Film: Super Size Me

[noizia]

film: Super Size Me

http://www.supersizeme.com/
has anyone seen this? it looks great.

 

[wanderlust]

have not seen it... but have heard about it and i love the idea and reality displayed by it

 

[RollNRave]

It seems that unless you were at the Sundance Festival, you won't have seen it because it is not being released until spring of this year.

 

[kiwikr720]

Paired with Fast Food Nation and the recent lawsuits, maybe everyone will finally wake up to what a horror fast food is.

 

[wanderlust]

mcdonalds is phasing out their super size options by the end of this year.... but they say it has nothing to do with this movie, it just happened to be announced right after all the publicity. they are trying to be healthier.... yeah right with their salads that have as much fat as one of their hamburgers

 

[LinZ-E]

^^ as yes...that's it...coincidence .

I'm very interested in this....intriguing web site, too.

 

[mzlove]

I heard its pretty funny and well made. Opens today...cant wait to see it!

 

[wanderlust]

in the backlash of this film there is a woman doing the same thing... mcdonalds everyday, three meals a day, thirty days- but she is doing it to prove that it is not mcdonalds at fault but people are for their obesity and lack of nutrition
no big macs, but tons of salads, fish and chicken sandwiches
last i heard she had lost a few pounds.
this is being done via website, but i cant find it right now

also sundance has been bought out so to the threaters TODAY opening!

 

[Monster_ZERO]

Redbank 5/14 thru 6/10

woot

 

[Orpheus420]

Like this movie actually tells you any new information..As mentioned before, there have been books written on this topic in the past, and anyone with half a brain can tell you a solid month of McD's will kick the shit out of most people...

 

[Belisarius]

Honestly, I think the premise that fast food is bad for you was only half his motivation (though I haven't seen it yet). From what I hear, the movie seems a lot like old-style performance art, in which people would inflict damage or great stress on their body to prove a point or deliver a message (like Chris Burden getting nailed--yes, nailed--to a car in traffic, having himself shot in the arm, etcetera).

In short, I think he did it as much to test himself as to deliver a message. Perhaps he felt that making himself the subject would bind the viewer's experience with his own, thus making it that much more powerful.

 

[mzlove]

I found this article about what gave him the idea to do this documentary:


Spurlock came up with the premise for "Super Size Me" in 2002, while in the throes of a post-Thanksgiving dinner tryptophan stupor. Reclining in a chair, his tummy distended with turkey and all the trimmings, he watched a television news report of a lawsuit filed against McDonald's by two young women who accused the burger chain of making them obese. The suit was eventually dismissed.

"I'm not a litigious person, and I think that what's happened to this country is that we start blaming other people, but I kept hearing about the ingredients in fast food and the marketing and packaging and processing. Then I heard McDonald's say, 'Our food is nutritious.' And I thought realistically you should be able to eat it every day."


What really bothers me about fast food places is that they do act like their food is fine to eat on a consistent basis. Everyone knows this isnt true but isnt it wrong that they advertise and promote their food to very young children? If this food can cause serious health problems shouldnt they be punished for trying to push their products to millions of kids???

Just my opinion, I think its wrong and someone should regulate it more harshly.

Heres the rest of the article if you're interested...... link

 

[voodoosoup]

guy that made it is from my state, WV

 

[Goodspeed]

the guy is from West Virginia?? cool beans figured weren't many of us around anyway he was on letterman the other night and stated that he knows one guy who eats nothing but Mcd's everyday and is in top notch health, I think the whole getting rid of super sizing though is a money making scam, cause now us fat bastards have to order to medium french fries to get the extra fries we want which equals more money

 

[Razzie]

I saw this movie last night for a special premiere and it was a great movie. Not only is the experiment itself interesting but Spurlock is really a funny guy.

There's a hilarious scene where he finds a hair in his McDonald's parfait and there's also a hilarious scene where he's arguing with his vegan girlfriend about why he eats meat. Classic!

The part of the movie that shocked me the most is the scene where they showed an elementary school that's publicly funded. I went to school in a private school K-8th where we had to pack our lunch every day. In the public school, they actually sold these Little Suzy chocolate rolls. Given their own choices, many of the children ate only candy and fries, bringing their own sodas from home. Even the hot lunches were mac/cheese, sloppy joes, foods with a very high fat and sugar content. Plus, they showed one elementary school that only had PE once per week! I did not go to public elementary school so I don't know how accurate this was. They also did show some schools that provided healthier lunches and more intensive exercise programs.

It really did make you think about how much you eat fast food. I eat fast food at least once per week even though I'm very active and exercise a lot. It's really eye opening.

 

[DigitalDuality]

I went to public school.. and K-5 we only had PE once a week.

I'm highly interested in this film.. can't wait til it comes out.

 

[Lingo]

Between Taco Bell, McDonalds and Burger King, I LIVE on fast food. I mean it. I eat fast food almost exclusively. I read Fast Food Nation, I know what goes on with the chain, the suppliers, etc... but I don't really care. The food tastes good and I don't have to cook. I grab a Big Mac and Super-Size fries on my way to work; a nacho Supreme, steak burrito supreme and chicken quesedilla on my way home. I am 6'2", I weigh 140 lbs. and my blood pressure is almost TOO LOW. On the same token, all four of my grandparents have had cancer, two have died as a result. If I remember my highshool biology correctly, that means my odds are pretty slim. At this point in my life, after ingesting countless amounts of illicit drugs and research chemicals, some trans-fatty acids are the LEAST dangerous things I am putting into my body.

I think the recent trend of filing lawsuits against fast-food chains for making kids fat is the kind of stupidity that can only exisit in America, and the people that do it are just as unscroupulous as the evil empire of McDonalds execs.

I still wanna see the movie though...

Adios,
Steve

 

[wanderlust]

ha ha!

great review! a little highlight... but worth a whole reading. great comparison to spurlock trying to be moore and the factual wrongs.

Just as David Blaine is a magician who does not actually create any magic, Spurlock is a filmmaker who has not actually made a movie. But both have performed stupid human tricks. Blaine has, more than once, subjected himself to hideous bodily harm — freezing himself for days in the middle of Times Square, starving himself for weeks in a glass box suspended above the Thames — and then gotten out alive. He is, after all, the Houdini of the reality-TV era, escaping from situations that might not be deadly but are certainly icky. And just as Blaine is all etched cheekbones and arched angles, he seems always to be dating aspiring supermodels (how did this become a career option?) who are also etched and arched and look like they really thought he might die, so it all works out for everyone.
____ Spurlock’s girlfriend Alex, by the way, is not an aspiring supermodel. She is, in fact, a "gourmet vegan chef" — three words that, by my reckoning, should be in Webster’s as the third or fourth definition of "lunatic." I have eaten at Anjelica’s Kitchen, the famed vegan outpost in Lower Manhattan. I have tasted what that establishment calls "double chocolate brownies." I believe the people who attached that name to those edible items should familiarize themselves with mental institutions.
____ Super Size Me is filled with statistics about obesity. To add heft to his sight gags (e.g. puking up McNuggets in parking lots and driving doctors apoplectic with his blood work)_Spurlock totes up the sugar content of the school cafeterias in Middle America and interrogates earnest dieticians about portion control. Maybe we cannot hear these things enough. But I, for one, have heard all this stuff more than I can bear, starting with the extraordinary Fast Food Nation and continuing through an assortment of Dateline NBC and 60 Minutes segments that have thoroughly examined the phenomenon of fatness gone fat crazy.
____ For what it’s worth, I am not one of those extra special healthy people, nor am I one of those really-good-and-decent sorts. But after reading Fast Food Nation, I have not once bought so much as a Coca-Cola at any of the wretched chains Eric Schlosser describes: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The risk of contracting e.coli and salmonella is the least of it: the labor practices, many of which Schlosser portrays as human rights violations so horrific that Amnesty International ought to intervene, are enough to make most people who are not even that good — I mean, I’m not even a vegetarian — decide not to have anything more to do with that dirty, disgusting system.
____ And still, when I hear Chef Alex comparing ham to heroin, I too am ready to reach for a Big Mac. As much as Morgan Spurlock would like to believe he is a muckraker or a Moore in the making, the truth is that Super Size Me is obviously a passive-aggressive response to living with a vegan chef who makes every meal into a Marxist sit-in.

whole article

 

[E-llusion]

I saw the film and while the over-the-top "performance" he put on was a bit much, I think it was still great. In one of the interviews published about the film he said something very funny " A lot of McDonalds would not allow us to shoot 'you can't bring a camera in here' however a lot of them were like ''oh movie ? cool, would you like fries with that ?''

 

[BA]

Is this out for rent, or still in theatres?