Cass Sapir Movies
As President Barack Obama prepares to deliver on his campaign promise to combat global warming, the filmmakers at NOVA take a comprehensive look at California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious, yet controversial, plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions and promote energy efficiency. Known as AB 32 (Assembly Bill No. 32), the 2006 California law aims to rollback carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, while mandating a further eight percent reduction by 2050. No other political entity in the world has set their sites so high, but how will everyday Californians need to alter their lives in order to reach this lofty goal? By speaking with Governor Schwarzenegger, as well as the ordinary citizens and concerned businesspeople, NOVA offers equal time to both supporters and detractors of the plan. Could Governor Schwarzenegger's three-pronged approach to environmental salvation set a new standard in limiting our carbon footprint, as claimed, or will the plan ultimately sink the state's economy by forcing business people to move in order to avoid going bankrupt due to increased energy bills? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 2005
NOVA reconstructs and dissects a decades-old unsolved mystery in this 60-minute special from 2005. Proclaimed for years as the apotheosis of evolutionary theory and the final proof of a link between homo sapiens and primates, the "Piltdown Man" -- a series of bones excavated from Piltdown, England in 1913 -- was proven a hoax in 1953. But who could have perpetuated such a fraud? For years, researchers and historians have guessed about the red-handed party -- popular suspects including Sherlock Holmes godfather Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Martin Hinton of the Natural History Museum, and archaeologist Charles Dawson, each of whom is examined, in turn, by this film. In NOVA: The Boldest Hoax, we revisit Piltdown, review the available evidence, listen to interviews with authorities, and are asked to draw our own conclusions about the identity of the perpetrator. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Originally airing on PBS, this episode of NOVA details the events following the mysterious crash of Flight 111 on September 2, 1998. With none of the 229 passengers surviving and no information known about the aircraft's final six minutes available through flight data recorders, investigators were faced with a daunting task in determining what went wrong when the Geneva-bound flight attempted to make an emergency landing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and plummeted into the ocean. With the aid of a special vacuum-equipped ship, the pieces of the airplane were recovered from the ocean floor so they could be reassembled and examined. NOVA: Crash of Flight 111 captures the drama as it unfolds. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
