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Holiday viewing
Dec. 26th, 2008 04:31 pmUsing Netflix's "watch now" feature, I had another movie overdose day yesterday, in between presents and food. First up, Helvetica, or, "more than you could ever imagine knowing or wanting to know about a font". It had an interesting way of telling both sides, the sides being "Helvetica is the Best Font EVAR — it is perfect and can't possibly be criticized" vs. "Helvetica is soul-sucking conformity of the very worst kind that is killing art and contributing to the war in Iraq" (seriously). Very entertaining, which I found completely surprising.
Then another documentary: Wal-Mart, the High Cost of Low Price. This didn't even pretend to show both sides of the story, because, frankly, Wal-Mart is evil. Every single thing they do, from where they store pesticides and gardening chemicals, their promotion practices, how they manage their workforce, and the factories they do business with, is just appalling. And that ignores the subsidies they get to move into a town. And the competition they provide to push smaller companies out of business. I believe that most companies wouldn't like to be put under this kind of spotlight, and I believe that some of the charges against Wal-Mart are not any different than other large corporations, but I still don't think that excuses them. I would never shop at a Wal-Mart before, and after watching this I certainly haven't changed my mind!
Then I left documentary world and headed over to movieville. First up, Soylent Green. Despite being a huge SF movie geek I'd never actually watched it before, but after recently seeing the first Planet of the Apes movie and The Omega Man, the better of the I am Legend-based movies, I've decided that Charlton Heston was groovy in a sexist, late-60s early-70s SF-movie way (he's the anti-hero, the guy you hate, and he almost always LOSES), so I decided this had to be next. I knew the catch-phrase from the movie, so the ending was no surprise, but everything else was vastly different from what I had imagined it to look like. Very distopian and eco-disastery! Big thumbs up!
And finally a movie I had never heard of but kept ending up at the top of my suggested viewing queue so I gave it a shot, Transsiberian. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer are a married American couple who take the Trans-Siberian train from China to Russia, and there's murder and intrigue and drugs and all kinds of stuff, plus Ben Kingsley! I am no Woody Harrelson fan (altho I thought he was excellent in No Country for Old Men), but the movie spent a lot more time on his wife, so he was used judiciously and well. Very Hitchcockian and intrigue-filled; highly recommended!
Then another documentary: Wal-Mart, the High Cost of Low Price. This didn't even pretend to show both sides of the story, because, frankly, Wal-Mart is evil. Every single thing they do, from where they store pesticides and gardening chemicals, their promotion practices, how they manage their workforce, and the factories they do business with, is just appalling. And that ignores the subsidies they get to move into a town. And the competition they provide to push smaller companies out of business. I believe that most companies wouldn't like to be put under this kind of spotlight, and I believe that some of the charges against Wal-Mart are not any different than other large corporations, but I still don't think that excuses them. I would never shop at a Wal-Mart before, and after watching this I certainly haven't changed my mind!
Then I left documentary world and headed over to movieville. First up, Soylent Green. Despite being a huge SF movie geek I'd never actually watched it before, but after recently seeing the first Planet of the Apes movie and The Omega Man, the better of the I am Legend-based movies, I've decided that Charlton Heston was groovy in a sexist, late-60s early-70s SF-movie way (he's the anti-hero, the guy you hate, and he almost always LOSES), so I decided this had to be next. I knew the catch-phrase from the movie, so the ending was no surprise, but everything else was vastly different from what I had imagined it to look like. Very distopian and eco-disastery! Big thumbs up!
And finally a movie I had never heard of but kept ending up at the top of my suggested viewing queue so I gave it a shot, Transsiberian. Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer are a married American couple who take the Trans-Siberian train from China to Russia, and there's murder and intrigue and drugs and all kinds of stuff, plus Ben Kingsley! I am no Woody Harrelson fan (altho I thought he was excellent in No Country for Old Men), but the movie spent a lot more time on his wife, so he was used judiciously and well. Very Hitchcockian and intrigue-filled; highly recommended!
