Momma don’t allow no music in here

Great Summer Movies

Quick Facts

• Food Inc – Documentary about failures of American policy with respect to the food industry.

Rotten Tomatoes – 97%

IMDB – 8.2

• Moon – Coherent Science Fiction with a beautiful outer-space set on the moon.

Rotten Tomatoes – 90%

IMDB – 8.3

• Away We Go – Dramatic/Romantic Comedy.

Rotten Tomatoes – 67%

IMDB – 7.9

• Bruno – Sacha Baron Cohen’s (Ali-G, Borat) latest Comedy and Social Commentary.

Rotten Tomatoes – 69%

IMDB – 7.1

Skinny Jeans

Times are changing!! Yayee!  Its finally my turn to criticize a younger generation whilst secretly envying their carefree confidence and lack of regard for convention.  The age of grossly oversized clothes as a fashion manifestation of non-conformity and youthful rebellion seems to finally be passing!  For a couple years now I have been noticing heterosexual young adult men wearing shockingly tight pants walking around in my home town of Red Bank.

Exhibit A: Nick, an 18 year old employee at clothing store Metropark, a Los Angeles based specialty store chain.  Here he is in my local Starbucks (didn’t have to go far for the inspiration for this article) sporting Kill City jeans and a New Era (still oversized) fitted hat which in this context seems to be old-hat;)

Naturally the first couple times I wrote them off as isolated incidents.  However, this trend seems to be gaining speed and attention.  50 cent, naturally bitter about the movement,  stated on his latest freely downloadable mixtape War Angel, “I think these n***as is f***ots.”  Harsh words 50!  (See the full interview here.)  Fashion must be moving fast for 50 cent to come off as the trapped in the last century grandpa on the porch yelling “Kids these days!! Pull up your pants and have some respect!!”  Over at AskMen.com, a harsh review of skinny jeans generates a wave of comments from men, extolling the virtues of their new fashion choice.  Hilarity in the comments section ensues!

Alas, I don’t see myself jumping aboard this skin-boat.  As my babycakes knows, I already have a hard enough time not scaring little kids with my frequent erections.  I am undoubtedly a transparent person, but i am almost positive skinny jeans would take this transparency to a level neither I nor my associates would be comfortable with.  In closing, I hail the new generation of youngsters for their ability to bewilder me!  Rock out with your cock out!

This is England

What I liked best about this movie is its element of surprise.  The story and the character development moves slowly and forcefully until you are feeling for characters who when introduced you were laughing at because of their sheer absurdity.  The writer/director Shane Meadows takes you to England in 1983 and gives you an up close and personal view of a split in the skinhead subculture.

“This is England” is shot in a low budget, unrefined style.  The neighborhoods depicted in the movie are run down and include abandoned buildings.  The characters are very imperfect, for example the main character Thomas Turgoose (Shaun) is an 11-year old boy who only occasionally respects his elders and is prone to throwing fits and sulking when he doesn’t get his way.  At the start of the movie Shaun seems an unlikely candidate to gain the viewer’s compassion.  All of these characteristics add to the “real” feeling of the movie. This effect would not be possible without a stellar acting job by two of the main characters; Thomas Turgoose and Stephen Graham (Combo) an older ex-con who form an almost otherwise unbelievable friendship.

Warning: If you don’t like the challenge of deciphering a thick British accent make sure you have subtitles on.  These were unavailable using the XBOX Netflix combo.

IMDB Rating: 7.9 (lee says this is under-rated)

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 93%

Blame it on Fidel and King Corn

Open this in a new tab to listen to original music from the movie while you read!

A professional couple (Spanish lawyer and French magazine writer) with two kids (Anna at left on cover and her brother) make an ideological shift from the cookie cutter bourgeois family in a comfortable bubble of isolation to becoming community organizing, self sacrificing political activists.  This shift is inspired by the father losing family tragically to the brutal Franco regime controlling Spain circa 1970.

The story follows young Anna as she transforms and adapts to her changing world.  Various human themes are explored from Anna’s point of view.  Indulging in self centered fantasies she dreads to leave the comfortable luxuries and familiarity of her life.  She fights the current while curiosity, inquisition, the love for her family, and the unity of group solidarity move her to open her mind as she questions her beliefs and the beliefs of those she’s come to trust.  Self discovery and individuality are beautifully expressed through the emotions of a child.

The movie is beautiful to watch and listen to.  It has a wonderful original score with piano, guitar, violin, harps and more.  The score is also colored by songs of revolution sung by Chilean workers in the socialist movement.

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King Corn: Two friends from college discover alarming facts about our diet as they go on an expedition through the corn industry. To provide structure to the movie they farm one acre of corn and take us through the process all the way from arriving in IOWA to the statistical probability of how their corn will be consumed. Farmers, professors, politicians and people are interviewed along the way.

Corn is in everything we eat, and when you are eating meat, well it was in everything they ate. The industrialized farm movement, the government providing subsidies, and the food market with their never ending drive for better margins have developed strong relationships and an infrastructure that gets food and drink to us for cheap that is based on a cheap and efficient corn crop. It is all big business and the health of the consumer is largely overlooked with the most obvious example being the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener in our beverages.

A First Shot at Animation

Stop motion animation is a renaissance art.  It requires you to use your hands, have patience, repeat tasks with great attention to detail, etc..  As tedious as it is there are plenty of opportunities to think outside of the box and your cleverness and creativity is rewarded with time savings and a more fluid final product.  There are an infinite number of ways to make any given stop motion scene and one is always easier than the other.  The above scene was created with the following ingredients:

• Black Magic Marker
• Pencil
• Chop Sticks
• Text Books
• Dunkin Donuts Paper Bag
• Folder
• Gatorade Bottle Cap
• Digital Camera and Tripod
• French Fries
• Shot Glasses
• Coins