader of an elite counter-intelligence unit called Section 9 and its brushed chrome style influenced the look of The Matrix, which also borrowed its scrolling green alpha-numerics.


Tasked with apprehending a dangerous hacker called the Puppet Master, who has been using 'ghost hacked' humans to accomplish shadowy political aims by proxy, Kusanagi starts to question the validity of her subjective experience as an artificial human. One striking sequence in an interrogation cell depicts a ghost hacked human confronted with the truth about the simulated experience the Puppet Master has programmed into his brain in order to manipulate him. "Will I get my old memories back?" he opines, desperately.

Short and snappy at 80 minutes, Ghost in the Shell takes science fiction norms familiar from the writings of William Gibson and Blade Runner, and lends them a sinewy sense of Oriental otherness.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief



The fullest cinema I have seen in a very long time and a much broader demographic than I anticipated turned out to watch the new Joss Whedon movie - Marvel's Avengers Assemble - on Saturday afternoon. Disney's marketing executives have been having a pretty torrid time of it of late, what with John Carter (of Mars... or not of Mars, as the case may be). Marvel's Avengers Assemble therefore is the rather clumsy title they have plumped for in the UK, to distinguish it from tongue-in-cheek British spy series of the 1960s and Hollywood box office flop of 1998, The Avengers.

There are a million different ways in which approach a review about this particular film. From a business perspective it is the culmination of a four-year long franchise film cycle that started with Iron Man in 2008. From a creative perspective it is the latest in a vast array of Hollywood superhero movies produced since they decided to start giving these hyper-real juggernauts to serious filmmakers, beginning with Bryan Singer and X-Men in 2000.

For this particular outing Marvel has turned to the talents of writer-director Joss Whedon, probably best known for his work on American cult TV series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. His assured handling of witty repartee makes him an obvious choice to helm what is essentially a superhero ensemble piece and even his action sequences is surprisingly solid - shots that looked televisual in the trailers really come to life in movie.

What of the film itself?

At times Robert Downey Jnr threatens to unbalance the entire enterprise, so supple is his handling of the throwaway comic quip. But he is just about kept in check by Mark Ruffalo's quietly powerful work as Bruce Banner and his mean, green alter ego. There is a moment early on when Ruffalo threatens Scarlett Johannsen's Black Widow that made me immediately love his character, a darkly mischievous streak that leans heavily on the fact that he knows people are terrified of making him angry. I had never seen anyone explore that aspect of Banner's character before. Chris Evans deserves plaudits for portrayal of the earnest all American boy-cum-military athlete extraordinaire Captain America. Playing opposite Downey Jnr's wisecracking genius billionaire playboy philanthropist he certainly risks coming across as too good to be true, but Evans invests his characterisation with an honesty and a warmth that makes you root for him too. Chris Hemsworth as Thor is probably less well served than any of his compatriots in the gang, but he doesn't put a foot wrong with the material he is given to play.

Of course, heroes are only as good as their villain, and in the form of Tom Hiddleston's Loki, The Avengers are onto a real winner. I was not sure that his character would prove substantive enough to propose a legitimate threat to such a mighty gang but, as played by Hiddleston, Loki is everything he should be - a snivelling but oddly charismatic man-boy who happens to have the powers of a Norse God.

Yes, I know it is another Hollywood superhero movie. Yes, I know it is the centrepiece of a multi-platform multimedia movie-gaming franchise. Yes, I know it is predictable in places and cheesy in others, but Whedon writes with wit, directs with style and his cast have just the right mix of fun and fantasy threat. Check your cynicism at the door and just go with it, remember what is was like to wake up early on a Saturday morning and watch the Marvel Action Hour - pure escapism, if you've got sufficent imagination to embrace it.

Pay the Writer

Previously, I expressed my desire to defuse the idea of a 'war on copyright' because it creates an artificial polarity that does not help to further the necessary discussion and debate that needs to take place on this increasingly important issue.

I pointed out that the only people impacted by restrictive and intrusive DRM are legitimate users, who pay an over-inflated price for an inferior product. 

I suggested that these self-defeating practices that are impoverishing the creative industries might be rectified by lowering the price of digital goods (the nominal distribution cost of which is zero) and removing the DRM that more and more closely resembles malware and spyware. 

Digital abundance

In this second article, I would like to backtrack a little and explain where I stand with respect to copyright, and why I think it is so important for creators to receive suitable recompense for the products they create, online or otherwise. 

My understanding of copyright is quite straightforward. I am no lawyer and I have no special knowledge on the subject - please let me know if I have anything wrong if you know more than I - but, as far as I understand it, copyright is a protection against plagiarism that enables creators to earn a living. That is it. I am sure that there are all sorts of complicated legal precepts with which copyright is associated and I know that there are hundreds of different licenses under which works can be copyrighted, but, as far as I am concerned, the notion that creators be paid for the products of their hearts and minds is perfectly fair and reasonable. 

Some argue that the 'digital revolution' and resulting information abundance has made copyright irrelevant, that the concepts of propriety and freedom are antithetical in a digital world. This strikes me as wrong. Propriety is surely an important part of freedom. 

Why it matters

One of the most eloquent and informed writers and speakers on the subject of copyright and digital distribution is Corey Doctorow. He earns what appears to be a very good living as a science fiction writer, technology journalist and public speaker. Having worked as a computer programmer, he knows about the technical realities of modern computing, and, having worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, he is very well informed about modern copyright law. I would not dream of contradicting him about any of the finer details of what are called the copyright wars, but which, I think, need a new name. As I am about to outline, I agree with him in almost every respect, but one. Creators should be paid for digital products. 

If you will allow me to paraphrase, Corey Doctorow says that the copyright wars are the front line of a coming war on general-purpose computation. Corporations and control freaks like the idea of turning general-purpose computers - as embodied by the PC (probably running Linux) - into tethered media appliances with limited functionality and spyware as standard, all in the name of security and convenience. Computing devices that match this description are already available on the market - you may well be reading this article on an Apple iPad, probably the most prevalent of this new vanguard. The fundamental point is that DRM is a slippy slope towards more authoritarian forms of control that might limit access to digital information. The solution therefore is for people to reject DRM in all its forms - and I agree with all of that. 

However, removing DRM and weakening copyright does not necessarily improve the likelihood of creators to be paid for their work online. 

The copyright industries

I have do far been very polite and attempted to choose my words very carefully to avoid any sense of prejudice on my part. But I feel like it is time to put my cards on the table and declare where my interests lie.

SOPA and PIPA were notionally promoted by the MPAA to protect the interests of its members - Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and The Walt Disney Company - all of which are either subsidiaries of or in themselves transnational corporations. This was an industrial response to what is essentially a creative problem, or to be more specific, a problem for creators. Personally, I could scarcely care less about whether the Big Six survive the digital transition. They have made themselves culturally irrelevant by rigid adherence to a franchise filmmaking formula  aimed almost exclusively at young boys and their families, and they have made themselves financially precarious by only making films with the insanely large budgets. Personally, I think I can live without another Transformers sequel or Spider-Man reboot. 

My interest and my concern is for free-spirited and independently minded creators. The problem of digital distribution is a problem for creators not corporations. Several years ago - maybe 15 or 20 - cyber utopians promised that the Internet would usher in a new era of pluralism and creativity, eliminating boundaries to entry for new writers/musicians/filmmakers/programmers. That was true enough, in the sense that millions of people were given a platform to publish what they wanted - everything from new political treatise to the ever popular cat picture. But, the utopians failed to anticipate the profoundly destabilising impact the Internet would have upon previously stable professions. 

The most readily reported (ha!) is probably journalism. Thousands of jobs on local and national newspapers have been lost because of the advertising dollars that were lost to the Internet. Maybe that was necessary. Maybe those people were not producing anything of any value and the papers in question are now better. I do not know. But I am worried. 

The money that previously went towards paying journalists did not then go towards paying the bloggers who nominally replaced them. Those jobs were lost, not to be replaced, while the vast majority of bloggers (even the good ones) continued to work for nothing, earning money elsewhere. This deprofessionalisation of journalism is starting to occur in other industries - music, films, games. Practically everything that the digital magic wand touches. People in low-cost manufacturing had better watch out because as soon 3D printers go mainstream their jobs will be subject to the same market forces. 

A false economy 

Into this confusing cacophony of amateurs struggling to make a living, working elsewhere and indulging their passion in their spare time, enter Google, with an offer for creators. You can publish your text, music and video on our platforms - Blogger and YouTube - for free, provided that we keep the logs. In return, we will place targeted advertising around your content, earning us dollars and you cents. And, put simply,  it sucks. Creators do all of the work so that the companies that own the servers that host the content can make almost all of the money. I think can do better. I think we need to try to create a business model that puts creators in control of their own works and enables them to earn a living.

Corey Doctorow seems to propose that creators should give their works away for free over the Internet in order to attract sales in other media. He gives away free copies of his e-books and his audiobooks without DRM via his website and seems to make a very good living from physical books sales and his speaking engagements. He says that most author's biggest problem is not theft but obscurity. This may well be true, but there is only one Corey Doctorow. If I have misrepresented his position, I would love to hear from the man himself. 

He may be right. It is not possible to control the distribution of digital content without DRM, but I would like to think it is possible for creators to earn a living in a digital world. Surely it should be easier, in fact. Imagine the possibilities; instead of being impoverished, creators could be empowered. Creative people do not need or want to make millions, only enough to cover their costs, with a little bit extra to support their lifestyle while they work on their next project. Simple. I  think that the best way to achieve this is probably through some form of direct payment. In this context, paying for what one wants to read, watch and listen is a social act, one that enriches society as a whole, as opposed to an elite minority of executives to whom people begrudge payment. 

Exactly what such a system might look like is difficult to determine, but I feel like I am gradually grasping towards an understanding. I may need a bit of help putting the bits and pieces together. 

More Good News

This is how to make a viral video. The music and Fassbender's performance are exemplary. Anybody who has ever watched a corporate video aimed at executives will immediately recognise the soft lighting, the high production values and the even, but ever so slightly passive-aggressive tone. The moment when David tells us what what makes him sad - “War, poverty, cruelty, unnecessary violence” - then, as the tears roll down his cheeks, explains, “I understand human emotions, although I do not feel them myself”, is wonderfully unsettling.

For the first time I am excited by the prospect of watching Prometheus in the cinema. None of the teaser tailors or theatrical trailers were particularly engaging, and the Guy Pierce TED Talk was badly misjudged. I would have been willing to give Guy Pearce a pass on his English accent if he hadn't been directed to give his speech in full on evil-rich-bastard mode to an amphitheatre of what looks like roughly 40,000 people. TED Talks today tend to be given by very fluent, very personable professionals in relatively small venues that hold no more than 2,000 people – usually less.

So, well done, the marketing guys got it right this time. I just hope Ridley Scott is up to the very difficult task of finding something new to say and telling an enertaining and surprising story with the Alien franchise.  

They Got My Memo

At least some people are still trying to make interesting science fiction films based on original subject matter.

A spectre is haunting the world

David Cronenberg is a past master at this sort of thing. He has a core audience of dedicated film fans who will watch almost everything he makes, regardless of subject matter. But, when he turns his hand to a sleazy techno thriller about sex, money and power in the 21st century, their cup runneth. The idea of Robert Pattinson's core audience being corrupted by Cronenberg and Don DeLillo's subversive vision gives the entire enterprise a nicely sadistic edge as well.



Mirror, mirror

Rian Johnson is probably best known for his first feature film - a moderately successful independent production called Brick, about an American high school where everybody talks like characters in a Raymond Chandler novel. His second feature film was the stylish but muddled, The Brothers Bloom, about a couple of con men played by Mark Ruffalo and Adrian Brody who set out to trick but eventually end up falling for a dotty English heiress played by Rachael Weisz. I think I am one of about a dozen people who saw that one in a cinema. 

Financial success (or the lack thereof) notwithstanding, somebody clearly likes Johnson's style.

The premise for his latest feature film is a doozy. Joseph Gordon Levitt is scarcely recognisable as a time-travelling assassin - or Looper - who kills people in the past in order to eliminate them from the future. He is living the high life until he is hired to kill someone who has no place in his present: his older self. Bruce Willis plays the older assassin and if this combines the guns and explosions present in the trailer with the quirky sensibility of Johnson's two previous two cinematic outings, we may well be in for a treat.

Keeping it Simple

The copyright industries claim that DRM is necessary to prevent copyright infringement.

Yet, copyright infringement continues.

What solution do the copyright industries propose? Even more restrictive DRM!

Albert Einstein said, the definition of madness is repeating the same action, over and over, hoping for a different result.

Legitimate user experience

It goes without saying that the only people who are impacted by DRM are legitimate users. 

What do these conscientious and law-abiding citizens get for their troubles?

No.1: A higher price 

The company that produces the music/film/game is likely to try to covers the cost of the expensive R&D that created the DRM that monitors and restricts legitimate use by setting a higher sale price for legitimate users. 

No.2: A worse product

The legitimate user who pays money for a copyright protected game with DRM may not be able to play the game without first registering her name, address and current account details with a remote host who is only then in a position to verify that she is indeed a legitimate user. 

The legitimate user who pays money for a copyright protected song with DRM may not be able to play the song on the MP3 player of his choice because the proprietary file format is not supported by the device. 

I have deliberately chosen examples at the milder end of the DRM spectrum, but the annoyance and resentment these restrictions engender are nevertheless real and genuine.

Meanwhile, the legitimate user's friend downloads the same game with no DRM and for no cost via BitTorent, she does not have to provide any personally identifiable information with a third party, she does not have to connect to the internet every time she wants to play the game, she does not have to have her use of the game monitored, time-stamped and data mined, and she is nor forced to download periodic updates and patches. The resemblance between certain types of DRM and malware/spyware is striking.

After a couple of months of being bullied and spied upon the legitimate user might think, 'Hang on a second, I am getting a raw deal here. Next time, I'll just download it off the Internet!' and the cycle of higher prices and an inferior user experience for legimate users perpetuates, driving more people to engage in copyright infingement, sending the copyright industries into a death spiral.  

This malaise is wholly avoidable, if both sides of the debate are willing to counternance a few home truths. This is not to endorse copyright infringement. But, if one is going to attempt to solve the problem, one has to at least try to understand from where the problem stems.

The social contract

There is an active debate in certain political circles at the moment about ending the 'war on drugs'. One of the few areas of agreement in that debate is that the rhetroric 'war on drugs' has not been helpful. Creators, publishers and technologists should avoid making the same mistake. Calling something a war is likely to polarise people and create entrenched positions on both sides. It is much more productive to talk about what is clearly a problem from a position of openness in order to engage in rational debate. I feel like I need to clarify these self-evident propositions because of the way in which language is so often rendered toxic by political debate.

In a spirit of reconciliation, I would like to point out what both sides are doing wrong and how to make a change in behaviour more likely.

Enlightenment thinkers used to talk about something called the 'social contract' which says that in a civilised society people should be willing to give up certain 'freedoms' in order to live more prosperously together. In the 'state of nature' described by Thomas Hobbes as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", I am free to steal from whomever I want, whenever I want. But in a civilised society, the citizens agree to cede that freedom so that others will do the same. Individual citizens have a responsibility to behave in a way that accords due respect to the social contract that binds them with their fellows citizens.

As I have already outlined, the relationship that exists between individuals and the copyright industries is not equitable and it is therefore in their power to reverse the self-defeating practices that are driving still more people to engage in copyright infringement, costing them still more money. 

I would propose two changes. Both are simple. 

No. 1: Remove the DRM. 

As Corey Doctorow points out, "DRM is broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely months". It is ineffective, intrusive and only impacts legitimate users. 

No.2: Lower your prices. 

CDs and DVDs are comparatively inexpensive to produce and a digital download costs even less. Yet, iTunes charges 80p per song and Amazon charges upwards of £8.99 for an e-book, the same as a paperback copy. 

Avoid a pirate's charter

Lowering the price and removing the DRM would immediately make legitimate purchases of digital goods a more attractive proposition. And what is the best way to win customers in a competitive market place? By convincing customers your product is better than your competitor's product. Every executive in the copyright industries should be looking to promote their foremost competitive advantage to its utmost. What is that advantage? Legitimacy. Don't laugh! Illegitimate users run the risk of downloading all manner of malware and spyware, which is why it is so stupid for the copyright industries to argue in favour of greater surveillance to protect their products. SOPA, PIPA and ACTA are a pirate's charter writ large! Users do not want that and the copyright industries should not want it either.

I don't expect the problem to vanish over night. The swamp of resentment created by the heavy-handed practices of media conglomerates is not going to subside in an instant. A minority of people will never be convinced. Over time, however, a more reasonable price and the freedom of people to use the goods they purchase as they desire would give the copyright industries a chance to survive and thrive. My hope is that, for the vast majority, if it is in their rational self-interest to buy a legitimate copy, they will.

If that does not work, we need a new system of production, payment and distribution, and I have got a few ideas about that as well.

This is the first post in a new series of articles about copyright. I am not pretending to have anything like all the answers, but in writing these articles I hope to tease out some of the subtleties of the arguments on both sides and in so doing move the debate forward. 

J'aime le film de Gainsbourg



The lover of the pop biopic has been well served in recent years. The Americans have given us solid, sturdy narratives with exceptional performances - Jaime Fox as Ray Charles and Joaquin Phoenix as The Man in Black. The Brits have produced quirky, independently-spirited impressionist oddities about outsiders and desperadoes like the gay, half-deaf, occult obsessed 1960s record producer Joe Meek in Telstar, and Polio-striken punk word smith Ian Drury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. The French, however, have been less well served, largely because, let's face it, the French were pretty short of pop stars to begin with.

There are, of course, exceptions to every rule and Serge Gainsbourg was a notable exception, as is the film that carries his name that is ostensibly about his life. In contrast to recent American efforts, first-time director Joann Sfar is scarcely interested in the emotional peaks and troughs of Gainsbourg's journey through life and much interested in capturing a sense of the outlaw spirit of the man's music. Sfar said he wanted to "avoid the burden of making a museum piece" and just have fun making a movie, an approach that would have likely found favour with the film's laconic hero.

The one time cartoonist achieves this in a number of ways, most notably through the creative use of puppets and long-limbed Guillermo Del Toro collaborator Doug Jones, who lends his unique physicality to a grossly exaggerated caricature of Gainsbourg's favoured public image - La Gueule - an elegant anarchistic lothario with an enormous nose, who time after time leads Gainsbourg astray. When Gainsbourg finds himself uncertain about whether to pursue a musical or an artistic career, La Gueule takes his guitar in hand, lights his head with a match and dances around his counterpart's studio, burning precious artworks and engulfing the entire room in flames. When the fire is extinguished, nothing of Gainsbourg's life of an artist remains.

It is not a subtle film. Characters are invariably what they seem and all details are painted in broad, colourful brush strokes. There is hardly any consideration given to narrative - once the small Jewish boy has escaped from the shadow of what he calls his Ugly Mug - another live-action puppet - the film moves rapidly from one Euro Pop musical number to the next, Gainsbourg bedding beautiful woman, one after another - Greco, Bardot, Birkin - and La Gueule inviting him to elope lest he settling down. Eric Elmosnino is exemplary in the leading role, surly, sarcastic, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth at all times.

Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life is the film's full title, intended as an ironic in-joke I presume. The film plays out a male fantasy about being the bad boy that at times resembles so closely a parody of a French hero, I can only assume the director is having a bit of fun by calling the film that. Gainsbourg, as depicted in the film was the kind of selfish bastard best avoided in real-life, but its good fun to indulge in two hours of his company via the medium of film. Far from perfect, but the lie is a good one. 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend'.

Bravo! C'est tres bon!

Early 21st Century Disaster Fiction

The 'situation on the ground' in the first decade of the 21st century was far stranger than even the most visionary 20th century science fiction writers ever imagined. As described by William Gibson in The Paris Review: "Fossil fuels have been discovered to be destabilising the planet’s climate, with possibly drastic consequences. There’s an epidemic, highly contagious, lethal sexual disease that destroys the human immune system, raging virtually uncontrolled throughout much of Africa. New York has been attacked by Islamist fundamentalists, who have destroyed the two tallest buildings in the city, and the United States in response has invaded Afghanistan and Iraq."

Climate change and the looming environmental disaster that scientists like James Lovelock warned about with such urgency did not really start making headlines, however, until the middle of the last decade. Hence, Hollywood - a cultural barometer for so many American societal issues - was, arguably, slightly ahead of the curve in its depiction of impending climate catastrophe. With a global box office take of more than US$500, The Day After Tomorrow was the most financially successful environmental disaster fiction of all time. Though certainly not a pioneering disaster movie - Hollywood has been entertaining America with stories about the end of the world since Cecil B. DeMille started making biblical epics in the early 1920s - The Day After Tomorrow was significant in the sense that it was possibly the first film to introduce the concept of imminent climate catastrophe to a mass audience. Al Gore's portentous PowerPoint presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2006, thereby demonstrating the desire of the Hollywood elite to be associated with fashionable causes. But, with only US$50 million at the global box office, it was The Day After Tomorrow that had a bigger impact on the general public. The political siren being sounded by the likes of Al Gore ahead of global climate talks by the G20 in Montreal in 2005 made the reckless destruction of New York by rampaging snow and ice seem reasonable - and cinema-goers bought into that fiction in their millions. The Day After Tomorrow will be remembered by me for an hilarious sequence in which Donnie Darko runs away from a fast-moving frost, only to escape a fate worse that frost-bite by locking the door! The message seemed to be: get better insulation.

Following Al Gore's reasonably successful polemic, earnest documentaries like the Leonardo DiCaprio backed, The Eleventh Hour, and the tactfully named, The Age of Stupid, preached to the converted (and alienated mainstream America) about the dangers of man-made carbon emissions and suddenly the end of the world didn't sound like nearly as much fun as it had done; apparently, remembering to turn the lights off and half filling the kettle wasn't going to be enough. Faced by insurmountable odds and lacking the power to directly affect the policies that govern power stations and the use of fossil fuels, political pressure waned, as did audience numbers and Hollywood interest in the subject. By 2008, the global political elite had bigger fish to fry in the form of a banking crisis, and, lacking direction and leadership, the environmental lobby seemed to flounder, struggling to find a cohesive, consistent narrative. That struggle for identity is exemplified by M. Night Shyamalan's well meaning, but confused and confusing 2008 film, The Happening, which wanted to say that 'nature will find a way to rid itself of irresponsible caretakers', but was so badly plotted it would have taken a Bertrand Russel to discern that message.

By the end of the decade, Hollywood, like the general public it seems, had moved on from climate change. This left the field open for more thoughtful and politically minded independent filmmakers, such as Australia's John Hillcoat, whose 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, is about as bleak a film as one could ever wish to see. About a boy and his father, struggling to survive in an Apocalyptic landscape, following a catastrophe - presumed to be environmental, although never specifically stated - there is no hope, there is no redemption. That story of desperation and despair did reasonable business in Europe but, perhaps unsurprisingly, failed to find much of an audience in the United States. It is a film that would never have been made in Hollywood today. But would a mainstream audience be willing to listen to its brutal message?