By Mark HadleyMonday 26 Jul 2010MoviesReading Time: 3 minutes
Inception
Rating: M
Distributor: Warner Bros
Release Date: July 22, 2010
Inception has academy award written all over it. Its acting, directing and special effects marry together to produce an achievement only seen every decade or so. It delivers bucket loads of pure, thrilling entertainment but its trump card has to be a truly inventive story. Not since The Matrix has a film so twisted and teased the minds of its audience.
Somewhere in the not too distant future chemists have managed to create drugs that allow two people to share the same dream state. This discovery has been harnessed by operatives who offer to steal secrets locked in the minds of power brokers for the right fee. It’s the ultimate in industrial espionage. However a team of infiltrators attempting to plant rather than extract information find themselves trapped in the deepest recesses of their victim’s mind, racing to escape before their own sanity is lost.
Inception is a sci-fi struggle to discover reality, but it takes a radically different path to The Matrix. Whereas that particular franchise maintained that the truth, however painful, was worth much more than our creature comforts, Inception leads the viewer to the conclusion that happiness is actually our greatest goal – and it’s worth living a lie if it means holding on to the ones you love. An intriguing proposition in a world that is beginning to believe that connection and community are the highest values.
Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
Rating: PG
Distributor: Network TEN
Release Date: Fridays, 9:00 PM
Not content with improving the eating habits of Brits, Jamie Oliver heads to the US to tackle the folk of Huntington, one of America’s most unhealthy towns. Following in the footsteps of Jamie’s School Dinners and Jamie’s Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution is seeking nothing short of a total mind shift for members of an increasingly obese nation.
The series sees him come up against hardened attitudes towards eating that have resulted in even harder arteries and bulging waistlines. As in previous series, the school system becomes the battleground with Jamie trying to convince children who can’t put a name to a tomato that vegetables could be their friends.
You’ve got to hand it to Jamie for trying his best to reform the world. No wonder the queen gave him a knighthood. There is something admirable about the way he has used his success to build up lives rather than a career.
Without doubt a balanced diet is not a bad place to start with improving a person’s lot. My only quibble in an otherwise entertaining program is that it’s not a good place to finish. Jamie has all the confidence in the world that better food will result in better people. But it was apparently the wisest man in the world who penned the observation, “The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant.”
Even if we were to successfully navigate those circumstances that shape our lives and ensure we put better things in our tummies, would we be able to diet away the flaws in our characters? The good people of Huntington face bigger hurdles than their attitudes to lettuce.