''Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea'' is a documentary film by Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, with narration by

John Waters John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his Cinema of Transgression, transgressive cult films, including ''Multiple Maniacs'' (1970), ''Pink Flamin ...

and music by

Friends of Dean Martinez Friends of Dean Martinez is an American instrumental rock/ post-rock band featuring members of Giant Sand, Calexico, and Naked Prey. The band combines Americana with electronica, ambient, lounge, psychedelia and dub and intertwines surf rock ...

. This often humorous documentary tells the story of the accidental lake and environmental catastrophe known as the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gulf o ...

, located in the desert of southern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in the United States.

Release

The film premiered at the 2004

Slamdance Film Festival The Slamdance Film Festival is an annual film festival focused on emerging artists. The annual week-long festival takes place in Park City, Utah, in late January and is the main event organized by the year-round Slamdance organization, which als ...

. With the addition of

as the film's narrator, the new version of the film premiered at the

Provincetown International Film Festival The Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) is an annual film festival founded in 1999 and held on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The festival presents American and international narrative features, documentaries and short films f ...

, in Provincetown, Massachusetts, hosted by Mr. Waters himself. The film opened in select theaters on February 24, 2006 and continued to screen theatrically throughout the United States and Canada until late 2007. A shorter, more environmentally themed version of the film aired on the

Sundance Channel Sundance Channel can refer to: * Sundance TV, formerly known as Sundance Channel (United States). * Sundance Channel (Canada) * Sundance Channel (Netherlands) * Sundance Channel (Europe) Sundance Channel can refer to: * Sundance TV, formerly kno ...

's GREEN programming block, along with occasional broadcasts on the

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

TV station KQED documentary series ''Truly, CA''. The DVD of ''Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea'' was released by the home video distributor, Docurama/New Video, on September 25, 2007.

Critical reception

The Christian Science Monitor ''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...

's lead film critic, Peter Rainer, gave ''Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea'' an "A" and called it a "One-of-a-kind documentary... A startlingly funny portrait of Gothic Americana." And the

Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries. Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...

Michael Sragow Michael Sragow (born June 26, 1952 in New York) is a film critic and columnist who has written for the ''Orange County Register'', ''The Baltimore Sun'', ''Film Comment'', ''The San Francisco Examiner'', ''The New Times'', ''The New Yorker'' (whe ...

wrote "Because of Metzler and Springer's appetite for raw experience, what could have been a depressing horror movie is wildly funny and enraging. It's the rare documentary with something for everyone." The review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

certified the film as "Fresh", reporting that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 53 reviews.

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

reported the film had an average score of 72 out of 100, based on 8 reviews. In screening at more than 200 festivals in twenty countries, ''Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea'' won 37 awards for Best Documentary.

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Plagues and Pleasures On The Salton Sea American documentary films Documentary films about California Documentary films about United States history Documentary films about water and the environment Films set in Palm Springs, California Salton Sea 2004 documentary films 2004 films 2000s English-language films 2000s American films

Release

Critical reception

See also

References

External links