Maggie 2010: Maggie Likes Things, Too! Part 3 of 4

#75. Food, Inc



I know what you're thinking: Seen one food industry criticism piece, seen 'em all. But what perhaps makes Food, Inc stick out so notably is the way it takes a tremendous body of commonly understood (at least for any eco-conscious foodie) information about best-we-can-get-away-with big business practices, and constructs very clear, well-synthesized, and yet still nuanced arguments about how the food industry has changed over the last few generations.

Included in this piece are arguments about the shift towards monopolization of key food industries by corporate enterprise with the aim of maximizing profit through the delivery of cheap food en masse. This is handily followed by an explanation of key biochemical crises that necessarily emerge from the grouping together of meat production in staggeringly large factory environments, and exceptional deconstructions of how these processes harm the workers, introduce less than best practices for the animals, and compromise the consumer. There are times in this piece when anyone who grew up with basic rhetoric training will chafe, necessarily, at the high-handed commentary being introduced in the narrator's soothing, even-keeled voice, but the documentary has some checks and balances for this--one of the most notable being the priority it places on farmer testimony during one-on-one interviews.

Farmers, viewers will note, are startlingly affected by this corporate monopolization, being sold essentially into indentured servitude via company business practices that necessarily place them under debt not only to acquire start-up equipment but also to keep their company contracts by agreeing to go into further debt (and/or cut into whatever meagre profit margin they manage) to pay for ludicrous upgrades and maintenance tasks over the years. If the abuse of immigrant and minority labour doesn't get you; if the wholesale abuse of the animals doesn't get you; if the health scares caused by creating giant factory-line production houses for our food doesn't get you; maybe the fact that the front-line farmers, the icons of the food industry itself, are being wholly cheated out of a viable career will leave you changed after viewing this film.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps it won't be the scary negatives exposed by this film that affect you, but the fact that Food, Inc offers an alternative: throughout its deconstruction of mass market corporate food empires, the film also introduces you to a small, free-range farm solution that works. You see how animals are prepared by hand for delivery; you hear how the owner refuses to expand his business despite its booming success; you observe how well integrated the act of supporting animals in life is with his farming philosophy. Many such anti-big business films don't show viable alternatives, but Food, Inc has found a fine balance between pointing to overarching trends, identifying individual narratives of strife, and creating personable alternatives. If ever I needed to introduce a skeptic to a food industry piece that would help spark a conversation about current North American consumption practices, Food, Inc would most decidedly be it.

Maggie 2010: Maggie Likes Things, Too! Part 2 of 4

#74. The Crazies (2010)



I've been really cranky about a lot of horror films as of late, but a lot of that crankiness has to do with having seen The Crazies remake, despite my initial protestation of the title on principle (perpetuation of a negative stereotype against people who have mental health issues, etc etc). This 2010 remake of a 1973 George A. Romero flick is an elegant testament to what can be achieved with a little foreknowledge of what has consistently made for great horror throughout history, and it sets the bar exceptionally high for other contemporary horror in turn.

As Breck Eisner's upcoming film list amply indicates, he has a love-on for the classics--seeking, by my last IMDB count, to update other cultural icons like Flash Gordon, Cronenberg's The Brood, and Escape from New York. Certainly those films will all have to be judged on their own merits, and a healthy measure of skepticism about any remake is always welcome, but if Eisner approaches them with the same love and respect for their genres as he showed with The Crazies, I'd say we have some superb nostalgia in store in a few years' time.

On its surface, The Crazies follows the simple premise of all successful zombie/zombie-like manifestation films: A small town of well-meaning folk are afflicted by a disturbing breach of normal life, which they try to write off as fluke happenstance before realizing it's already too late. Before they know it, loved ones are turning left right and centre into inhuman monsters, and--bam!--the government gets involved just in time to make even more of a mess of things. A plucky gang of survivors struggles to make it out of a dead zone in time.

But the devil truly is in the details--and what a pleasure of a devil this one is! Eisner is a master both of cinematic tribute and subtle misdirection, which is why some of the greatest scenes in this film are scenes of classic suspense, not horror. He's helped in great part by excellent acting by Timothy Olyphant, who plays town sheriff David Dutton quite comfortably, etching out for the audience long-standing reliances and relationships with behaviour patterns as much as with speech. Wife Judy Dutton (Radha Mitchell) also thankfully does not overact, though the peril she's placed in by the government because of an unrelated condition certainly could merit it. But the best thing about the acting, truly, is that it's equally strong regardless of whether the character is part of the "core four" or someone to be sacrificed early on. This makes every step on the journey a sheer intellectual and visual thrill. Added to some truly superb cinematography, and the intelligent pacing and script-writing of the whole, and you've got yourself a modern classic--a film that lifts heavily from its predecessors but stops along the way to revitalize them, to make their psychological crises somehow new.

Maggie 2010: Maggie Likes Things, Too! Part 1 of 4

#73. Meerkat Manor S1



I first tried pitching this series as "better than any human soap opera," but as that set the bar ridiculously low, I was met with well-justified skepticism. Hopefully I do better by this unique piece in my descriptors this time around.

Meerkat Manor follows a family of meerkats. Unlike anything we were taught from Lion King, these are not isolated creatures; without the particular group dynamics this species has developed to survive conditions in the Kalahari Desert, these foot-long creatures would soon be toast. Those group dynamics make up the core of this show, which picks up alongside a Cambridge ten-year study of a family called "The Whiskers," making these little critters perhaps the most closely documented mammalian species ever. By collaring the lead female in the group, and setting up permanent camera posts around The Whiskers' territory, the Cambridge team has made it possible for show producers to provide us with a bounty of material both endearing and depressing -- in fact, this show easily takes top prize for being able to manage both to such an extreme!

Season One follows matriarch Flower as she has to make some important choices regarding the viability of her four litters of four pups over the course of one year. Narrator Sean Astin (Mikey from The Goonies, and eh, an epic fantasy film or two) helpfully fills in the behavioural back-story that explains why Flower simply cannot allow her daughters, Tosca and Mozart, to mate or get away with mating if she's to give her own pups the best chance of survival in their group. This is a cruel lesson, but what's even more striking are the whims of happenstance that ultimately consign one meerkat to an exceptionally lonely, outcast fate. Meanwhile the meerkats' capacity for self-sacrifice is staggering; above and beyond the turns meerkats take babysitting at the burrow, providing sentry duty against predators, and themselves getting to forage for food, some meerkats, like little Shakespeare, time and again risk everything in order to defend the helpless youngsters of the group. This is especially important because, as with humans, some meerkats do tremendous damage to their own social network, and Yossarian, though with legitimate reasons for his eccentric behaviour (he was literally dropped on his head in a fluke survival of a bird-of-prey attack, and as non-dominant male brother to lead male Zaphod, he commands no authority to boot), is no exception. Time and again he attempts burrow moves with infant pups, ostensibly for their greater protection in the long-term, but when these burrow moves flop due to his low positioning within the group, he abandons the pups to their fate. It's a frustratingly complex circumstance -- as, surprisingly, most are within this little band of desert critters.

It would be easy to suggest reasons to watch this series that relate back to us--our own shared group dynamics, and the complexities therein--but truly, this is a series that can operate perfectly well on the surface level, and should be lauded as such. This is a sweet show to watch, but it's also a difficult one: Viewers should mind how much they'll become attached to these little meerkats the moment they set figurative food in the Manor.

"Survivors 1975," Season One and a Bit

I had extremely low expectations of "Survivors," mainly because it was created by Terry Nation.

I associate Nation with some of the most plodding and formulaic Doctor Who scripts, usually involving some combination of killer virus, invisible monster, deep chasm, and cowardly-character-makes-brave-sacrifice. Nation's hack jobs for Doctor Who were notorious; the show's producers had a running joke about him just selling them the same Dalek script over and over again.

So when I heard that Nation had created a television series about -- you guessed it -- a killer virus, I just HAD to find out how the invisible monster fit in. But I'm sad to say that "Survivors" is anything but formulaic or plodding...in fact, for the first half, it's absolutely brilliant.

These are not your typical Terry Nation characters; they are complex, understated, and always interesting to watch. Sure there's a funny little Welsh tramp that you can laugh at...but then comes episode nine, "Law and Order," which is the first of two truly harrowing treatments of the "survival" theme: what do you do with a funny little Welsh tramp who isn't so funny anymore?

This theme is pretty simple: when almost everybody in the world dies suddenly, and the diverse survivors have to...well, survive...how do they live through the first few days when they can no longer rely on anybody else, let alone the creature comforts they've known since birth? How do they cope with their shock and grief? How do they find each other? What sort of communities can they form, and how do those communities relate to other groups who disagree with their philosophy? Who the hell knows how to make coal, and what will they do when the tea runs out?

That's the basis of season one, but it's so much more than that, because all of this is approached in a quiet way: no music, no big moments, no flash or spectacle. By contrasting the 1975 series with the new 2008 remake, the Outland Institute explains what is so wonderful and refreshing about this approach, compared to the way it would be (and is) done today. The 1975 series is has an almost documentary style, complete with atmospheric filmed outdoor footage.

Until halfway through the season, however, when things go downhill a bit. First of all, this was the transition period when the BBC was switching from film to "O.B." for their program inserts, and the outdoors look far less "real" when they start using videotape.

This is made worse by the simultaneous arrival (in episode seven) of Hana Maria Pravda, a woman who stands out from the otherwise excellent cast by turning all of her scenes into overwrought babooshka-stereotype cartoons. Combine her with the quietest bunch of cheerfully-prancing "feral dogs" -- especially in one scene when she must actually be ATTACKED by them -- and you get the first glimmers that things are going downhill.

And they do. The plots become more heavy-handed and deliberate, each episode involving the destruction of yet another hard-won and essential social advancement due to the stupidity of others, often the stupidity of the children whose sole purpose is Get Into Trouble or Get Others Into Trouble.

I also have to mention what I refer to as "The Tritovore Technique" (using convenient accidents to get rid of characters who would be too burdensome to keep around) and "The Lucy Saxon Technique" (using secondary characters to kill villains because the primary characters are too principled to do it themselves), which become more and more obvious as the show goes on.

I thought I'd give up after watching the first season, but the second season -- following a truly ridiculous Tritovore-style character-purge of last-season's dross -- has introduced Ruth, a character who harkens back to the complicated and interesting survivors of old. And the second story of the season ("Greater Love") is, once again, unpredictable and beautiful and terrible.

Here's to Ruth and Jenny and Greg and the rest of the survivors. May their wheat ripen, may their sheep multiply, may their babies survive and their horses never go lame. And may they never suffer the indignity of a crappy remake.

Oh, well that already happened.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #35: The Calamari Wrestler (2004)

Livin', lovin' - he's just a blue squid.

Do you like seafood? You might not. But I bet you would give seafood a second chance were you watching different sea creatures fighting each other for glory and supremacy. Let's give this some dignity: fighting each other in a wrestling ring.

Calamari Wrestler is pretty much what it sounds like, and I'm fairly glad for it. It might be described as some weird and forbidden love-child between Mexico and Japan – that is to say, Mexican wrestling culture with its Santo films and the large monsters of Japanese kaiju cinema. It ends up being a strange, sappy, and hilarious mixture.

So just when the public is losing interest in the Japanese wrestling circuit, a brave challenger comes. A saviour. No mere human wrestler, but a fucking man-sized blue squid. This squid goes on to capture the public imagination and inspire all of Japan with its show of courage and determination. He rises in wrestling stardom, dominating his opponents until some strange new challenger appears – holy moly! A boxing-glove wearing shrimp with super speed! As if that onslaught weren't enough, an even more pressing antagonist emerges from the dark recesses of the world's oceans: a big red octopus. The Calamari Wrestler must overcome these great foes, find love, and reconcile his mysterious and turbulent past.

So: This could only have come from Japan. Watch with friends and sushi.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #34: The Lovely Bones (2009)

Mark 'One Face' Wahlberg!

I miss Peter Jackson. The Peter Jackson I once knew.

A man who could make a movie with a kung-fu-fighting catholic priest. A man who thought it best to use a lawnmower to destroy zombies. A man who would make a character take a sip from a bowl of puke so that the aliens wouldn't think he was a spy. The guy who took a decent crack at the Lord of the Rings.

But something changed. Something happened to him in Mordor that I will not utter here. And then he forgot how to make his movies interesting.

Peter Jackson's filmmaking has become, I think, pretty boring and pretty manipulative. The emotions he strikes with are overzealous, the tactics used to deploy them typical, the end concoction powerfully mediocre. He's become pedestrian.

The Lovely Bones suffers from some kind of bipolar disorder. A depressing or heartbreaking scene will be followed by a jaunty one meant to make you laugh and relieve the thin gravity of the previous scene, only to plunge back into the sombre and then soar up towards visual magic and wonder. The movie seems to think that emotions are simple, clear, and can be called upon at the drop of a hat, or often in this case, at the turn of a soundtrack. The movie is pretty over-scored, and when coupled with the frequent moments of pseudo-poetic and voice-over-delivered reflection, Lovely feels like it's constantly ending. And at a two and a half hour runtime, this gets pretty maddening. As the moments go by you might realize that you care less and less about what's happening on the screen, which seems strange when you consider that the movie is about a murdered little girl stuck in a visually fantastic purgatory. Which, by the way, points to the central drive of the flick - the spectacle of WETA workshop's digital effects, hammering all else to the side.

So: Peter Jackson still trying to impress a post LOTR crowd by adapting a moderately risque book. His talents lie elsewhere.

Pose Reviews a Movie. #17: When You're Strange

Mostly, I'm just really, really glad that someone OTHER than Oliver Stone made a movie about The Doors.

Alright, alright, I know Oliver Stone's film starring the weirdly perfect, pre-Batmanian Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison was good. I just hate Oliver Stone so DAMN much it pains me to admit it.

But condemnations of Oliver Stone aside (although a healthy Stone-bashing at the beginning of a review never hurt anyone), Tom DiCillio's documentary about the psychedelic, four-piece tour-de-force is really quite good.

First of all, it's absolutely incredible that the filmmakers were able to unearth so much old footage of the band, and restore it to such good condition. Surely, someone had to wade through hours upon hours of backs-of-heads and poorly lit stage shots to get the concert footage used in the film, and although the interview scenes have probably been carefully preserved over the years, it was impressive to see them presented with such sharpness and clarity of both audio and video.

Johnny Depp also lent his voice for a solid narration of the film, having practised up on Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson (which is also a great documentary if you want to check it out). Depp didn't lend a lot of character to the narration--he was clearly reciting a script, verbatim--but it didn't really matter. The script was full of fascinating tidbits about the band, and, overlooking the occasional eye-rolling one-liner, it pretty much sold itself.

The other thing I liked about When You're Strange was that it focused on the band as a whole. The difficulty I have whenever anyone pays any attention to The Doors is that they tend to go straight for Jim Morrison. I suppose it's hard not to, since he's one of the most iconic frontmen of all time, but The Doors is comprised of some pretty fantastic musicians who never get much credit.

Ray Manzarek, the band's keyboardist, is a prime example--the guy is playing those CRAZY organ solos WHILE he's playing the bass line! I always knew The Doors didn't have a bass player, but seeing actual footage of Manzarek's hands in action gave me a whole new appreciation for how talented he is.

Overall, The Doors' status as a legendary cultural entity lends them well to documentary format--after all, any band that sells eighty million albums in a career spanning only 54 months is bound to have some interesting stories. But DiCillio does a good job of constructing a well-structured, good-looking and entertaining documentary stuffed with fun-facts to appeal to everyone from die-hard Doors fans to people who think Jim Morrison is "that guy from Menudo."

...just be wary of the weirdly interspersed scenes with the Jim Morrison look-alike driving through the desert. They're kind of lame, totally confusing, and don't add anything to the film, but they're good for an occasional eyebrow-furrowing, and I even chuckled at them occasionally. I have no idea what DiCillio was trying to get at with these bits, but luckily whatever it was didn't ruin the movie.