Online Film: Overdose

A new 46-minute film was uploaded to YouTube a few days ago. I do not remember seeing (or reading) a better overview of our current and future financial crisis than this one. Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis from Journeyman Pictures is the real deal, a piece of journalism that, while not looking for somebody to blame, isn't pulling any punches either. Essentially what our leaders have done in recent years is to boost our economy through stimuus spending and lower interest rates. While the film doesn't question that those tricks worked in the past, it makes it clear that we're now at a point where rates cannot go any lower and stimulus spending and bailouts have put us under a great burden of debt.





Both Democrats and Republicans have historically encouraged more home ownership. The creation of a financial environment where it was too easy for Americans to own a home ultimately led to the subprime mortgage crisis. (Remember the collapse of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?)







President Obama's "Cash for Clunkers" program is one example of an economic stimulus that was not (in my opinion) worth the debt our nation went into to fund it.





Watch Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis now!

Online Documentary Film: "For All Mankind"

It might be argued that our space program reached its zenith between 1968 and 1972. As primitive as much of our technology back then may appear to us now, we had the ingenuity, the nerve, the motivation, and the fuel to pull off a remarkable series of "manned" flights to the moon and back.

The people at NASA, sensing the historical significance of what they were doing, filmed much of their operation and stored it in their archives until director Al Reinert came along and used it to make "For All Mankind," a documentary that was originally released in 1989.

Astronaut interviews and NASA's remarkable footage - from their control rooms to inside the space capsules - makes this eighty-minute movie a special treat.


Relive a time in American history when we seemed to have had the world by the tail. Watch "For All Mankind."

King Corn: A Documentary About America's Most-Subsidized Crop

King Corn is marketed as entertainment. I'm sure it will hold your attention, but it didn't make me laugh. Instead, I think many people can expect to feel outraged while watching this documentary.

Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis (pictured) are just trying to learn how to grow an acre of corn in Iowa. Along the way they also visit a variety of experts on food and agribusiness. If they are outraged themselves, Cheney and Ellis themselves never let on. Instead, they behave like good apprentice farmers, or student-journalists, depending on the situation.

But it is hard for me to imagine that our two heroes didn't come away from their experiment shaking their heads at the absurdity of modern American agribusiness and hoping that things will soon change. Let me tell you what I'm talking about:

1. All of the Iowa farmers seemed to agree that they're only able to make a living growing corn because it is heavily subsidized by the federal government.

2. The government, however, is not subsidizing the delicious, healthy sweet corn that you might grow in your backyard, instead they're growing varieties of corn that cannot be consumed until they are thoroughly processed.

3. The pesticides used by today's corn farmers will kill every possible plant, even every possible type of corn - except the one that particular pesticide was made to be used on. (Could that possibly be good for the land?)

Okay, so I'm outraged, or at least sad, how about you?

Movie of the Day

For a lot of people, the winter break is still going on. So instead of a school-related or work-related website, today's post will be about an entertaining movie.

One Take
I hadn't heard of One Take until I rented it from Family Video in Fond du Lac. Somehow it was easily one of the best movies I have ever seen and won lots of awards, but didn't reach my radar screen until now. If you're like me and something about all the movies coming out of Hollywood seems wrong (too "packaged," or too predictable, or too...something), then I'd strongly recommend that you watch One Take. I never knew what to expect next, in fact, as I watched the movie, I was trying to figure out what genre of film it was. Elements of the supernatural/fantasy, tragedy, humor, love, etc. all fit together in this movie in a way that I don't think any other movie has achieved.




MPTC Film quality rating:
Two thumbs way up!


"G-PG-R" Rating: This film is unrated. Despite a shot of a naked man from the rear (which you'll see in the trailer), and one 4-letter word, One Take is probably more "clean" than what you've been seeing on broadcast TV lately.
(Released in 1997)

Use this link to see the trailer.