If you like Marvel Comic, Iron Man could be an entertaining movie for you. It has full action, high-tech show off, heroic scenes and, you might not like it, propaganda about stereotypical evil Asians so US must use 'necessary action' to deal with it.
It's easily understood according to American (Bush administration) campaign about with-us-or-against-us counter terrorism obsession. It's not first time Hollywood portrayed Asians in negative ways, there have been so many times, countless, actually.
For example, high award-nominated movie The Deer Hunter in 1978. The Deer Hunter which took home 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Then, and since, however, the movie has been ridiculed by antiwar critics for the way it turned history on its head in its use of reversed iconic images that seemingly placed all guilt for death and destruction in Vietnam on America's enemies.
Most famously, it appropriated a then-unforgettable Pulitzer prize-winning photo of Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam's national police chief, executing an unarmed, bound prisoner during the Tet Offensive with a point blank pistol shot to the head. In the film, however, it was the evil enemy which made American prisoners do the same to themselves as they were forced to play Russian Roulette for the amusement of their sadistic Vietnamese captors. That was something that had no basis in reality.
No need to mention some Rambo series, some James Bond series, parody Hot Shots series and many other series and single movies.
Iron Man starts on Afghanistan Battleground. A convoy of equipped-armor Humvees carrying an ultra-rich man, Tony Stark, ambushed by Taliban Militias. Since Tony is not only a businessman but also engineer who can design and make weapon, he is forced to make a deadly weapon for Taliban.
What happen next, you can guess. Instead of giving the weapon to Taliban, he slaughters his captors and back to US, offers help to authorities to destroy Taliban with his prototype super-suit he built at Afghanistan cave. You can guess the rest of story after it. It's an easy plot.
Iron Man full of such reversals The Deer Hunter had, beginning with the obvious fact that, in Afghanistan, it is Americans who have imprisoned captured members of Al Qaeda, Taliban and many innocents sold by North Alliance in exceedingly grim conditions, not vice-versa. Again, how Evil Asians on Hollywood movies.
In reality, US military has been deeply involved in Hollywood industry since Silent Era. But now the temporary arrangements of the past have changed into a full-time, sitting on a floor in a Los Angeles office building. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself has established entertainment liaison offices to ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way.
It's a mutualism. Military grants access to high-tech and unavailable gears. As return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs, propaganda as Pentagon's agendas. It's like, don't bother to read military journals to get to know its latest equipments, just see some movies.
Interesting to see what Roger Ebert wrote:The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration, but if we must have one more (and the Evil Marketing Geniuses at Marvel MegaIndustries will do their utmost to ensure that we always will), "Iron Man" is a swell one to have. Not only is it a good comic book movie (smart and stupid, stirring and silly, intimate and spectacular), it's winning enough to engage even those who've never cared much for comic books or the movies they spawn. Like me.
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The Turkish has a proverb for coffee, ‘black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love’. Coffee was originally from Ethiopia. In Ethiopia the main coffee production is still from wild coffee tree forests. Now, coffee grown in over 70 countries. As commodity, coffee is number 2 in world trading money volume, only lost to number 1, oil.
Coffee trees produce their best beans when grown at high altitudes in a tropical climate where there is rich soil. That zone lays between latitudes 25 degrees North and 30 degrees South. There is a zone with tropical climate and has rain forests.
Besides location, other factors affect the quality and flavor of coffee. These include the variety of the plant, the chemistry of the soil in which it is grown, the weather, particularly the amount of rainfall and sunshine, and the precise altitude at which the coffee grows. Combined with the way coffee bean processed, coffee comes in so many taste and aroma. The combination of factors is so complex, that even from a single plantation one finds variation in quality.
World Largest Coffee Producers
Brazil is the largest coffee beans producer for decades with an average output of 28% of the total world production. Colombia is in second place at only 16%, with Indonesia less than half that at 7%.
In Brazil, with a seemingly infinite space for its production, coffee plantations cover vast territories, the need for hundreds of people to manage and operate them, and produced in large quantities of coffee. A Brazilian coffee is 'soft'. Arabica and robusta are grown in Brazil in different locations for each types. A fine cup of Brazilian clear, sweet, low-acid coffee.
Colombia takes position as world's number 2 seriously and works hard to maintain high standards of excellence. The result is consistently good coffee grown carefully and with great pride in thousands of small family farms coffee throughout the country. Extremely rugged landscape provides the perfect environment for the growth of coffee. But a very rugged terrain also made historically difficult to transport the grain of coffee harvested for production and shipment centers. Even today, this is often done by mule or Jeep. Such care and attention on results consistently good, mild coffees, with a well-balanced acidity. Colombian Supremo, the highest level, has a delicate, aromatic sweetness while High Grade could be a little more smooth and acid.
Indonesia still handles coffee production traditionally. Indonesia is composed of thousands of islands. Several larger islands; Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi; are known throughout the world for the fine, quality coffees which grow there. Hundreds of 1-2 acre farms in those three islands combine to secure the country's third place position. Indonesian coffees are noted for a pronounced rich, full body and mild acidity.
Indonesia is also known for its fine old coffees. These are the coffee stored at warehouses for long time. During time, warm and damp climate make coffee has deeper body, less acidity and also stronger. It is a process which cannot been matched by any modern technology.
Types of Coffee
There are several species of coffee trees, but most commercial growers use mainly Arabica and Robusta coffee species. Arabica trees are believed to produce the highest quality beans. However, Robusta trees are more economically viable for their heartiness. Coffee rarely are designated as Robusta and Arabica beans. The soil and environmental conditions which play a significant role in flavouring beans, that all coffee beans are classified according to their geographical origin. Kilimanjaro coffee comes from Tanzania feet near Mount Kilimanjaro, for example, while Java coffee comes from the Indonesian islands.
Espresso, made by brewing espresso roasted beans at high pressure, is a strong black coffee. Machiatto is espresso with a touch of steamed milk. Cappuccino is still thirds of espresso, steamed milk, and a cap of frothed milk. Cafe latte is a third of espresso and two-thirds steamed milk. The favorite drink French, Cafe au Lait is made with strong coffee (espresso), and generous servings of hot milk. With flavored coffee; hazelnut, walnut and maple raspberry, is produced by adding oils flavored beans during roasting. Depending on the manufacturer, the flavors can be natural or artificial.
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Chevolution is a documentary film directed by Trisha Ziff and Luis Lopez. It was funded by Red Envelope Entertainment, the distribution arm of Netflix. The film examines how the famous photograph of Che Guevara had became an iconic image of rebellion and political engagement. Not just that, the photograph had also evolved into a pop icon. It beat the famous picture of Colonel Sanders, logo of Kentucky Fried Chicken. You can see now all over the world, Che's photograph is on flags, t-shirts, jackets, emblems, etc wore by young college girls.
Che Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina in 1928. His real name was Ernesto Guevara. He got a name 'Che' because of an Argentinian like him used to say 'che...' while talking. Some part of his life, while he was young described on film The Motorcycle Diaries.
After studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires he worked as a doctor. While in Guatemala in 1954, he was a witness to the socialist government of President Jacobo Arbenz overthrown by a US-backed military coup. Disgusted by what he saw, Guevara decided to join the Cuban revolutionary, Fidel Castro, in Mexico.
Chevolution starts there, after Che met Fidel. It explains how Che expressed concern over Fulgencio Batista rule in Cuba, how he saw Castro as the rebels' medic and and how, as if taken from a chapter of 100 Years of Solitude, a string of poorly lost battles somehow culminated in victory that brought the Cuban government as we now know it to power.
At the time the photo was taken, Che was in a deep state of sadness and anger over the La Coubre explosion, a counterrevolutionary terrorist attack that killed at least 75 people and injured some 200 more in March 1960. At the funeral service, the photo journalist from Havana, Alberto Korda snapped his picture. It was not published until 1967 but then an Italian mogul came through and scooped it up to use on posters for profit. Then an Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick made a seemingly subtle rendition in graphic art form that eventually became the sole standard by which all other variations of the image of Che are created.
Korda's family has been fighting for the royalty of the photo while Fidel Castro would not allow a copyright on the photo because he didn’t believe in copyrights though he used Korda as his personal photographer for 10 years.
The film contains interviews with actors Gael Garcia Bernal, Antonio Banderas, as well as political and cultural personalities from Cuba, South America, the United States and Europe. It also contain interviews with some regular people about Che; from a young guitarist in England who thinks Che was the savior against right-wings, to a Cuban-American student who thinks Che was no more than a savage communist militant.
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Nothing about Robert Rodriguez is conventional. His first movie is El Mariachi in 1992 where he was the director, writer, editor, director of photography, and music score. To finance El Mariachi, he took volunteer as laboratory rat. For more than a month, a local research hospital paid him to ingest an experimental cholesterol drug. Combined with his own money, he spent $ 7,000 to make El Mariachi. Originally, the film intended for the Spanish-language low-budget home-video market but then Columbia Pictures invested in it as distribution company. Fortunate for him, the movie won the Audience Award at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival; at the time, it was the lowest-budget film ever released by a major studio.
Even after Rodriguez got backing from Columbia for his next projects, he didn't go by the book. When studio executives wanted to bring in an outside editor to work on Desperado, his follow-up to Mariachi, Desperado, starring Antonio Banderas, Rodriguez demanded to do it himself and won. Desperado itself was not actually a sequel of El Mariachi. It was much more a remake. Also while making From Dusk Till Dawn, he insisted on using a non union crew.
His stubborn head not always successful. While directing Sin City (2005), Directors Guild of America (DGA) forbid Frank Miller's name for co-director in movie's credit. DGA stated that only 'legitimate team' can share co-director credit, which is same rule doesn't apply to Wachowski or Hughes brothers. Rodriguez insisted that Miller direct the film with him because he considered the visual style of Miller's comic art to be just as important as his own in the film. By DGA's force, Rodriguez resigned from DGA and back to work outside major studio once again. He had to lose his next big project in Paramount Pictures.
The breakout film for Rodriguez was Spy Kids (2001). A film that grossed more than $ 110 million in domestic box office and earned him the confidence and cash to settle in Austin, Texas, with his family. One of his son is named Rebel. He rented two soundstages and turned his garage into a series of post-production. He named it Troublemaker. The following films, Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over was shot entirely with HD cameras and edited at Troublemaker.
At the Toronto International Film Festival in 1992, Rodriguez met his next partner in crime, Quentin Tarantino. Quentin Tarantino was earning rapturous praise for his thriller Reservoir Dogs. Robert Rodriguez had recently made an even bigger splash, selling his $7,000-budgeted debut feature El Mariachi to Columbia Pictures and signing a two-year deal with the studio. As the story goes, they spent ninety minutes talking in a hotel lobby. Back in Los Angeles, the upstart directors discovered that they both had offices on the Sony lot.
They also discover that they had same similarity; out of the book, out of mainstream style. Quentin appeared as cameo in some Rodriguez's movies and gust directed one scene in Sin City. Tarantino is not a typical director. He collects rare 35-mm prints and doesn't even use monitors on set while directing. After work together in Sin City, Tarantino now says he'll shoot his own digital feature.
Rodriguez's movies are not about narrative but about style. He is master in editing and digital visual effect. As Rodriguez refines the tools of digital filmmaking, and the liberty that comes with them, others are slow to follow. Hollywood purists tend to dismiss the geeks in the business as more interested in technology than storytelling.
Rodríguez not only has the usual credits of producing, directing and writing his films, he also frequently serves as editor, director of photography, camera operator, composer, production designer, visual effects supervisor, and sound editor on his films. This has earned him the nickname of "the one-man film crew."
Alone in his austin garage, he is preparing his next project and learning more digital movie making.
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