I debated adding a spoiler alert at the beginning of my last post, then I remembered: you can’t spoil true events. Without the documentary-style editing, Wild Wild Country could’ve passed for a Wes Anderson film.
Let’s meet some more characters.
I don’t think pandemic updates are the blog content anyone is interested in right now, so why don’t I instead do an upbeat write-up about a docuseries featuring a cult in 1980s Oregon?
This story is so farfetched that the filmmakers couldn’t compress it into a standard two-hour documentary. Instead, the Wild Wild Country docuseries is made up of six episodes, each lasting a little over an hour. I have now been subjected to 400 minutes of footage showing burgundy-clad guru-worshipping settlers pissing off their redneck neighbours with their casual sexing ways, and I still have many questions.
Many.
This guy’s face says it all:
Question number one: How come this moment in history is seemingly absent from pop culture references?
Everybody knows about the Manson Family. Old millennials like myself still think about Heaven’s Gate when they see black Nikes. The Branch Davidians’ David Koresh is the reason aviator glasses went out of style (they’re back because people forgot about David Koresh). Jonestown gave birth to the phrase “drinking the Kool Aid”. Rajneeshpuram, somehow, disappeared off the map and faded into obscurity.
Yet, the founder of the Rajneesh movement had more followers than Manson, Applewhite, Koresh, and Jones combined! Without further ado, here’s the man who was charismatic to attract more than 10,000 followers worldwide:
Alright, I have things to say about the Obama-produced documentary, American Factory. This documentary is about a Chinese company repurposing a long-shuttered GM plant in the US as an automotive glass factory. Apparently, labour can be cheap enough in the US for Chinese businessmen to make a profit!
When I learned that this documentary revolved around an automotive glass factory, I had low expectations of its entertainment value. No part of me expected the documentary to be anything like a Will Ferrel movie.
The Jacobim Mugatu of this film is Fuyao’s CEO, Cao Dewang, who owns no fewer than two (identical!) oil paintings of his image.
Click here to read the first part of this post.
We’ve all known someone who has been involved in an MLM (multi-level marketing) business. In the early 90s, I attended a Tupperware party as Mom’s accessory. The host had me reach into a bag for two prizes, which was a long, plastic spoon designed to extract maraschino cherries or olives out of their skinny jar and a serrated plastic scraper used for combing ridges in the icing around a cake. The reason I remember the prizes is because the host had to explain what they were. You know the prizes suck when they require an explanation.
Continue reading “A second helping of backhanded helping hands.”
I’m not into horror films, but Betting on Zero is excellent. It’s a documentary that focuses on nutrition supplement giant Herbalife, which incorporated in 1979 in the Cayman Islands. As in, the tax haven Cayman Islands.
