Farmers vs monsanto

Photo: Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw/Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics. When filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw first wandered into the Piedmont mountains, they thought they’d fallen into a fairytale kingdom. The tiny, steep towns and foggy woods seemed to them to be a place out of time, an Italian Brigadoon dotted with people following the old ways like pressing their own wine and making their own clothes. Even more beguiling, the pair soon heard about certain men who hunt in those woods for the elusive Alba truffle, secretive foragers who search with their dogs by night, not even telling their families where they go. Dweck and Kershaw’s resulting documentary The Truffle Hunters follows several of the oldest of these men — like Carlo, the impish 88-year-old who sneaks out a window to go truffling, and Aurelio, who is a spry 84. The documentarians track the men and their dogs on their hunts, but they don’t actually try to uncover their mysteries. (I only worked out their names thanks to the press materials.) There’s therefore a lovely reticence in this quiet and beautiful film: It picks its way carefully, like a deer, trying not to disturb the enchantment. Life is not, of course, a fairytale. Even in the Alpine hills, existence cannot be all lamplit conversations over wine and piles of jewel-bright tomatoes and dogs staring dreamily into their owners’ faces. Cruelty encroaches, as does climate change. The white truffles that Carlo, Sergio (a relative youngster in his ‘60s), and Aurelio are hunting are tremendously valuable. Late in the film, we see a magnificent specimen displayed on a red velvet cushion at some kind of expo or auction — the film never really tells us where we are — which sells for over €100,000. Everyone notes that there are fewer full-grown truffles every year, that the dryer and warmer weather has disrupted their mysterious and un-cultivatable process. Competition is fierce. We hear that rival trufflers are violating … [Read more...] about Heads for the Hills and Returns With a Feast for the Senses

Photo: Courtesy of Netflix Best Original Song has always been a curious little Oscar category. On balance, of all the elements that go into making a movie — writing, acting, sets, costumes, effects — the addition of a song seems to be, on paper, the least essential. And to specify that it be an original song, written specifically for the film, thus denigrating the time-honored contributions of perfectly selected, preexisting needle drops … it’s all so peculiar. And yet, with the exception of the acting categories, no single corner of the Oscar ballot has historically been more essential for putting on the production of the Oscars telecast. It’s the only element of a movie that can be replicated in full onstage, and the writers and performers of those songs are the only non-actors who have a prayer of keeping that all-important TV audience glued to their screens. Lady Gaga, Elton John, and Pharrell are far more likely to draw a crowd than the sound effects editors. But as anyone who’s followed the Oscars through the years will tell you, the category has been slipping over the last several decades. While the 1980s saw a nonstop run of hit songs by artists like Lionel Richie, Irene Cara, and Cher parade their way through the category, followed by the new Disney golden age delivering signature song after signature song, the category took a nosedive in the 2000s, with a handful of good, worthy, memorable songs (“Lose Yourself,” “Falling Slowly,” “Skyfall”) dotting a landscape of forgettable filler. Apologies to the die-hard partisans of U2’s “The Hands That Built America” from Gangs of New York or “Learn to Be Lonely” from The Phantom of the Opera . The last decade alone has seen multiple years that could have reasonably been considered the category’s nadir: the 2011 category where only two songs were nominated and one of them was a song called “Real in Rio” from a movie called Rio ; the 2013 category where a thoroughly unknown movie called Alone Yet … [Read more...] about This Is Going to Be the Most Ridiculous Best Original Song Year Ever