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Just watched an atmospheric, easy paced and heart warming romantic comedy: Im Juli (In July) by Fahih Akih, a Turko-German director. There is plenty of information about this movie available on the internet (and I’m not really in a mood to write a review today 
). Please watch it! I’ll give this movie a 3.5 stars / 5. In India you can get this DVD from the NDTV Lumiere folks.
It was about 1:00 am, Friday night: a perfect time for a movie! I was also quite hungry. So it was an interesting coincidence that the movie we watched at home, Fast Food Nation was about food.
Fast Food Nation is a fictional movie about a burger chain in the US. The movie is made in a pseudo-documentary style and has many interconnected stories in it (like Crash). The movie presents the fast food business from many perspectives: the perspective of workers at a meat packing plant, of the employees in the fast food outlets and of executives in the burger chain. The most important and tragic perspective is that of animals that make up the burgers. Fast Food Nation is a deceptive movie. It starts out feeling like a comedy or a light hearted “mockumentary” but becomes serious along the way. While its not a slickly made movie, I really liked it. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Without getting too much into the story, Fast Food Nation is about corporate greed and the blind pursuit of profit. Its also about our cruelty towards animals. I’m a non-vegetarian and I felt guilty after watching the movie. This movie shows us how our insatiable desire for non-vegetarian food has spawned an extremely efficient killing machine. Animals are brought onto this earth, raised and killed so impersonally and in such sophisticated ways that it boggles the mind. We live far away from these factories and farms so we never have to see what really happens. Its almost as if the chicken on your plate and the bird were two different things! This movie takes away that distance and brings the farms and meat packing factory to our living rooms.
I don’t think I’ll give up meat just yet. But I’m now aware of the supply chain of sorrow that puts animal food on my plate. Watch the movie and learn. Modern cultures must debate the issues raise by this movie. As an Indian I felt proud that my culture has traditionally criticized the consumption of non-veg food. Indians can teach the West/Islamic world/Oriental world a thing or two on this issue.
Rating: 4/5 (3/5 for the movie, and an extra point because it made me think)
Pluses: Educational, Reasonably realistic and entertaining. Not too heavy handed on the preaching.
Minuses: Tries to attack too many themes. Felt incomplete.
Some resources
Postscript
After watching the movie I was reminded of another movie Super Size Me. It is also based on the fast food business. The movie was the 7th highest grossing documentary of all time. Needless to say, a fantastic movie!
Most interestingly, while researching the above movies I read about how a Professor of Management went undercover and worked at various fast food restaurants in the US. After working for over a year and seven of these restaurants he wrote a book. Read an article on Businessweek about it. Highly enjoyable article. It will give you a fresh perspective after all the fast food industry bashing Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me does.
2 Amazing Hindi Movies
The Hindi movie industry continues to churn out one excellent movie after another. I profile two wonderful Hindi movies I’ve seen in the last month.
Johnny Gaddar (2007) – A whodunit movie. The audience knows the killer but the characters in the movie don’t. Catchy music, tight story and great atmospherics. Story keeps surprising. Made very stylishly. Don’t want to give away more. Just watch it!!
Sidharth’s Rating 4/5
Khosla ka Ghosla – A 2006 movie that I watched recently. A land shark forcibly occupies a family’s plot of land. In the movie the family tries to fight back and recover their land. They try all methods to get their land back: the police, the politicians, other gangsters but nothing seems to work!
Khosla ka Ghosla is a dark comedy that portrays land sharks, politicians, policemen, land brokers and assorted middle men in an amazingly accurate way. Bomman Irani (the land shark) and Anupam Kher (the plot owner) are the lead actors and they do an amazing job. Khosla ka Ghosla is an intelligent and perceptive film that just happens to be a comedy.Thoroughly enjoyable.
Sidharth’s Rating 4.5/5
P.S. Why wasn’t Khosla ka Ghosla India’s entry for the Oscar
?