In the spirit of Away We Go and 500 Days of Summer, Going the Distance starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long (the “Mac” guy) is more than just a cute chick flick. It’s girl-and-guy-friendly rom-com made for the thirty-somethings about a couple who hooks up one drunken evening then struggles with their long-distance relationship.
In this movie, you get two lead actors who look like they are just being themselves, a few eighties inside jokes, a couple of randomly hilarious scenes and it all just feels really authentic. While Drew Barrymore and Justin Long have great on-screen chemistry (comedic and romantic, likely because of their on-again-off-again relationship which was on during filming), it’s the supporting cast that makes the movie. Christina Applegate as Barrymore’s older, wiser and creepily over-protective sister is brilliant. And Charlie Day plays Long’s quirky, dirty roommate. His monologue about self-pleasure with a grandma while crossing a busy NYC street is hands-down the funniest and most memorable scene in the movie.
Going the Distance is directed by Nanette Burstein who is better known for her documentary titled American Teen. This might explain why the movie feels like you’ve just been dropped into a friends’ apartment and are hanging out in their reality for a little while. It has that raw, imperfect, life-like quality about it that makes it all the more charming.
While this film is less powerful than Away We Go and less honest than 500 Days of Summer, it is probably funnier than both of them. Laugh out loud funny. So if you’re looking for something light and entertaining on the weekend (or on a plane ride), or if you are craving some eighties nostalgia (like references to Top Gun), check it out. At the very least you’ll get to hear Berlin and have a few good laughs.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
Viewer discretion is advised. Contains disturbing scenes of what’s really on your dinner plate. Do not watch this movie if you are not prepared to be changed. Don’t be frightened. Watching this film will not make you vegetarian.
Food, Inc. is the Academy Award® nominated documentary that deconstructs the business of food, starting with the meat industry then turning to the GMO controversy, starring Monsanto. It exposes the backwards practices and motives that have led to chickens that have such big breasts they can’t stand up, an upsurge in E.coli because we are feeding our cattle corn that they were never meant to eat, the loss of small farms across America to monstrous businesses who have been sanctioned by the government to own patents on food, and the exponential rise in obesity and food-borne illness in our society. This movie exposes the devolution of our food—our source of life—into just another profitable business.
Food Inc. is not a feel-good movie because, well, that just wouldn’t rouse the type of change we need. Instead it’s an eye-opening film that exposes the disturbing facts about the food that’s on your plate. But it’s not all Debbie-downer-doomsday either. It also serves up a lot of fascinating insights and practical alternatives to the mainstream food choices we make; they even have a great website that offers tips and petitions you can sign. For those of you who have a passion about marketing and branding like I do, you’ll love the segments on how big brands are buying up small brands that stand for something natural and communal. They know sustainable products are profitable products. For example, Kellogg’s owns Kashi and Colgate owns Tom’s of Maine. For those of you who are animal lovers, there are some scenes that will certainly be difficult to watch, but trust me, watch them. The one in particular that has stayed with me was the look in a cow’s eyes as she was hauled off to slaughter. The look of fear and anxiety in her eyes was familiar to me; I’ve seen it in my dog’s eyes before. Just that connection made me feel for the animals that are so unnecessarily treated as beef when they are still cows. It actually opened my heart to all animals who are a critical part of our eco-system and a sustainable future on this planet. Strangely, I even love my dog more.
After watching the film, I was certain that it would only be a matter of weeks before I fell back into my old habits and beliefs. I was wrong. So wrong. If anything, it has had the opposite effect. I am increasingly motivated to live a changed life. It’s been a little over six months since my husband, Bruce, and I watched this film together. Since then we have only purchased meat for our household twice (it was organic and locally raised), started grocery shopping at a small local grocer (Sunnyside Market in Kensington) and started seriously lamenting the lost connection between humans and the natural world.*
If you truly absorb everything this movie has to offer, you will be changed and changed for the better. If not, it will at the very least give you some food for thought. Just don’t be a jack-ass and not watch it because you are afraid of change.
*Not to freak anyone out, but watching this movie has prompted some very serious discussions between Bruce and I about our future and where we want to live. We’ve come to the still unbelievable decision that we want to live closer to the land, so have decided to minimize the scale of some much-needed renovations to our inner city home so we can save to buy some property outside of the city in the next ten years or so.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
Every year my family watches movies on Christmas Day. This year, we decided to cue up something that brought together a little of India and a little of Canada: Cooking with Stella. It was well pared with our Indo-Canadian Christmas dinner (cauliflower soup and homemade rolls with lentils and roti as our main dish).
Starring the beautiful Indo-Canadian actress Lisa Ray and directed by the brilliant Deepa Mehta’s
brother Dilip Mehta, Cooking with Stella has all the right ingredients for a great Bollywood/Hollywood movie. The movie is about a young Canadian diplomatic family that moves to New Delhi for a term and is greeted by a small mafia of larcenous house help led by the scheming, ring-leader slash cook, Stella (a great performance by Seema Biswas). She’s been serving on the high commission’s compound for 30 years and has made a business of pilfering, overcharging and selling stolen items. Meanwhile Michael (Don McKellar), the “diplomatic housewife,” asks Stella to be his guru and to teach him how to cook flavourful South Indian fare.
Think Julie & Julia in India: scenes of mouth-watering fish curry, dosas and steaming basmati rice. Think Slumdog Millionaire without the slums: memorable shots of India’s bustling streets. Think Cairo Time: innocent Canadians abroad seduced by wily locals. While Cooking with Stella draws on aspects of all of these great movies, it doesn’t measure up to any of them. The moral of the story is that there are no morals for the poor in India and it almost goes so far as to champion deceit, thievery and manipulation. Maybe I’m addicted to movies that teach “good” values, but I couldn’t digest the lessons in this movie.
I can’t lie though, it’s not like the movie’s unrealistic or un-entertaining. My sister, mother and I laughed as we remembered all the things that went “missing” when we visited our family in India. Earrings, walkmans, jeans, perfume. The colourful scenes of busy food markets and freshly cooked curries put a faint smile on my mom’s face as she remembered growing up in New Delhi. And the humour was distinctly Canadian and Indian, so there were many laugh-out-loud moments. But if I weren’t Indian and I didn’t have a personal connection to India, Cooking with Stella would have just been a strange blend of genres (comedy, drama and foreign) that left me feeling not so good about being Canadian, Indian or a Canadian in India.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com.
Today’s post was written by Sona Khosla. While Sona cares about a lot of things like brand integrity, George Michael and a good BBC costume drama, it’s her desire to find meaning and live intentionally that inspires me. You can catch her blogging regularly at www.sonakhosla.com, where this post originally appeared.
Anyone who knows me, knows I’ve always had a funny thing about kids. I love ‘em, but I don’t want ‘em. If I’m totally honest, freaked is the most accurate way of describing my personal feeling about having a baby.
But somehow when a few pregnant friends recently suggested we watch a documentary called Babies that had no dialogue, I was intrigued. “I’m in,” I said, which is the most affirmative statement I’ve made about children in my life thus far. My husband looked at me with a scowly face. He did not want to watch the babies, but the tape was already rolling.
80 minutes of Babies An 80-minute documentary about four infants raised in four different parts of the world, Babies by French director Thomas Balmès, is a pure joy to watch (especially with pregnant women). You will laugh, you will be horrified, you will be surprised, you will be confused, you will coo, you will say “ew.”
Who’s really rich? My personal experience of watching Babies There’s a lot of amazing scenes in the movie, but what struck me most was how rich Baby Africa’s first year of life was in contrast to Baby North America, whose life was surrounded by wealth. Baby Africa was left to experience the natural world herself with support from the community of children and women around her. She was never alone, but she independently explored the natural world around her. There was always someone there to gently guide her from poking at other children’s private parts, eating dirt and yanking the dog’s jowls. Her mother was present to nurse her and love her. She learned by experience with an intimate connection to nature and family.*
My pregnant friend at one point said “I feel so sorry for my kid” because it was so obvious at how contrived, controlled, simulated and over-stimulated Baby North America’s upbringing was. You see Mom reading a book called “How to Become the Parent You’ve Always Wanted to Be” (or some such title), baby is constantly being occupied so Mom can get her housework done, and baby is doing most of her learning from books and classes.
African rearing in a Canadian household I started to wonder how you could have a child in this culture, watch this movie and not feel guilty for the sterile, unnatural and overwhelming world you are bringing a baby into. Then, I visited my friend across Canada and watched her play with her children.
She held her five-month-old in a Snugit close to her chest so the little baby could hear her heartbeat and rest peacefully while she was present with her two-year-old as they played with wooden blocks for hours on the living room floor. She let her two-year-old daughter roam, touch, experience and even use a pizza cutter on the wall while gently guiding her away from more dangerous situations and kitchen utensils. She was raising her children just the way I saw the African mother in Babies just weeks earlier. Present, loving, connected. And no, she didn’t learn it from the movie. This gave me hope (and relief).
So curious My husband and I have talked for weeks now about the things that struck us about this movie. From the emphasis on survival vs. success, learning in life or learning from books, from being alone to being together, from present mothers to absent fathers. There’s just so much jam packed in this short documentary. So, I’m curious. What struck you?
*I’m trying not to get overly romantic about this simple way of life, but as you’ll learn in an upcoming blog, I’m increasingly drawn to a more natural and connected life. So I want to point out that I know I sound like I am idealizing it, but trust me, it’s hard not to the more you see people truly living it.
