Home | Community | Message Board

Sporeworks
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
Invisibledwpineal
Psychedelic Artist
 User Gallery


Registered: 07/20/06
Posts: 4,667
Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011)
    #14294582 - 04/15/11 08:50 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

I personally can't wait to see this :volcano:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/movies/square-grouper-movie-review.html

Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011)

Billy Corben, the director of “Cocaine Cowboys,” continues his adventures in the drug trades with “Square Grouper,” a curiously inert documentary about pot smuggling in South Florida in the 1970s and ’80s. (A square grouper is a bale of marijuana.)

Mr. Corben has found three potentially interesting stories to follow. The first concerns the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, whose Miami branch was made up of American hippies with a puritanical streak. They were against oral sex, masturbation and homosexuality, but embraced marijuana, which they smuggled from Jamaica, as a God-given herb. Even the children smoked giant spliffs.

The second part is about the Black Tuna Gang, ordinary-businessmen-turned-Miami-pot-smugglers who were dealt with particularly harshly by the law. And the third tells the story of Everglades City, a town that turned to pot smuggling when deprived of its livelihood from fishing.

The film mixes period footage with visually unappealing contemporary interviews. If you’re expecting voluble, outsize personalities with colorful war stories, you’ll be disappointed. The former smugglers, almost all of whom spent time in prison, seem as weary and matter of fact as the law enforcement officers who snared them.

“Square Grouper,” with its jaunty soundtrack, has a strangely larky tone as it skims the surface of these stories in a desultory way. Mr. Corben seems disapproving of the law, whose zealous enforcement harshed the country’s mellow. (The segment about the Black Tuna Gang gets bogged down in legal maneuvering.) But his smugglers aren’t romantic rebels. They’re ordinary people (well, not the Coptics), who made money illegally and got caught.

“Square Grouper” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). There’s pot smoking, swearing and talk of Jimmy Buffett.

SQUARE GROUPER

The Godfathers of Ganja

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Directed by Billy Corben; directors of photography, Randy Valdes, Matt Staker, Jordy Klein, Ralf Gonzalez and Benjamin Rabbers; edited by Jorge Diaz; music by DJ Le Spam; produced by Alfred Spellman, Mr. Corben and Lindsey Snell; released by Magnolia Pictures. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlineshroom_boom
boomer
Male User Gallery

Registered: 03/28/11
Posts: 61
Loc: michigan
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
Re: Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011) [Re: dwpineal]
    #14295501 - 04/15/11 12:54 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

im excited it looks really good and the church dudes make me laugh but the damn things only showing in florida and new york


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibledwpineal
Psychedelic Artist
 User Gallery


Registered: 07/20/06
Posts: 4,667
Re: Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011) [Re: shroom_boom]
    #14295590 - 04/15/11 01:19 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

yeah I watched all the old footage from the Ethiopian Coptic Zionist Church, it was a 20/20 special and they hosted it on their website

http://www.squaregroupermovie.com/

it was a really interesting watch. Same with the other 2 parts of the story. I don't usually agree with movie critics, so I'll have to see this for myself :smile:

Thanks so much for saying that Shroom_boom! I live close to one of those theaters!!!!!!! I would not have realized they were screening near me if not for your comment... +:mushroom2:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineAdamist
ℚṲℰϟ✞ЇѺℵ ℛ∃Åʟḯ†У
Male User Gallery

Registered: 11/23/01
Posts: 10,211
Loc: Bloomington, IN
Last seen: 8 years, 10 months
Re: Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011) [Re: dwpineal]
    #14298342 - 04/15/11 10:18 PM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

“Square Grouper” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). There’s pot smoking, swearing and talk of Jimmy Buffett.




:lolsy:


--------------------
:heartpump: { { { ṧ◎ηḯ¢ αʟ¢ℌ℮мƴ } } } :heartpump:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Invisibledwpineal
Psychedelic Artist
 User Gallery


Registered: 07/20/06
Posts: 4,667
Re: Square Grouper: The Godfathers of Ganja (2011) [Re: Adamist]
    #14316084 - 04/19/11 08:35 AM (12 years, 9 months ago)

Okay I saw the movie, and thought it was a lot of fun. Maybe not as engaging as Cocaine Cowboys, but it had a lot of history that was new and they covered each of the 3 stories in good detail. After the movie the director came out for a Q & A and that was really fun and we got some answers to some nagging questions. I want to see it again, it was rich with a lot of details and cool characters.

The director said that they'd be releasing the movie free online this week I believe. I think he said it would be on Netflix and maybe viewable online (can't remember :burnone:)

Saw this article today...

http://www.nyunews.com/arts/2011/04/19/19square/

"Square Grouper" chronicles a lost era in marijuana history

To answer the question that's probably at the front of your mind right now, a "square grouper" is an enormous bale of pot, so named by a tiny community of grouper fishermen outside of Miami — who, after their commercial fishing market was decimated by local wildlife regulations, collectively refocused their entire local economy around pot smuggling. These 300-plus-pound, burlap-bound bales have been the preferred method for smuggling marijuana into Miami from Colombia or the Caribbean for more than a decade. The name caught on as the bales, often cast overboard in skirmishes with the DEA and the FBI, began to constitute the ultimate find for many beachcombers and boat captains who went fishing for square groupers.

Its title aside, however, "Square Grouper" shares little in common with lighthearted and lifestyle-focused "stoner film" releases ("Super High Me," for example) that have taken on the subject in documentaries over the past decade. The film is helmed by director Billy Corben, perhaps best known for his previous documentary, "Cocaine Cowboys."

While "Square Grouper" plays a little slowly next to the violent, adrenaline-saturated "Cocaine Cowboys," the film nonetheless offers much-needed continuity to the conspicuous gap in the historical timeline of pot in America, gaping between "Reefer Madness," "Harmless?" and anti-drug campaigns linking marijuana smuggling to Al Qaeda. In a broad sense, it begs the question of when, exactly, marijuana was substantiated by legislation and public opinion not as a plant, but as "dope." More narrowly, however, "Square Grouper" follows the bizarre social and economic landscapes that formed in Miami as these questions were brought to bear.

Relying heavily on a strong soundtrack to narrow the space between its meticulously researched historical footage and interviews of present-day subjects, the film captures a moment in time and a historical and political transformation of federal laws, international policy, public opinion and local economies. It does so by depicting a trio of perhaps the most unlikely drug kingpins one could ever imagine as they become pinched squarely between these greater movements of law and society that defined the beginning of America's "war on drugs."

"Square Grouper's" subjects are, respectively, the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, the Black Tuna Gang and seemingly the entire male population of Everglades City, Fla. The Coptics were a small group of college-educated, mostly Jewish, white kids from the Northeast who, after traveling to Jamaica and converting to Zionism, used the guise of religion to set up an extensive smuggling network. They made their home base on Star Island in Miami, next to Al Capone's former residence, and made almost no effort to conceal the bulk of their activities, relying instead on their First Amendment right as a federally recognized church to name their own sacraments.

The Black Tuna Gang, as conspicuous as it sounds, was in fact a pair of childhood friends from Philadelphia. Along with their accountant, they leveraged their modest business know-how to begin a smuggling operation without spilling a single drop of blood. The city of Everglades, as previously mentioned, was turned upside down when a combination of commercial fishing regulations and a booming drug import put expensive, customized cars in every driveway and gold chains around previously sun-bleached and salt-drenched necks.

So although most people are familiar with the deeply antiquated dialogues originating from the "Reefer Madness" era and the blood-soaked "Scarface" archetypes that comprise the history of cocaine, "Square Grouper's" greatest strength lies in its ability to offer a window into a ludicrous and unrelatable period in the history of drugs and law enforcement, when pot was popular enough to be a drug but not quite strong enough to be "dope"; as hippies and rednecks were transformed, overnight, into kingpins; as the overzealous soldiers of the FBI and DEA dramatically wielded shotguns in massive "operations" to "take down" these almost exclusively nonviolent offenders.

"Grouper" lacks dynamism as a narrative work. Its undeniable value is as a historical documentary, not drug-centered entertainment or a self-righteous stoner flick. The powerful and evocative impression left by seeing the 6-year-old children of Coptic Church members toking furiously on a joint the size of an ice cream cone, or the DEA apprehension of Black Tuna Gang kingpin Robert Platshorn — looking, as he does, like an older, friendly Glenn Beck — is indicative of a lost era. Although the tenuous period depicted in "Grouper" appears as some kind of alternate reality, the drug activity in Everglade City in fact has done a great deal to influence the reefer culture of today. So long as you're not looking for "Half Baked: the Musical," "Square Grouper" is a good bet.

A version of this article appeared in the Tuesday, April 19, 2011 print edition. Theolonious Brooks is a contributing writer. Email him at film@nyunews.com.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   PhytoExtractum Buy Bali Kratom Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Gil Scott-Heron, The Godfather of Rap, dead at 62 veggieM 1,275 5 05/29/11 07:14 AM
by dubsideofthemoon
* [WA] 'Grammas for Ganja' advocates marijuana to be accepted in workforce veggieM 878 1 03/05/11 02:46 PM
by crokms
* 'Godfather of meth-making' gets 30 years [VA] veggieM 3,006 0 07/20/05 09:02 AM
by veggie
* 'Godfather of ecstasy' Alexander Shulgin suffers stroke veggieM 2,945 11 11/23/10 04:41 PM
by Dickhead
* 'Godfather of meth-making' pleads guilty veggieM 3,060 2 04/06/05 07:21 AM
by Lana
* GANJA - Is it harmful or useful? [JAM] veggieM 951 2 05/13/05 12:05 PM
by Adamist
* 'Godfather of heroin' lands reconstruction contract [BURMA] veggieM 597 0 05/25/08 03:14 PM
by veggie
* [CAN] Ganja yoga combines marijuana and meditation veggieM 1,367 5 09/17/10 09:16 AM
by Humility

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,310 topic views. 0 members, 4 guests and 0 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.023 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.