fast food nation Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Bruce Willis returns to cinemas this week with Surrogates, his first starring role since Live Free or Die Hard. It has been 21 years since the original Die Hard, and it seems as if studios and executives are still trying to make lightning strike twice with Willis as an action hero. Fortunately, Willis' finer instincts keep coming through with some of his quirkier choices between the big-budget blow-em-up movies. And though a casual fan wouldn't know it, he has demonstrated over the years a marked talent for acting. That's right. Bruce Willis is an actor, and a damn good one. It's a shame he has yet to earn a single Oscar nomination, and he could have -- should have -- earned some for the following great performances.

1. Butch in Pulp Fiction (1994)
He shows up 20 minutes in, in a single shot that lasts a full two minutes. It's just Bruce, framed in the center of the shot. The background is lit low and mostly out of focus. He doesn't speak for two minutes; we're listening to Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) speak, but we're looking at Bruce. We're looking at that mug. It's a tough, hard mug, but he knows that Marsellus has his number, so his guard is not entirely up. That look of hard disappointment anchors it. Most of Willis' acting is like that: an invisible stamp of quality that makes everything else around him look good. Then, check out the rest of the film, the way Tarantino's dialogue seems to perfectly fit his mouth, and the brilliant way he pulls off his many non-speaking scenes.

Full disclosure: I was a junk food junkie. Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me made me stop and think when I eventually saw it -- after an intervention -- and gradually I've reduced my intake. But, of course, it's not just fast food that can cause health problems, it's everything we put into our bodies. So when Cinematical debuted the poster for the new doc Food, Inc. earlier this month, I got intrigued.

Directed by Robert Kenner, Food Inc. "uses reports by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser and The Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan as a springboard to exploring where the food we purchase at the grocery store really comes from, and what it means for the health of future generations." Well-intentioned as it sounds, in the wrong hands the film could easily have been churned into a piece of shrill, self-righteous propaganda preaching entirely to the choir.

Not so, says Russ Fischer at CHUD. Instead, it's "an informative, well-crafted film that wants it's audience to understand where food is coming from ... It's a film that is deeply suspicious of practices that bring food to our table every day. And rightly so." He found the first three and a half minutes of the film on YouTube, which we've embedded below. The credits are cleverly displayed as gentle music plays in the background and narrative voices raise questions that will be addressed. Take a look and see if this clip doesn't whet your appetite. More information is available at the official site. The film opens in theaters on June 12.

Eating has become more and more difficult in the 21st century. Food isn't always the wondrous, romantic thing depicted in most movies. Recently we have learned about MSG, GMOs, polyunsaturated fats, trans-fats and the presence of the horrid "high fructose corn syrup" in just about everything. (It's in bread. Bread!) Sales of organic foods have increased drastically, and everyone has become an ingredient-reader and an amateur foodie. Now multiply this by about fifteen and you've got Thanksgiving dinner. Who's a vegetarian? Who's a vegan? Who's on the Atkins diet? Does putting the stuffing inside the turkey actually make it poisonous? Were those slivered almonds made on machinery that also processed peanuts? Who's allergic? What's the difference between yams and sweet potatoes? To get yourself prepared, I've assembled a chronological list of food cautionary tales, or hard culinary lessons learned.

Soylent Green (1973)
Is there anyone out there who doesn't yet know the secret component of everyone's favorite future foodstuff? If not, watching this film, directed by Richard Fleischer, will make you want to read the ingredients more often.

The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
The key scene in Luis Bunuel's film takes place at a dinner party. Guests gather around the table, pull down their pants and sit on toilets. They talk, rifle through magazines and otherwise engage in casual conversation. One guest rises, politely excuses himself and shyly asks for the dining room. Once inside, he shuts the door and begins eating. That's really funny, and in the joke, Bunuel asks why we perform one bodily function with great dignity in public and another with shame in private. As humans, our beliefs and behavior are utterly arbitrary. Try not to think about that at the dinner table.

While Fast Food Nation might have gotten lost in the Bond - Penguin showdown of last weekend stories about the ugly side of the food business seem to be alive and well in a documentary by Nikolaus Geyrhalter. Both filmmakers made the decision to tackle the subject matter a little differently, Richard Linklater made a narrative film and Geryhalter made what sounds like the Koyaanisqatsi of food production.

The New York Times has a profile on Nikolaus Geyrhalter's film Our Daily Bread premiering this Friday in New York. The film was a success when it screened at the New York Film Festival, but there has not been any word of a wider release. The film focuses on the mechanized side of food production and the loss of connection to the tradition of farming in the new factory-style system. Geyrhalter's film does not use traditional interview segments and voice-overs; instead the film uses pure visuals to get the point across.

Considering Geyrhalter has made a film that is half abstract art film, and half documentary, the film might have trouble finding an audience in either camp. It also might be possible that audiences are becoming overwhelmed by all the bad news in documentary film lately, and when it comes to what's on our dinner plates, is it just easier to tune it all out?

How do you take a book that's non-fiction and make a fictional movie about it? Real-life stories are made into movies all the time, of course: Erin Brockovich, The Insider, All the President's Men -- all took real events and made them into films. But Fast Food Nation, the book, is not a story about a person. It's a painstakingly researched documentation of the history of the fast food industry and California car culture, and their collective impact on the way entire industries are run, the way people eat, and the way their food is produced. How to translate the vast amount of information Eric Schlosser presented in his book nearly a decade ago into a cohesive fictional film? The answer: It's not easy.

Schlosser's book, which started out as an article for Rolling Stone as a behind-the-scenes look at fast food, covered everything from suburban sprawl and changes in the meat industry destroying the American rancher; the meat-packing industry morphing from a crappy, but well-paid job with union benefits, into a crappy, poorly paid job with no benefits, mostly occupied now by illegal immigrants; teens becoming an underpaid and easily exploited workforce; and the rise of an entire industry marketing to children. The heart and soul of Schlosser's book is the focus on the plight of illegal immigrants -- a topic dear to his heart, as he previously spent a year following immigrant migrant farm workers for an article for The Atlantic on illegal immigration and its relationship with the produce industry. Schlosser's passion for this facet of the fast food industry comes across clearly in the book, and in the film adaptation, it's the segment imbued with the most passion as well.

Corporate interests have been protected, thank God, from the threat of an actual issue being presented in the form of a message at Willie Nelson's Farm Aid this coming Saturday. Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation will not be shown, because the film does not fit in among performances by Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Neil Young and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Is Farm Aid's, uh, beef with the film an aesthetic one? Our own Mr. Rocchi found the movie incomplete-feeling, a somewhat unstructured work. Or could it be that a quick scroll down the Farm Aid page reveals that Chipotle is a sponsor, and Chipotle is 90% owned by McDonald's? I've been unable to track down any comment on the decision beyond an incompatibility of 'messages,' but this feels as lame to you as it does to me, right? I mean, family farmers care about the quality of beef and improving the consumer's perception of the American beef insdustry, right? (And I acknowledge that the point of Farm Aid is to bring aid to poor family farmers, so one has to respect the sponsors, but that doesn't mean this is a good decision. Blech.)

I couldn't wait to read Peter Biskind's Down & Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and The Rise of Independent Film when it first hit the bookstore shelves -- but I was at Sundance at the time and (curiously enough) you couldn't find a copy of the thing anywhere up there! I knew going into the book -- which includes some pretty scathing swipes at both Miramax overlord Harvey Weinstein and Sundance cowboy Robert Redford -- would be half true and half sensationalistic-ish ... but obviously I'd never be able to tell the one from the other. Overall it's a very fun read if you're a diehard movie geek, but doesn't come close to the author's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which is one of my very favorite books.

So get this: Much like someone (Richard Linklater, actually) took Eric Schlosser's non-fiction tome Fast Food Nation and turned it into a "traditional" movie, director Ken Bowser (he directed the excellent doco based on ERRB) and screenwriter Dean Craig have acquired the right to turn Biskind's book into a narrative feature. How one would turn a collection of Indie Hollywood's war stories into a three-act piece of amusing fiction remains to be seen -- but I know it's a movie that I'll want to see!

Unlike myself, Mr. Bowser has no problems at all seeing Down & Dirty Pictures as a straight comedy: "You couldn't make these guys up. They're like offensive linemen rampaging across the fields of Sundance sacking anyone who gets in their way, while the handsome movie star owner of the stadium smiles benevolently down on his charges. If that's not a movie, I don't know what is." Ha! Something tells me that The Weinstein Co. won't be picking this flick up for distribution -- nor will it be playing at Sundance anytime soon.

Odds and ends from Thursday:

• Man, Josh Brolin is keeping himself busy lately. Hot off films like No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers) and Grind House (Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino), the young actor has just been cast in Ridley Scott's American Gangster, now filming in New York. Damn, talk about a trio of directors to work with back-to-back-to-back -- someone made a birthday wish that came true. Brolin will take on the role of corrupt narcotics investigator, Detective Trupo. Also starring in the film are Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.
• Night club owner, real estate entrepreneur and movie producer -- it's all in a day's work for Sam Nazarian. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Nazarian has purchased the spec script, College, penned by first time scribes Dan Callahan and Adam Ellison. Pic (which boasts the most original title, like, ever), is apparently about three high school seniors who enjoy one wild and crazy weekend while visiting a nearby college. So, basically, it's PCU with two additional main characters.
• Fox Searchlight has decided to push back the release date of Fast Food Nation, one of this fall's more controversial films. Instead of opening on October 20, the Richard Linklater flick (which James kind of liked when he reviewed it at Cannes) will now open on November 17. At this time, there doesn't appear to be a reason behind the move.

Not long ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Paul Dano, a crucial component in the wonderful ensemble cast of Little Miss Sunshine. In the film, Paul plays Dwayne; an extremely angry Nietzsche-reading teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he is accepted into the Air Force Academy. Paul crashed onto the independent film scene in a big way when he starred as a young boy "involved" with a much older man in Michael Cuesta's directorial debut, L.I.E. Since then, Paul has gone on to star in films like The Girl Next Door, Taking Lives and The Ballad of Jack and Rose.

Most recently, he's had the chance to work with director Richard Linklater on the upcoming Fast Food Nation, as well as helped voice a Wild Thing in Spike Jonze's big-screen adaptation of the popular children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. Paul had a lot to say. So did I. Check it out:

Cinematical: How did you first get involved with Little Miss Sunshine?

Paul Dano: It was a long time ago, like three and a half years ago. I met with John (Dayton) and Valerie (Faris), the directors, and auditioned for the movie. At that point, they were trying to get it made. It went well, we talked and it seemed like they really wanted me to do the movie. And I really wanted to do the movie – it was a wonderful script. And then the movie kept getting pushed, kept getting pushed. And I live in New York, so whenever I was out in LA, I would say hi to them (Jonathan and Valerie), grab coffee, that sort of thing. A few years go by, I'm thinking maybe I'm too old or too tall, and luckily, it just got made. Another year later and who knows if I would have been fitting for the part. It boggles me this movie took so long to get made because the script was brilliant.

I'm not sure how many times I've eaten fast food in my lifetime. I would guess the actual number would at least be in the hundreds, if not thousands. Scary, ain't it? However, I know, that each and every time I shove a McDonald's hamburger into my mouth, there's a chance I would be utterly grossed out if I knew every detail of the gritty journey that burger took on its way into my stomach.

Though Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation isn't due to hit theaters until the fall, its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival is already conjuring up thoughts of protests and controversy. McDonald's has prepared a fierce campaign against the ideas presented in the film, just as it did after Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. While Spurlock's documentary caused damage to the fast food industry, all but eliminating the super-size option and forcing chains to provide a healthier menu, he was but one man on the outside of an enormous monster. Fast Food Nation, although fictionalized for the screen, will delve much deeper and certainly has the potential to significantly damage the Happy Meal.

But is it worth it? There's obviously a demand for fast food throughout the world and, ever since Spurlock's adventure, the industry really has made a conscious effort to step up the health factor. Look, the point's been made -- eat this stuff at your own risk. We know this. We understand it. Is there more to say?

So, I ask you: Should we or should we not just leave the fast food industry alone?