Come anticipate "Fast Food Nation" with me

Very much agreed.

I see no reason to watch Waking Life ever again

I want that 90 minutes of my life back.

Oh you people hate fun.

milo this is stupid and lame.

the actual book horrified me and turned me vegetarian.

Indeed. Sean Astin has optioned Isaac's Storm by the same author.

Fast Food Nation is based on the best-selling non-fiction book by Eric Schlosser, who co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater.

It intertwines three fictional stories: Mexican illegal immigrants entering the US to work at a meat-processing plant; a fast food executive's investigation into the discovery of cattle faeces in burgers; and a high school student and burger bar worker who takes her first steps as an activist.

So Traffic, then. What will the color schemes be?

(punny!)

man noooooooooobody saw this movie, huh?

it is what it is, i guess. the stuff w/ greg kinnear is not very well dramatized. it's an adaptation of a didactic (not in a bad way) nonfiction book and it shows. if he had just made a movie about the mexican immigrants and the local high school students this could have been good, although it wouldn't have been an adaptation of the book in that case. also, wilder valderama (sp?) is a problem.

i really want linklater's films to be really good, b/c he's obviously capable of making super-duper movies (before sunrise/sunset, slacker, even 80% of school of rock) but this and other of his films are kind of modest and anonymous to a fault. you'd think they were made by michael winterbottom or some other, less heralded, less interesting filmmaker.

I turned it off because I started falling asleep. I thought it was going to be a documentary.

yeah i think it's the category error that kept most folks from seeing this.

i guess the film is a little misbegotten. it's also a little toothless until the end.

it probably turned a few folks vegetarian, though.

i kinda dug it, warts and all. dug bruce's cameo, dug a lot of the performances incl. valderrama who i usually cant stand, dug how strong linklater's feel for the setting was - that in particular really carried the movie for me. the characters & their milieu, though thinly drawn 'types', still rung true. and some scenes had some real kick. not just the slaughterhouse stuff, but like with bobby cannavale's predatory factory floor manager - his scenes made me as uneasy in a primal sort of way as any of the butchery scenes. its too thinly written to be a really good movie, but i'd say its still an interesting one. never read the book tho

i think this is probably true: if he had just made a movie about the mexican immigrants and the local high school students this could have been good

also the movie does indulge in some 'fiery latina' stereotyping that i think is a little ugly, in retrospect

you mean the moreno character's best friend?

i really liked this movie tbh!

it was def on my top 10 the year it came out

i'm probably letting its low reputation influence my judgment.

you mean the moreno character's best friend?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, February 20, 2012 10:41 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

ya

i have to admit i shut it off at the scene with all the awkward banter between ethan hawke and patricia arquette. but then i turned it on again the next day.

i guess just making a movie that has undocumented workers as sympathetic and somewhat omplex protagonists is a good thing.

also wtf is up with the avril lavigne cameo? was this part of an abortive attempt to establish her as a triple double threat?

also i do like, in theory, the subplot about the dawning social-political consciousness (and conscience) of a group of small-town teenagers. and there are some really good scenes. but as you mentioned it's kind of thinly written and too schematic in practice. a bit like an afterschool special.

I thought Linklater structured the film really well, for being basically a Soderbergh/Traffic patchwork. I really liked that the muckraking started with the most sterile examples of fast food nefariousness (i.e. testing out chemicals meant to enhance flavor) and ending with the slaughterhouse footage you spent most of the movie dreading.