Michael Russnow: Black Swan: A Must See Even if Ballet Ain't Your Thing

I don't go to the ballet and have only seen one a long time ago. Interestingly, it was Swan Lake performed, as in the film Black Swan, at Lincoln Center in New York City.

It is an art form that doesn't interest me and I say this at the outset, because, as in the case of The Fighter, about which I recently wrote, though I'm not drawn to the arena I was captivated by the motion picture itself.

Like The Turning Point and Billy Elliot, two major films that dealt with similar subject matter, Black Swan is elevated by a story of conflict, hopes, unfulfilled dreams and the fear of failure, and in those areas the movie soars.

Plus, it's a mystery and a bit of a thriller, as we're not really sure what's going on at the beginning when we meet the young ballerina Nina Sayers, played so movingly by Natalie Portman. We see red marks on her body and it appears that perhaps her career will be cut short by a serious illness. Maybe it's leukemia or Hodgkins, we don't know. But we are saddened by the prospect, and that's all I'm going to tell those of you who haven't yet seen the film.

We are introduced to her mother, Erica, portrayed by the always surprising and still beautiful Barbara Hershey, and though we might be expecting a ballet version of Mama Rose, it's not quite so. There are similarities in the sense that there is a competitive drive she instills in her daughter, but it's not pathetic and there's no cruelty. She has missed her own chances and, yes, there may well be a vicarious thrill she experiences in her daughter's success, but she is loving and genuinely cares.

We also see the political world of ballet, the cutthroat competition exhibited by newly arrived dancer Lily, played by a fairly transparent but intriguing Mila Kunis. Lily is alternately likable and devious, and to the audience it's clear she wants to be the star, and the only way to get the principal role is to get rid of the timid and haunted Nina, whom she aggressively befriends.

All this, as Nina fights to become the White/Black Swan and to seduce the choreographer with her persona. However, Thomas Leroy, played in a tough, yet loving manner by French actor Vincent Cassel, would prefer a true sexual dalliance, as he'd had with the soon to retire, now over the hill ballet star, Beth MacIntyre, whose performance is conceived so well by an embittered Winona Ryder.

The writing by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, John J. McLaughlin, with the story by Heinz is taut and unpredictable, and the melodrama is kept to a minimum as any good suspense mystery should be. And it's wrapped together in a wonderful package by director Darren Aronofsky to such an extent that you are gripped from almost the beginning right until the captivating end.

Ballet may not be your thing and it may keep the box office grosses from setting any records. But if you like to watch beautiful images and at the same time engross yourself in a masterful world, at times unexpectedly keeping you at the edge of your seat, I recommend Black Swan as one of the best films of 2010, sure to be an Oscar contender in major categories.

Michael Russnow's website is ramproductionsinternational.com

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Michael F. Jacobson: The Next Big Thing for Food Labels

Wouldn't it be great to walk through the supermarket and be able to identify the healthiest products at a glance? Without even turning the package over and looking at Nutrition Facts panels?

Well, of course the healthiest foods in the supermarkets often don't come in packages at all: fresh fruits and vegetables. But for everything else, we rely on labels. And while Nutrition Facts labels are great and give consumers a great deal of useful information to guide their choices, they aren't as visible as the companies' marketing claims on the fronts of packages. Zooming through the supermarket, we can easily see that a box of cereal offers "IMMUNITY" to some unspecified disease ... but we have to pick up the box and flip it around only to find that the cereal is high in sugar, low in fiber and so on.

Front-of-package nutrition labeling is one of the hottest topics in food marketing today. Some companies, such as General Mills and PepsiCo, had used their own versions, with names like the "Goodness Corner," and "Smart Spot," respectively. One supermarket chain, Hannaford, has designed a system that assigns stars to foods based on sensible nutrition criteria. And other chains are using the NuVal system, which ranks every food on a nutrition scale of 1 to 100. But the goal should be to come up with one uniform set of symbols that would be used on all foods and would make the healthiest foods easy to spot, and the least healthy products easy to avoid.

The food industry tried coming up with an industry-wide system like this once before. That program was called Smart Choices and was based on many sensible criteria. But it allowed excessive amounts of sugar in cereals, did not require bread and other grain foods to contain any whole grains at all, and allowed added nutrients to cover up a food's poor nutritional quality. One wag (me) said that even vitamin-fortified sawdust would qualify for the special logo. But it didn't take a wag to question the appropriateness of the Smart Choices seal of approval on Froot Loops and other nutritionally questionable products. (Full disclosure: I resigned from an advisory committee that planned Smart Choices when it became clear that the program's nutrition criteria would not be smart enough.)

Just last week, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing Institute (the supermarket industry) announced that they would try again to design a front-of-package labeling system. Clearly the food industry wants to come up with its own system before the Food and Drug Administration comes up with one for them (that's what we've been urging the FDA to do since 2006).

The Institute of Medicine recently recommended that a credible front-of-package labeling system should focus on calories and three nutrients: saturated fat, trans fat and sodium. (I would drop trans fat, because fewer products still contain it, and add refined sugars, because some foods and beverages contain so much of it.) But instead of repeating the raw numbers on the Nutrition Facts panel, a useful system should provide a visual cue as to whether those nutrients are present in low, medium, or high amounts. One possibility would be to use green, yellow, or red traffic light symbols, as the British government has urged companies there to use (few do). You can be sure that the food industry is doing everything it can to avoid having to acknowledge that a given food is "high" in any of those unsavory nutrients.

Whether the government can (or even wants to) overcome that resistance will determine whether the next front-of-package labeling system will serve consumers or food marketers.

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