Food, Inc.

‘Food, Inc.’ won’t make you hungry

"Food, Inc." takes a scary look at the modern food industry.

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You may never look at food again after watching

“Food, Inc.,” an Oscar-nominated documentary on the largely unregulated food industry.

Directed by Robert Kenner, the film shows how the manufacturing of food has changed since the 1960s.

Decades ago, numerous family farms put our food on the table.

Today, a handful of factory farms use technology, cruelty and cheap alternatives to produce our food.

Kenner explains it all started with that most evil of fast-food restaurants, McDonald’s. McDonald’s really created the fast-food industry in the 1960s by taking away the carhops on roller skates and reducing the menu at the time to hamburgers, fries, Cokes and milk shakes.

McDonald’s wanted its food supply to be cheap and with the rise of the fast-food industry, food manufacturers took note. The result is even if you don’t eat fast food, the food you buy in supermarkets is a result.

The director pans the rows and rows of food at the supermarket, revealing that much of our food comes from the same source: corn.

Corn is cheap and easy to produce.

It goes into everything from soda pop to meat to catsup and practically everything else.

The film chronicles how chickens are kept in dark quarters, bred to create the popular white breast meat, pumped with antibiotics. The birds go from chicks to eating birds in half the time as they once did, but they cannot walk, live in excrement and many die early.

Cows, we learn, are fed cheap corn rather than their natural diet of grass. The upshot is they become susceptible to e-coli bacteria, something that doesn’t happen with grass-fed animals.

What’s worse is in some states it is illegal to criticize the food industry. Who cares about the First Amendment!

A mother who tells how her son contracted e-coli from a Jack-in-the-Box restaurant and died must also contend with legal action from the meat industry for her criticism.

Farmers are also forced to buy genetically altered seeds from Monsanto.

The director shows us how especially during the George W. Bush administration, high officials of the food industry got jobs as government regulators.

A bill requiring people to be informed if their food was genetically altered passed both houses of the California legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The food industry wouldn’t comment for the film and wouldn’t let its farmers allow the filmmakers to record in their chicken barns.

The filmmakers also give suggestions on what the average person can do, including planting your own garden.

If you go to grocery shores and if you eat food you don’t grow, you should watch “Food, Inc.”

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On a totally different note, if you like videos and dogs — and who doesn’t — boy do I have something for you. It’s the professionally produced Boo-Wow Walk video. It chronicles the annual event, held in October at Maple Ridge Golf Course in Saybrook Township.

This is the biggest fundraiser of the year for the Animal Protective League, which houses, cares for and adopts out the county’s homeless animals.

Margie Beth Trax Page, director of the event, describes all that goes into putting on the event, from getting prizes and sponsors to getting straw, setting up, getting and cooking the food and tearing it all down when it’s all over. Page also happens to be Star Beacon Geneva reporter.

The video, less than a half hour in length, includes interviews with participants (the two-legged ones), lots of footage of the walk, and still photos as well (some taken by yours truly.) It was all put together by Adam Racinskas.

If you were there, there’s a good chance you will be spotted somewhere in the video.

You can get a copy, which includes a rare look at Trax’s tattoo (see it when she’s carrying boxes to a van), Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in front of the APL store in front of Sears. There will be baked goods and other cool stuff. The videos are a mere $18.

I will even be there. But please don’t let that stop you from attending.

• Directed by Robert Kenner, written by Kenner and Elise Pearlstein
• Runtime: 94 minutes
• Rated PG for some thematic material and disturbing images
• 3 stars out of 4

The Stranger

Great cast in Nazi fugitive drama ‘Stranger’

EDWARD G. ROBINSON (left), Lorretta Young and Orson Welles star in "The Stranger."

Actors in “The Stranger” alone are enough to make watching this film worthwhile.

Not to mention it is an excellent film that addresses the Holocaust a year after World War II ends. Oh yes, you can watch it anytime streaming from your computer by going to the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).

Boy was Edward G. Robinson a great actor. In this film he plays a war crimes commissioner trying to track down a Nazi fugitive.

The way he finds the bad guy is by releasing a lesser Nazi criminal and following him.

Konstantin Shayne plays Konrad Meinke, who when freed heads straight to a small Connecticut town where Nazi Franz Kindler (played by Orson Welles) is posing as Professor Charles Rankin. As Rankin, he is well respected at the local college by the students and marries a beautiful local girl, Mary, played by Loretta Young.

Welles plays the character chillingly well, considering he must play him as a pleasant, small-town educator as well as a blood-thirsty war criminal. We are constantly reminded of the horror under the surface.

When he is stopped on the street by Shayne’s character, he offers to talk in a more secluded area. Shayne’s character has repented and found Jesus and wants to pray with the Welles character.

Franz wants to lay hands as well, right on Meinke’s throat and squeeze until he is dead. So he does.

Franz then buries him in a shallow grave in the woods.

Robinson arrives in town, gets in good graces with the professor and his wife and begins digging into the situation.

Unfortunately so does the family dog, who doesn’t make it out of the film alive.

Robinson confides in Young’s character’s brother, played by Richard Long, who would later play one of the sons in TV’s “The Big Valley.”

The backdrop of this drama has Welles’ character working on a clock housed in a tower in the community.

The film is ahead of its time as the Robinson character lays out to the Young character the atrocities of Nazi Germany and the deaths of millions of Jews. He then reveals one of the main figures behind it all is her husband.

Now that could ruin your day.

Except she doesn’t believe him and repeats the allegations to loving Hubby.

The climax, as you can guess, takes place in the cloak tower.

This is wonderful film noir featuring a sterling cast.

Five years before he directed this, Welles produced his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” described as the greatest film of all time. Welles was dubbed “the boy genius.”

That genius continued with “The Stranger.”

Not only is it available streaming from IMDB, but Netflix customers can stream the movie from their computers or televisions as well.

THE STRANGER

Directed by Orson Welles

Written by Anthony Weller (screenplay) and Victor Trivas (adaption)

Runtime: 95 minutes

Not rated but intense for young audiences, plus a dog dies

4 stars out of 5

Julie and Julia

Sony Pictures
Amy Adams as Julie Powell in "Julie and Julia."

‘Julie and Julia’ cooks up a great plot

“Julie and Julia” tells two similar stories from two different eras.
Meryl Streep does a dead-on Julia Child, an American living in France in 1949. She was destined to be PBS’ “The French Chief.”
Unsure what to do with her life after being a clerk during World War II, Julia decides to enroll in a prestigious and expensive cooking school. It appeared too grueling for a woman.
The other story deals with Julie Powell, played by the ever-perky Amy Adams. Julie works in a cubicle for an insurance company, taking calls about people suffering from the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
It’s a depressing job and she often cries with her clients.
She also enjoys watching Child’s cooking show, maybe because Julia isn’t suave and perfect. She regularly ends up with food outside the bowl or on her clothes.
Then Julie gets an idea. She’s going to take Child’s book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 524 Recipes in 365 Days” and do just that.
She’s also going to blog about it at the same time, using her self-depricating sense of humor.
While some movies have the hero saving a person or family or town or maybe the world from tragedy, the great conflicts in this film deal with how to end the life of a lobster before cooking it or the best way to debone a duck.
As we follow Julie’s cooking trials and tribulations, we also follow a younger Julia Child as an American female learning cooking in a French male’s world.
It also follows the problems Julia has in getting her famous cookbook published.
So in many ways, Julie and Julia are the same.
They are two young, married women, dissatisfied with the way their lives have taken them and unsure of their futures.
They both have a drive and determination to forge ahead and better themselves and their lives.
They also have husbands who take a backseat to their ambitions and accomplishments. In fact, the film would have easily been made without even featuring the husbands. Julia’s is played by Chris Messina with Paul Child is played by Stanley Tucci.
There is a point in the film when the Messina character leaves his wife because of all of the stress of cooking and tasting food, but that doesn’t last too long.
Cooking proves the salvation for both women and Julie’s quirkily and fun blog helps to build her growing fan base.
It’s another fine example of a movie where people work and persevere to accomplish a goal, something all too-rare in movies. So much of the time the average movie plot deals with if and when guy beds girls or whether the main character is able to save the world or solve the crime.
Here’s a film that details just how doggone tasty food can be when it’s cooked in a lot of butter.
So check out “Julie & Julia,” just don’t do it the day before you get your cholesterol checked.

JULIE & JULIA • Directed by Nora Ephron • Screenplay by Ephron, book by Julie Powell • Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality • Runtime: 123 minutes • 3 stars out of 5

More Than A Game

‘More Than A Game’ tells LeBron’s story

Published in the Star Beacon March 5, 2010

Granted, Cavaliers star LeBron James is a multi-millionaire.

He may be the greatest basketball player ever, but he’s definitely worked for the honors he’s received.

Nothing better illustrates this fact than “More Than A Game,” the documentary about LeBron and his high school buddies who set the sports world afire in the early 2000s.

Thanks to home video and archived local and ESPN TV footage, we see the long, difficult road James and his buddies took to success as the best high school basketball athletes in the country.

James, Dru Joyce, Romeo Travis, Sian Cotton and Willie McGee came from a poor area. But instead of resorting to crime and drugs, they became extremely close friends who found sanctuary in the basketball c\ourt.

The five spend all of their time together. They slept on the floors of each others’ homes. In fact, while James lived in an apartment and the others had houses, they spent more time at his home.

James eloquently describes growing up with a young, unmarried mother, not knowing his father. The two moved often. They had few possessions. But he obviously has great love for his mother, who saw greatness in her son.

Other team members had similar stories. But like James, they had parents who infused in them the idea they would do great things, they could better themselves.

They lived in an area where many didn’t graduate from high school, but some of James’ friends were told they would also go to college, no questions asked.

Joyce wasn’t even five-foot tall but worked extra hard to be a basketball star. His father, a professional man, decided there was more to life than making money. He coached the boys in basketball from a young age, became a teacher and ended up as their high school coach.

Joyce Sr. says in one interview his job wasn’t to teach the boys basketball. It was to teach them how to deal with life.

The boys could have gone to an inner-city school. But they ended up at the private St. Vincent-St. Mary High School. It was mostly white, mostly conservative, with high academic standards and a dress code.

But the five excelled on the basketball court, eclipsing the other players while only freshmen.

As the documentary tells us, other teams took yellow school buses to basketball games. These guys went to the Akron-Canton Airport and flew all over the country to play the top teams.

They often defeated the best in the country from high schools that actively recruited and often won by 20 points or more.

With all of the adulation and publicity, there were those who looked for a crack in the armor.

There was the question of James getting a $25,000 vehicle while in high school. High school students, like those in college, cannot benefit monetary-wise from playing.

It turns out James’ mother took out a loan for the car. But another scandal hit. James may have accepted two shirts. He became ineligible to play in his last handful of high school games.

The first game, his fellow teammates somehow eked out a win, but James, sitting on the sidelines, realizes he needed to find a way to get back in the game.

It takes court action but James finished his high school career.

The story of James and his buddies is a real success story about hard work and determination.

But frankly, the documentary plods at times. It is worthwhile to watch and there was no need to manufacture drama.

But maybe it could have been shortened a bit.

Even if you aren’t a big James or Cavaliers fan, you will find plenty to like about “More Than A Game.”

MORE THAN A GAME

• Directed by Kristopher Belman, written by Belman and Brad Hogan

• Rated PG for brief mild language and incidental smoking. It still has some good life lessons for young people

• Runtime: 105 minutes

• 2 1/2 stars out of 4