Now Showing: Countdown to Zero Exposes Dangers of Nuclear Weapons

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today, Friday, July 23, 2010:

'Salt': Fun, if Not Quite a Meal - The Wall Street Journal [link]

• "Countdown to Zero" is a cautionary tale, torqued up: Opening with footage from various terrorist bombings of recent years—London, Bali, Riyadh, Oklahoma City and, of course, New York—it makes the case that no one really wants to ponder, regarding what each of those events would have become had terrorists owned The Bomb. And then it proceeds to tell us how frighteningly easy, and close at hand, nuclear terrorism is.
• But as odd as it may sound, it's a remarkably beautiful movie. Integrating all sorts of archival footage—including, John F. Kennedy's 1961 "Sword of Damocles" speech before the U.N., which echoes throughout the film—it has a sense of rhythm, color and humanity that evokes melancholy rather than dread.
• The nighttime photography, of the world's most luminous cities, awakens our sense of grief—not for what's gone, but for what could be, in the blink of an eye.
• NOTE: For more information about "Countdown to Zero", click here and here.  For release dates and cities, click here.  And to watch the trailer, click here.

Jolie's 'Salt' and Walker's 'Countdown to Zero' Bring Heat to Cold War Stories - The Washington Post [link]

• A nuclear armageddon may be more plausible than we think, according to the lucid and compelling documentary "Countdown to Zero." This lively primer in history, policy, physics and black-market economics offers chillingly persuasive evidence that the nuclear threat is not only still with us, but it's more volatile than ever.
• With superb editing and a moody, menacing musical score, Walker infuses "Countdown to Zero" with surprising energy and emotion. Walker expertly interweaves those [expert interview] sequences with anonymous on-the-street interviews and surveillance footage of public places to raise the issue's human stakes and to underline just how naive and vulnerable we really are.
• "Countdown to Zero" may have a political agenda, but by the film's moving conclusion, that agenda seems not only supremely logical and refreshingly bipartisan but actually within reach.
• As this cinematic call to action makes clear, contemplating the alternative is enough to keep even the soundest sleeper up at night.

Countdown to Zero - Entertainment Weekly [link]

• "Countdown to Zero" makes old terrors radioactively new again. Lucy Walker, the director of this documentary about the still clear-and-present danger of nuclear weapons, has her finger on the ultimate hot-button topic, and she doesn't let go.
• At times "Countdown to Zero" comes close to being nuclear-anxiety porn, yet it's the rare film that could trigger and unite the reflexes 
 of the left and the right. It makes 
 getting rid of nukes seem less like a ''cause'' than an imperative.
• Film rating: A-

Countdown to Zero: Is it Possible? - Rebecca Abrahams in The Huffington Post [link]

• Watch the film. Watch it again. Academy Award winning producer Lawrence Bender and director Lucy Walker's documentary "Countdown to Zero" is an extraordinarily powerful and disturbing film that lays out the case for global nuclear disarmament. But the question how do we get to zero is not one easily answered.
• "It's not easy and it's going to take some time to do. This is an idea that's been around for a while. It's not a liberal idea or a conservative idea. But I do believe it's an idea whose time has come," says producer Lawrence Bender.
• Getting to zero starts with Russia and the United States taking the lead in reducing nuclear weapons.
• Bender goes on to say, "So the idea is that the United States and Russia reduce until they get about 1,000 each and speaking to Chinese, [sic] we believe that somewhere around that point the Chinese will agree to start reducing. And if the Chinese reduce, then you have the three major powers in the world taking the lead. Then India and Pakistan will reduce their arsenal and then other countries will start to fall in line."
• To see a full interview with producer Lawrence Bender, see below:

Lawrence Bender Interview from TakePart on Vimeo.

A View from the News Cycle

White House Presses Senate G.O.P. on Arms Treaty - The New York Times [link]

• With time running out for major votes before the November election, the White House is trying to reach an understanding with Senate Republicans to approve its new arms control treaty with Russia.
• At stake is perhaps Mr. Obama’s most tangible foreign policy achievement, a treaty that bars the United States and Russia from deploying more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers.
• With Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, already supporting the treaty, Democrats hope they can win the votes of other Republicans on the committee like Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.
• Mr. Kerry has said he wants his committee to vote on the treaty before the Senate leaves town for summer recess, possibly Aug. 3 or 4.