The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1092633/

“Used-car liquidator Don Ready is hired by a flailing auto dealership to turn their Fourth of July sale into a majorly profitable event”.

Jeremy Piven makes you laugh, forget everything going on in your life and keeps you entertained for ALMOST two hours. THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD is a funny and slightly memorable story of Don Ready (Piven) and his band of merry men (and a lady), who make their way from dealership to dealership helping broken salespeople bring some buzz onto their lots and clear cars. With an awesome ensemble cast with the likes of Ving Rhames, Catherine Hahn (Anchorman), Ken Jeong (Roll Models and The Hangover), Ed Helmes, James Brolin, David Koechner and Will Farell, they keep the gut crunching one liners going throughout the film.

First and foremost, there are actually people who travel the country helping badly performing dealerships bring their numbers up. We were lucky enough to have Jeremy Piven at the screening for a Q & A and he told us about a doc called Slashers about people in the “Car moving biz”. Weird; yes. Tres American: Yes.

In The Goods, set in a small town in California, does what a quirky off-beat comedy should do; entertain, confuse and surprise. I’m not going to talk about the narrative or the character depth. Why you may ask? Well, there really isn’t any. It's a punch you in the face comedy with shiny colors. They try and pull a few heart strings to create some connections with the characters, but at the end of the day they serve up a funny movie that makes you laugh.

Can we end on a super random note. I asked Piven how the script for THE GOODS made its way to him and he said the name of the person and then went on to tell the story of how the movie got made. When he put it in his brother-in-laws hand, Adam Mckay (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0570912/), it moved quickly and was made within a year…ok, did you just hear what I said, Adam Mckay..What the H#$*…his bother-in-law is Adam Mckay…Crazytown. Adam McKay is married to Shira Piven, Jeremy’s sister. Ok, so there is your random fact for the day.

www.wired.com

WIRED MAGAZINE

Time and time again Wired magazine comes out with the most well rounded articles I have ever read. Sure, tons of publications pump out quirky headlines, amusing stories and new spins on the records of the past, but it's a rare occassion when you can say a story is smart, funny, educational and entertaining. Wired meets that tall order ALMOST every issue.

Case in point; HOW TO BEHAVE: NEW RULES FOR HIGHLY EVOLVED HUMANS. The piece is written by Brad Pitt and promotes his new movie Inglorious Basterds.

The piece is a how to's of supremed douchness..How TO and NOT be a douche. Numerous questions are posed by "readers" with varying topics and interests. Below is an example of a question from HOW TO BEHAVE: NEW RULES FOR HIGHLY EVOLVED HUMANS;

I exaggerated my salary on my online dating profile. Should I fess up?
Hell no. Everyone lies online. In fact, readers expect you to lie. If you don't, they'll think you make less than you actually do. So the only way to tell the truth is to lie.

Clearly the "ironic" answer.... The next one is my favorite and I totally concur with the reader response.

Can I answer my cell during a movie if it seems urgent?
Never. It may be a brief interruption—just a few seconds—but what if someone sitting near you is trying to make a decent bootleg? Did you ever think of that? Now all those street-corner copies are permanently defiled by your so-called "emergency." Don't be so damn selfish.

The piece continues with similar questions that both educate and entertain,,,oh yeah, and make you laugh...They achieve the honor of most well rounded article by providing

- Relevant content that applies directly to the reader
- Promotional integration that truly fits. Brad Pitt is an actor with many facets..The article is a reflection of that and seamlessly builds in the Inglorious Basterds identity with the sub headlines
- The responses to the questions are both compelete insanity and totally on point. When they say you should take your "bluetooth headset" off when your not using it, that makes total sense....
- The photoshoot that was done to marry with the Q&A were almost stand alone---I could have been happy with the pictures and a quick caption!

Wired rules...FYI: Not only can you see it in print, but Wired has it online as well..Why, because they rule.

REVIEWS AND STUFF

WORTHY DOCS

OUR DAILY BREAD
In the vain of Naqoyqatsi, OUR DAILY BREAD is a visual montage of different ways we grow, treat, harvest and consume our food. There are some amazing and disturbing images that leave you seeing the agricultural industry in a new light. OUR DAILY BREAD provides yet another opportunity for us, the consumer, to become more educated about how our food gets to us. It empowers us to make smarter purchasing decisions and to the part of the process that will hopefully effect positive change in the way food is farmed and distributed. Everyone has an opinion and OUR DAILY BREAD gives you a bit more info to strengthen or to question your existing opinions.

ADDICTED TO PLASTIC
Smart, well made, global perspective, relatively impartial, great education tool, gives true and feasible alternatives to ecological options to plastic. Rent it.

WWW.FUNNYPLACE.ORG

THREE WORD MOVIE REVIEWS

STAR TREK = Awesome, Beautiful, Entertaining

GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE= Fragmented, Anti-Climactic, Confusing

PUBLIC ENEMIES= Unnatural, Confusing, Disappointing


TV SHOWS

DAMAGES = Amazing, magnificent, Essential

TORONTO CITY STRIKE

For those who don't know "At 12:20 a.m. on Monday, June 22, 2009, the City of Toronto's unionized employees represented by the Toronto Civic Employees' Union Local 416 (CUPE) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 began a legal strike". The strike has affected many services in the city, including garbage pick-up. As a downtown dweller, I have seen the deterioration of the city streets over the last few weeks. I am writing this to talk about what this strike has highlighted about many people who live in the city of Toronto.

As I walked the length of Queen Street running from Dufferin to Church ( approx 45 min walk), my sense of smell was assaulted with a mixture of discarded foods left in overflowing garbage bins, alleyways and in places, right on the sidewalk. I was stepping over shopping bags full of take-out packaging, plastic bottles, plastic bags and other random garbage that didn't have a home. It highlighted two things:

1. People clearly don't feel that they have to take responsibility over their own waste
2. Most of the waste littering the streets doesn't have to exist. The items have been created over time to make our lives more convenient and to make the cost of doing business lower. Gone are the days of glass milk cartons and ONLY tupperware for lunches..We have been conditioned to think that single use items that are not recyclable and end up taking up much needed living space are ok to use. Only recently has the buy local and sustainable mantra become hip. There are not enough environmentally conscious people yet to make that a financially viable option for businesses, so it will remain a cottage industry until the education and empowerment spreads.

To help create awareness about the problem and try and help empower the community to effect change, I thought about creating a facebook group for people who want to volunteer their time to do neighborhood garbage clean up. I was embarrassed by the way my city looked and wanted to help clean it up. Then I thought that would be too easy..The ones who would volunteer would probably be the people bringing their garbage home, trying to reduce their impact on the waste issue and also looking for solutions. Those are not the ones who should be cleaning up after others....It should be the ones who have removed themselves from the responsibility of taking care of their own space, their city.

The strike has caused the situation, but it's not an excuse for relinquishing personal accountability. At the end of the day there is nobody to pick up our garbage right now. We need to take care of it and we are not. It is sad and I wish I could say that people took what their parents taught them as young ones to heart and CLEANED UP AFTER THEMSELVES, but they aren't. It doesn't mean they can't...But right now, they aren't and people's attitudes need to change about the city their live in or we will continue to fall apart even after the strike ends...What to do? Suggestions anyone?