here's my recent netflixings.

"national geographic: secrets of jerusalem's holiest sites"
ermph, i expected more from this. it wasn't terribly exciting, just a little bit informative of 3 separate holy sites from each of the major religions tied to jerusalem, the history of those sites, and the current state of those sites.

"hacking democracy"
this film chronicles a lady who asked a question and followed up on it. bev harris wanted to know how electronic voting machines work, if they are reliable, and can they be tampered with. the further she delves into this, the more she becomes a truthful vote advocate. if votes cannot be correctly tallied and reported, then there is a failure of democracy for the people, by the people. bev harris creates black box voting, a watchdog group. it's mostly one manufacturer of electronic voting machines in particultar that is the one being called into question. the way their system works is completely private, top secret stuff, but they claim it's bullet proof. bev harris doubts the code is that secure when others have reported irregularities so she does some internet detective work and finds that some dumb-dumb has put their entire code online without any passwords. then the company sues her for stealing. it's quite fun and amazing to watch this pursuit. (and sad to see the corruption though you know it exists) what's truly baffling though is someone in the film who is responsible for the votes in her district, let's just call her voting supervisor because i forgot her name and title. this voting supervisor noticed that clearly the voting machines were tabulating things incorrectly when the results were in the minus (how can you have minus votes?) but when bev harris and black box voting went down to the supervisor's office, she was not helpful at all in the investigation that there could be voting fraud. it's just an interesting film and i recommend it.

"fast food nation"
i never read the book but thought it was time to watch the film. since i'm already converted, one might say by being vegan, there's not much point for me to read a book about how fast food is bad for you. i'm sure there's lots of good stuff in there and that's why i wanted to see the film, to get a sense of what i'm missing out on, though i know the author is not vegan and just wants healthier options out there. when you watch the special features, you see that the author is also quite pissed at corporate greed and that is why he does not eat at fast food chains anymore, because he does not want those ruthless bastards to have a single penny from him, to paraphrase it. first off, the film is not a documentary. it's a fictional work with the spirit of the book. it covers so many issues and is intertwined with several character stories in order to accomplish this. though there are some flaws, overall it's done quite well and i recommend this one too.