In the follow-up to his ground-breaking documentary ‘American Drug War,’ filmmaker Kevin Booth traces the fight against Federal drug regulation in the State of California. A public majority has spoken and said yes to states rights, allowing for the use of medicinal marijuana and opening up a new front in controversial medicinal ‘dispensaries.’ While users herald the freedom of legally-licensed “weed,” powerful forces at the DEA and law enforcement haven’t given up their federal enforcement power yet. Many dispensaries have been raided, targeting their distribution of marijuana and challenging their authority to rise into legitimate business. In the backdrop of this public dispute is the Dark Alliance– where governments handle the volume of drug trafficking and work with cartels and drug dealers to manage the drug flow. Just like the prohibition of alcohol, drugs have thrived on their illicit appeal, and doomed millions of non-violent offenders to incarceration and prosecution. Now, those swearing by the healing power of medicinal marijuana as well as those who simply refuse to be outlawed by a hypocritical rogue government are daring to stand up and declare that the violence, corruption and uncontrolled flow of drugs is due to the prohibition of the substance, not the substance itself. Big Pharma has put millions of non-“drug” users on hallucinogenic prescription drugs and instituted new forms of addiction and dependency, challenging our outdated notions that is only …

Part one of my Star Trek Nemesis review/analysis. I guess this is more of a retrospective look back on the features and why they didn’t work too well. I delve into some pointless details and swear a lot. On the whole I thought Nemesis was a slickly made movie. I liked the Remens look a lot. and the lighting was really nice, the visual fx much better since insurrection. This movie felt more authentic and more well made, but at the same time it felt rehashed, and tired. That’s the theme here. Even though Picard has a fresh copy of himself, the movie suffers from a lack of fresh ideas. Its another villain/revenge/doomsday device/picard and bad guy face off/thing explodes movie. It was always a shame to me we never saw a best of both worlds type movie or yesterday’s enterprise or chain of command, or heck even time’s arrow. The show had more latitude to experiment with stories. Because of the expensive risky nature of a feature film, they always stuck with the big dangerous bad guy/big ship/revenge/space battle/something big blows up plot to make it safer for general audiences. It was that catch 22 that I find fascinating, because the exact kind of movies they wanted to make don’t quite gel with the TNG cast. Had they kept the Enterprise D, kept some of the show writers to write larger feature scripts I think we’d have some kick ass TNG films. The sad truth is that no one took a risk. From feeling like that had to include the original cast (part of) in Generations (for box …