http://erikbosse.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/strawberry-smoothy-with-a-pickled-jalapeno-on-top/

You can read the two pieces Erik refers to here:

http://www.sacurrent.com/columns/story.asp?id=70596

http://www.sacurrent.com/film/review.asp?rid=13997

Peep my review over at The Current, if you fancy.

There must be some mistake, this is teasing Johnny Depp in Wonderland:

… Manohla Dargis’s completely brilliant review of The Ugly Truth. It’s witty, it’s everything you need from a review – plus she works in the downfall of a genre, and pins blame where blame is due. What I like best, though, is how she doesn’t assume women (or men) will buy the movie’s line — she rather suggests we’re sick and tired of it.

Hahahahahaha:

Food is a dirty business. On the off chance you aren’t aware, animals are involved. Stinking, pooping animals … and a terrible lot of government-subsidized corn. But on a typical business day in the US food industry, there’s more going on than shit in the meat: There are children dying of E. coli, chickens living out a mere 48 days of life in the dark, and a compromised, ineffectual FDA.

Like a host of muckraking books and documentaries released in the past decade, director Robert Kenner’s documentary film Food, Inc. is out to expose the icky truths about our dinners’ back-stories. He’s scored big-time talking heads like Michael Pollan, environmental journalist and author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, as well as Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser (also a co-producer here), to aid the cause.

Kenner casts his net wide, offering an overview of everything from hamburger-patty production to factories’ abuse of migrant workers to the virtual monopoly held on soybean seeds. As a result, Food, Inc. is organizationally muddled. Its disparate parts are connected by titles such as “Behind the Veil” and “The Unintended Consequences,” the animation of which has a Power Point quality. Early on, delightful graphics of cows, pigs, and chickens — not pie charts — establish the knowledge of industry domination by a very few corporations. If only the motif had continued more strongly through the film.

Food, Inc. allegedly transformed my movie theater ticket-taker from vegetarian to vegan. I can’t say why.  The film is only damning of the meat industry and the fast-food industry — like its forbears Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me — not the industries that produce animal byproducts such as eggs, milk, and cheese.

But really, who is Food, Inc. preaching to but the converted — the dreadlocked vegan theater employees who can see the film for free and the affluent, Michael Pollan-reading greenies who can pay — and how can they change their consumption habits beyond what the aforementioned movies have already taught them? Make things up, I guess.

It’s the venue that’s wrong — not the ideas or intent, which are informative and well-meaning. The truth is this would be a wonderful thing to show in middle-school science or health classrooms, when children are old enough to make their own decisions about food (and as a result, are being assaulted by advertisements). Film, frankly, is too bourgeois a method of letting people who can only afford $1 meals know that those $1 meals aren’t very good for them. 10-bucks-a-pop buys movie tickets or a whole lot of vegetables.