seen any films recently?

[Boom Boom]

Just watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) - in Japanese with English subtitles. It's amazing. Almost made a vegetarian out of me, though, when we went to the huge Japanese fish market. These are the guys depleting the oceans all over the world. They talk about how sad it is that traditional sushi species are disappearing - with no trace of irony.   

[Antonia]

I stopped eating fish after I read "The World is Blue" and interviewed the author, Sylvia Earle.

 

I asked her if she eats "seafood" and she said only certain mollusks .. i.s. farmed mussels.

[Boom Boom]

We live in a stupid, cruel, greedy world. I think we have a collective obligation to make it less so.

[Boom Boom]

  Am watching this:  The Fever
 
The film follows the existential crisis of an unnamed urban sophisticate (Vanessa Redgrave) who becomes aware of the nature of world politics, economic exploitation and the vapid consumerism around her. A series of events lead her to visit an unnamed third world country, representing an exotic location somewhere in Eastern Europe, where the entire economy and populace are geared towards the tourist industry. Even as she enjoys the rare taste of its products she is made starkly aware of the reality behind the façade by a journalist (Michael Moore) who, subsequently, suggests a visit to the country's war-torn neighbour in order to experience a true picture of life in the region. She does so and her life is changed forever.
 
Once back, and now acutely attuned to the world about her, she can no longer fit back into her old elitist and consumer-driven lifestyle; watching operas, discussing art and theatre with friends, shopping for "beautiful things" and aggrandizing her trifling everyday struggles, all seem meaningless to her compared with her recent macro epiphany. Compared with the global struggle for existence, her life begins to feel insignificant. Having lived in the bubble her guilt-free, pleasure-filled, life she is now challenged to look beyond comfort and soon finds herself in the throes of a moral dilemma, questioning the moral consistency of her own life and the choices that have had an impact on the lives of the poor in far corners of the globe. She feels that she cannot be truly free having apprehended this new reality, which confronts her blindness to the harsh truths of the class struggle and her sense of entitlement, which had, in the past, been broken, only occasionally, by displays of sympathy.
 
She returns to the war-torn nation to explore her feelings further, this new reality now drawing her ever deeper. This leads to a delirious bout of fever in a run-down hotel where her inner-self challenges her need for comfort and entitlement, culminating in a moment of spiritual awakening and a perceived 'oneness' with all reality. Finally she sees the truth about her own life and her innate connection with every human being, apprehending the transient nature of her material life. She can no longer sit, immersed in her personal comforts and vanity, or "clean sheets" as she terms it, and pretend it’s all right when the world around her is filled with strife and exploitation for millions of people. She is lustrated of her previous immunity towards their predicament and is, by extension, finally able to see the truth of own life, as summarised by film's tag-line: Enlightenment Can Be Brutal
 
Discussed in the film are:
 
The People United Will Never Be Defeated!
 
What is the Fetishism of Commodities?
 
and a discussion of  “Democracy is the worse form of  Government, except for all the others”.
 
and: why do we have so much, and others have so little?
 
We make choices in life - if we choose to struggle and have a good life, we do so at the expense of others.
 
 

 

[lagatta]

Ken Loach: The spirit of '45: where did it go.

I really want to see this, about the postwar push for the National Health, housing, education and simply being treated as equals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/mar/02/spirit-45-ken-loach-nhs-history

Includes a trailer.

[Boom Boom]

I'd like to see it, too. The name Ken Loach rings a bell.

[Sharon]

Ken Loach made a film called Bread and Roses!


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212826/

[Boom Boom]

Surviving Progress (2011). With David Suzuki, Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking.
 
Plot summary:
Humanity's ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, A Short History Of Progress inspired SURVIVING PROGRESS, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by "progress traps" - alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world's resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn't an evolutionary dead-end.
 

One of the reviews:
"The documentary starts by explaining how human nature is not designed to deal with the complexity of 21st century life. As the movie progresses it goes in more and more situations of how today's civilization (mainly the rich countries) is on a course to destroy our environment which may very well bring the end to our civilization."

 

[sparqui]

I watched, sort of given lots of distractions, the Jack Layton biopic. I was at a friend's place since we had been extras on this film and no, we did not see ourselves on screen... A review:

...
 Plenty of things niggle about Jack. There’s all the heavy-handed exposition, which has characters clumsily introducing themselves and their roles in order to get all the work of identifying them out of the way (“Olivia Chow, school trustee,” “He’s the president of the party,” “Not as long as I’m chief of staff!” and so on). There’s also all the cheesy courtship stuff between Layton and Chow, which overloads Jack’s slim running time by threading a love story through a more compelling narrative of Layton’s political life...
...It may possess all the depth of a commemorative coin, and never really gives Layton’s political enemies a proper run at Saint Jack – though Sun News commentator Charles Adler appears as a radio host giving a younger Layton the gears for his bleeding heart policies earlier in the film. But Jack is well acted, neatly structured and tender without feeling like an unscrupulous attempt to seize on the raw public emotion toward the former NDP leader. It’s a fitting, and at times stirring, tribute. Way better than some rink-a-dink road over by the Don Jail.

http://www.nowtoronto.com/movies/television.cfm?content=191548

[Boom Boom]

I watched about fifteen minutes of the Layton flick, then changed channels - it was boring and badly acted. Maybe in ten years I'll have a yearning to see it.

[Toedancer]

I watched about fifteen minutes of the Layton flick, then changed channels - it was boring and badly acted. Maybe in ten years I'll have a yearning to see it.

Ditto and I'll add Olivia has always been a bit of a mystery to me, and the movie was not helpful. (Jack loved her no doubt, but...I've never been a big fan)

[greenvie]

Surviving Progress (2011). With David Suzuki, Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking.
 
Plot summary:
Humanity's ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, A Short History Of Progress inspired SURVIVING PROGRESS, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by "progress traps" - alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world's resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn't an evolutionary dead-end.
 

One of the reviews:
"The documentary starts by explaining how human nature is not designed to deal with the complexity of 21st century life. As the movie progresses it goes in more and more situations of how today's civilization (mainly the rich countries) is on a course to destroy our environment which may very well bring the end to our civilization."

Just watched this film. Like Koyaanisqatsi with a back story and real people I could identify with. Was this ever aired on CBC, which co-produced it? I can't believe I never heard of it. Though IMDb dates it as 2011, it's coming out in theatres on March 23 this year (in Japan!). Should be on PBS too. Don't think it has. Have you seen it Boom Boom? The oil goons will hate it. Nice variety of voices, very compelling.

Throughout my life I've had the dumb "don't you believe in progress?" thingy thrown at me in various guises. What a big fat lie. My new favourite phrase from David Suzuki, from the film, is "Conventional economics is a form of brain damage". =)  Recommended it to my daughter in Seattle, who is not a  like me, but it's on Netflix.

ETA:  Crikey, just checked out the film project's website. It's done extensive touring worldwide, at theatres, festivals, the UN and Eco-Festivals. It's out on DVD. http://survivingprogress.com/?page_id=19
http://survivingprogress.com/

[Boom Boom]

Surviving Progress (2011). With David Suzuki, Jane Goodall and Stephen Hawking.

 Have you seen it Boom Boom?

Yes, that's why I posted it... 

[Boom Boom]

End Of The Line

Stayed up late last night to watch this. The Mitsubishi Motor Company (Japan) buys thousands of tons of bluefin tuna every year - some illegally caught - and keeps it in cold storage, hoping the price will go up, and thus make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. It's alleged that Mitsubishi pays for huge supertrawlers to go out and overfish the bluefin tuna. If the bluefin go extinct, then the company will simply overfish another species of tuna - it just never ends, until eventually tuna will be extinct. Other corporations, and entire countries, overfish - illegally - and don't care about the consequences at all.
 
Loving Tuna to Death: The Price of Wild Food - Triple Pundit: People, Planet, Profit   
 
Based on a review of tuna catch and sales numbers, Charles Clover of The End of the Line, suggested that companies dealing in bluefin, such as Mitsubishi Corp., are likely deep-freezing and holding up to 20,000 tons of bluefin per year. If this is true, might it be a hedge against the impending commercial extinction of species? And what about Mitsubishi, you may ask? Many who watched The End of the Line were surprised to learn that Mitsubishi, Corp. deals in bluefin tuna. They are the largest Japanese importer of bluefin and, by self-estimate, control about 40 percent of the market.

Petition: Mitsubishi - Stop Buying Bluefin Tuna

Mitsubishi purchases a very large percentage of the bluefin tuna catch in Japan.  Not only are they endangered, but the yearly catch is much higher than is allowed by international agreeements.  Mitsubishi could be single handedly responsible for decimating the bluefin tuna population with the hopes of profiting when they get fished into extinction.

Personally, I don't buy tuna.
 
ETA: Our astronaut on the ISS tweeted that he could see huge ships dumping their bilge at sea - no wonder the fish are dying.
 

 

[Boom Boom]

I've never understood why Kim Novak's film career was so brief - well, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) last night aired Hitchock's Vertigo - his masterpiece - and, afterwards, TCM's Robert Osborne interviewed Kim Novak in a hour-long, uncut, commercial-free interview from 2012, where Novak states the industry treated her very badly, and she left.
 
She said she's been bipolar all of her life - she discovered this after she quit films - and it's now treated with medications. Her father was a nasty paranoid schizophrenic.

She's married to an equine veternarian, has horses and dogs all over their country home in Montana, and she carries on with her first passion: painting - she is absolutely brilliant - and some of her work was shown last night.
 
Some reviews of the interview are here, the interview itself is on YouTube - but it's a long download.
 
I've seen all of Hitchcock's movies at least twice - Vertigo ain't my favourite - but, nevertheless, I've always liked Kim Novak. I found her difficult to comprehend - in my opinion, being in films held her back from something, and last night it was revealed her passion has always been painting, and she's considering an exhibition of her work. She's obviously much older now from her days as the number one movie star in the world in the 1950s, but ain't we all?

correction: not "lots of dogs and horses" but I think she said two dogs, and at least one horse.
 
(there's a photo of Novak - from 2012 - at the link)