First the DVDs ...
A few days back, I wrote about the Slow Food Movement, and one thing that came to mind was a supporter's book that in part focused on the production of corn in this country. Corn per se doesn't seem to be a gigantic part of our diet, though some might consider that it is a major part of the diet of the beef cattle we consume. There is also ethanol. But, a major end product of all that corn is corn syrup, a sweetener found in loads of processed foods.
Thus, besides being a window into modern farming, corn production can be a way to gain important insights on various matters. In this light, I thought King Corn would be a light-hearted investigation of such things, but interesting all the same. It concerns two college buddies who decide to go back to the land of their ancestors (Iowa) and grow an acre of corn. The documentary follows their journey and provides some of the insights suggested. It just does so in a rather boring and slow paced way. Disappointment, but some might like it.
Never Forever balanced things out, while also touching upon some things expressed of late.* The film, fictional, concerns a white woman (Vera Farmiga, who I'm not familiar with, but is quite good here) struggling to have a child with her successful Korean husband. But, he simply is not fertile, so out of desperation, she secretly starts an arrangement with an illegal Korean immigrant to conceive a baby. It is simply a business arrangement, but it eventually gets too personal.
A quiet, very restrained movie about characters hurting in various ways. Sophie's inability to pray is but one quietly powerful part of the movie, which is not for all tastes, but for mine. Bottle Shock is not really restrained, but overall is rather low key, and at the end of the day simply doesn't quite make that good of a movie. Some of the characters and scenes work (Alan Rickman as a British wine snob finding the wonders of 1970s California wines is surely the best thing in the movie by far), but this portrayal of the "Judgment of Paris" (not quite Nuremberg level, except for some French wine lovers) is lacking.
Someone once said to me that she thought any given movie probably had some good thing that provides the viewer with the knowledge that it wasn't a total waste of their time. Movies have so many components, that you can hang your hat on something. Bottle Shock is all the same one of those "whole not the sum of the parts" deals, and not TOO many of those parts are that good. I reserved the book discussing the actual event; meanwhile, I bought a California wine or two at Trader Joe's.
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* In part, Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion, probably a book best cherry-picked for some good real life accounts (and its finale, that praises the wording of Roe ... now that is a new one).
In one, a single mother refuses to offer the birth father's (portrayed as a drunk loser) name for the birth certificate. I reckon forcing the issue would be hard, but that is a bit reprehensible. It is the FATHER and even if he is lacking at the time of the birth (at times open to debate, in part because the father never learns about the baby), this in no way suggests he always will be like that.