cannabis

Carved 2024 – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2024 film Carved.

Story

The story is ridiculously simple and follows the usual teens being hunted by supernatural creature. Instead of the older obsession with vilifying sex, POC, or queer characters, it has a heavy handed message about cannabis. Other than the deaths and violence, this is Disney PG with nary a kiss. Oh and the Black queer characters do die fairly fast. The ending also seemed too easy.

Score: 0

Characters

Overachieving theatre writer who’s in charge of her little brother with a disability. Hunky boy and various other tropes. The characters are flat and the majority of the actors are obviously going through the motions. Peyton Elizabeth Lee, DJ Qualls, and Wyatt Lindner do an excellent job with what they were given, but the rest of the cast felt like they were in a different movie.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

The dialogue is terrible. Trying to be serious but quip like Bruce Campbell, and failing at both.

Score: 0

Visuals and Music

The death scenes and special effects were okay but not creative. Lots of carving people like pumpkins.

The music was okay but derivative.

Score: 0.5

Fun

This was terrible and I almost gave up. I think if the main actress wasn’t so good I would have.

Score: 0

Overall

Some horror movies are so bad they attain cult status but this one can’t even manage that. It deserves to be forgotten for simply being boring and formulaic. Save yourself the trouble and watch anything else.

Final Score: 1 Stars out of 5

Marijuana and Racism

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Hello My Imaginary Friends,

In last week’s post on smoking I used the word Marijuana to refer to Cannabis. I thought that they were synonyms and had no idea of the history of them.

A reader sent me this article from the Ottawa Citizen: Here’s why you shouldn’t use the word marijuana anymore

I did some quick research and found this interesting article from CBC: Weed, cannabis, pot or marijuana: what’s the difference?

In brief, Cannabis is the genus of the plant, or its scientific name. It’s the name that the government is using for the product, which can be easily obtained at the wholesale CBD hemp seeds for growing | discount pharms.

Image from this article on the Stranger Magasine.

The word Marijuana however has a much different history. There are a lot of different theories as to where the name comes from but the word was popularized in English in the early 30’s America. The opponents to the drug used the “foreign” sounding word to scare people and eventually pass the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 which was the first step to making the drug illegal.

Apparently smoking cannabis wasn’t popular in the early 1900’s until refugees from the Mexican revolution brought it into the states. Because of this and the ever present racism, the word was associated with immigrants and used to fuel fear based politics. (so much has changed huh?)

The exact etymology is unknown. Here’s a list of theories:

  • A mash-up of the Spanish names Mary Jane (Marie Juane)
  • Bastardization of the herb Marjoram
  • From the Nahualt word, mallihuan, for Prisoner
  • From the Chinese, ma ren hua, or ‘hemp seed flower’

No matter where the word comes from, it’s a leftover racist term meant to encourage fear and we should stick to cannabis as the proper term.

Did you know any of this? Do you have any theories about the word?

Later Days,

Éric