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film review 
Thu Jul 08, 2010 at 22:57:12 PM PDT
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Those who know me know I don't see many movies. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I've seen fewer than 10 movies in the last five years. So it stays something about Oliver Stone's new documentary South of the Border that my first reaction was, "I have to see that!" The film is an informal conversation with several Latin American Presidents: Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (and her husband and ex-President Nestor Kirchner) (Argentina), Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raul Castro (Cuba). That these leaders each ascended to power (and have not been overthrown or assassinated yet) is in itself remarkable. That they are in power all at the same time is even more remarkable, and the possibilities for the sovereignty and self-determination of the people of their countries are wonderful as a result.
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Wed Dec 09, 2009 at 07:23:10 AM PST
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How low can you go? (At this point, Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove starts playing in my head, but maybe I'm just odd?) That's what Colin Beavan and his family (wife Michelle, and their absolutely adorable then-2-year old daughter Isabella) sought to discover via the No Impact Man project, which currently consists of a blog, a book and a documentary screening around the country right now.
Eager Beavan and reluctant Michelle take to the task in stages (with Isabella joyfully ogling worms in the composting bin and washing clothes in the bathtub via foot stomping), from eliminating television, cosmetics and cleaning chemicals, to forswearing forms of transit other than foot, bike or scooter and shopping farmers' markets and bulk food bins, eventually moving all the way up to turning off the electricity in their apartment.
Review below the fold...
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Thu Oct 01, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PDT
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After a couple of false starts (whistle blows - "5 yards, Jay, still first down.") last weekend, I finally made it out to the beautiful Bagdad Theater just up 39th from me here in Southeast Portland on Sunday to catch the screening of the new food documentary Ingredients, which was also a benefit for Portland Public Schools' Eat, Think, Grow farm-to-school program. I once again partook in that great Portland tradition of sitting down for a movie with a craft brew... and okay, also a contraband (!) bag of roasted Oregon hazelnuts which I snuck into the theater as a snack. Shoot me, or beat me with a leek or something.
Anyways. On to the review, below the fold...
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Sat May 02, 2009 at 19:57:10 PM PDT
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I attended the Portland screening of Food, Inc. this past Thursday, a documentary by Robert Kenner which takes us inside the corporate food system and attempts to give us suggestions as to how we can head towards a more sustainable system.
This review, in short, can be summed up with two simple words - see it. The best part of the film, for me, was being able to actually see the things I had already read about and heard of. Immobile cows being pushed and rolled towards slaughter by forklift, hundreds of baby chicks rolled and knocked around down conveyor belts while tumbling every which way including off the belts altogether, hamburger filler being run through industrial-strength ammonia washes to kill off any potential e. coli bacteria.
Cameras take us inside an industrial producer's chicken house and show close up footage of chickens too large to take more than two or three steps before crumbling under their own massive weight. We follow the producer as she picks up dead animals off the floor and tosses them into trash piles. Hidden cameras give us a look at a 1 AM poultry pickup at a Perdue chicken house - live animals being picked up by the legs 3, 4 or more at a time and haphazardly tossed and slammed into trucks...
Interviews with Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan and others guide us along; as Pollan again makes the point that our supermarkets only present us with "an illusion of choice", as virtually all offerings of the industrial food system are simply "clever rearrangements of corn" and one or two other main ingredients.
More below the fold...
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Wed Aug 06, 2008 at 04:39:14 AM PDT
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( - promoted by OrangeClouds115)
As someone who loves good food, especially good food grown and produced in a sustainable manner by local growers and producers here in Oregon and SW Washington, I must say that I was quite intrigued when I first heard of this film. A recently released 73-minute documentary from Moving Images directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, "Good Food" is a fascinating and extremely enjoyable film that touches on all aspects of a local sustainable food system. From farm and ranch, to market or distributor, to grocery store and restaurant and on to our forks and dinner tables - "Good Food" focuses on our successful and ever-growing sustainable local food system here in the Pacific Northwest, and in doing so also demonstrates that we can (and must, if we are to carry on as a working society much longer...) do the same everywhere across the nation.
A few variables will change region by region, but in the end there's a basic "Unified Theory of Sustainable Food Systems" that is clearly sketched out here - human scale family farms and ranches working with, rather than against, nature, producing healthy food without destructive poisonous chemicals; either selling directly to the public through farmers markets or through local distributors willing to work with small family farms; on to restaurants who source their food locally and change their menus accordingly with the seasons, and neighborhood grocery stores who take their role in the community seriously by making an effort to support local growers and producers while providing convenient access on a retail level to neighborhood residents.
Loaded with informative in-depth interviews with some of the leaders in this movement in Oregon and Washington, and not to mention beautiful farm and ranch scenes and many, many(!) hunger-inducing moments - "Good Food" is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen on this issue, and is definitely worth a view (or ten...). More below the fold...
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