A

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness – I started a blog series breaking down each of the six parts of this film that give lessons from long-ago deceased philosophers on how to live a life of happiness. It was highly enjoyable and I’d encourage anyone to watch it.

A-

Contagion – I really liked this. Basically about the response to a virus wreaking havoc on humanity. Great cast and script.

Resurrecting the Champ – Samuel L. Jackson plays a homeless former boxer that becomes the focus of an up-and-coming journalist’s career piece. I was surprised at how good this was.

Neds – Great Scottish film about Non-Educated Delinquents. Neds exposes the failings of certain social systems like education and family life through the story of one young delinquent. You may want to try this one with the subtitles on though, the English being spoken in the movie was at times inaudible.

End of America – Pretty awesome film pointing out some of the ways the Bush administration paralleled the tactics used by totalitarian governments to undermine the freedom of society. You can watch it here.

The Crash of 1929 – Documentary film about U.S. society leading up to the stock market crash of 1929 and the various factors that caused the crash. Really fascinating. Made me feel bad for the people back then because they were all just such total suckers without a clue. Makes me wonder what will cause people to say that about us in another 80 years. A lot, I’m sure.

B+

Dream House – A poor man’s Shutter Island and I love me some Shutter Island.

Jack and Jill – About as dumb as a movie gets, but it had me laughing quite a bit.

C

War of the Worlds (2005) – Just seemed so one-dimensional. Tom Cruise running from aliens for 120 minutes. That was the whole film.

D+

Killer Elite – Ugh this was just dreadful. I can almost hear the production meetings “let’s get De Niro, Clive, and Stratham and just blow a lot of shit up, it’s like guaranteed $40 mil box office right?” “Yea Jim, sounds great, let’s run with this one!”

D-

Shark Night – I feel dirty having participated in the consumer experience of buying a ticket to see this.

A

The End of Suburbia – If you’ve never seen any films on peak oil and its consequences for American lifestyle, you should. This would be a good place to start as would Collapse or A Crude Awakening. The gist is that the typical American lifestyle is unsustainable from an energy standpoint. One guy interviewed in this film predicts the suburbs will one day be the slums of the U.S. with multiple families sharing McMansions and using the lawn to grow produce. It’s not hard to picture suburban society basically unraveling when gas reaches $6, $7… $9 a gallon (Europe is already basically paying these prices which is why they drive more fuel efficient vehicles and generally live in cities where they can walk or take mass transit, not drive). One final point is how the American Dream at some point along the way started to mean having your own house, car, wife, kids, etc, when all it ever meant to begin with was that anyone could “make it” in this country. The post-war oil boom marketing succeeded in defining “making it” as moving out to the ‘burbs and living the good life. But it’s not really a sustainable reality. Anyway, this is a great film, check it out.

Escape from Suburbia: Beyond the American Dream – This is the follow-up to End of Suburbia. It focuses on the stories of a few people and communities who have taken action on creating a life that will be sustainable when we run out of oil.

Trading on Thin Air – Really solid doomsday documentary on how the seemingly environmental-friendly Cap and Trade policy is really just a way to create money out of thin air for the big players. One thing it briefly touched on that I found interesting is how easy it is to game environmentalists. You can get away with basically owning them by getting them to believe that whatever you’re doing is “good for the environment”.

Maxed Out – Documentary film about credit card debt in the U.S. It’s pretty disgusting. Makes me want to climb into a hole. Our economy is in deep, deep crap long-term. Lucky for me, I’m young enough that I get to watch it all go down.

The Change Up – Laughed hard and a lot which is all you can really ask of a movie like this.

A-

Carlito’s Way – Solid Pacino gangster flic. Can’t believe I didn’t see it before now. Coulda done without all of the romance storyline though which felt contrived.

How to Train Your Dragon – Not quite my favorite of the animated genre, but still very good. Movies like these are the best things coming out of Hollywood right now.

Deadline – Pretty awesome film about former Illinois governor George Ryan’s decision to commute all of the death sentences of state inmates. Said Ryan in his speech announcing his decision, “If the exercise of my power becomes my burden, I’ll bear it.”

A Time to Kill – Never quite got all the general hate on Matthew McConaughey. In this 1996 courtroom genre, he was great as a promising young lawyer who bets his reputation on defending a black man on trial for murdering two white men who raped his daughter.

Drive – A couple of the character relationships seemed underdeveloped but overall this film was great and felt timeless.

B+

The Human Experience – I kept waiting for it to go into overdrive and get really awesome, but before it did, it ended.

A Night at the Roxbury – Not sure why it took me so long to see this, but I liked it. Pretty hilarious.

B

Unknown – This was subpar for the Liam Neeson vs. The World genre, but still worth watching.

C-

Captain America – This had a hard time holding my attention. These comic book movies are so formulaic; they all seem the same after a while. Geeky white kid flukes his way into super powers, explores his newfound powers, then saves the world and gets the personality-less broad he’s had his eye on. The end. (Exceptions: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were both a cut above the typical comic book genre crap).

Limitless – I like the idea of a drug that allows you to harness all of the power of your brain, but this movie sucked.

A

Last Play at Shea – This was just awesome. An absolute must-see for anyone who likes music or American culture.

One: The Movie – Great interviews with various spiritual leaders.

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash – Great look into what will probably be the most important hurdle for humanity in this century: the end of oil.

Aviator – Not sure why I put off seeing this for so long, it was amazing.

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death – Broke down the process of how U.S. government has generated support for military actions since Vietnam by utilizing the media to rally support for their agenda. It’s a huge criticism of mainstream journalism as having abandoned the principals of their industry.

12 Angry Men – Absolute classic. Everyone should see it if they haven’t already.

Kung Fu Panda – Maybe my favorite animated film. Never once felt like I was watching a kids movie. It was both funny and profound.

God Grew Tired of Us – Insightful documentary on the lives of Sudanese refugees and their struggles to adjust to life in the U.S. These people had a camera on them as they used a light switch, an escalator, etc for the first time in their lives. I was impressed by how intelligent they were despite a life spent fleeing from persecutors sans-electricity. I also noticed they seemed to have relatively little interest in joining American culture in terms of the “keeping up with the jones” type of attitude. They seemed far more relaxed and almost confused at why they should have to work all the time. If you’re into humanity, see this.

A-

Toy Story 3 – Mission: Impossible meets South Park meets Patton meets the War on Terror meets amazing graphics meets conflict after conflict. Toy Story 3 rules and is not a movie just for kids.

Jackie Brown – Tarantino’s lesser well received follow up to Pulp Fiction. I had seen it lots before, but not for like five years.

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky – I had mixed emotions about this. There’s obv value in a film offering a look inside the mind of one of world’s most highly touted intellectuals but a.) it was nearly 3 hours long which was especially grinding since b.) there were a LOT of advanced, intellectual concepts being thrown out at a pretty quick rate. I feel like I’d have to watch this 5-10 times to really absorb every point trying to be made. After watching it once, I can barely regurgitate any of the theories/beliefs that were presented and I think the film trying to do too much is probably partially to blame (or maybe my attention span just needs to improve, I dunno). The gist of the film is basically how powerful the media is since they get to choose what news we’re exposed to. I’d imagine this power has diminished since this film was made (1992) because of the Internet where all varieties of information are more easily transmitted. But the main point of that there’s more going on in the world than your mainstream paper tells you about is a good one. I also liked the point about how the media’s emphasis on concision puts dissenting opinions and facts at a disadvantage. In other words, you need a lot of time to successfully argue against an accepted mainstream viewpoint and the media is built on not providing that time to dissenters. This was basically just a propaganda film for underdog social views.

American Drug War: The Last White Hope – Really solid film highlighting some of the reasons why the war on drugs is retarded and needs to end. Privatized prisons whose stock rises with higher capacity is a dangerous and sick thing for a society to have.

Hanna – Alice in Wonderland meets Kill Bill and it rocks!

Kung Fu Panda 2 – Was just as good as the first one except for the action sequences which I thought were a little more Hollywoodized and trainwreck-ish.

Middle Men – An exciting, cautionary tale on business and the rise to riches. Great cast. I think a majority of the young male demographic would like this. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Surfwise – So a guy leaves his life as a doctor so he can surf and have 9 children and drive around the world with them in an RV. This really happened. Surfwise is a documentary. Really kind of a fascinating sociological project. I wouldn’t take the problems of the kids today as a criticism of the lifestyle, however. It’s just one trial.

Independent Intervention – Good short doc about the importance of independent media.

The F Word – Funny look at how dumb it is to regard certain words as “bad” or “naughty”. The F word is a battleground for souls.

Kill the Irishman – Gangster movie about Cleveland mob figure Danny Green. Was really good, nice surprise here.

Horrible Bosses – One of the funnier comedies I’ve seen in a while. The cast had some really great chemistry. It was also nice seeing Jennifer Aniston playing a role that didn’t involve being mopey and insufferable.

B+

The Adjustment Bureau – Had some ingredients from Inception and Vanilla Sky. A decent psychological thriller that almost failed at fighting off the cheesiness factor a few different times.

Bridesmaids – Solid, glad I saw it.

The Next Three Days – Had a few real cheap scenes but overall was surprisingly good.

I Love You, Phillip Morris – Better and less of an out-and-out comedy than I thought it was going to be.

B

The One Percent – Documentary that looked at the lives and lifestyles of America’s wealthiest 1%. It had it’s humorous moments but overall seemed aimless.

Due Date – Pretty funny, stupid at times. Basically par for the course for The Hangover genre.

Casino Jack – Kevin Spacey was awesome as Jack Abramoff but this was just okay outside of that.

Why We Fight – Documentary film on America’s military industrial complex. It was kind of all over the place and didn’t really make many points a lot of us haven’t already heard. Basically America having standing armies all over the world = bad and liable to lead to our demise.

B-

Catfish – Very bizarre. Held my attention mostly but just… wow… bizarre.

Rabbit Hole – Slow moving character drama about a couple struggling to cope with the loss of a young child.

Little Fockers – About as contrived as they come, but a few funny moments + de Niro = not awful.

The Hangover II – Bah… I fell for it. Same exact movie as the first one. Still paid the $9.50. Still laughed.

C+

Love and Other Drugs – Very retarded but there were only like two scenes that made me want to stop watching it.

The King’s Speech – Oh man, s-s-s-so b-b-b-b-bru-bru-brutal.

C

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – Had it’s moments but overall very bad. Shia and his girl’s characters were insufferable.

C-

The Kids Are All Right – This was such a piece of crap. I’ve never disliked a movie that got nominated for Best Picture more. Perfect example of how some spewy trainwreck of a film can still get tons of accolades as long as it’s about some cutting-edge liberal topic (in this case, lesbians raising kids).

D-

Blue Valentine – I would rather be locked in a freezer for two hours than watch this again.

A+

Inside Job – I probably understand the world financial meltdown better than the average American my age, but this documentary made me feel dumb. Reminded me of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, only instead of explaining how a company collapsed, it explained how the world collapsed. It kind of makes you wonder how much the culture of the crisis affected our generation. Like how much of us are unhappy because of this “baller” complex that got built up where, in order to be viewed as successful, you need six-figure cars and hot women and sometimes loose morals? And meanwhile, what if the key players responsible for propagating that image in society were just a bunch of pillaging frauds? One of the most important films of our generation.

A

Waste Land – An awesome documentary about humanity; beautiful.

A-

127 Hours – Amazing story and a really well done film.

Searching for Bobby Fischer – Really great movie. See it if you haven’t already.

GasLand – Probably a must-see for anyone who blindly thinks natural gas is the gung-ho solution to everything.

The Insider – Starts really slow (a pretty underused criticism of movies IMO), script turns great, Crowe too alpha for this role, very pro-journalist. Built up to be really awesome. Showed the depths of the power that money can buy you and the importance of hard-working journalism.

Exit Through the Gift Shop – Really awesome but was kind of all over the place in terms of what story it was trying to tell.

B+

The Dilemma – A pleasant surprise. I thought it was really funny.

You Don’t Know Jack – A nice biopic on Jack Kevorkian. Pacino was awesome.

True Grit – Had it’s flaws. The Coen brothers movies have steadily declined in my view since No Country.

B

The Tourist – Predictable and pretty corny but fine for what it was. Nice to see Timothy Dalton back on screen.

Food Matters – This had a lot of crap to it but the basic point that eating more raw “superfoods” (ie: goji berries, raw honey, cacao beans, etc) is good for you long-term is a nice thing to be reminded of.

Takers – A lot of retarded testosterone in this, but there were some pretty cool scenes, especially at the end.

The Company Man – From a broad perspective, I thought this movie did a nice job telling a story worth telling: how upper middle class Americans have struggled to keep up an excessive lifestyle in the face of a bad economy. Unfortunately there were a few wanker scenes and Affleck’s character was just kind of a dunce so it failed in a lot of small ways.

Lincoln Lawyer – Pretty canned and predictable, but totally entertaining nonetheless.

A

After Innocence – If anyone has kept track, you might have seen that I’ve recommended a lot of documentaries on here lately, but bump this one up near the top of ones that need to be seen. It’s about prisoners who are exonerated after years (sometimes decades) behind bars when DNA evidence showed that they were actually innocent. One of the most emotionally powerful things I’ve seen on film. Everyone should see this, especially anyone involved in the justice system.

Waiting for Superman – This film left me depressed and with a deep level of contempt for teachers unions. Unions in general, while probably founded on noble purposes, allow deadbeats to slip through for decades draining resources and it costs everyone in the end.

The Power of Nightmares – BBC documentary about the history of neo-conservatives in the U.S. and Islamic terrorists. Showed a very interesting perspective that not many Americans are really aware of: neo-cons tend to make the enemy out to be more powerful than it is so they can stay in power. Think of Reagan and the Soviet Union in the 80s. They were portrayed to be this looming superpower that was a threat to freedom everywhere. We know now that they were little more than a self-imploding economic trainwreck, one that posed very little (no?) actual threat to the day-to-day life of Americans. This film supposes that Al Qaeda is effectively the same thing: a non-existent network conjured up by the imagination of American politicians to retain power. And there’s a lot of evidence to suggest this is the case. The notion of Al Qaeda being a highly organized network that has cells in dozens of nations around the world is simply untrue. It is just in the political interests of politicians who believe that America has a mission to defeat “evil” around the world to blow the enemy out of proportion. (See: WMDs in Iraq for an easy example). The whole war on terror has been one assumption piled on top of another assumption. These neo-con politicians believe that a lack of evidence should not stop one from taking measures against a perceived threat. People in a high position of power with an M.O. like that is a scary thing.

The Corporation – A documentary that paints corporations in a light I’ve never fully seen them: as sociopaths. It makes a lot of sense too; corporations enjoy many of the rights people have only without a lot of the potential consequences. And all they care about is profit. Imagine a human being who only cared about profit to such an extent that they would kill if they thought it was +EV. We’d probably diagnose them with some disorder and possibly try to jail them. Many corporations are exactly this type of disturbed individual and yet, we revere them and allow them to own us basically. Ever heard of a federal politician that got elected without major financial contributions from companies? Me either.

Beer Wars – Awesome documentary about the struggles that small, independent breweries have with getting their product on to a market that is completely dominated by Anheuser-Busch more ways than many people probably realize. A-B owns basically everything and benefits from a system that makes it tough for small competitors to get their beers onto the shelf next to the Bud Light. If you like beer, you should watch this film.

Fair Game – Story of Joe Wilson and his CIA agent wife Val who had their lives pulled apart by the White House after Joe wrote a NYT op-ed saying that he believed the President’s assertion that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa was fabricated. Really highlights the amount of cowardice in high governmental positions; most people are more worried about covering their ass than doing what’s right (which is how they rose to that height in the first place), so if an order, or in the case, a suggestion, comes down from the top, everyone had better fall in line and agree or risk facing someone’s wrath. Misanthropic-types be warned: this will stoke your flames pretty hard.

Black Swan – Totally gripping. Suspends you in a state of non-reality for two hours and then just leaves you there in shock. It passed Shutter Island for my favorite 2010 release.

A-

Conviction – Awesome movie based on a true story about a woman who puts herself through college and law school (Hilary Swank) to work on exonerating her wrongly-convicted brother (Sam Rockwell) of life in prison for murder. This should be up for some Oscars.

B+

Hereafter – Another really solid project from Clint Eastwood. This was a little slow, but I appreciated it.

Stone – After the credits rolled, a woman behind me said to her dude, “I am never letting you pick a movie again.” LOL, I didn’t think it was that bad. The characters were really interesting.

B

White Christmas – This is my gf’s favorite Christmas movie. I had never seen it until now. American society seemed a lot more childlike back then.

The Fighter – Solid for the most part, but didn’t rock my world like I was hoping it would. Christian Bale is putting together an impressive career.

B-

Unthinkable – This movie is about some terrorist plot where they need expert-torturer Samuel L. Jackson to come in and get the guy to divulge where he’s hiding three bombs. It was pretty absurd, but entertaining enough. Michael Sheen rocked as the terrorist in captivity.

C+

Iron Man 2 – I just could never get into this. The storyline seemed too canned and rushed. It was as if Hollywood just spit out whatever crap as quickly as they could to make money for themselves and advertisers.

F

Bad Santa – Just awful.

A+

Food Inc – This movie is pretty trippy. It makes me see why people become hippies. Maybe the hippies are right! This movie definitely shows you something about our society. Everyone should see it. There is no personal responsibility in our society anymore. This might be the most important and maybe even the most effective documentary ever made. It’s changed my life more than any film I’ve seen. Absolutely excellent. I wanted to watch it again as soon as it was over. Also, Michael Pollan is the nuts.

A

The Social Network – I wish more films were this intellectually stimulating; a great glimpse at how young, Ivy League, 1600-on-their-SATs types operate.

8: The Mormon Proposition – My views on gay marriage tend to resonate with those of Doug Stanhope, so it was hard for me to fully get behind the plight of the victims as portrayed by this film, but I find the powers of intolerant organized religion to be deeply concerning; although they account for just 2% of California’s population, Mormans contributed 71% of the money donated to fight Proposition 8. That they have tax exempt status despite being what is essentially a political lobbying group seems criminal.

Gonzo – Hunter S. Thompson was a one of a kind dude.

JFK – Terrific; a must-see, no doubt.

Botany of Desire – Fascinating documentary on the evolution of plants from the plants’ perspective.

The End of the Line – Oh snap… we’re eating all of the fish. I feel like people will really find this movie important in ~10ish years.

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High – Awesome documentary about the economics of illegal marijuana and how things would change if it were legalized. Very important; everyone should see this.

An Unreasonable Man – Ralph Nader has had an interesting life. This film shows how he went from this celebrated consumer activist of the 1960s and 1970s to the butt of a lot of jokes (and very undeservedly so) today. The film also shows you how both sides of American government are a lot more similar than people would like to think and that they’re basically both controlled by corporate interests that are so inpenetrable that a guy like Nader’s interests are disregarded as “kooky third party stuff” before people even examine if he has a point. Another interesting thing was how the media never took his Presidential campaigns seriously and instead just perpetrated the two-party system by only talking about how Nader’s running would influence votes towards the other parties. Finally, it showed how corporations directly and unapologetically kept Nader from being included in the Bush-Gore Presidential debates. Those debates would have given him a stage to reach millions he otherwise never was able to touch.

A-

Un Prophète – French movie about a guy who goes from rags to riches by dabbling in illegal activities while in prison. Pretty awesome.

I.O.U.S.A – Fairly dumbed-down overall, but informative and had interviews with pretty interesting people like David Walker, Warren Buffet, and Alan Greenspan, plus some cool footage of “important” figures, so I liked it a lot. Frankly, it was terrifying.

Blue Gold: World Water Wars – A glimpse at how water could one day be a commodity that stirs as much political interest as oil does today.

B+

This Film is Not Yet Rated – A look into the secretive nature and methods of the organization responsible for affecting the content of nearly every film made, the MPAA.

The Town – Not amazing, but solid. Affleck starting to grow on me.

Cropsey – This documentary asks the question: is the serial killer really a serial killer, or did we make him into that in order to have peace of mind?

Following – Reminds me of the Usual Suspects.

Capturing the Friedmans – Did a really great job of making you have a hard time knowing whose side to be on, which seems like a pretty difficult thing to achieve in film.

B

Inception – I could never bring myself to care about the hero’s plight.

Super High Me – Not great, but entertaining enough.

B-

Salt – Kinda ridiculous but coulda been worse.

Winter’s Bone – Not a bad film, just sooo low energy.

Dirty Dancing – Sillier than I was expecting.

C+

Role Models – Why does Paul Rudd always have to play some lower-middle class loser? Seann William-Scott is really good at that role he always plays. “Say hello to your whispering I,” lol!! Awful screenplay.

My Left Foot – I get that this is supposedly a good movie, but I was bored to tears. Gotta applaud Daniel Day-Lewis though.

The Expendables – Fun at times, but ultimately pretty bad.

C

American Meth – A pretty terrible documentary on a subject that could have been so interesting.

C-

The American – Immensely disappointing; left you wanting so much more but not in a good way.

WCOOP has been running for a couple of weeks now. I’ve played a handful of events with limited success. I bubbled a couple of tournaments in a really disappointing fashion including a $265 PLO Knockout event where, despite turning a 5,000 starting stack into 45,000, I bubbled out on some dumb standard PLO flip and somehow managed to not even score a single bounty. That was super frustrating since I felt like it was a pretty good chance to make a deep run in a tournament format that, inexplicably, I feel like I’m pretty solid at despite fairly limited experience. That same day was the $215 heads-up event which also proved super frustrating. Most players only had to win 3 matches to get into the money. But a handful of us, myself included, had to win a “play in” match just to join the field of 2048 (it started with like ~2300). I’m pretty sure Stars determines who has to do those play-in matches at random. In other words, it’s not based on the order in which you register or anything. I’m not sure how I feel about that one way or another. I guess it just is what it is. At any rate, it’s frustrating when your number is up to have to win an extra match, which I did, along with my next two, for a total of three matches won, which for most everyone else would have been enough to reach the money, but not for me since I needed to win a fourth, which I didn’t do because I drew Dan “Lenny” Heimiller who apparently never loses hands in WCOOP. Spaghetti sentence ftw!

One event I did have some success in was last Sunday’s $215 event that started with ~9,500 players. I chipped the 10,000 starting stack up to 140,000 and into the money without ever being all-in. Normally getting in the money in an online tournament while avoiding being all-in, called, and covered is basically impossible, but the structure in WCOOP events is so absurd it can be done. Once I got in the money, I played well/ran-hot my way up to a million chips with < 100 players left before having an unfortunate hand where I turned a set of 4s after checking behind a T76 flop only to get it all in against 98 and go out in 80th place. WCOOP events can be frustrating because even after playing well and running hot for 12 hours, I was still a solid 6-8 hours of rungood away from any serious money. The structures are so good and fields are so huge that lasting long enough to make any serious money almost seems impossible.

I'll probably only play a couple more WCOOP events. I think I'm going to Louisiana later this week for a $1,000 tournament at Coushatta, an Indian-owned casino about 3 hours from Houston. It looks like it has a ridiculous structure and I can only imagine the field will be awful. Even still, you definitely have to derive some entertainment value from this trip to justify 6 hours of round-trip travel for a $1,000 buy-in event. I can justify the trip on account of random casino trips to Louisiana being fun from time to time and live tournaments, something I haven't done since busting out of the WSOP Main Event two months ago, also being fun.

That's enough poker talk for now. I've been on a really big documentary binge lately. My girlfriend has a Netflix subscription so I've been watching a lot of movies online. There's some pretty amazing stuff out there. My previous movie-finding method of just wandering into a Blockbuster left me out of the loop on a lot of really interesting documentaries. I love documentaries. I find a really good documentary way more enjoyable than a really good film. Fiction is great and has it's place and all, but there's just something awesome about being able to learn about real-world issues while being entertained at the same time. My only beefs with documentaries is when they're a.) unfairly one-sided which can sometimes be hard to tell or b.) too dumbed down (which is a bit easier to identify). I realize all documentaries have to be dumbed down to some extent, but it annoys me when they're like absurdly dumbed down.

I'll mention a few good ones I've seen:

I.O.U.S.A. - This was very dumbed down, but mostly to it's credit. It's about America's debt situation explained in a way a middle-schooler could understand, which is good since most of our population is probably about that intelligent re: economics. On the whole, it's pretty terrifying. Basically if we continue with our current fiscal practices, the federal government will be broke in a couple of decades and have to allocate all of it's tax revenues to paying down the social security trust fund and foreign-held debt which means no more funding for stuff like NASA, national parks, etc, etc. This, way more than terrorism or mosques in New York City, will be the end of the American empire.

Botany of Desire - Based on Michael Pollan's (who is awesome by the way, check out his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma) book of the same title, this documentary explores the evolution of the apple, tulip, marijuana leaf, and potato from the plant’s perspective. It shows you a glimpse of how humanity has impacted the evolution of plants we are familiar with. I think most people probably just take plants for granted. Like, “oh, apples are just apples.” But there’s so much more to it than that and it’s pretty rewarding to take a look at things from the plant’s perspective.

The End of the Line – This is about the world’s fishing practices and how we’re basically eating all of the fish in the ocean faster than the species can sustain themselves. I found it depressing and horrifying. There’s good evidence out there to suggest that a lot of the fish we’ve come to enjoy in sushi restaurants and beyond won’t even exist by the middle of the century. One day, I’ll bet humanity finds this issue far more important than it currently does. This issue seems like it’s just getting started (think: global warming in the 1980s).

There’s been a few other good ones, but those three are the ones that stick out the most.

Alright, I guess this wasn’t as concise as I pledged it would be; I should try to blog shorter entries more frequently.

We don’t eat real food in our society. This is something I suppose I’ve always had an intuitive awareness of. I mean, you can’t grow up eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast without realizing that the stuff we put in our mouths is anything but natural. However, the extent to which our food is “not real food” is unbelievably troubling. The market has succeeded in putting a wide array of affordable and filling options in our face without anyone really stopping to ask, “should we really be eating this stuff?”

It’s all just corn. One of the more striking points in Food, Inc for me was when the narrator said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “when you go into a grocery store, it seems like you have a ton of options, but most everything is really just a clever rearrangement of corn [or soy, or both].” The film dives a little bit into the economics of corn and how farmers are basically “priced in” to growing corn because of government subsides to do so. Since corn is plentiful, corn is therefore cheap. Since it’s cheap, food manufacturers can afford to flood the market with corn-based products at a low price for consumers thereby basically “blocking” the consumer from really eating anything other than “clever rearrangements of corn.” In effect, we’re using tax dollars to make it so that the only thing it makes financial sense for us to eat is variations on corn. Do you think Joe Farmer is going to use his field to grow blueberries thereby driving down the price of blueberries when he can make significantly more money producing corn? Not a chance. Joe is only human, after all.

Greed is the main problem. The real crux of the food problem in America, and the crux of most (all?) problems for that matter, is greed. Greed is what has caused food manufacturers to put whatever cheap and tasty crap they can onto the market. They profit wildly from doing so and are able to use some of those proceeds to lobby Washington to create friendlier and friendlier laws for the industry. The FDA is in bed with American food manufacturers. It’s really little more than a front to make you feel like there’s a governing body looking out for your interests with regards to food. It might have originated with the right intent, but over time the FDA has basically sold itself out to the food industry. The food we currently eat are like what cigarettes were in the 1940s: awful for you but consumers have little access to information to help them realize this because regulators are in bed with the manufacturers too much to do anything about it.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about how greedy our culture is lately and how much we romanticize the idea of making another buck or seeing a stock price go up. But rarely do we ask, “at what cost?” In this way, we are a very foolish culture.

Poor people are screwed. People on fixed-income budgets who are living paycheck to paycheck are the real losers. They are almost certainly eating a bunch of processed crap. After all, a frozen pizza is a lot cheaper and has a lot more calories than an organic salad topped with grilled, organic chicken. What choice do you think they’re going to make? In short, people have less money than they think. People “think” they have enough to get by on what they’re currently making, but that assumes they settle for eating processed sugars, salts, and fats. Suppose these foods were no longer an option to them because they decided their health wasn’t worth selling out. They’d have no choice but to pony up a considerably more amount of money for organic, non-processed foods. On the back-end, however, they’ll recoup a lot of this money, and then some in the opinion of my friend Nat, through lowered health care costs.

We’re fat because it’s affordable to be fat. We’re fat because our policymakers and corporations have allowed a system to arise in which it is affordable to stuff your face with yummy fats, sugars, and salts. Since we naturally crave these items ahead of the spinach, and since they’re cheaper than the spinach anyway, we stuff our faces. This is why even the poor people in this country are fat. Everyone can afford to be fat because being fat has been made to be so cheap!

Non-organic meat is disturbing. No text authored by me can come remotely close to doing the scenes from Food, Inc justice. You really just have to see the film. The source of our meat in this country is just downright troubling. Take for example chicken. Chicken is healthy and yummy, right? Well because Americans like white meat, companies engineered the chickens to have breasts about twice the size as they are in nature. Additionally, since a chicken that can grow to full size in 48 days is cheaper to produce than a chicken that takes nearly twice that long to grow to full size, we figured out a way to make chickens grow so fast that their bones and joints simply cannot keep up. What does this mean for the chicken? It means that in it’s final days, the weight of its breasts is so immense that it’s underdeveloped legs don’t stand a chance. The chickens can take one, maybe two steps (not like they’ve got very much space to work with anyway) before they plop back down onto the ground waiting for death. All so we can have a big, fat, juicy chicken breast on our plate for dinner at half the cost of the organic ones that are half the size. I’ve always avoided veal since I thought it seemed pretty cruel to keep them chained to the ground. I never realized that if I applied that same logic to chickens, it would have made sense to go organic before now.

Corporations are remarkably capable. This movie really demonstrates the brilliance that companies are capable of. When left to their own devices, they are able to create jaw-dropping “optimizations” (I put that in quotes because putting a toxic chemical on something we plan to eat so that we can have more of it to eat shouldn’t really be viewed as “optimal”). What our corporate food companies have managed to do is really quite remarkable. It’s depressing and seemingly void of any ethics, but remarkable all the same. They have directly engineered an entire country full of people who unquestioningly eat stuff that they don’t even know where it came from and balloon to unparalleled sizes in the process. I mean think about that, how many of us can truly say that we’ve ever thought about where our food comes from? How many of us can honestly say that they’ve thought, “hmm, I wonder what xanthan gum is?” I know I can’t say that. Since I was a toddler until just recently, I never questioned the origins of the food I put into my mouth. I just ate without really knowing what it is. Remarkable, isn’t it? Do you think humans from a century ago could have said that?

Where corporations succeed, they also fail. When left to their own devices, corporations are only concerned with one thing: profit. Profit does not have to be an evil word, but to many people, increasingly myself, it has an evil connotation. This is because any entity concerned only with profit will do anything, including things detrimental to the health of humanity if they think they can get away with it, in order to see that “profit” number increase. Our society has become more concerned with seeing a stock price go up on one day than it is with asking if what they had to do to make that price go up actually added value to society or just stole from many to give to a few. And make no mistake, food corporations are stealing from the many, in this case, their health, in order to increase their own bottom line. Our obsession with money is literally killing us and will continue to kill us until we decide that it is not what’s most important.

Consumers are incredibly powerful. Food, Inc succeeded in restoring the viewers’ feeling of power after spending most of the film making them feel helpless and disturbed. They did this by reminding everyone that every time you scan an item at a grocery store, you are “voting” for that item. If enough of us begin to “vote” for the items that we are meant to eat, companies will get the message. The film recommends buying organic foods wherever possible, buying locally-grown foods wherever possible, and basically getting used to the idea that food is supposed to require more work than we’re used to. Food was not meant to be something we could get from a window out of our car for $1 and be full. Food is work. For the majority of human history, the majority of the work humans did was directly related to cultivating food and sustaining life. We have found a way to cheat ourselves out of having to do this work and in doing so, we’re cheating ourselves. Budget more time and money for the gathering and preparing of food. Real food.

I’ll close with two links to related stuff. First, the story of aspartame. Read that and tell me if it doesn’t make you want to burn Donald Rumsfeld at the stake. Finally, read here the text of a New York girl’s valedictorian speech from a few months back as she bashes the very system decorating her.

Anyway, here are the movies I saw in the second quarter of this year along with a letter grade on how much I liked them and a brief comment about them. I saw Inception a couple days ago (that will appear in the 3Q grades) and I was really disappointed. Based on all the things I had heard people saying, I went into it expecting it to have a good shot at surpassing Shutter Island for my favorite movie of 2010, but it didn’t even come close. The storyline concept was cool, but I thought the movie did an inadequate job of making you empathize with the hero. The whole movie hinged on DiCaprio’s struggle to get back to his children which was a struggle that I thought the movie did a terrible job of getting the audience to support. I could have cared less whether or not he succeeded, so the movie was very unsatisfying imo.

A-

Usual Suspects – I saw this when I was a teenager but don’t think I was really able to follow it then.

Kick Ass – I can’t think of another movie where gratuitous violence was so hilarious.

El Secreto en sus Ojos – Coulda done without the romantic storyline, but was otherwise an awesome murder mystery thriller.

B+

Law Abiding Citizen – A poor man’s Se7en.

Nordwand – German mountain climbing movie. Started off slow, but got really good by the end.

Syriana – Never really got as suspenseful as I was hoping it would, but a good movie nonetheless.

The Damned United – Brian Clough reminds me a little of Phil Hellmuth.

B

Edge of Darkness – Got a little over the top with the villain figure.

B-

MacGruber – I laughed my ass off a few times, but overall should have probably just waited for it to come out on video.

Rendition – I normally like the war on terror genre, but this kinda sucked.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind – This had stretches of being pretty good and stretches where I nearly shut it off.

C+

Dog Pound – Succeeded in being violent and captivating but the storyline was simply too far-fetched.

Robin Hood – This could have been a good movie, but they let it get too cheesy in some parts.

C

Men Who Stare at Goats – Stupid.

Tenderness – Mediocre psycho-thriller.

D

Streets of Blood – This was just a trainwreck.

She went big and ordered the sample platter.

Knowing I would be downwind of her leftovers, I decided to go with a small dish of the Cajun mac’n'cheese.

The Cajun mac was awesome; there was nothing in her sample platter that I liked more, although the La Mancha was close. Who knew fennel could taste so good in mac’n'cheese?

After dinner, we killed some time sitting in tiny, cramped, over-crowded bars while waiting for our 8:45 showing of Dog Pound.

I had never been to a film festival before so I didn’t really know what to expect. For the most part, it was just like going to a regular movie except there was a little more buzz in the hallways and before the film started the French director, Kim Chapiron, and one of the featured actors, Adam Butcher, who was fantastic, were introduced. They thanked the audience for coming and said they would be available for a short Q&A session following the film’s conclusion.

Dog Pound is about a fictional juvenile correction facility in Montana. I had hoped it was going to be a documentary. Since it wasn’t, I was hoping it would at least be true-to-life and provide some type of a thought-provoking message regarding the juvenile correction system. It didn’t do that either.

Instead, the film was basically a low-budget prison movie that served viewers a king’s portion of violence and sensationalism. To that extent, it was actually pretty good. I think anyone who showed up hoping for a Tarantino-style blood bath probably left the theater pretty happy. The film held my attention most of the way but was nothing special overall. My girlfriend spent the cab ride home explaining how utterly unrealistic it was (she works in the juvenile corrections field) and how it seems unlikely that Chapiron did his homework before shooting. It made me sort of wish we had hung around for the Q&A. I would have liked to have seen how seriously he took himself. If he tried to act like the film made some social statement in regards to juvenile corrections, it would have been pretty laughable. But maybe his intent was just to make a gory prison movie and if that was the case, he should give himself a pat on the back.

At any rate, it was kind of neat watching a film that only a handful of people have ever seen while the director was in the room.