"Tsunami - The aftermath"

“TSUNAMI - THE AFTERMATH” focuses on the harrowing aftermath of the tsunami that devastated the coast of Thailand - Krabi, Phang Nga and Phuket on Dec 26, 2004.

The production, from Kudos Film and TV, has been commissioned by the BBC and HBO channels, with a screenplay penned by award-winning writer Abi Morgan. With the working title ‘Tsunami’, the two-part mini-series will take a hard look at how the real life disaster affected a disparate group of fictional characters from tourists to aid agency officials. Many celebrity names - Sophie Okonedo, Gina McKee, Tim Roth and Toni Collette - have been associated with the production, but none have been confirmed at the time of writing. There has been particular outrage at a poster for an open audition, originating from the local Thai casting team, that lists the type of extras required for the film as: “Victim [...] A lot of people!!!!”.
Filming is expected to take around two months.

Here are some of the film's stars at an HBO press conference, along with some of their thoughts on filming:

Tim Roth plays Nick, a hard-nosed reporter dispatched by an international news agency in the Thai capital on the day of the tsunami to cover the disaster. He said "I was very wary of it," Tim Roth admitted about taking a role in the miniseries coming in December, less than two years after 300,000 were killed in the tragedy. "But I found it not to be exploitive at all. If I lost my kid, our family, I don't know that I'd watch it. But I think it's quite honorable."

Toni Collette plays an Australian missionary teacher caught up in the aftermath of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami of Dec 2004. "She's an Australian woman who has been living in Thailand for 11 years," Collette says, "a Christian who runs an education programme for local kids in local fishing villages. Some people may think it's too early for a film about the tsunami, (and) it may be too early for the survivors, but it's not too early to tell their story for the rest of the world."

Toni Collette agreed, saying, "I was slightly nervous," but she cited a survivor who said, "Maybe it's too early for the survivors, but it's not too early for the people who weren't there."

 

Sophie Okenedo and Chiwetel Ejiofor play married couple Ian and Susie Carter, who are on holiday in Thailand when the tsunami strikes. Ian hangs onto his child as long as he can, but the wave is too powerful and he loses hold.  The film follows the Carters' search to locate their child.

Since the production shot on location in Thailand in areas devastated by the tsunami, Sophie Okonedo conceded the work was difficult. "We cried quite a lot of the time," she said. "It was very emotional because it was all around us. You didn't have to do too much acting."

(L.A. Daily News, 18/7/06)

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake: 

It had a magnitude of 9.3, triggered a series of lethal tsunamis on December 26, 2004 that killed approximately 230,000 people (including 168,000 in Indonesia alone), making it the deadliest tsunami as well as one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. It also had one of the largest earthquakes.

The tsunami killed people over an area ranging from the immediate vicinity of the quake in Indonesia, Thailand and the north-western coast of Malaysia to thousands of kilometres away in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and even as far as Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania in eastern Africa.


Reflection movie:

As its title suggests, HBO Films' Tsunami: The Aftermath begins not with a crashing wave of water but rather with something far more chilling. 

A boatload of vacationing scuba divers returns to their Phuket resort after a morning outing on December 26, 2004 and notice all sorts of debris, and then bodies, in the water. At the dock they see that the entire landscape is destroyed, the hotel is in ruins, and everyone, including their families and friends, is gone. As they run through the wreckage screaming, you'll feel chills. Among the group is Susie Carter (Sophie Okonedo), who quickly reunites with her husband Ian (Chiwetel Ejiofor) but is devastated to learn their four-year-old daughter slipped out of her father's arms and has disappeared. Meanwhile, Kim Peabody (Gina McKee) has lost her husband but finds her teenage son horribly injured. The Thai perspective comes from Than (Samrit Machielsen), a young hotel worker who aids guests even as he realizes his own nearby village (and everyone in it) is probably gone.



The British Consul Tony Whittaker (Hugh Bonneville) rushes in from Bangkok accompanied by a scrappy aid worker named Kathy (Toni Collette) and finds himself utterly unable to provide what his stranded countrymen need. Hot on his heels is muckraking gonzo journalist Nick Fraser (Tim Roth) and his photographer sidekick Chai (Will Yun Lee) who zip around on a motorcycle with sidecar looking for stories.

The multiple storylines bounce off each other as the chaotic days following the tsunami unfold. For Ian and Susie, terror morphs into panic as they race around looking for their daughter. Susie can't help but cruelly blame Ian for "losing" their daughter, and he heads off on a frantic search of temples, hospitals, and morgues looking for information. Susie, on the other hand, is nearly catatonic with horror. Kim worries that her son will die from his injuries but faces the ineptitude of Tony and his consulate, while Kathy does what she can to help and also tends to the Thai community. Nick is outraged to discover that Buddhist monks are burning bodies that haven't been identified, and in one of many East-vs.-West cultural clashes, Chai explains the Buddhist attitude toward death and urges Nick, who's firing off angry news bulletins to Europe, to accept those differences. Than eventually returns to his ruined village and takes his grandmother's cherished bracelets only to be arrested for looting even as he watches a secret government land grab unfold. Will a megaresort sweep in and steal his village's beach? Nick is soon on the story. 



That's a lot of plot (the film runs over three hours), but the stories speed along in gripping fashion. The question of whether Ian and Susie will find their daughter alive is the most dramatic throughline, and Okenedo and Ejiofor, who turn in Golden Globe-nominated performances, are outstanding. It's as if they're acting out their own little Beckett psychodrama in the midst of all this chaos. (Collette earned a Golden Globe nomination as well.) With each plot line, you'll appreciate writer Abi Morgan's rigorous avoidance of clichéd happy endings. This is tough stuff. But it's the production designers who really deserve the trophies. Tsunami looks fantastic, and the making-of featurette is essential viewing for anyone who's curious about how the team went in to recreate devastation that the community had just spent more than a year cleaning up. When the monks burn the bodies and when Kim and Ian make terrifying trips to the morgue, you can almost smell the stench. It makes you feel like you are there... and glad you weren't.

Whales & Dolphins slaughter in Denmark - Culture festival or Gruesome custom!!??

     Whale and dolphin hunting has been the tradition of the inhabitants of Faroe Islands (near Denmark) since the 10th century. And most of the descendants of the medieval whalers have passed this tradition from generations to generations. For the record, there are 17 villages in the island that have these kind of scenario every year which are authorized to conduct such massacre.

     After killing the whales in methods so gruesome, the villages part take the meat of their hunt and distribute them among the inhabitants. Some carcasses or what has been left from meat scraping and fat extractions of the killed whales and dolphins are laid right on the pier where most birds and flies scavenge on what is left of the poor creature, skin and bones.

     The locals use the whale meat for food because it is one of their staple diet. But recently, a law was passed in the area stating that whale meat consumption must only be once every two weeks because of high levels of mercury, insecticides and other poisons contained in it.
     This Tradition has met worldwide outrage and criticism that even Greenpeace Activists tried to stop this from ever occurring again. But the islanders insist that the outsiders doesn’t know the implication of this tradition to their identity and culture as Faroe islanders. Activists however argued that during the medieval times, Faroe islanders have shortage of food compare to this time of ours that food is already abundant and that using tradition as an excuse for the slaughter of these gentle animals is truly unacceptable. 

Review - "The Cove" documentary movie.

“The Cove” is an Academy Award-winning documentary about the horrifying and merciless slaughter of dolphins in the Taiji, a small fishing village in Japan. It sets on exposing the dolphin trade and why the public needs to act against it with such urgency. 

At first glance, the place seemed to be a dolphin and whale’s paradise. There were posters, graffiti, statues, and parks inspired of dolphins and whales scattered around the small community. The Japanese claim their whaling is conducted for research purposes as stated under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. However, as the story unfolds, this small town of Taiji is actually keeping a very dark secret—it was a small scale version of an international large-scale dolphin trade.

An organization called the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) has found out that there are around 23,000 dolphins which have been killed every year in Taiji. At first, the fishermen did not let OPS get near the shore but OPS placed spy cameras camouflaged with rocks and in the water. The things recorded were devastating. Dolphins being attacked with harpoons and deep red blood flowing in the sea water. Although, the OPS have shown the recorded clips to people in Taiji, the slaughtering didn’t stop but less dolphins were being slaughtered.

Dolphins are slaughtered because fishermen want money, selling one dolphin is already worth 150,000 USD. They are captured for multi-billion dollar entertainment industry, and for high market demand for dolphin meat. But the Japanese government would go through extreme lengths to make sure that these discoveries do not go public. Moreover, the Japanese Fisheries Agency was able to manipulate the International Whaling Commission’s mandate, something that has dangerous repercussions to the rest of the world. What is more shocking, the truth about the cove in Taiji, and the covert operations of the Japanese fishermen was not something that is known by most Japanese! The government of Japan proceeds to give away dolphin meat, for free, to schoolchildren and also placed on supermarket shelves masked as other types of fish. They did not know that mercury (one of the most toxic non man-made chemical and can give many diseases to human beings) levels in the meat remain dangerously high, according to the research presented in The Cove.

 Knowledge is powerful, and it gives one a certain responsibility to action, particularly in this case. The dolphin massacre at Taiji is just one piece of the puzzle surrounding the future of our global resources, our food system, our health, our planet’s ecology — basically, our everything. The movie was very inspirational especially for me to think beyond my personal problems. There are various social concerns and issues that we are facing right now that if we did not do something to address it would cause domino effect that affects us all—whichever part of the world we live.

Review - South Park: episode "Whale Whores"

It's not terribly difficult to understand why some people were offended, but I for one found the cartoon South Park episode “Whale Whores” is hilarious.

Under the leadership of Captain Paul Watson, the Sea Shepherd gang sails south with a pirate flag find, confront and interfere with Japanese whaling vessels by "nonviolent" means, though the planned measures include hurling stink bombs onto what they call "the killer ships" to disrupt their operation. Like the most extreme quadrants of the animal-rights movement, these personalities take their passion to off-putting heights -- even if that means endangering other people's lives, as well as their own, to fulfill their objectives.

This episode is obviously meant to be a parody of the disputes between the anti-whalers and Japan and it does that very well. The show is not one sided however, both the Japanese as well as the anti-whalers are displayed as a bunch of retards and it's a good thing since it means you can have a good hard laugh while watching the episode regardless of if you support whaling or are against it. Odds are you are wandering how exactly the show insulted anyone, and the reason for that is how the episode depicts the people on both sides.

The Japanese are shown as begin a bunch of raging savages who at one point in the episode go as far as killing the whales by crashing aircraft into them WWII kamakazi style, and all the while the anti-whalers are shown as begin fat stupid tree huggers who don't know about what they are talking about and only do what they do for the media attention. But what really takes the cake is....WARNING! GIANT SPOILER ABOUT THE ENDING AHEAD! is the ending where the reason for the Japanese "hatred" towards the whales is revealed: It turns out that at the end of the second world war the Americans gave the Japanese an edited image of the Engola Gay (the bomber that dropped the first Atom bomb on Hiroshima) where the pilot is a whale instead of an American and that the modern day Japanese were merely looking for some payback against the whales whom they believe dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima. Stan Marsh then gives the Japanese another edited image of the Engola Gay in order to make the Japanese stop killing whales and focus there anger on another "much more acceptable" pray: cow and chicken.

Why should study Geography?

It's a misconception that Geography is only about finding nations and its capitals as well on a map. Otherwise, it’s big and more than maps. Another way to think about it is that there are three important "W" questions: What is where? Why is it there? Why it matters? These are some reasons why we should study Geography:

Geography is the study of location and place. Everything has a location, and there are patterns to places. Location and place dictate how we as humans interact with each other and with the environment that surrounds us. Politics, history, religion, society, medicine, economics, science, art, language, ideas... all are influenced by geography is ways that are obvious and ways that are subtle. Geography is the attempt to understand the "big picture" of it all.

Geography supplies information you need to function in your world. Someday, you may want to go abroad for holidays to new places that you’ve never been or join a study abroad for students, geography will give knowledge about new cultural, people differences and also shows where the rest of the world is and how close or far it is from you,… that help you can have the trips to across anywhere and everywhere of the globe.

You can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your own area, resources or products that derive from there. Ever you wonder about what you eat, what you wear, or even what you listen,…if you do, geography will help you answer where things come from or how they get here.

Personally, the shape and of nations in the world interested me a lot. It help me to recognize any country easily and fast on maps such as my country – Vietnam with S letter, England’s shape like a rabbit or Italy is a boot….One more thing make me want to study geography is can pass my exams. J

Joseph Piwowar is a Geography professor at the University of Regina and Canada Research Chair in Geomatics and Sustainability, he said "Your place of birth (for example) influenced the economy of where you grew up because you consumed goods and services. It also effected the environment of the place where you grew up because after those goods and services were consumed they ended up in the landfill . . . . If you really care about the place we live in, about climate change, for example and you want to do something about it, you want to learn more and understand how you can adapt to the impacts that are coming then you need to study Geography."