Five years ago, Fast Food Nation was a book written by a relatively unknown investigative journalist named Eric Schlosser. It was well researched and very insightful, and like Morgan Spurlock did a few years later with his movie along the same vein, it got people talking about what they were eating.

The first installment of Lars von Trier's "USA - Land of Opportunities" trilogy, Dogville, was a crowd divider. Against the arty scenery and the one set-sans-walls, there was a certain artlessness in its dialogue and its blatant concepts of injustice, vulnerability and the exploitation of power. The heroine turned out to be an anti-heroine, a kind of idealistic cynic armed with virtues, a gun, and posse of gangsters (no, really). Despite the starkness of the production, Nicole Kidman pulled it off.