Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

runamokprods Anything that exposes photographer Edward Burtynsky's socially important and beautiful work to more people is worthwhile. That said, for me the documentary itself, while very interesting and well made, simply can not compete with the enormous power of Burtynsky's own images. Indeed the best moments in the film are when we see the photos themselves. While some of what we see of the photographer"s process is interesting, and there is some provocative gentle implied questioning of the distance and lack of humanity in Burtynsky"s photographs, I did not learn much more about the man and his work then when I first happened upon his seeing his photos at a gallery, and then bought several books of his images.A solid documentary, but not an amazing one. On the other hand, the extras, particularly the lengthy photo gallery where Brutynsky talks in detail about many of his great images from the film is far more powerful and interesting, and it's absolutely worth getting the DVD for that feature.

ThurstonHunger This felt a little like a companion piece to Wall-E briefly in the beginning; images of overwhelming waste, even nice compacted cubes of it a la that film. Then later it sort of connected for me with a book I recently read called "Lost on Planet China" by J. Maarten Troost, although that book wants to be a comedic monologue more than a travelogue/social commentary.This film is humorless. Which is fine, but the notion that it is not a polemic, or even the photos alone are not political, is quite unfair, even if I do tend to lean the same way as the filmmaker's viewpoint. I understand that some people feel China is one huge Pittsburgh/Sheffield and that "we" are defiling our Mother Earth. I'm not entirely sure I buy that though.I'm always a little suspicious of "the old ways are best" thinking. I'm generally pretty happy with increasing life-spans, and I know that change comes with costs. Ideally you minimize the damage, but I wondered how these filmmakers would depict the birth of a child. Notice the woman's body beforehand, but now in manufacturing a child, look at the gross distension of the innards, and once the child is finally delivered, observe the impact on the once-vibrant young couple as they struggle through endless hours of sleeplessness and toil with the mound of waste produced by just one child.For some reason, I also expected the photography to be more artistic, a la "The War Photographer" (a film that I would recommend if you liked this one, or even if you just finished this one). I liked one of the Chinese people, examining a picture of him and remarking how the scale of the shot was so large that there was no detail. Nothing intimate.Anyways, an interesting albeit strongly biased view of China...just the number of women workers in different positions was fascinating. Including the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" with the either attractive or repelling (or both for me?) Diana Lu, extravagant real estate agent, was kind of weird to me. Especially when contrasted with omitting the stonecutter, who was in the deleted scenes, well all choices are loaded.I'll look for the photography book at the library, some of those shots with a green oval inside a strip mining pit show briefly in the film I wanted to understand more. I assume enhanced via filters/processing. Also the Bangladesh ship graveyard...while maybe meant to be a cautionary scaring about our wasteful ways was nonetheless compelling, like having a ringside seat to the La Brea Tar Pits back when the dinosaurs were laying down for extinction.The legacy of China's rapid growth will be understood long after I am gone, and I'm not so sure that Eve and Wall-E will be weeping over the Great Wall crumbled down to build our great-great-great automaton grandchildren.

benl-4 This film follows Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky to China where he documented the grim scale of Chinese industry and it's impact on the... landscape, obviously! Burtynsky's fascinating photos of industrial activity and waste have been exhibited widely, I saw the local exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario two years ago and came home with both the exhibition book of the same name and one of his framed 'quarry' prints. Now I've seen Jennifer Baichwal's film on the same topic. I think they've covered the media bases. Perhaps a role-playing game for PS3? So, thumbs up or down? Well, a thumb in each direction I think. The film gave visual context to Burtynsky's photos, which was helpful because sometimes you just can't believe that his images come from the real world. It also expanded them by capturing more of the human presence, which is often incidental in his photos. The film opened with a five minute tracking shot (shades of Robert Altman) along rows of bustling manual assembly lines. The scene showed both the monumental scale of China's industries and the massive and repetitive human activity that makes it possible. Watching a worker assemble a small electrical component at lightning speed and then later watching peasants tapping the metal off of computer chips for recycling reminded me that industry grinds down people as well as landscapes.There were some clever juxtapositions that highlighted the economic divide in China. The remark "this is an open kitchen", for example, started while we watched a peasant's medieval outdoor stove in use but concluded while we watched the speaker, a Shanghai Realtor, show off her open-concept luxury kitchen.The down side? Well, the film kind of dragged on (how many slow tracking shots can we sit through in a night?) and the sound track was excessively "industrial" and often grating.Still, Manufactured Landscapes is a mind-expanding film that illuminates and expands on Edward Burtynsky vision and trusts the viewer to interpret it.

oblivion101 This is the most recent addition to a new wave of educational documentaries like "The Corporation" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." Its commentary is clear and unwavering as is the breathtaking cinematic style of this well crafted feature. The film manages to impose a powerful sense of how unsteady our world is as we rush toward an environmentally unsustainable future at lightning speed - while showing us the terrifying beauty in our pursuit of progress. Truly a remarkable accomplishment which must be seen by all who care about the world we leave to our children. Bravo!NB - this is also the only film (of 8) at Varsity theaters (Toronto) boasting a stick-on tag which reads... "To arrange group viewings please contact...." ... a further testament to the popularity and importance of this gem.My bet... an academy award nomination for best documentary.OB101