A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Movie Information:

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Directed by: Basil Gelpke, Ray McCormack A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Written by: Not available at this time A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Cast: Not available at this time

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) U.S. Distributor: Not available at this time A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) U.K. Distributor: Dogwoof Pictures

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A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Synopsis:

A theatrical documentary on the planet's dwindling oil resources.

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) Movie Review:

The facts in this documentary are astoundingly sobering, and yet society continues to keep its head buried in the sand. By avoiding any political slant, the filmmakers forcefully get the message across.

It's pretty simple really: oil is non-renewable. There's only ever been a small amount of it on earth, and in the last 150 years we've used it to fuel humanity's biggest spurt in technology, science, transportation and population growth. But we're at the end of the supply. We've known this from the beginning, and yet we've never planned ahead.

At the centre of this film is the concept of "peaking out", defined in the 1950s as the point where reserves start running out. This theory has proven true, as demand continues to grow (especially in China and India). Meanwhile, alternative fuels are too marginal to make much of a difference; our current attempts at biofuel or hybrid engines are simply not enough at this stage in the game. And they won't help us replace plastic, which is used in everything from computers to cosmetics.

The filmmakers explore through straight-talking interviews from geologists, politicians, lawyers, oil company experts and academics. No one denies that this is happening, and it's quite scary to discover how research has been slanted over the years for political and economic reasons. Politicians and corporately sponsored journalists are afraid to bring us bad news, so they just lie. Basically, we've bled the earth dry to line our own pockets, even though we are condemning humanity to a scary future.

Against all this doom and gloom, the film contains witty animation and music, historical footage and lots of fabulous old movie clips. We also travel from America to the UK, Russia, Azerbaijan and Venezuela to examine the issue on a global scale. None of this makes the news any better. Mankind is going to have to learn how to live without oil in the very near future, and we need to start figuring it out now. Lifestyles will change as the oil era becomes a blip in human history. Yes, this is an extremely bleak film. But it's not scare-mongering; it's an urgent wake-up call.

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A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2007) review written by: Rich Cline