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grrgoylWith our beloved Heroes on a month-long hiatus, we haven't had any reason to hang out with Ryan. This past week the situation became intolerable and we agreed to rent some movies.
I poked around on the Hollywood Video new releases page and thought Fast Food Nation sounded like something we could all enjoy. This was based on my first impression that it was a documentary (Tery's favorite), but she agreed to watch even after I realized my mistake. It was either this or Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny, and being unable to decide, we got both.
Fast Food Nation is about the destructive nature of the meat industry on our country. If that isn't political enough for you, its destructiveness is couched in a more human story of illegal immigration. We follow a small group of Mexican youth in their dangerous crossing of the border, huddled in the back of a van, herded into a crowded hotel room with other countrymen to await selection for various job opportunities. A handful of men are loaded into the back of a pickup and driven down the brightly lit retail strip, past a Hollywood Video, Applebee's, lots of nice-looking stores. But these clean, wholesome work places are not for them. They end up instead at the town's enormous meat-packing plant, where the two "stars" of the movie are immediately set to work on the kill floor.
There's a bit of a seconday plot involving Greg Kinnear as the marketing exec trying to get to the bottom of rumors that his fast food restaurant's hamburgers have an unusually high fecal content, but that's sort of brushed under the carpet, along with his attempts to do the right thing in the face of an enormous, relentless corporate machine that isn't as concerned with safety or hygiene standards as it is with squeezing every possible penny out of every single hamburger patty.
The movie does a very good job of addressing all the issues efficiently without coming off as TOO preachy: A group of well-meaning college activists decide they'll free the cows, only to discover that cows are largely too stupid to run for freedom when it's offered. And for those who argue that killing cows on such a grand scale is excessive, Ethan Hawke appears in the middle of the movie for no other apparent reason than to deliver a speech naming most of the major restaurant chains, to illustrate the grand scale of demand that exists out there, even not counting McDonald's, Burger King and grocery stores.
However this is all just fancy dressing for the final scene, which obviously the entire movie (book) was written around. One of the Mexican girls swallows her pride and agrees to work at the plant, hoping for a cushy job in shipping like her sister (who is sleeping with the supervisor). However this isn't to be, and she's sent to the kill floor to "pull kidneys." We see most of the slaughtering process through her eyes, and it's as horrifying and stomach-turning as you imagine it to be. And that's the end!
As the credits rolled, we all just sat there, stunned. It did reinforce my belief that illegal immigrants serve a purpose that most conservatives would prefer to overlook: They aren't stealing CEO jobs, and they certainly aren't making $33 an hour as one drunk tried to argue with Tery at the bar. They're taking shitty, filthy, sometimes hazardous jobs that most Americans would rather beg on the street than perform.
I felt somewhat responsible for traumatizing my friends until I went back to the Hollywood site which described the film as "Smart, funny and provocative." Even the front of the DVD case proclaimed it to be "unusually funny." Sure, if struggling immigrants forced to do dangerous, ethically questionable work and the inner workings of slaughterhouses is your thing, this is a spirited romp. For the rest of us, the words "gut-wrenching, appalling and wholly depressing" might be more fitting...though granted not as helpful in selling DVDs.
Now our hopes hang on Tenacious D to cheer us up, but there's the distinct danger that Jack Black will leave an even worse taste in our mouths.
~*~
While searching for new releases, I noticed that somehow a new Terry Gilliam movie snuck onto DVD that I'd never heard of. I've become a bad, bad fan. Tideland is the story of a little girl who escapes into her imagination to deal with her parents' drug habits.
The frenetic opening scene of the movie is very Gilliam circa Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which is the only one of his movies that I hated): Jeliza Rose (Silent Hill's Jodelle Ferland, building quite a resumé for herself of running through creepy, dilapidated buildings) tends to her junkie parents; Jennifer Tilly screaming shrilly from the bed, and Jeff Bridges readying his veins for "daddy's little vacation." Jeliza dutifully cooks the heroin for daddy, applies the cotton ball to the puncture wound and catches his cigarette before he sets fire to himself. It's all done with the practiced clinical ease of a nursing home aide.
But 10 minutes in, mommy dies of a choking fit. Jeliza stops daddy from burning the body and they board a bus and head to grandma's house, which is where the rest of the movie takes place.
Grandma is long dead and the house is falling apart. Jeliza isn't bothered though, as she spends most of her time in the golden field of wheat surrounding the house, playing with the quartet of severed doll heads who are her only friends. And daddy really isn't bothered, as he settles into a chair to take what proves to be his last "vacation." Jeliza doesn't seem to notice, and dutifully swats the flies away from daddy's swelling corpse.
After what feels like hours of watching Jeliza entertain herself with her dolls and little else happening, she finally meets Dell, a terrifying but intriguing Southern Baptist woman dressed like an extra from the Manson video for Man That You Fear (which, come to think of it, could have been the inspiration for the whole movie). Dell's brother Dickens is mentally handicapped (and it looks like the actor took most of the pages from Sean Penn's playbook for I Am Sam).
Jeliza forms a friendship of sorts with Dickens (who is 20), but it teeters precariously on the edge of uncomfortably sexual as they play at being "silly kissers" and married. (Gilliam tsk-tsks this in the extras, blaming cynical adults for seeing something sinister in what is a completely innocent relationship. But the author whose book Gilliam based it on admits that the tension is in the book and he wondered how it would be dealt with.)
It was somewhere around the scene where Dell embalms Jeliza's father, inviting the child to stick a "gift" into his dessicated abdomen (she chooses her two least favorite doll heads, who have been mouthing off to her something terrible) that I had to face the possibility that I might not be the die-hard Gilliam fan I once was.
The film ends with the train (that occasionally shoots through to remind us that the real world still exists outside) crashing with a sonic boom explosion. Jeliza runs to the wreckage, where she meets a woman who offers to take care of her, believing her to be traveling alone on the train. Gilliam wryly grins and says he left it up to the audience to decide happy ending or not. I think it's unquestionably happy. Maybe now Jeliza can live in a normal environment where she isn't surrounded by drug addicts, mummified corpses and crazy people. Maybe now she can eat something besides the fly-infested jar of peanut butter that's been sustaining her while she waits for her father to wake up.
I guess this movie is proof that I've finally grown up; I would pick sensible, secure reality over living in a fantastic (but unstable) world of imagination.
I feel like a terrible fair weather fan. I didn't hate this movie as much as Fear and Loathing, nor did I especially love it either. It felt like they were rubbing it in on the extras when everyone praises it as "a masterpiece," "quintessential Gilliam," and "the fans will love it!" *skulking guiltily*
Over at IMDb there are a bunch of film school snobs complaining that the DVD was released with the wrong aspect ratio. To them, it's the end of the freaking world and a huge slap in the face to Gilliam purists everywhere. I really should stop wasting my time on those boards.
There was one funny moment in the extras when Gilliam is commenting on the unforgiving conditions of the remote area in Canada where they shot most of the exteriors. He said, "I can't imagine working out in these fields all day, coming home and NOT stabbing at least one of my children to death." Now THERE'S the Gilliam I fell in love with.
~*~
Finally, for no other reason than to spice this entry up a bit, I give you a picture I found of a younger, sexier me that I found in my closet:
Tery thinks my gray hair is all that stands in the way of me looking like this again, but I refuse to cave.
I poked around on the Hollywood Video new releases page and thought Fast Food Nation sounded like something we could all enjoy. This was based on my first impression that it was a documentary (Tery's favorite), but she agreed to watch even after I realized my mistake. It was either this or Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny, and being unable to decide, we got both.
Fast Food Nation is about the destructive nature of the meat industry on our country. If that isn't political enough for you, its destructiveness is couched in a more human story of illegal immigration. We follow a small group of Mexican youth in their dangerous crossing of the border, huddled in the back of a van, herded into a crowded hotel room with other countrymen to await selection for various job opportunities. A handful of men are loaded into the back of a pickup and driven down the brightly lit retail strip, past a Hollywood Video, Applebee's, lots of nice-looking stores. But these clean, wholesome work places are not for them. They end up instead at the town's enormous meat-packing plant, where the two "stars" of the movie are immediately set to work on the kill floor.
There's a bit of a seconday plot involving Greg Kinnear as the marketing exec trying to get to the bottom of rumors that his fast food restaurant's hamburgers have an unusually high fecal content, but that's sort of brushed under the carpet, along with his attempts to do the right thing in the face of an enormous, relentless corporate machine that isn't as concerned with safety or hygiene standards as it is with squeezing every possible penny out of every single hamburger patty.
The movie does a very good job of addressing all the issues efficiently without coming off as TOO preachy: A group of well-meaning college activists decide they'll free the cows, only to discover that cows are largely too stupid to run for freedom when it's offered. And for those who argue that killing cows on such a grand scale is excessive, Ethan Hawke appears in the middle of the movie for no other apparent reason than to deliver a speech naming most of the major restaurant chains, to illustrate the grand scale of demand that exists out there, even not counting McDonald's, Burger King and grocery stores.
However this is all just fancy dressing for the final scene, which obviously the entire movie (book) was written around. One of the Mexican girls swallows her pride and agrees to work at the plant, hoping for a cushy job in shipping like her sister (who is sleeping with the supervisor). However this isn't to be, and she's sent to the kill floor to "pull kidneys." We see most of the slaughtering process through her eyes, and it's as horrifying and stomach-turning as you imagine it to be. And that's the end!
As the credits rolled, we all just sat there, stunned. It did reinforce my belief that illegal immigrants serve a purpose that most conservatives would prefer to overlook: They aren't stealing CEO jobs, and they certainly aren't making $33 an hour as one drunk tried to argue with Tery at the bar. They're taking shitty, filthy, sometimes hazardous jobs that most Americans would rather beg on the street than perform.
I felt somewhat responsible for traumatizing my friends until I went back to the Hollywood site which described the film as "Smart, funny and provocative." Even the front of the DVD case proclaimed it to be "unusually funny." Sure, if struggling immigrants forced to do dangerous, ethically questionable work and the inner workings of slaughterhouses is your thing, this is a spirited romp. For the rest of us, the words "gut-wrenching, appalling and wholly depressing" might be more fitting...though granted not as helpful in selling DVDs.
Now our hopes hang on Tenacious D to cheer us up, but there's the distinct danger that Jack Black will leave an even worse taste in our mouths.
~*~
While searching for new releases, I noticed that somehow a new Terry Gilliam movie snuck onto DVD that I'd never heard of. I've become a bad, bad fan. Tideland is the story of a little girl who escapes into her imagination to deal with her parents' drug habits.
The frenetic opening scene of the movie is very Gilliam circa Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (which is the only one of his movies that I hated): Jeliza Rose (Silent Hill's Jodelle Ferland, building quite a resumé for herself of running through creepy, dilapidated buildings) tends to her junkie parents; Jennifer Tilly screaming shrilly from the bed, and Jeff Bridges readying his veins for "daddy's little vacation." Jeliza dutifully cooks the heroin for daddy, applies the cotton ball to the puncture wound and catches his cigarette before he sets fire to himself. It's all done with the practiced clinical ease of a nursing home aide.
But 10 minutes in, mommy dies of a choking fit. Jeliza stops daddy from burning the body and they board a bus and head to grandma's house, which is where the rest of the movie takes place.
Grandma is long dead and the house is falling apart. Jeliza isn't bothered though, as she spends most of her time in the golden field of wheat surrounding the house, playing with the quartet of severed doll heads who are her only friends. And daddy really isn't bothered, as he settles into a chair to take what proves to be his last "vacation." Jeliza doesn't seem to notice, and dutifully swats the flies away from daddy's swelling corpse.
After what feels like hours of watching Jeliza entertain herself with her dolls and little else happening, she finally meets Dell, a terrifying but intriguing Southern Baptist woman dressed like an extra from the Manson video for Man That You Fear (which, come to think of it, could have been the inspiration for the whole movie). Dell's brother Dickens is mentally handicapped (and it looks like the actor took most of the pages from Sean Penn's playbook for I Am Sam).
Jeliza forms a friendship of sorts with Dickens (who is 20), but it teeters precariously on the edge of uncomfortably sexual as they play at being "silly kissers" and married. (Gilliam tsk-tsks this in the extras, blaming cynical adults for seeing something sinister in what is a completely innocent relationship. But the author whose book Gilliam based it on admits that the tension is in the book and he wondered how it would be dealt with.)
It was somewhere around the scene where Dell embalms Jeliza's father, inviting the child to stick a "gift" into his dessicated abdomen (she chooses her two least favorite doll heads, who have been mouthing off to her something terrible) that I had to face the possibility that I might not be the die-hard Gilliam fan I once was.
The film ends with the train (that occasionally shoots through to remind us that the real world still exists outside) crashing with a sonic boom explosion. Jeliza runs to the wreckage, where she meets a woman who offers to take care of her, believing her to be traveling alone on the train. Gilliam wryly grins and says he left it up to the audience to decide happy ending or not. I think it's unquestionably happy. Maybe now Jeliza can live in a normal environment where she isn't surrounded by drug addicts, mummified corpses and crazy people. Maybe now she can eat something besides the fly-infested jar of peanut butter that's been sustaining her while she waits for her father to wake up.
I guess this movie is proof that I've finally grown up; I would pick sensible, secure reality over living in a fantastic (but unstable) world of imagination.
I feel like a terrible fair weather fan. I didn't hate this movie as much as Fear and Loathing, nor did I especially love it either. It felt like they were rubbing it in on the extras when everyone praises it as "a masterpiece," "quintessential Gilliam," and "the fans will love it!" *skulking guiltily*
Over at IMDb there are a bunch of film school snobs complaining that the DVD was released with the wrong aspect ratio. To them, it's the end of the freaking world and a huge slap in the face to Gilliam purists everywhere. I really should stop wasting my time on those boards.
There was one funny moment in the extras when Gilliam is commenting on the unforgiving conditions of the remote area in Canada where they shot most of the exteriors. He said, "I can't imagine working out in these fields all day, coming home and NOT stabbing at least one of my children to death." Now THERE'S the Gilliam I fell in love with.
~*~
Finally, for no other reason than to spice this entry up a bit, I give you a picture I found of a younger, sexier me that I found in my closet:
Tery thinks my gray hair is all that stands in the way of me looking like this again, but I refuse to cave.
