May 11, 2004

Two All Beef Patties

There was a brief moment, we think it was 1993, wherein Cinecultist was a vegetarian for six weeks. Some might think our briefly adopted vegetarianism was just a further extension of our childhood eating designation "picky," but at the time CC honestly wanted to try on this lifestyle to see if it fit. In the end the lure of grilled chicken, and a few years later Seattle's Two Bells hamburgers, led us back to meat eating but the impulse to examine your eating choices, as filmmaker Morgan Spurlock does in his new movie, Super Size Me, makes sense to CC.

Cast in the mold of a Michael Moore documentary, though with less bitter and more funny, Spurlock brings his downtown New York liberal, anti-corporation, living with a vegan chef point of view to the question of America's growing obesity. Inspired by the lawsuits filed against McDonald's by a pair of severely overweight girls, Spurlock's shtick is to undertake a 30 day all McDonald's diet all to the service of exploring the detriment our fast food laden diets take on our health. In particular, Spurlock's concerned by this trend for children and spends quite a bit of screen time showing how McDonald's markets to kids and how most school lunches are also influenced by corporate interest.

What scared and grossed out Cinecultist the most in all of this — not the second day vomiting from just eating a super size Big Mac meal — was how unprepared his team of three doctors were for Spurlock's rapid health deterioration. No one seemed to anticipate that eating like this would "turn his liver to pat้" in a matter of weeks, but it does. Also, CC wasn't aware that New York had so many McDonalds' for such a small island. Super Size Me made Cinecultist linger even longer than usual in the produce aisle during this week's grocery trip. That bag of spinach salad never looked so good.

Remainders:
• Morgan is blogging about the release of his film Super Size Me and his current press junket through IndieWire.

• Thanks to our Canadian reader Jeremy (Victoria, B.C. no less) for pointing out this article in Sunday's Los Angeles Times about the coming summer's trend for more "adult fare" after last summer's onslaught of caffeinated sequels. Just as long as we don't have to sit through League of Extraodinary Gentlemen again, Cinecultist will be fine.

Posted by karen at May 11, 2004 8:45 AM