Your Inner Fish is a well made television style documentary, three episode series. Episode 1 – Your Inner Fish, Episode 2 – Your Inner Reptile and Episode 3 – Your Inner Monkey. All three episodes are entertaining, informative, and offer a trip through time going back to when prehistoric fish swam in the oceans and animal life on dry land apparently didn’t exist. The story delves into areas of research that have changed what was thought to be true up until now.
The Your Inner Fish series is one from which everyone can learn. The documentary presents facts and offers evidence to support the ideas explored. In addition to Neil Shubin, a Fish Paleontologist, a number of well know specialists in related areas are interviewed or are followed as they go from lab to remote locations to do their work of scientifically exploring the origins of the human primate. Paleontology, Anatomy, Biology and other disciplines are relevant, important contributors to understanding human evolution.
Forks Over Knives is both a personal journey story and an educational documentary. It explores the world of nutrition and the damage foods derived from animal-based food products (meat and dairy) may be doing to human health. Forks Over Knives also makes the claim that “most, if not all” degenerative diseases that plague humans can be controlled or reversed by moving away from animal-based and processed foods.
Forks Over Knives is written and directed by Lee Folkerson, who for personal health reasons, looks at the affect of processed and animal-based foods on his health. The research of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, a nutritional biochemist from Cornell University, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn a former surgeon at the well know Cleveland Clinic is highlighted. According to the filmmaker, Esselystyn and Campbell’s separate, independent studies into degenerative diseases, proves there is a connection between eating processed and animal-based foods and diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other problems.
The opening scenes of Forks Over Knives begins with the following quotes, “the average American now carries twenty-three extra pounds.” “ Heart disease and stroke will claim the lives of 460 thousand American Women,” and “We’re talking about diabetes and hypertension, bone disease and osteoporosis…” also facts about the food we eat and health problems in the United States and other countries. Food and the drugs we take may be extremely harmful to the health of adults and children in the long run. According to the film the US spends five times more on health care then the defense budget. Why are there so many health problems? Bill Maher is quoted saying, “…There’s no money in healthy people or dead people. It’s the people in the middle; people who are alive with one or more chronic conditions…” Others like Michele Obama talk about “Obesity,” and other conditions as seen in a montage of film clips. These facts are well documented and the problem well stated to set the investigation conducted by the documentary.
One of the marks of a good documentary story is not to have a string of talking head interviews. In Forks Over Knives there is a continuing montage of action and “B” roll that parallels what is claimed with graphic evidence making for a convincing argument.
Forks Over Knives takes an unexpected turn when it takes goes to China and a study done there initiated by Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai, who is suffering from bladder cancer. Six hundred and fifty thousand researchers cataloged the mortality patterns caused by several types of cancer for the years between 1973 and 1975. The study covered every county in China and over 850 million people.
Based on the study by Dr. Campbell they found some important correlations between what people in China were eating and the types of cancer and other diseases they contracted. An in-depth food and nutrition study ensued looking at the diet and lifestyles of people over many years. The results were conclusive. In 1990 after ten years of intensive work, Dr. Campbell and his team published the China Study. It identified no less than ninety-four thousand correlations between diet and disease.
Forks Over Knivesis a documentary that may well change your life. There is important information here that cannot be ignored. This is a film well worth seeing, that makes a definitive statement based on fact and not speculation. It is informative and educational. It may save your life.
FORKS OVER KNIVES – 2011 – 96 Minutes – Written and Directed by Lee Folkerson – Virgil Films Entertainment
LINKS
Forks Over Knives
Books by James R Martin Available on Amazon
Listen Learn Share: How & Why Listening, Learning and Sharing can Transform Your Life Experience In Practical Ways
Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.
Actuality Interviewing and Listening: How to conduct successful interviews for nonfiction storytelling, actuality documentaries and other disciplines … (Documentary and Nonfiction Storytelling)
Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead is a personal story directed by Joe Cross, who finding himself one hundred pounds overweight, loaded up with steroids and trying to deal with an autoimmune disease, decides he’d had enough. This documentary begins with Joe weighing in at 310 pounds. He doesn’t see any future in his current condition except pain, suffering and an early demise. Doctors and conventional medicine seem unable to help him.
Joe Cross, who lives in Australia, decides to come to the Unites States where he plans a sixty-day road trip across the country eating only fresh veggie and fruit juice he makes in the back of his car. Joe’s goal is to lose weight and improve his health to the point where he will be able to stop taking all the medications and live a healthy life.
Joe starts his journey in New York City where he feels there will be the most temptation to go off his juice fast. In NYC he talks to people on the street to get their reaction to what he is trying to do. Joe meets and talks to about 500 people as he travels. In a truck stop in Arizona he meets Phil Staples, an obese truck driver who suffers from the same autoimmune disorder that he does. Phil weighs 429 pounds. Joe tells Phil about what he is doing and mentions that if Phil ever needs help to give him a call. One day back in Australia, Joe gets a call from Phil who is desperate.
What emerges is a documentary about Joe Cross and his journey along with Phil Staples amazing transition from extreme obesity to a healthy life. The juice fast not only helps each of them to lose weight, it also helps them overcome their autoimmune problem by detoxing their bodies. Soon they are able to get off all the medications they have been taking.
The documentary shows both men getting checkups to make sure it is safe to do the fast. Also checkups along the way. Joe emphatically suggests to others in the film that they also check with their doctors about doing this kind of fast.
Unlike Super Size Me, another hybrid documentary with someone on a mission, Fat, Sick & Nearly Deadpresents a positive story in which it advocates good health. This documentary is inspirational. It presents a simple remedy for getting one’s physical and ultimately mental life back on track. Fast, Sick & Nearly Dead comes across as a serious nonfiction story advocating one way of obtaining good health.
Fat, Sick & Nearly Deadis well shot and edited in a way that keeps the pace moving. The progress that Joe, Phil and others make is amazing to watch. The documentary uses several animated scenes to explain an idea or situation. No particular juicer or other products are pitched, although there may be some incidental product placement. The focus is the idea of fasting on vegetable and fruit juices for a certain period of time to detox one’s body and gain a foothold on a healthy life style. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead shows the progress of others beside Joe and Phil that testify to the success of the idea.
Review written by James R (Jim) R Martin
[box] FAT, SICK & NEARLY DEAD – A JOE CROSS FILM – Directed BY Joe Cross, Kurt Engfehr – 96 Minutes – 2011 – Director of Photography Daniel Marracino, Editors, Alison Amron and Christopher Seward. REBOOTYOURLIFE – http://www.jointhereboot.com/[/box]
TRAILER
LINKS
Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead
Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.
According to author Christopher McDougall the basis for this book and the fast-moving adventure story he tells, was a question? Why does my foot hurt? Why do I and other runners eventually sustain all types of injuries? But this story has a lot more going for it than why runners get injuries. It’s a great read and hard to put down at times even if you’re the type of person who fights off the urge to exercise by lying down.
You will immediately be pulled into the Born To Runstory, as if you’re sitting there with McDougall in “the dim lobby of an old hotel on the edge of the desert” in Mexico, as McDougall obsessively waits on the slim chance that the a man he doesn’t even know exists might appear. Caballo Blanco, the mystery man of Mexico’s Sierra Nevada region and Copper Canyon is that man.
McDougal’s style of writing is first person. He tells you the story as if you were sitting down having a bear with him. He weaves together a great nonfiction story that covers his experience and introduces a cast of real live characters including famous distance runners, trainers, scientists, drug dealers, and the fabled running Tarahumara Indians who live in the Copper Canyon region of Mexico’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
For me, someone who has run for thirty years, this story hits home. Coincidentally my son gave me Born To Run as a present for my recent birthday. After all those ears of running my right knee started aching along with nearby muscles in that leg. I have always ran for exercise. I’ve run a few 5K’s and a 10K once. People have criticized my running style for my lack of “heal/toe” action. But until now I never had an injury or ache. Getting into a more natural style of running, as described in the book along with switching to a more minimalist type of running shoe alleviated the problems with my knee.
Born To Runis not only a great story it introduces a number of ideas and concepts about running that I never knew about. Good story and some great information and tips on running. What’s not to like?
Your Inner Fish is a well made television style documentary, three episode series. Episode 1 – Your Inner Fish, Episode 2 – Your Inner Reptile and Episode 3 – Your Inner Monkey. All three episodes are entertaining, informative, and offer a trip through time going back to when prehistoric fish swam in the oceans and animal life on dry land apparently didn’t exist. The story delves into areas of research that have changed what was thought to be true up until now.
