By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
The movie FOOD, INC. opened this past weekend in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It’s not the first film to tackle the problems of our industrial food complex. Indies like Chris Taylor’s Food Fight (2008) and King Corn (2007) a handful of few bigger releases, like Fast Food Nation (2006) have been chipping away at this story for a few years now.
But FOOD INC. arrives at a time when the American public seems primed for the message in ways it wasn’t before: We better recognize today that our mass-produced food is threatening our vitality and tearing up the arable land we need; that food that’s been processed beyond recognition has also been stripped of nutrients; that packaging can’t substitute for flavor and that local food often tastes better it has a lower environmental cost (OK, not everyone gets that last point, yet).
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Coen brothers production shows how to not trash the set
March 26th, 2009 · 1 Comment
By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now
These days it’s not just individual Hollywood A-listers who are going green in their personal lives; they’re taking the entire movie set in a sustainable direction. Some eco-driven insiders have even started up side businesses to complement their work in film. And who knows, with emerging companies like Film Biz Recycling in New York and EcoSet Consulting in Los Angeles, the industry may have just conjured up a new wave of green troops.
Shannon Schaefer, founder of the fledgling EcoSet Consulting (website still in progress), is on the front lines. During her stint as production secretary on the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man in Minneapolis last fall, she helped the Coens and FOCUS Features studio divert more than 11 tons of waste from the landfill.
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Tags: · A Serious Man, Coen brothers, EcoSet Consulting, Film Biz Recycling, Focus Features, Minneapolis, movie sets, Movies
Fuel: in the future and on film
By John DeFore
The latest edition of an annual report by the International Energy Agency was released this week, and while the news may not be unexpected, it’s unsettling nonetheless.
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Tags: · Alternative fuels, coal, Fields of Fuel, Fuel, International Energy Agency, Josh Tickell, Movies, oil
James Bond’s new eco-nemesis
By John DeFore
James Bond has often fought men who sought to bend the Earth to their whims. But this time around, the evil scheme is a tad more realistic than a planet-sized death ray.
In the new Quantum of Solace, which opens tomorrow, the super spy’s personal vendetta (he’s hunting the folks who killed his girlfriend in the last movie) leads him into the world of a big-time operator named Dominic Greene, whose name lends itself to a glitzy organization, Greene Planet, that is ostensibly trying to help the environment and the world’s poor.
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Tags: · James Bond, Movies
Encounters of a Nuanced Kind
By John DeFore
Over the last few years, moviegoers may have come to expect that any documentary pairing scientists and ice caps will be a scare-fest or a sermon — a big-screen effort to hammer home the urgent need to take action countering climate change.
Not so with Encounters at the End of the World, a film [...]
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Tags: · Antarctic, environment, Movies, Werner Herzog
But FOOD INC. arrives at a time when the American public seems primed for the message in ways it wasn’t before: We better recognize today that our mass-produced food is threatening our vitality and tearing up the arable land we need; that food that’s been processed beyond recognition has also been stripped of nutrients; that packaging can’t substitute for flavor and that local food often tastes better it has a lower environmental cost (OK, not everyone gets that last point, yet).