The Cove [HD]

a must-see documentary
****1/2

Ric O'Barry may be the world's premier lover of dolphins, but the one place you'll never find him at is Sea World taking in a show. That's because he'd much rather expend his time and energy in freeing those marvelous creatures from captivity - an act for which he has been arrested numerous times and which has earned him the status of persona non grata in many quarters. Yet, although O'Barry may be an "environmental whacko" (maybe even a "dangerous criminal") in the eyes of some, to others - and certainly to the dolphins whose freedom and well-being he champions - O'Barry is a real life hero.

The remarkable, consciousness-raising documentary "The Cove" chronicles O'Barry's efforts to make a clandestine video record of a dolphin slaughter that takes place regularly in a secluded cove in Taiji, Japan, far away from public view. Here thousands of dolphins are trapped, some to be captured and sold to dolphinariums, but most to be brutally massacred for...

Secret Slaughter: Today's "Silent Spring"
About 3/4 of the way through THE COVE, I nearly turned it off. Not because it was a bad film, but because it was almost too painful to keep watching. I grew up, like many my age, watching the hit TV show, Flipper. It was a great adventure going along with Bud, Sandy, their dad and, of course, Flipper the dolphin. I used to pretend to swim with him (Flipper) and thought it would be the coolest thing to be able to feed and play with a dolphin. So it was doubly troubling to see Ric O'Barry (the man who helped capture and train Flipper) as the centerpiece for this film. After watching the original Flipper die in captivity, Ric learned a hard lesson: that creatures with this kind of intelligence should never be kept in captivity, nor should they be harmed.

Fast forward to today, and we find Ric in Taijii, Japan near a small cove where, every September, the unthinkable happens. A mass slaughter of hundreds or...

Touching and inspiring...
I really think everyone should watch this documentary, not because this is just a great documentary (and it is), or because their cause deserve any more attention than any other animal cruelty or global warming issue, but because it pictures the kind of people the world is most in need nowadays.

These people are different from us, who, in most cases, see what is happening to earth and its wildlife and just think: "i wish i could do something to change all this", or maybe just don't care at all. This is where these people differ from us, they actually got out and did something about it, sometimes even risking themselves.

What is happening in Japan, and other places in the world, where dolphins are being literally slaughtered, is a cruelty, plain and simple. When i see something like this happening i think: "there is no hope for the human race, we're just doomed, we're killing this planet a creature at a time." But when these kind of people try to do something to...

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