Ron Mann

Canadian documentary-maker (and film distributor) Ron Mann, who also directed "Grass," goes one trip farther with this psilocybes syllabus, a love ode to spores that offer a little magic for your love. Fans and experts alike hold screen in "Know Your Mushrooms," which explores the coming-together that is the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and mingling the fascinating facts of mushrooms themselves with the mush of psychedelic trips recalled. Mushroom expert Larry Lincoff and "the Indiana Jones of mushrooms" are among the more likable of the bunch. Mann, as always, has a keen eye for archival footage, but his own enthusiasm is what stitches it all together. Watch Movies Online for Free on 10StarMovies.

Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets. In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today's most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer's thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue's posh boutiques. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco's Mission District questioning our culture's fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West - perhaps America's best-known public intellectual - compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy's power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it. Watch Movies Online for Free on 10StarMovies.

From the award-winning director of Comic Book Confidential and Grass comes TALES OF THE RAT FINK, Ron Mann's wildly inventive bio about Renaissance man Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, who engineered a shift in mid-20th century culture with his customized cars, "monster" T-shirts and America's alternative rodent, Rat Fink. Watch Movies Online for Free on 10StarMovies.

Woody Harrelson narrates as This film explores the history of the American government's official policy on marijuana in the 20th century. Rising with nativist xenophobia with Mexican immigration and their taste for smoking marijuana, we see the establishment of a wrong headed federal drug policy as a crime issue as opposed to a public health approach. Fueled by prejudice, hysterical propaganda and political opportunism undeterred by voices of reason on the subject, we follow the story of a costly and futile crusade against a substance with questionable ill effects that has damaged basic civil liberties. Definitely an interesting film, with lots to learn from it, but by no means the definitive word on cannabis. Watch Movies Online for Free on 10StarMovies.

In the 20th century, no artistic medium in North America with so much potential for creative expression has had a more turbulent history plagued with less respect than comic books. Through animated montages, readings and interviews, this film guides us through the history of the medium from the late 1930s and 1940s with the first explosion of popularity with the superheroes created by great talents like Jack Kirby and hitting its first artistic zenith with Will Eisner's "Spirit". It then shifts to the post war comics world with the rising popularity of crime and horror comics, especially those published by EC Comics under the editorshiop of William B. Gaines until it came crashing down the rise of censorship with the imposition of the Comics Code. In its wake of the devastation of the medium's creative freedom, we also explore EC's defiant survival with the creation of the singular "Mad Magazine" by Harvey Kurtzman. We then move to the resurgence of the superheroes in the late 1950's and 1960's typified with the rise of the dramatically innovative Marvel Comics edited by Stan Lee. Still more important is the rise of the the gleefully uninhibited underground comics created by eccentric talents like Robert Crumb and Dan O'Neill. These leads to profiles of creaters like Harvey Pekar who take the medium into new directions of expression. In the late 1970s and '80s we see the rise of alternative comics with such bold talents like Jaime Hern ndez for "Love and Rockets, Sue Coe for How to Commit Suicide in South Africa and especially for Art Spiegelman for his searing Pulitizer Prize winning Holocaust account, Maus. Finally, we learn of the medium's superhero mythos' revitalizing moment with the creation of Frank Miller's ferocious min-series "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns". Taken together, the film makes its arguement that the medium is far more than the stereotype of juvenile trash but rather it is an artform with a wild history and an exciting future. Watch Movies Online for Free on 10StarMovies.