THE BIG UNEASY Harry Shearer film Monday Only
tedalvy@aoldotcom
ONE TIME ONLY THEATRICAL EVENT
MONDAY AUGUST 30th 7PM and 9:30PM
For Theatres Nationally check the website thebiguneasy.com
On the morning of August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the city of
New Orleans. The hurricane flooded the levee system, which
catastrophically failed. Eventually 80% of the city and the large
tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters
lingered for weeks.
In his feature-length documentary, The Big Uneasy, humorist and New
Orleans resident Harry Shearer gets the inside story of a disaster
that could have been prevented from the people who were there. As we
near the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Shearer speaks to the
investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a
whistle-blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some
of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during
Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the
New Orleans from future peril.
Los Angeles Times PRINT EDITION August 26, 2010 Calendar Page D3
Kenneth Turan's film pick of the week: 'The Big Uneasy'
August 26, 2010 | 7:50 am
If you know Harry Shearer only as a key voice on "The Simpsons,"
you're missing a lot, especially his work as a fearless and incisive
social commentator on his KCRW program "Le Show" and in his excellent
muckraking documentary, "The Big Uneasy," playing in theaters
nationwide one night only Aug. 30.
A part-time resident of New Orleans, Shearer has put together a
gripping, persuasive film that posits that the catastrophic flooding
that overwhelmed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not a natural
disaster but the result of years of ruinous decisions and horrific
misjudgments by the Army Corps of Engineers, the same people who are
in charge of the city's latest flood-control plan.
With the help of lively computer imagery and smart interviews, "The
Big Uneasy" shows what went wrong and how both academic investigators
and a Corps of Engineers whistle-blower were unceremoniously quashed.
Essential viewing. Showing at the Grove, the Americana in Glendale and
theaters listed at thebiguneasy.com
-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic
latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/08/kenneth-turans-film-pick-of-
the-week-the-big-uneasy.html
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