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DESCRIPTION:Film evenings begin with optional potluck refreshments and social hour at  
 6:30 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after 
 the film.\n\nFast Food Nation\nby Richard Linklater\n\nThis nervy movie is 
 part documentary and part feature film with major stars.   It’s an 
 adaptation of Eric Schlosser’s best-selling expose of the same name.  In 
 fact filmmaker Richard Linklater worked together with author Eric Schlosser 
 to make the film.\n\nThe territory of the film is nothing less than the 
 American lifestyle.  While it does not shy away from making arguments and 
 advancing a clear point of view, it’s far too rich and complicated to be 
 understood as a simple, high-minded polemic about food.  It is didactic, 
 but it’s also dialectical. While the climactic images of slaughter and 
 butchery — filmed in an actual abattoir — may seem intended to spoil 
 our appetites, Linklater and Schlosser have really undertaken a much deeper 
 and more comprehensive critique of contemporary American life.\n\nThe film 
 tells multiple stories, which radiate like spokes from the hub of a central 
 theme.  A fast food executive pokes around in a fictional city in Colorado 
 trying to balance his search for the truth with an apparent desire not to 
 do anything that might hurt his career.  Meanwhile, a group of Mexican 
 immigrants arrives in town and takes up dangerous, stomach-turning jobs at 
 the meat-processing plant.  And a third story features a teenage 
 burger-slinger who undergoes a crisis of conscience when she falls in with 
 a group of anti-corporate activists from a nearby college.\n\nWhat the 
 filmmaker does best is to film people in conversation.  The movie is thick 
 with debate, argument, rumination, and repartee.  The talkiness is what 
 saves the movie from turning into a lecture.  Its loose, digressive rhythm 
 keeps it tethered to reality, while the dialogue and the easy pace of the 
 scenes allow the characters to register as individuals, not just as types.  
 The cast is large but the crowdedness of the movie is evidence of its 
 liveliness.  Everyone in it has something to say and the central characters 
 face some hard ethical choices set down by the logic of 21st-century 
 consumer capitalism.  The movie does not neglect the mute, helpless 
 suffering of the cows, but it also acknowledges the status anxiety of the 
 managerial class, the aspirations of the working poor, and the frustrations 
 of the dreaming young.  It’s a mirror and a portrait, and as necessary 
 and nourishing as your next meal.\n\nWheelchair accessible around the 
 corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are accepted\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/16/18648082.php
SUMMARY:Fast Food Nation
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nmidtown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org\n
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/05/16/18648082.php
DTSTART:20100603T023000Z
DTEND:20100603T043000Z
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