Fast Food Nation (Widescreen DVD-Video) + Wake
Up Screaming – A Vans Warped Tour Documentary
Picture: B-/C Sound: B-/C+ Extras: B Film: B-/C+
How does
one communicate the issues around vegetarianism, why meat as food may not
always be safe and make it clear without hitting the audience over the
head? The book version of Fast Food Nation was a remarkably
thorough study on a documentary level and especially in book form of the
situations minuses, but leave it to Richard Linklater to try to make it into an
offbeat comedy. Then there is the
political concert documentary tour disc Wake
Up Screaming – A Vans Warped Tour Documentary showing the more radical
approach to saying how bad the meat situation is in more radical terms.
You
should be warned that both offer graphic footage of animals being “graphically
processed” (or brutally killed) for consumption, but Wake Up saves that for a supplement far more brutal than the
already disturbing images in Nation. In both, we see the myth deconstructed that
the animals roam freely before their final destination, treated very badly in
ways that make you wonder about the health of the animals, the food they become
and your health after eating them. Nation focuses on cheap food and
minimum wage labor, while PETA provides a broader attack on the meat packing
industry in general for Wake Up.
In both
cases, there is some shock value involved, some of which is exaggeration, while
other parts can be overkill. The parts
that speak for themselves without trying so hard work best, but Wake Up sells itself as a disc about
turning with Post-Punk bands when it is more preoccupied with vegetarianism and
confrontations with animal abuse (from touring animals to a strange incident
where the doc’s focus Jason Bayless confronts an egg-throwing booth in ways
that even if he is correct in his views, his approach is unquestioned and
undebated in a way that hurts his very cause).
There is music, but not enough and that is not the focus.
Nation beings as another narrative in the
world of slackers, though it is obvious that some of that slacking is caused by
lack of good jobs, opportunity and a culture that used to encourage the best
and has purposely abandoned it. Bruce
Willis has a great moment as a deadly cynical meat industry titan using sick
rationale for the increasingly awful conditions in which meat is being
processed.
Even from
this limited, unmanipulated footage, you wonder why thee has not been some
outbreak or other unmanageable catastrophe.
It is stronger on Wake Up,
showing the inhuman treatment of all the animals, but more than enough to make
you rethink some of what you are eating.
Other
notable actors turning up include Greg Kinnear, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzman,
Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, singer Avril Lavigne, Esai Morales, Wilmer
Valderrama and some other very talented actors hopefully to be seen again
despite participating in this film. The
idea that a fast food chain is an extension of a gilded cage trapping those who
eat there is all too real and has been haunting us in one way or another since
the 1980s in particular.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Nation
is shot in 35mm by Lee Daniel, Linklater’s longtime cinematographer. It looks good and has a slight overcast to go
with the narrative. The Dolby Digital
5.1 mix is good if not overpowering with good music and sound effects use to
enhance the narrative, but it is dialogue-based.
The 1.33
X 1 image on Wake Up is rough
location video throughout with softness and issues with color consistency,
detail and depth. The Dolby Digital 2.0
is location sound that can be described as rough stereo at best.
Extras on
Nation include a making of
featurette, the hilarious animated Meatrix trilogy that deconstructs
the meat packing industry (visit www.themeatrix.com
for more information), stills, an audio commentary track by Linklater &
writer Eric Schlosser and The Backwards Hamburger, another animated gem about
how consumers are being lied to about fast food and how everyone from workers
to consumers and especially animals are being exploited.
Extras on
Wake Up include the aforementioned
PETA film footage of slaughterhouses entitled Meet Your Meat, trailer,
Al Sharpton attacking the bad conditions, outtakes, more interviews, more music
performances, Wake Up Screaming At SXSW featurette and
somewhat less graphic Chew On This featurette from PETA.
These two
works take different approaches in dealing with the issues, but hit the nail on
the head about what has become a brewing scandal about to open wide. Dealing with all these issues is long
overdue.
- Nicholas Sheffo