Super Size Me
Directed by Morgan Spurlock
By Erin Oke

Cut from the same cloth as recent documentary successes Bowling for Columbine and The Corporation, Super Size Me is a humour-laden look at the obesity trend in the U.S.A. and the culpability of the fast food industry. In the wake of a lawsuit aimed at McDonald's about the detrimental effect of eating their food, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock documents his own journey of eating nothing but McDonald's for one month. What starts out as a light-hearted experiment turns a bit scary once the diet starts wreaking serious havoc on Spurlock's health and wellbeing. Interspersed with Spurlock's personal observations are an impressive array of interviews with doctors and lawyers, lobbyists and nutritionists, Big Mac enthusiasts and vegan chefs.

Shot on video, the production is pretty bare bones. Aside from the filler footage of random fat people, which grows tiresome pretty quickly, the camera work is solid and the editing is fast and clever, chock full of the ironic juxtapositions that are a staple of this kind of documentary. The film attempts to cover a lot of ground, touching on the nutritional value of school lunch programs, the lack of physical education programs, the prevalence of weight loss surgery, the corporate lobby in Washington and much more. Although these interviews are packed with interesting facts and data, by far the most compelling aspect of this film is Spurlock's personal diet experience. He's an affable guy who approaches the project with curiosity and more than a little glee, which makes his health's downward spiral all the more affecting. Just watching his growing addiction to the food, wild mood swings and declining physical state makes the case against the McDiet far more eloquently than listening to the leading experts or even to Spurlock's own didactic final speech. (Alliance Atlantis)
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Australia's The Rage in Placid Lake is at once a sharp social satire and a quirky coming of age story that’s much more complex and interesting than the regular American teen fare. It stars musician Ben Lee in the role of Placid Lake, a bright and colourful perpetual misfit with hopelessly new-age parents (Miranda Richardson and Garry McDonald) who seal his fate early on when they send him to elementary school in a dress to challenge the other children's conventional views of sexuality. ...Read More
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"I've got a fever and the only cure is dead angels."
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Ever since the Christmastime gaming deluge ended, I've been killing a lot of angels. Though God's messengers have been bad guys in other pop-cultural products ― His Dark Materials book trilogy, the pas... Full Review
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Don't count on Norway's premier disco revivalist Hans-Peter Lindstrøm to ever turn in the same record twice. "All the artists and bands that I really like do surprising stuff every time, and I guess I just copy their way," he says from his Oslo home studio. "But it's also about not getting bored myself."... Read More
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