Beer and Cinema

This is a repost of something I wrote on theauteurs.com several months ago:

I see that the Cannes Film Festival and The Auteurs are partnering with Stella Artois to bring us some great films for free on this site. Kudos to everyone at The Auteurs for getting support from a major corporation to make this happen and I will be watching some of these films from the comfort of my home. I will not, however, be drinking a Stella while doing so.

I may be the only one here who feels this way, but I find it kind of odd that a site dedicated to choice and independence in film making has partnered with a corporation dedicated to stifling choice and independence in brewing. Stella Artois is owned by the largest beverage company in the world, Anheuser-Busch InBev. Anheuser-Busch did a lot to destroy the American Beer industry by overwhelming the market with its fizzy, tasteless light American lager and driving small, independent brewers out of business by the 1970s due to its overwhelming production capability, focus on marketing, and dominance of distribution networks. This makes Anheuser-Busch InBev a lot like a major Hollywood studio, which focuses mainly on earnings with little regard for the quality of their product, as long as it panders to the lowest common denominator.

Today, Anheuser-Busch InBev controls almost 50% of the US beer market by itself, with Miller/Coors taking up most of the remainder. These two corporations, in their pursuit of market dominance, have focused on cutting production costs by brewing beer (and this includes Stella Artois) with cheap adjuncts (corn and rice instead of malted barley; synthetic TetraHop liquid instead of real hops), while saturating us with multi-million dollar advertising campaigns. Some of these ads are actually quite clever, such as this one, which aired in Canada, for the atrocious concoction Bud Light Lime:



The worst thing about this is that it actually works. The average American beer drinker is incredibly loyal to their brand, although it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between the major American light lagers.

Anheuser-Busch, Miller, and Coors did a lot to give American beer a terrible reputation worldwide. In the past 20 years, however, small independent craft brewers have made the United States one of the best places to find bold, interesting, and delicious beers. They have also helped expose Americans to some of the great beers from other parts of the world, such as Belgian Trappist and farmhouse ales that influenced their own recipes. For the most part, craft breweries do a lot to support their communities by buying their ingredients locally and getting their employees involved in local issues, or sponsoring events, such as film festivals. They also collaborate with one another to make their products even better. Check out this video (featuring Stone Brewing’s Greg Koch) for an example of what I mean:



Through a lot of hard work, sacrifice, and passion for their work, independent brewers have carved out a tiny slice of market share, but still face a lot of challenges, mainly the three-tiered distribution system that disproportionately favors the mega-breweries, as well as overt harassment from the big guys. These are the same problems facing independent film makers. A lot of the films being shown at Cannes and other festivals will never be seen by a wide audience because distributors are unwilling to take a chance on them. This severely limits consumer choice and exposure to some very interesting films. In the end, it’s all about choice. I want to have access to the finest films in the world and I’d also like to ensure I can enjoy some good beer while doing so.

So, do yourself a favor and expand your horizons the next time you buy beer by trying a real craft beer instead of that fizzy yellow junk you see on TV. If you don’t like it, fine. But it’s nice to have a choice in the matter, don’t you think? And wouldn’t you feel better about supporting brewers like these guys rather than a massive, faceless corporation?



Incidentally, I’m trying to get my craft beer-loving friends interested in great independent and “foreign” films using the same argument . . . so far with mixed results.

Support your local brewery and long live independent film!

And check out Anat Baron’s Beer Wars if you’re interested in this topic. It’s available instantly on Netflix.

New MSP Ski Video!

New Criterion Cover Art

After a long hiatus, here's my latest entry in the Fake Criterion Cover thread over at theauteurs.com (I still refuse to call it by its new name).

The Third and the Seventh

Absolutely stunning use of CGI here.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The Vice Guide to Liberia

An incredibly harrowing documentary about contemporary Liberia, which remains one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin

Well, now.  Let's see if I can get my hands on some of this . . . The world's strongest beer.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin from BrewDog on Vimeo.

Dario Argento's "Suspira"

Suspiria is quite the experience.  It's an Italian horror movie that could be accurately described as candy-colored.  It's almost like a live-action cartoon at times, but remains frightening and disorienting.  Check it out.  It has recently been released on Blu-Ray in the UK, which is a great use of the format.

Still courtesy of dvdbeaver.com.

Title Sequence for Gillo Pontecorvo's "Burn!"

"Funny Games" (US) Posters

The poster for Michael Haneke's Funny Games, designed by Akiko Stehrenberger recently got the nod for "Poster of the Decade" over at theauteurs.com.  I'm inclined to agree.  The winner is on the right, but I like both of them.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Karl Theodore Dreyer's silent masterpiece can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.  Part 1 below:

George Orwell: A Life in Pictures

A Documentary about George Orwell

George Orwell -- A Life in Pictures uses a bold and original approach to put him on the screen. Chris Langham plays the writer and every word he speaks is as written by Orwell himself. But the pictures are all 'invented' -- a specially created 'archive' because there's not a single frame of archive footage of Orwell in existence. Not even one word or one of his trademark hacking coughs on recorded audio. All that is left is one oil painting and a couple of hundred photographs. By bringing to life his extraordinary treasure trove of writing - nine books and some eight thousand pages of journalism, essays, diaries and letters -- the film creates a unique dramatised biography of Orwell. Written essays become authored documentary films shot in the style of the day; events described in diaries are 'captured' on home movies; and Movietone footage is manipulated to reveal Orwell in the trenches of the Spanish Civil War. From Eton and Burma to London and Paris, Orwell's writing -- poignant and polemical, scathing and sometimes just funny -- is at last caught on film. http://www.walltowall.co.uk/catalogue_detail.aspx?w2wprogram=55

From "Why I Am Not a Christian"

"We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world -- its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create." -- Bertrand Russell

Dogville

I just saw Lars von Trier's Dogville over the course of two nights and was struck by the sheer originality of the production and the devastating indictment of American society.  More on this later.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Napoleon's March

Charles Joseph Minard's figurative chart of Napoleon's Russian campaign.  Edward Tufte describes it as "probably the best statistical graph ever drawn." (click image for larger view)