Last Call At The Oasis [HD]

A Watery Mess
As someone who worked in the clean water business for many years, I was looking forward to this movie. We do have problems that we need to address. But this movie doesn't help us do that.

It's a mess. It is a long litany of complaints about water in the US, without offering one thing the viewer can do to help make things better. And we need for people to have concrete things they can do to help.

It gives a really incomplete picture of the progress we've made in this country. For example, it whines that the average toilet uses 6 gallons of water per flush. Well, this is a big change from the 12 gallons they used to use. And reducing it further can cause other problems. The movie doesn't mention that many sewer systems require a certain quantity of water to flush out the sewer mains. Lower the toilet flow too much and the sewage won't move through the system.

While it has a segment on recycled/reclaimed water, it doesn't mention how much of it is used in...

Not A Drop To Drink: A Cautionary And Important Tale About The Impending Water Crisis
As someone who has watched just about every environmentally themed documentary ever made, I find that they generally fall into one of two camps. Either they serve as a call to action with ways that you might better your life and the world around you or they bludgeon you with harrowing statistics that make the situation seem hopeless. For the most part, "Last Call At The Oasis" fits more soundly in the second category. Don't get me wrong, I think that the subject matter is incredibly relevant and timely. We can't just bury our heads in the proverbial sand while ignoring the looming water crisis. While Americans still consume enormous amounts of water with abandon, the deleterious effects of a worldwide shortage are in evidence almost everywhere you look.

"Last Call at the Oasis" is really broken into two sections. The first half of the film deals with the actual shortage of ground water. It highlights areas devastated by the lack of water and even points out impending...

A 'must see' if I do say so myself.
Well, I'm in it, so please take my remarks with a grain of salt.

Critically acclaimed by virtually every major newspaper and media outlet, this movie succeeds on so many levels. Most importantly, it's one of those films that everyone should see. It's an eye opener about a resource that most of us simply take for granted. We turn on the faucet, and, great(!), there's our cool, crystal clear water. The reality is, in many places around the world, this is just not the case. And, unfortunately, this is becoming much more of a challenge in the United States, as the 2012 mega-drought and the impact of Hurricane Sandy have recently exposed.

It's a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking in the classic sense. In my case (I'm a professor at UC Irvine), the crew actually captured the scientific discovery process in real time. When I talk about 'the water cycle spinning out of control' in the film, I'm actually thinking about our ongoing research that suggests that this...

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