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OVERSIZED TRUCK DRIVIN' BLUES
Oil Sands Karaoke
Charles Wilkinson (director), Canada: Indiecan Entertainment, 2013, 83 minutes.
We're so used to the arguments between those who say tar sands and those who say oil sands that we might forget it's just called paying the bills for many Northern Albertans. Oil Sands Karaoke looks at the mining operations around the booming city of Fort McMurray, using long landscape shots and aerial footage of enormous trucks traversing the raw, bare earth carrying bitumen from shovels to crushers. But Charles Wilkinson's second film about Canada's controversial oil reserves (following 2011's acclaimed Peace Out) mostly focuses on the little humans that operate the machines and their lives off the clock.
The documentary follows a singing contest at Bailey's Pub, a lively bar in...