From "Awesome!" to "GROSS!"

Just a quick post about two movies that I highly recommend watching.

The latest Marvel-to-movie adaptation of Iron Man is not only the best comic book movie but also the most enjoyable movie to watch in a very long time. It has a really tight narrative that isn't over-the-top or dumbed down, and it has the strongest cast of actors with Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Robert Downey, Jr., who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man. My girlfriend and I were extremely impressed with Downey's performance; he played the role of Tony Stark perfectly as the arrogant, super-intelligent industrialist. The visual effects were aesthetically beautiful and creative especially when Tony Stark was designing the suit on a visually stunning holographic/interactive computer interface. It was very clear to me that the use of cgi was there to strengthen the narrative instead of supplanting it.

And the suits rocked!

We also watched Super Size Me on dvd last night. I wasn't sure what was more difficult: the fact that a high fat/fast food diet has the same damaging effects on the liver as alcoholism, or watching Morgan Spurlock (the director, producer, writer, and star himself) endure an intense weight gain of 20 pounds, severe body illness, nausea, vomiting, depression, and a whole host of physical and psychological effects that come from eating 30 days of McDonald's foods. It was seriously gross but very critical of the fast food industry and the state of obesity, health, nutrition, and diet in this country. We also watched the dvd extra called "The Smoking Fry" which was a simple experiment on how fast McDonald's foods "deteriorated" compared to made-fresh burgers from a local vendor. Obviously, the real burgers took a week to begin to decompose. The other burgers took longer. But what was truly disturbing were the McDonald's french fries. They showed no signs of decomposition after 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and even as long as two months! Everything else had molds, fungi, oozing liquids, or what he called "mossy goodness," and the collective foul stench of rot. But the McD fries still remained the same. It made me think about how difficult losing weight was compared to how easy it is to gain it. If artificial ingredients and preservatives can maintain McD fries for weeks on end, then imagine what that does in your body? How long would it take to get rid of it?

UPDATE: The Washington Post has an excellent series on children and obesity.  Definitely one to check out.