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Know Your Mushrooms
Know Your Mushrooms
Actor: |
Director: Ron Mann
Genres: Indie & Art House, Documentary
NR     2009     1hr 13min

From the award-winning director of Comic Book Confidential, Grass, Go Further and a host of paradigm-shifting films reappraising the backwaters of popular culture, Ron Mann investigates the miraculous, near-secret world of...  more »

     
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Movie Details

Actor: |
Director: Ron Mann
Genres: Indie & Art House, Documentary
Sub-Genres: Indie & Art House, Docurama
Studio: NEW VIDEO GROUP
Format: DVD - Color - Closed-captioned
DVD Release Date: 12/15/2009
Original Release Date: 01/01/2008
Theatrical Release Date: 01/01/2008
Release Year: 2009
Run Time: 1hr 13min
Screens: Color
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaDVD Credits: 1
Total Copies: 0
Members Wishing: 2
MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Languages: English

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Movie Reviews

Mann's Mushrooms...Bravo!
B. Bunyard | Wisconsin | 10/27/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's hard to tell what a general audience will make of Ron Mann's new film Know Your Mushrooms. It opens with a clip from one of the first motion pictures ever, Georges Méliès' 1902 Trip to the Moon. After their rocket smacks the moon right in the eye, the astronauts disembark to discover that the moon is covered with what Méliès must have considered the most other-worldly of life forms: mushrooms.
The film segues to the almost equally fantastical Telluride Mushroom Festival--playful enthusiasts, funny hats, costumes, and ceremonial Tibetan bells. The opening credits explode with the psychedelic animation of Mike Roberts, colorful and sparkling--he makes fungus dance. Just as we're beguiled into a world of mushrooms that are funny, exotic and frivolous, the canny filmmaker brings things down to earth with film consultant and mycologist Gary Lincoff explaining that a fungal mat underlies and nurtures all life on earth.
I've followed Mann's work since his first film, Comic Book Confidential, which came out while I was researching my book on the history of MAD magazine. He's very good at illuminating the many facets of a subject in vivid ways. For Know Your Mushrooms he cleverly chooses two complementary guides. Lincoff and Larry Evans are both middle-aged white guys with an obsession with fungus, but their sensibilities quite different. Evans is a pig-tailed, brilliant, chatty, self-described "mushroom gypsy" who can hunt down, field-dress, and cook up our favorites while spouting a stream of fascinating facts and lore. By contrast, Gary Lincoff is a bona-fide mycologist and much-published author who speaks in paragraphs and fills the audience in on the scientific side of things wit and verve. Interestingly, Mann chooses to have the Lincoff, the scientist, describe an hallucinogenic experience. John Cage, Andrew Weil and Terrance McKenna also make short appearances in vintage footage (strangely, Paul Stamets, about whom a whole film could be made, is absent).
Know Your Mushrooms is a collage of information about fungi, including the culinary, spiritual, ecologically remedial, and scientific aspects. The film is interspersed with jokey quiz questions, posed by an anthropomorphized Boletus edulis that are sometimes funny and sometimes an annoying interruption. But the ditzy little guy keeps an information-laden film light, as does the rest of the fabulous animation by Roberts, which appears throughout the film in various artful ways. The soundtrack features lots of songs that have fungus as a theme (who knew?) that Mann has collected.
The film, which was produced in association with Bravo, is meant for a general audience, but it's definitely fun for a more knowledgeable aficionado--you won't learn much, but the mix of documentary footage, great cartoons, vintage film clips from an international selection of movies and documentaries is almost as fun as being at your favorite foray with all your hunting pals around you. And if you have friends and loved ones, even kids, who are perplexed or curious about this fascinating life form and the people who pursue it, Know Your Mushrooms is a wonderful, inspiring, introduction.

Maria Reidelbach, contributor, FUNGI magazine [...]"
A bunch of Fungi Fluff
Matt Lafleur | Olympia, WA | 12/09/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)

"This was a pretty big disappointment, i had been waiting to see this for a while now, only to be totally let down with another fluff piece lacking any real substance. Perhaps this might be entertaining to people that dont know anything about fungi what so ever as a very basic introduction, but it doesn't even do a very good job at that. It sadly falls short of providing any worthwhile information about what makes fungi so intriguing as essential components of our environment and not just another tired fallback to" Ooo WOWZER look at all the funny hippie folk doing all the wild and crazy things they do OO GOLLY GEEE!". If i wanted to see all that i could go find it for myself and not have my time wasted when i could be learning about the amazing wealth of vastly more interesting facts about what fungi actually do and why are they so important. It is one thing to want to make some cheesy commentary piece and throw in a some interviews and crazy clips but PLEASE don't try to pass it off as a documentary or at least for the love of flammin baby jebus don't call the film "Know Your Mushrooms" because your certainly are not going to know much about them after this film.

With all the ranting negativity aside, for those out there that do not have any expectations of having any real meaningful educational premise, i suppose this is not the worst of films, just very misguided and lost along the way. There is at least about 20 or so minutes worth of interesting tid bits here and there and fanciful clips to entertain the children and senile folk so i suppose its worth a watch as long as your not foolish enough to spend any of your money on it.

I'm sure glad i didn't.



"
Fabulous Fungi!!!
Peziza | Colorado | 09/02/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)

"Great movie! Lighthearted, informative, and nostalgic. Ron Mann does a great job of bringing mushrooms to life with animation and old film clips while tripping along with real life fungophiles Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans. Fun movie for everyone!"