INDICATORS

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MARRIED COUPLES NO LONGER IN CALIFORNIA MAJORITY

INSIDE BAY AREA - For the first time in at least 60 years, a majority of
[Californbia's] adults are single or separated, according to new federal
data. As recently as the 2000 Census, about 52 percent of Californians
15 or older were married. But 2006 population data released today by the
U.S. Census Bureau says that share of Californians has slipped to 48.5
percent this decade as the share of adults who have nevermarried has
grown. . .

Californians are waiting longer than ever - and longer than people in
many other states - to get married, or they're just skipping it
altogether. About three in 10 women in California have never married, a
percentage topped only by three other states, according to the new
census data. An even higher percentage of men - 38 percent - have never
married.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci6870303

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NEW MOVIES
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GRIST MILL - In 1977, Stephen King published a short story in Penthouse
about some bad things happening in cornfields in the Midwest. Later,
that story, "Children of the Corn," became a successful B-movie
franchise. Leave it to Stephen King to capture the horror of vast
cornfields. Thirty years later, a new movie, King Corn, is poised to hit
national movie theater distribution -- and what it has to say might be
even scarier. . . While primarily about the food system, King Corn also
documents friendship. The film is sweet but not sugary, earnest and
open-minded, and more than a little bit tragic. Incorporating
stop-motion photography, the filmmakers show how corn, originally a
native grass of great variety, has been pared down to one genetically
modified breed that came to reign over the grain belt.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/12/10919/0331

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ANGELS IN THE DUST

VILLAGE VOICE - It's not just children whom Marion Cloete and her family
are rescuing in the de facto orphanage and school they've set up in
rural South Africa, but childhood itself for these pint-sized refugees,
from rape, child prostitution, hunger, and-above all-an AIDS epidemic
that's killing by the hundreds of thousands. A big, jolly, boundlessly
energetic former Commie activist from the apartheid era who walked out
on a life of luxury in Johannesburg to do good, Cloete has carved out a
shelter for the children. She's a licensed therapist who understands the
value of a sympathetic ear, but also an advocate who trusts her charges
enough that she can refract their grim reality back to them as hope,
action, and self-care. Director Louise Hogarth (whose last documentary,
The Gift, dealt with HIV-positive men who deliberately pass on the
virus) deftly weaves in the big picture through Cloete's bursts of anger
at government ministers and traditional healers who willfully propagate
the belief that sleeping with virgins cures disease. But the children's
most heartbreaking obstacle is the apathy and denial of their broken
families, ground down by poverty, illness, and despair. . .

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0737,taylor,77785,20.html

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GREAT WORLD OF SOUND

VILLAGE VOICE - Unemployed and living with his artist girlfriend Pam
(Rebecca Mader) in Charlotte, North Carolina, Martin (Pat Healy)
interviews with Great World of Sound, a local fly-by-night record
company that hires him as a producer. Never mind that Martin has no
record-making experience - as he soon learns, he and his
African-American partner Clarence (Kene Holliday) will mostly be
traveling around the South bilking any guitar-slinging sucker for a few
thousand dollars in exchange for some empty promises about a label deal
that will never materialize. Clarence is too grateful not to be living
on the street anymore to let the ethical complications of fleecing get
to him, but rudderless Martin secretly envies these young performers'
optimism, telling himself that if he can actually help one or two of
them reach their dreams, maybe the whole situation isn't as rotten as it
appears.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0737,grierson,77749,20.html

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PETE SEEGER: THE POWER OF SONG

VARIETY - "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" is a terrific, multilayered
portrait of a singer whose legacy extends beyond music and into every
major social action movement since the 1940s. With unprecedented access
to family and colleagues -- even Bob Dylan appears -- helmer Jim Brown
follows Seeger's career from the hit parade to the blacklist,
encompassing civil rights and environmental activism. Always enjoyable,
this docu proves that a few rare people actually deserve the hagiography
treatment. . . One of the remarkable things about the man is his use of
music rather than polemics to effect social change. Dylan comments on
his magical ability to get everyone in a room to sing along with him,
and it's this quality that enables him to win over adults and children
alike. Vintage footage of Johnny Cash calling Seeger the best patriot he
knows reinforces Bruce Springsteen's use of the "citizen-artist" label,
revealed not only in Seeger's public life but privately as well.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117933581.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

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