Indeed!

 

I'll try to keep this one brief... I don't know why.  Well, my vacation's just about at an end, so naturally I'm getting this done now.  Okay, sure, this new Netflix documentary called Kiss the Ground... or should I format it like a TV show/movie?  "Kiss the Ground"?  I guess they'll never put it out on DVD, so perhaps the latter.  Or is it better that I don't have a copy of The Irishman on disc?  It wasn't that bad, was it?  Anyway, this new documentary from Josh and Rebecca Tickell... I believe I have a review of one of his earlier efforts called Fuel somewhere on here; I didn't care for it as much because a couple years earlier I saw a similar effort by two lesbians who drove across country in their Biodiesel-mobile, stopping at fast food restaurants all along the watchtower... along the way.  Boy, that's gonna be a tough one to find.

Anyway, okay, so "Kiss the Ground" might be a little too slick, or plow through its myriad topics way too fast, and I just gotta say, I love Hot Chocolate's "You Sexy Thing" as much as the next person, but... 1975?  Wow!  Didn't know it was that old.  And so, all complaints aside, "Kiss the Ground" is probably the most important documentary about the environment, our "America is the World's Breadbasket" way of life and everything that I've seen in my lifetime.  Okay, maybe there's an episode of Nova or two I'm forgetting, but I've boiled this one down to one graphic, and sure, there are a lot of graphics, charts, terms and probably statistics in this thing.  I mean, this is the kind of thing that oil companies used to disappear people over, am I right?  The graphic has to do with Profits Per Acre.  I don't even want to say the guy's name, lest he get into more trouble, but the guy seems to be doing pretty well!  So well, in fact, that he's moving his way up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs pretty good!  Might be at the top of it now, for all I know.  He and another Agri-fella are trying to lift other American farmers out of the poverty they're basically living in.  Apparently, the majority of these farmers are renters anyway.  His story is touching, too; if I remember correctly, the bank stopped bailing him out, even though the natural disasters kept coming.

But don't worry, non-fans of documentaries, there's plenty of celebrity endorsements to keep your attention: people like Tom Brady and Mrs. Tom Brady, Jason Mraz, and of course our favourite narrator of them all, Woody Harrelson.  We even see him in a recording booth at one point... oh, that's a different John Wick.  Oh well, can't win 'em all!  But yeah, very very slick production.  However they stabilize the tripods these days for the HDTV generation, keep it up.  I'm sure Good Fortune's probably good too, but "Kiss the Ground" is probably the Tickells' masterpiece.  The only thing left to do, really, is do a sequel some time in the future, maybe about ten years later.

****

-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan