Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Due to the rainy Saturday we had in Chicago over the long weekend and my general interest to kick back on said day made it a good time to catch up on some movies I had been meaning to watch. Just for the record, Laura and I did do a 20 miler on the bikes on Sunday and generally got outside a bunch. I thought I would mention that so none of you out there thought we were shut ins.

Without further adieu here are quick reviews of the movies we took in over the weekend.

The Last King of Scotland

Fantastic film. The acting was incredible (especially Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of Idi Amin) and the locations were breathtaking. The subject matter was also fascinating. I knew nothing about Uganda in the 70s and Idi Amin’s reign as dictator before I watched this film and, although the film was fictional, it did get a lot of the history across. Check out this one if you have a chance. It’s intense so be prepared but ranks right up there as one of my favorite films of 2006.

Blood Diamond

Continuing with the Africa theme Blood Diamond was next up on the viewing queue. Blood Diamond is another fictional film set in a very real setting. In this case the setting is Africa in the midst of civil war and it focuses on the mining and trading of what are known as Blood Diamonds or diamonds mined in a war zone and sold in order to finance insurgent/rebel war activity.

The film was a good one although the ending could have been tied into the film a bit better. DiCaprio was excellent in his role and showed again that he is a great actor. This film is both action packed and very character driven. It doesn’t head too far toward the bleeding heart zone even though it could but it still makes you think about the diamond trade and I know I will insist that any future diamonds I buy are conflict free. As with The Last King of Scotland this film is one you should check out without question.

The Queen

The Queen focuses on the royal family, and in particular the Queen, during the tragic loss of Princess Diana. While Helen Mirren does an incredible job portraying the Queen I have to say that I found the film quite boring. The plot just dragged. It truly would have been more interesting if this film was a documentary since you would have been seeing actual historical footage. If you want some insight into the royals you should check this out but otherwise it’s best left on the shelves of your local movie rental joint.

Fast Food Nation

This film was pretty eye opening. It shows, through a fictional narrative, the process it takes to get a burger to your local fast food joint and into your hands. Exploiting illegal workers, having untrained workers gut cows which causes manure to contaminate the meat and crippling injuries that take place in the meat packing plants are the just the start of what this film shows as the reality of the fast food business.

This film did head down the bleeding heart track but apparently a lot of what was said does happen in the meat packing and fast food businesses. I hardly ever eat fast food simply due to the health issues but now it will be hard to ever stomach another fast food burger while on the run or traveling.  This is not because fast food doesn’t taste good, cause it does, but because I don’t want to support such awful corporate practices.

This is a film you should check out and then do research on your own as I have been doing. While technically it was not a fantastic film the message is still one that bears listening to and following up on.

For example, Chipotle restaurants will not use meat from animals that have been fed antibiotics (a practice used by cow farms who pack cows in very close together in dark barns – they have to give them antibiotics to keep them from getting sick since they are so close and standing in their own filth). Good work Chipotle. Ultimately it is up to us as consumers to make the change happen by requesting organic and free range options and supporting restaurants like Chipotle are a good step in the right direction (plus their food is great!).  Bottom line: I won’t become a vegitarian but I will insist that the animals I eat are raised and killed in a humane way.

Side note: On the DVD special features section there were a few short animated films called “The Meatrix” that are well worth a watch. Check them out here.

That ends the movie wrap-up.  I hope this will help you fill out our netflix queue for rainy Saturdays to come.

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Wow… watching this film really opened my eyes to what went on at some of the biggest companies in the bubble. I had seen Startup.com before which is very similar to this movie. That film follows govWorks.com from beginning to end but the story wasn’t as crazy I thought it would be. Sure, they had their problems but it was nothing compared to what you see in e-dreams.

e-dreams follows the guys from Kozmo.com, a service that would deliver whatever you ordered in under one hour using a fleet of bicycle messengers. Seems harmless enough I suppose but check out these stats:

- Raised $250mm in VC in about a year

- Went from 10 – 4000 – 0 employees in about a year

- Did a deal with Starbucks where they paid Starbucks $150mm over 5 years for the right to market to Starbucks customers and they made about $25mm from Starbucks for allowing them to be the only coffee they would deliver (more on this deal later – as a biz dev guy myself it made me cringe for a number of reasons – in fact, I felt physically ill after hearing the terms)

- CEO/co-founder was incredibly out of touch with the operations of the business due to his obsession with talking to the media (it’s just about all he did if the movie was accurate – of course you never know how they cut the film)

- Wanted to go public when the company was bringing in $3.5mm per year but still had a net loss of $26.3mm per year

- Pushed away their college student base (about 80% of their customer base) while trying to go for older folks who would buy more expensive stuff

In today’s web atmosphere this sounds completely absurd and it should have probably sounded absurd during the bubble too. Let’s talk about the biz dev deal with Starbucks since that was one of the craziest things in my mind.

The deal with Starbucks basically allowed Kozmo to leave video drop boxes (for returning videos rented via Kozmo) in Starbucks stores and market to Starbucks customers in other ways for $150mm to be paid over the life of the 5 year deal and Kozmo would get back about $25mm over 5 years for exclusively selling Starbucks coffee on their site. What could be wrong with that, right? A lot of things.

Granted 80% of Starbucks customers were internet users so getting to them made a lot of sense for Kozmo. However, did hitting them everyday of their lives for 5 years make sense? Can someone say frequency capping? The killer was that the company really wasn’t in any position to sign a deal worth that much money even if the deal made sense.

Of course the business model was a bit suspect (no delivery charge or decent mark-up on the products) and they grew far too fast and raised way too much money but aside from that the other glaring issue was that the CEO, Joseph Park, didn’t have a hand in much of anything other than talking to the media (or so it seemed from the film).

One of the most glaring examples of this lack of involvement was when Joe went over to one of the warehouses (called “spokes” at Kozmo) and the manager showed him the new Kozmo Intelligent Delivery System (K.I.D.S.) that, of course, is crucial to Kozmo’s core functionality of delivering stuff to people quickly. The manager asks Joe if he’s seen this yet and replies that he hasn’t seen it at all. That’s crazy. An internal product that is crucial to the company was developed and Joe had no idea what it was, how it worked or how it looked.

The quote in the movie that summed up Kozmo, and the whole internet bubble, came from a programmer on the Kozmo staff named Rich Marshall.

“A lot of these companies never intended to be businesses and we’re [Kozmo] a business now. …. [In reference to all companies in the boom/bust] Get investor money, get a sexy website, get bought if they’re lucky, cash out if they’re lucky. If they’re not, who cares? Start over. Big deal. Crash and burn was just as sexy as succeeding.”

Those were crazy times and while I was not part of them I did watch it all go down while at Bentley College and it wasn’t pretty. I think those times have made me the frugal guy I am today (i.e. when I go to NYC on business I stay with friends rather than spend company money on a hotel for example which in NYC are super expensive and I fly late night/early AM if possible to save on the flight and to maximize work hours) and I believe that frugal attitude will continue to help me through my career.

e-dreams is a great movie for anyone to watch but I think it is especially good for entrepreneurs and start-up folks to check out (also check out startup.com if you have a chance). It’s a great example of what not to do and a lot of times those examples are just as helpful as examples of what to do. Don’t repeat history, right? Be a student of History and don’t make the same mistakes.

Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes

For anyone that has ever wanted to know more about the film rating system this is for you. OK, a lot of you probably don’t care about the film rating system but I am a film geek and I do. Quite frankly, if you care about free speech you should too.

All documentaries have their slant on things so you have to take the info in them with a grain of salt but director Kirby Dick does provide a lot of compelling evidence in this film that would lead you to believe that the film rating system is pretty corrupt.

Here are some of the interesting bits:

1. Raters tend to let studio films slide through with R ratings while they slap independents with NC-17s for the same content (which basically means no one will get to see their film).

2. Raters will not tell filmmakers what they need to cut to get the rating they need/want under the guise that they aren’t censors but “just raters.” However, it seems they do help you when you are with a studio and they don’t if you are independent.

3. If you appeal your rating you are brought before a group of folks that wear numbers so you don’t know who they are or where they are from and you aren’t allowed to plead your case.

There are many more interesting points brought up in this documentary (like violence is much more accepted by raters than sex) but the points above all lead to the conclusion that studios, who back the MPAA, get preferential treatment over independents thus creating an inequality in the free speech arena. The raters are also acting as censors in a roundabout way by rating films they don’t think folks should see NC-17 (a lot of theaters wont carry NC-17 films meaning most people won’t see the film).

These raters are essentially the moral compass of America and (get this) the MPAA won’t even tell you, or anyone, who they are. In an open and transparent society like ours it seems crazy that the MPAA won’t tell you who gives films their ratings and essentially decides what you have easy access to watch.

Check out this movie if you have a chance. It may sound stupid to care about film ratings at first but I think you’ll see things differently after watching This Film is Not Yet Rated.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

I have been waiting to see this film for some time and I am glad I finally did. I was thinking this would be more of the typical Zach Braff (i.e. Garden State) that I enjoy but since this film was not written by him (it was written by Paul Haggis of Crash and Million Dollar Baby fame – interestingly enough he was having trouble selling both of those screenplays – which of course turned out to be huge successes – when he got the gig writing The Last Kiss) and since this movie was a remake of Italian director Gabriele Muccino’s film L’Ultimo Bacio it was much different than I expected.

The Last Kiss turned out to be a very interesting exploration of human relationships as seen through the eyes of Michael (Zach Braff) and his friends who are all approaching 30 and are in various places in their lives.

The main focus of the film is on Michael and his fiance Jenna (Jacinda Barrett) who appear to be in the perfect relationship and are expecting a child. Temptation for Michael comes in the form of young college coed Kim (Rachel Bilson) and he spends a good portion of the last part of the film trying to patch up his mistake.

I am sure some of the movie was lost on me since my friends and I are not quite to 30 yet (we’re in our mid 20s) but I still enjoyed the human relationship study and the story in general which was well written. The cast was also outstanding and worked very well together (congrats to the casting folks). Definitely check this one out when you have a chance. It’s well worth it.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

It’s simply amazing that I had not seen this film until now. It had been on my list for years and I had heard great things but other films kept trumping it in my Netflix queue for some reason. Now that I have seen it I can say with certainty that Darren Aronofsky (also of Requiem for a Dream) did an outstanding job on this film.

Pi is an in depth and quite poignant look into both science and obsession. Maximillian Cohen (Sean Gullette), a brilliant mathematician, is our hero in the film. He is fanatical in his belief that everything in nature can be explained with numbers. He cites things like the golden ratio throughout the film as evidence of this.

With this belief in hand and a homemade computer that consumes his small New York apartment he begins to ponder the stock market. He hypothesizes that it is an organism just like any other and that he should be able to find a mathematical code that will crack it.

Looking for this code, a 216 digit number based in Pi, takes Max to some dark places both inside his head and out and we get to witness it all in black and white with jarring camera work all accompanied with a soundtrack that I saw described as an audible fractal (that’s a great description – via IMDB).

This film will leave you gasping for air and praying for it to stop. It’s uncanny how well Aronofsky pulls the viewer in. I felt physically disturbed at points in this movie which rarely happens. This is one example where all of the cinematic elements like the black and white footage, the soundtrack and the jagged camera work all make the movie much more compelling. They aren’t just done “for fun” so-to-speak.

Bottom line: This is a must watch film. It will give you a view into insanity you’ll appreciate but may never want to see again.

Side note: If you have seen Requiem for a Dream you’ll notice the “drug taking” sequences are shot in almost exactly the same manner.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

Tsotsi is a fantastic and very powerful film set in modern South Africa. The story itself focuses on a man named Tsotsi who has truly been dealt some rough cards in life which we learn about primarily through quick flashbacks that pop up throughout the film.

Tsotsi has ended up as a small time gangster who lives in one of the “shanty” towns in South Africa by the time we meet him. He has some friends that help him in his mischief but they seem human (well, except for one of them who is a crazy murderer but that’s another story). Tsotsi, however, seems to have lost has lost his humanity completely. He’s cold and ruthless even to his own friends.

The film really kicks into gear when Tsotsi decides to pull a big job in the rich neighborhood that can be seen from his village. Once in the nice suburbs he carjacks a woman and as she runs to the car to try and stop him from driving away he shoots her. As he pulls away he realizes that there is a baby in the car as well and has to decide what to do with it.

Ultimately Tsotsi decides to care for the child and through caring for it he rediscovers his humanity and his compassion. His journey is a very touching one and I have to commend writer/director Gavin Hood as he artfully frames the story from the first minute of film. Presley Chweneyagae also does an incredible job of playing Tsotsi. He’s is very believable and makes the transition from heartless to caring in a very real way.  It doesn’t feel contrived for even one second.

This film is truly a must watch so please head out and pick it up or add it to your Netflix queue. For your Oscar buffs out there it should also be noted that this film won the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film which it very much deserved.

Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down and watching some cycling movie classics so I thought I would pair them in a cycling movie round-up for all of you. Enjoy!

American Flyers

American Flyers is the story of two brothers, one of which has a terminal illness (nope, I’m not going to say which one). The older of the brothers is an accomplished cyclist and the younger is a great cyclist as well but never really took to the races like his brother. The older brother then convinces the younger to join up with him for a race (queue the training and race montages) and you’ll need to check out the film for the conclusion. There are some great race scenes and the soundtrack has some killer 80s tunes (no dance montage in this one though). You’ll also be able to gain some insight into bicycle racing tactics which can be helpful when you watch the 2007 Tour de France.

Breaking Away

Breaking Away is the story of a group of Indiana high school grads that are trying to shake the townie image by throwing down on occasion with the Indiana University students in their town. While the four friends all have different paths in life there is one who wants to race bicycles professionally and takes it to the extreme by acting like he’s Italian. After a large fight between the locals and the IU students the boys are asked to duke it out with the IU students by taking part in the famed Little 500. Again, cue training and race montages and the outcome… you’ll have to check out the film (hint: the friend into bike racing helps a lot). Side note: Breaking Away won the Oscar in 1979 for Best Original Screenplay.

Conclusion

These films were both produced in the bike boom and are well made films (Breaking Away being the better one). If you love bikes you’ll love them both but if you aren’t a huge cycling fan I would stick to Breaking Away since it’s just a nice feel good film.