Time Of Fear

-This was a standard PBS documentary. Not mind blowing, but simply meant to just educate you on a subject. I was interested to watch this one because I watched one of those It Gets Better videos with George Takei, looked up his history, and his Wikipedia page mentioned that he was in a Japanese Interment camp….which is insane to think about. Really, what was FDR thinking?!

-This was such a fucked up moment in American history. The government took a bunch of people from the same country, most whom were now citizens, took them away from their homes, had them burn their family pictures, letters, priceless mementos, and got them all together and put them in a camp. That's incredible. That's an incredible scar on our nation's history here. And it's really a shame because WWII is known as being one of the "noble wars" (if that makes sense and is not a complete oxymoron), but with this huge scar on it, it's really tarnished forever. It sort of brings to mind the recent Presidential election which was happy and momentous, but then you think about how Prop 8 passed and that will forever tarnish a great night in American history.

-I tell you what, though, it's interesting to watch this and see how conservative and paranoid the media, press and government were. Implying that all the Japanese in America should go back to Japan and never come back, implying that every Japanese person, citizen or not, was probably working undercover against the United Staes as some kind of sleeper agent. And then to NOW see how times have changed with conservatives constantly complaining that the media is too liberal. Liberal media this and liberal media that. I guess something like this would be what they'd have in mind? A close comparison you can draw to this situation is with the current war and the way this country treats and view Muslims as if they're automatic enemies of the state. To imagine the kind of government that would then take all those people, round them up, put them in a camp (basically for safe keeping), only to be backed up by all the media outlets in the country with little to no protesting on the subject until way later…that is just something I can't even fathom. Of course there's still Fox News and other ridiculous outlets that perpetuate the same hate and fear that I saw in this film. But at least there are now checks and balance when it comes to the media. To imagine prejudice like this just being backed up. At the risk of sounding completely melodramatic, it really makes me kind of sick yo my stomach.

-"I remember our parents telling us we had to do well in school because we would have to try twice as hard to get jobs and things." Well that's a funny perspective of it. And it's ver interesting, once they got to the camps, the wages for teachers inside he camps was almost double what they would make in the public schools. So the camp was staking all the good teachers, basically. And it's incredible that the Arkansas residents actually resented the Japanese in the internment camp because they're provided food, or they're getting hospital stays, or they can go to school. But they're in a camp!! There is no comparison. Absolutely none.

-When it comes to the filmmaking, it was pretty standard PBS kind of stuff. Voice over and archive footage. I tell you what, though, it's pretty tricky to cut a bunch of archive footage together as a narrative. It's like not being around during filming, and going into something completely blind without knowing what it's about or anything that was filmed. That basically is what it is.

-"Americanism is not a matter of blood and color. Americanism has always been a matter of mind and heart." Says the guy that put them in the camps in the first place; that's FDR.

8: The Mormon Proposition

This movie was controversial for some for various reasons. Documentaries are interesting. When you watch a doc, you take at face value that what you're being told is the truth. You want to believe that the filmmakers did their homework and are giving you the facts. I've watched enough of them to know (and actually exist in the world), that that's definitely not always the case. There can be manipulative editing, manipulative narration, and just over all skewing of the facts. I'm going to ignore that where this movie is concerned and just take it for what I saw.

Unfortunately, the way the Mormons went about it was great planning and great organization. It was really pretty impecable, the ways they went about campaigning against gay marriage with commercials, with door to door, with word of mouth. It was exactly like the said, they were a little army.

It did get a bit hard to watch once we got into the sad stories about all the young Mormon people who were thrown out of their houses simply for being gay. It's hard to imagine any parent reacting to their child in such a way. Their flesh and blood. I can't wrap my head around that.

The good thing about tis movie is that we know now it was mostly over turned...sort of. It's getting there.

Life and Debt

-This made me want to never visit Jamaica or any third world country that depends on tourism. Which I guess doesn't help. It would hep more to give them that money. But jeez, the guilt. It's like double edged guilt. I feel like the subtext of voice over narrating the Americans on vacation is like "you're an elitist privileged douche who takes what they have for granted." But it really just makes me sad seeing the employees put on their happy faces and talk to the vacationers like they're idiots who've never been on vacation. I tell you what though, if I had to hear just one more Bob Marley song over that footage, I was going to cut a bitch.

-On a similar note, I feel like I should never buy a banana again! The Honduran workers were forced by gun to go back to work during their strike. Buying Chiquita bananas seems like a carpool lane to Hell. But not buying them and getting others to not buy them has a chances of tanking a job that many people want and many people don't even have in these third world countries. It does most definitely help their economy. What a pickle.

-The way this was cut when it first started, it seemed like it was a feature and not a documentary. The shots used. And the look of it is interesting. It was clearly shot in the same time as Sound and Fury. This feels like a doc that could really only come out of the 90s. A definite product of that decade of documentary filmmaking. The way it was cut, the Day-O part in black and white and slo-mo reminded me of watching the Up series change it's doc style before my very eyes as we catch up with, not just the children, but the filmmaking crew every 7 years. Or similar to seeing Grey Gardens take shape as narrative docs just started to rise in popularity and prevalence in the United States.

-The parts of the doc that were just living just seemed like living. It was interesting to see how that came off. It seems like something that's hard to do. To set a tone like that with the b-roll scenes as if there was absolutely no camera, no releases signed, no boom mic, etc.

-Overall, I wish this were a little more...cohesive and understandable. I still don't really know what the IMF is or how it operates or why. They started out sort of introducing it, but them dropped it midway. I guess the point of this wasn't exactly to spell that out, but they could have spelled that out. What is the IMF and why do they hate Jamaica. After watching, I still don't get what the beef is. Where's the beef?

-This movie really made us come off as villains..which I supposed we are. Just ask North Korea. I mean, we don't pay taxes on the underwear we make them put together in Kingston Free Zone. We have one of the highest proportion of the IMF votes. We don't buy their bananas. We don't pay them right for their work when we outsource everything. We generally don't help them out. And no unions. But I guess England is their mother. Maybe we expect them to worry more about them.

The Art of The Steal

-I feel like art may be similar to film appreciation. If you watch Rebel Without a Cause now a days, if you were to put those same lines in a movie today, film it the same way and use the exact same script in today's film world, it wouldn't be as treasured, I feel. It would be completely unremarkable. But the movies are appreciated now because they were good for their respective time periods. I really feel that to be true. Similar to art, I think. Although lesser so. Art has technique, it has form. There are things about certain paintings that people appreciate (things that I feel like I will never get). It's something that, I imagine, evolves and changes as the times change. As does all forms of art. So it's more like some scribbles by Serrat was brilliant in its time, but if that same piece of art would be done in the exact same way in this day and age, it would look like something that's been done and nothing remarkable. Could that be true?

-It's like they can't win. They want the art in the right location, but when they put it in the right location (the original building at the Barnes museum) and the neighbors get mad. And then everything blows up in the stupidest way ever. So basically, they just want what the will says, no visitors. Which is lame.

-It was funny to see the filmmakers attempt to take both sides, when you know what they really thought about the whole situation. You could sense what side they were on. They interviewed Glanton. Thankfully he said yes and they had the opportunity to TELL both sides, but they didn't really stick up for both sides, so much. Which is a hard thing to do. And not all docs need to even do that. Some docs are MADE to take one position. Some docs are made jsut to give information and tell the story.

-I love how they told us each person that wouldn't speak up and defend themselves on camera. It was like Food Inc in that way. They would talk shit about someone and then let us know that they declined to be interviewed for the film. That made them look even worse than they would have looked if they just got on camera and said no comment for every single question.

-It was an interesting thing, watching this. After watching so many docs that have made me cry; docs about the state of education in America, docs about poverty, and death, and mental illness, and physical deformity, watching something about a bunch of nerds arguing with a bunch of rich people about a bunch of art that's priced by people on the basis of I don't know what characteristics....this seems like such small potatoes. Also valid in its own right, of course, but just not worth heartache. In comparison, of course. I'm sure a lot of these people are rightly heartbroken. And their feelings are justified. I guess.

-I really extremely don't see the big deal here. This guy bought a bunch of art, and then wanted it specified in his will that after he's dead and gone and no longer living on this earth in any way shape and form, no one should be able to publicly see these pieces...that he didn't make, he just paid for. No one should be able to borrow these pieces. No one should be able to sell the art. No one can ever visit these priceless (although very expensive) pieces of art. Says the dead man. What a selfish guy with a selfish will. It's not the city of Philidelphia's art. That's true. it's Mr. Barnes art. But you know what? Mr. Barnes is dead. I get the objection to not wanting it made profitable, just for a "damn the man" kind of reason. But I don't get not wanting it to be viewed by the public so they could appreciate and learn from it. Also, he's dead. They probably thought of this guy as a eccentric misanthropic genius, but I see his as a controlling almost psycho. You can't take it with you, dude. These guys being interviews just seem, more than anything, to be like butt hurt fanboys. They actually sound very similarly to the fanboys from The King of Kong. And I don't knwo if I mentioned this already, but he'd very dead.

Pressure Cooker

I figured it was about time to go through my "eh, I'll watch it eventually" list that I've been making for myself. Started with Bigger, Stronger, Faster, went to Mad Hot Ballroom, and I've just finished this one.

I was a puddle after this one. I watched a few Rachel Ray videos, updates they did with the same class from the move and Wilma Stepheson, the teacher. They gave her a new bistro, a new kitchen, and a 5 day vacation. The tears just started flowing out of me. Funny thing is, I don't feel like I cry a lot at movie, but I looked through the tags on my blog (I tag it every time I cry during one of them) and lets just say I have plenty of "tears" tags.

Then I thought more about it. Something like this is so bittersweet. More sweet than bitter, of course. But even still, it's great that something like this happened to THIS inner city school and THIS class and THIS teacher and THIS group of students, but there are thousands of other schools like it. That's what it makes me think of (after I get over the initial happiness of celebrating the kids' success.) It made me think of the culinary art school at Mackenzie Career Center. What are they up to now?

It's funny that I watched this so close to Mad Hot Ballroom. The featured teachers were similar while being very different. Similar right down to the kiss on teh cheek before competition, but this lady was absolutely insane. Just completely hard core and a bit vicious. I can really imagine having a teacher like her or knowing of a teacher like her at my school. And she really wants them to succeed and do well and get into college. She really cares. She's involved in the lives of the students just like the teacher in Washington Heights was. Buying dress shirts for her students similar to the way the teacher at Washington Heights was buying the performing skirts for her students. Attending the football games in support of her students like the other teacher attended the final Grand Finale. What an experience, to have a teacher who cares that much. And this lady has been doing it for FOURTY years.

I feel like the camera had to have some influence on the students when to comes to being nervous for the competition. You look down, concentrating and working, and you look up and there's a camera in your face. And watching a documentary, it's easy to forget the camera's there. Being filmed, it's a little less easy. Especially if you're asked questions in the middle of doing whatever it is you're doing. I do wonder how Fatoumata had the clearance to be followed by a camera crew, but not much freedom when it came to anything else.

Last point, this movie was so hopeful and inspiring, it basically reminded me of an opposite Waiting For Superman. Superman actually did actually do a good job in showing up for this one. One thing that was interesting about this one is that it wasn't just about the competition. That was definitely a huge part, but it was more about the characters and their journeys. It was interesting to watch this and Mad Hot Ballroom back to back. There very similar in their ways but also had their difference in the way they approached the material. It's interesting how different two docs can be when they begin with very similar structures.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Competition is a great way to make a documentary moving. Unfortunately for me, the competition becomes less about celebrating the people who won and more about being sad for the poor bastards who lost. I like that they didn't dwell too long on the kids that didn't get chosen to represent their school for the competition because that would have been a little sad.

I love watching kids like this because I remember being this young and thinking I was so old and old enough to be dating and doing all kinds of things I was nowhere near old enough to be doing. They're playing it up for the camera and trying to come off as cool. Funny.

It was interesting that they got the clearance to be following these kids. They follow them walking home and they follow them hanging out with their friends. Their parents, their immigrant parents and grandparent parents and non-native English speaking parents allowed this to happen. Which is interesting.

The teacher in the Dominican Republican school didn't really come off very well for some people, I bet. Which is really just a shame because she probably basically just did her best to help these kids. You can tell she's doing it for them because she really cares about these kids and their future. All good teachers do. The scene where they go out to buy dresses is particularly revealing of that. And it's not like the filmmakers went out to go after her and make her look bad. As if they only included scenes where she said something terrible. That wasn't the plan. So...it just was what it was. Although, I mean, she did work those kids pretty hard and speak to them pretty hard compared to the to her teachers. But that's how winners win. And, also, some things are lost in translation. Take that into consideration. Overall, I thought she did a great job and was a very loving teacher. On another note, having the Dominican students do well at dancing the meringue to me was kind of like letting Nicole Schirzinger compete and win Dancing with the Stars. Also funny.

It was interesting that we were introduced to last year's winners (the people who got last year's huge trophy) halfway through the film. They were clearly a school with higher income families and more resources. So clearly, they were the villains against the Washington Heights school's underdogs. The faceless yuppies who get things handed to them. We had to beat them this time. Kind of an interesting way to go about building the roles of a narrative within a documentary. I wonder if that school minded. They clearly invited them into their school and gave them access to their students like any of the other school. But they weren't like any of the other school in the end. Not really.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

This gave me what I want from docs. I learned something. I love that. People are attempting to shit on this because they think of it as a pro-steroids doc, but I didn't see it that way, really. This was pretty fair in trying to examine and trying to present both sides. It was also, in some way, probably trying to excuse Chris Bell's brother's behavior in some way n the same way anyone else would want to explain away a siblings bad behavior. Very similar to something I can see myself making and HAVE attempted to make in the past. In fact, this opening reminded me so much of some of the stuff we used to make when I worked at 360. The pop music. The montage of pop culture movies and tv shows with a voice over that I did myself because there was really not anyone else who would do it the way I had it in my head. Unfortunately, this dudes voice was kind of grating.

This made me feel bad again for Marion Jones all over again, who didn't even go to jail for doping, but for lying about doping. Also, makes me think about the Olympics and the fact that so many of those athletes take performance enhancing drugs. It's a slippery slope. You don't want to se drugs because their illegal and you'll feel like you're cheating, but you have to use steroids because if you don't, everyone else who's using them (which is literally almost EVERYONE else) will outplay you in every way.

It's funny, I assumed this guy wasn't into filmmaking, just because he didn't seem all that into and it seemed kind of green with the whole thing. Like he doesn't know shit about filmmaking and he'd have to get a lot of help with the editing. he'd be over your shoulder like, "can we, like, do this one effect were the screen zooms in? oh yeah, that looks pretty good." Then I come to find out he went to USC and graduated from the film program. Whoops. One thing I appreciated was that he attempted to ask the tough questions but in a sensitive way. Tiptoing up to Carl Lewis to question him about his positive test for steroids BEFORE the controversial 1988 Olympics. Talking to the Hooton dad (who I'm guessing was probably not very happy with how the doc turned out) about his son's suicide having to possibly do with the anti-dpressants he was on. He did a good job in attempting to get those controversial answers.

That does make me wonder though. Do people forget that they're on film and this little video he's making is going to be turned into a movie or something? They question his brother's students about whether or not their coach (his brother) takes steroids and those kids say that he himself told them no. He said to their faces that he did not do steroids. He lied to them and yet, now, when the movie comes out, everyone's going to know. They sit at the dinner table and try not to say anything to their parents, but the when the movie comes out, everyone' s going to know. It's hard not to take that into account when watching. It's in the back of your mind the whole time. Like when two costars are dating in a feature and it's in your mind during the whole movie.

I like that this didn't solve any problems or give any answers. It wasn't really like Super Size Me in that way. It just was what it was. There really IS no right answer in all of this. It's a complicated matter. I'll leave you with this, though: "Peanuts are dangerous. There are people who eat a Peanut and they go into anaphylactic shock. Does that mean we ban peanuts and sue God for making them?"

Harlan County USA

Watched Harlan County USA, which I'd say was very apropos since the Chilean miners where just rescued. I watched this, it was hard to see how people can be okay with making their living with this kind of work. Hunched over, dirty faced, dark, sweaty work. Someone has to do it, of course, but it just seems like human doing work like this shouldn't be legal. You're wet and you come out into cold air. You breathe that terrible air down there all day. You're bent over so you mess up your back. What a way to make a living. I had to keep reminding myself that this was made 25 years ago, but, still, the world still isn't perfect. I saw Last Train Home.

What I took away from this is...lets get this going with Wal-mart. After watching A State Of Mind, which brought to mind 1984 and the proles refusing to rise up because they just didn't know that they should, this too recalled 1984. But here the metaphorical proles are, rising up. So lets get this going for Wal-mart.

It's interesting though. This has the same organization, really, that Red with Blue had. But this is excusable because it was in their early days of documentaries. Look at Grey Gardens. Hardly any organization with that. It's like a stream of consciousness doc. So we've evolved from there to the filmmaking we have now. But...who's to say we can't have the same kind of filmmaking now? Well, to make a 70s movie now, it wouldn't be good.

It's insane to think that some of these old men coal miners have been through two different strikes. The Bloody Harlan strike in the 30s and now, this one 50 years later. That's a depressing though. Also because that means that some of them were very very young men working in those coal mines.

It's too bad, it really is just too bad that people had to die to make this contract happen. Of course everyone's always hoping it wouldn't come to that. Who even does that? Uses weapons against picketers. Someone killed a man. What kind of person does it take to do that? The contract wasn't exactly what they wanted, but it took a person to die to get what they wanted. Sort of. What a shame. Makes it sort of anti-climactic.

This is movie was also yet another example of if they tried to do this now, they'd sensationalize it too much. Even as a doc. There's a great description of this in a viewer review on IMDb. It says, "Exemplary on how a filmmaker can involve herself, be in everybody's face, get every little thing on camera, but be testifying instead of exploiting." And that's very true. She's joining in and fighting for the cause. It was like watching a fellow picketer capture the action while in the middle of the action. I don't know how the camera was allowed such access. They were able to take their camera into the jail cells. They were able to take their camera to the picket line. They were able to take their camera into the court room. That's a lot of access. Shasky would love this doc. And I bet he does. It's about the characters. It stays with the characters, leaves the camera on the characters, and lets them make the story.

35 Up

Michael asks such asshole questions. When Tony said he basically gets his shit done and makes stuff happen that he wants to make happen, he replies that "well, nothing you've done has worked out, right?" Tony's response? "It's better to be a hasbeen than a neverwas, innit?" You get him Tony.

I thought they'd have some problems finding things to talk about for the next few series, but I guess I get it now. We're just going to sit and watch all the relationships dissolve.

It's interesting though. With this sort of thing, you wonder why you just can't work the marriages out. Like, this seems like it could kind of be like fiction, so the idea of not having your life work the way they wanted it in the previous edition, or not working really hard to make your relationship work, the idea of these concepts just seems so abstract. Like when you hear things these people say about their lives, you just take it at face value, but these people are just saying things that they think will make them sound the most clever, or what the documentary filmmakers would want to hear, or what they think sounds most truthful to them. And they're not prefect. They could just be talking out of their ass. They do the interview once, and it's over, and it's on celluloid forever as these specific statements being representative of their outlook on the world. Interesting. Confusing, I know, but interesting.

Unfortunately, we keep hitting terrible decades. This hair. These sweaters. This is so miserable...really. Also, a terrible point is that these 35 year olds don't look a day over 40. Some around 45. Is it going through the 80s that did it to them, or is it because most of them smoke, or because Brits age worse than we do or...something is going on here. Like, guys, we check back with you once every SEVEN years, and THAT'S what you wear in front of the camera? That's such an odd choice. As Marggy said about one of the guys "I need this mustache to go away."

A lot of the previous children, now adults, complain about a loss of privacy or having regretted doing the program. And one of the wives was upset at how she was portrayed so she opted out of this next one. And that's a shame. I feel weird watching something that they might not enjoy doing. It's really a shame. I do wonder why they still even do it, though. If terrible things happen to them, they'd have to share that with the whole world.

It's kind to sad to see them not get what they wanted to get at 7. Which is silly. Seven year olds don't know what they want. Their opinions aren't their own so they just repeat what they hear and they only know what they want to do by what they see. They're stupid. But I want them to get their dreams. Which is stupid.

More Than A Game

When it comes to the actual movie, the fact that they got all this footage from their journey to the national championship...something like that was just begging for a documentary to be made about it. It sort of looked liked it was being filmed for the purpose of becoming a doc. That's probably not true, but they did a great job in making it seem like that.

Th graphics in this one ware ridic. Like really fun. A lot of work when into that. I wonder how good the movie would be if they didn't have that flashy After Effects animation.

They cut the basketball games pretty well. They had to do it in a suspenseful way, but also in a truncated way to get to the point and move on to the next moment. It worked. One thing I thought was weird about the flimmaking was that we were never able to see the score during the game. The movie was wide screen, so the 4:3 cut off the part of the news footage with the score of the game. That worked against the suspense and you didn't really know who was in the lead until they told you that one of the other teams won. I didn't like that.

You gotta feel a little bad for wherever that dude was who replaced Willie as a started but wasn't in the Fab Five. They talked about Romeo feeling left out, but once they pulled Romeo into the crew and Willie wasn't a started anymore, that guy had to have felt left out.

I get a little conflicted sometimes when it comes to sports movies. With a movie based on fiction, or even a movie based on real events but it's a feature, you can have some disconnect from the team that loses. Someone has to lose for someone else to win. And when you clearly see that it's real people who are really upset and really want to win, it's kind of a sad moment to see. You're of course happy for the team that won, but the team who lost has to hang their head and drive back home in shame. Luckily, they didn't really show us much of the team that lost. Which I liked.

I realized while trying to watch this last night that basketball is still kind of angermaking for me. Kind of a soft spot. I haven't had an overall great experience with it in the past. In school, tryouts, etc. I've actually had kind of a bad experience. I had to turn it off and finish it the next day. Maybe I should get some therapy about that.

Sad to watch him and know that he abandoned the state that "raised him." People are really mad about that, huh! I sort of get why now.

Red Without Blue

I loved the idea of this documentary. I was really excited to watch it because it had such a fascinating premise. I decided to watch this because as a twin and an ally, and I was really interested to see what was going on with this family. It sounded like a really intriguing story. Something that just had to be put on film.

Unfortunately, it turned out to basically be a representation of my fear in filmmaking. Which was a bummer. Every once in a while, you see a movie that just falls together. It makes it look like filmmaking is so easy. Everything just works. But then you come across something like this where you can tell the team was really passionate about the project and the content and the characters, but it just really doesn't really come together, exactly. The summary said this takes place over a year, but it didn't really feel like that. It felt like we were talking about everything happening in the past. I didn't like that. There didn't seem like there was forward momentum with the narrative, however pompous that sounds.

After I watched it, the feeling sort of became...maybe it should have been a feature. It's a sort of "truth is than fiction" sort of story. And the way they went about it as a doc didn't really work, for me. I feel like there were much better ways to tell that story.

Enough bitching though. The story is definitely an interesting one. Sexuality is really freaking tricky. It's complicated and is in no way black and white. This was a clear example of that. It was disappointing how the family sort of fell apart and never really came back together. Even the end, which seemed like some things got resolved, showed that nothing will ever go back to being like those happy times of their childhood.

My Flesh And Blood

That was a drag to get through. I seriously just sorta felt like shit after watching it.. There were 13 special needs/mentally handicapped/physically handicapped kids in this movie. A family of them. That was like an hour long super depressing documentary times 13. It was difficult for me to conceptualize what it takes in a person to even take to take all of these kids. It was interesting that her mother implied that she adopted all the kids she did to fill the loneliness. That's very sad.

Adoption is so tricky. It was really interesting how they cut from one of the kids calling his birth mother "mom" and then calling the woman who adopted him "mom." And when his birth mother got married and he sat in the second row because they're "second row people"...so sad. And how does Susan feel about this. It has to feel a little crappy.

As for the overall documentary, at times, this seemed very much like a reality special. The little girl said "leave me alone" to the camera crew when she was crying in her bed. The angry kid, Joe (who I learned on IMDb was bipolar, and had ADHA, and hyperactivity, on top of his cystic fibrosis) yelled "Stop fucking filming me right now" and "I'm gonna break your camera." And they didn't leave right away. That didn't seem right. But that's how you get the good stuff I guess?

A State Of Mind

This was a really fascinating look behind the curtain of North Korea. I never fathomed that the government would allow such a thing to happen. But I guess I juts assumed that because they'd never let U.S. have a peak back there. They hate the U.S. Blind hatred. The comical kind of hatred where everything that goes wrong (the nightly power outages, famine, etc) is somehow the fault of the U.S. They're raised to hate America. They love socialism and communism, and we don't, so they hate us. Also, we bombed them pretty bad in the 50s and they think of us as US imperialists. They have a great example to fall back on with Bush invading Iraq and basically destroying it. Old U.S. Up to their old tricks.

The fact that North Korea hates the US because of the war and the bombing and the atrocities and the killing of millions of their people, makes me feel bad. I know I had nothing to do with it, but it kind of feels like that guy you hate at work who when you find out he hates you, it makes you feel bad. Even though you don't like him yourself. You don't want the people you hate to hate you. You want everyone to like you, even the people you hate.

Still, I don't even know how they got this kind of access. I would assume Kim Jong Il's people had to approve of it before it could be released. And they do only make all true statements that just seem to come off as offensive because of what the truths are, but it's still pretty impressive that they got that much access.

When it comes to the actual content of the film, what a look into their way of life. The TV has one channel (full of propaganda) that runs for 5 hours a day. The state run radio pipes into each and every home. You can turn it down, but you can't turn it off. What a power trip. That has SUCH implications. On the upside, when it comes to the tv stuff, it's easy to say to someone "hey, did you catch this on tv last night." Makes small talk really easy. Unfortunately, they don't seem to do small talk.

From the outside, this thing functions like a cult or some excellent long con brainwashing. Like, it's fine for them, because they know no other life, but you guys, as Maria, my busser at Fridays says, "this is no fine." And you could say that who are we to judge because it works for them...but is it really?

It's pretty impressive how nice of a floor show they can put on when they practice from 12 hours a day in 8 below freezing whether...on concrete.

Hell House

Really interesting stuff. I tried to watch this with no judgement, but that was basically impossible. Especially with the embarrassing 90s haircuts and fashion rolling around. I read an interview with a director and he commented that in Texas, the movie plays very serious. In New York, it plays like a comedy. I can definitely see that.

From the audition scene I really felt like I was watching a Christopher Guest spoof. Like...you guys have got to be kidding. The script writing scene sounded ridiculous. He was trying to explain what Magic: The Gathering was (ultimately they decided to just go with calling it Magic). She pronounced it o-EE-ja board with no idea how to spell that one. When they read back the entire scene, it just sounded absurd. And the Harry Potter book reference? Yikes. How very 90s. The dude actually used the phrase, "power of the dark side." At times, their obliviousness of their own ridiculousness made them seem kind of precious. Then you realized they were brainwashing young minds with their sick imagery.

I find it hard to understand how they think it's a good idea to scare people into embracing and believing in God. I wonder if that works for them. I feel like the people who would be interested in going through this Hell House this would already be believers, or not be and go to make fun of the whole thing. I would think that the people this would work on would be young impressionable minds, and that seems like a very sticky issue. This would make a fabulous companion to the doc Jesus Camp.

And overall, this seems like a really messed up thing for Christians to be doing. They have to write 666, draw a pentagram (even if hey accidentally drew a star if David, but whatever), they have to pretend to shoot people, kill people, slap women, stab people. All of this, no matter if it's fake or not, seem pretty un-Christian. They make a reference to role-playing being bad but...that's sort of what they're doing here.

They have a lot of money for this production. Building new sets every year. Getting new props every year. Recording news audio every year. It makes sense because they did say that there were 12,000 people who came through the Hell House and tickets are $7. That means they probably bring in at least 70grand a year for this.

I really like how they cut together the scenes of going through the Hell House. They showed different tours cut it up with footage of the tour guides, the volunteers going through the tour themselves and other goings on of opening night.

At least the tour ends on a good note. They try to get some people saved (is that how you say that?). This tour of Hell House makes me think of going to the Church Of Scientology in New York and after we watched the video, being hounded by the nice smiling Scientologist lady about it.

Funnily enough, literally, just now, in the middle of watching the scene where the Slipknot loving alternatives youths argue with one of the Christian dudes about Christianity, God, religion in general, and the fucked upness of their Hell House, I learned that The Insane Clown Posse are Evangelical Christians! That was a coincidental turn of events. I bet those 90s youths would be disappointed to hear that.

For All Mankind

Beautifully complied. Excellent archive footage.

No sit down interviews to speak of. I mean, maybe. There were mysterious voices talking about their respective voyages. But there's no way of knowing since they didn't have any on camera interviews. I thought that was a really cool way to do it. Made it seem like an observational doc while still getting the specifics of what the astronauts were doing, feeling, and thinking while there.

A funny part of this is that the idea of getting to the moon wouldn't even be the scary part, to me. It's the idea of getting back off of the moon. It's not like you can just fall to Earth. You could do all the preparation on your end here, but you'd had no idea what was going on on the other end. That's terrifying. So as a downside, I would have loved to see how they got back to Earth. Clearly they don't have that footage.

Also, as much as the idea of leaving Earth even still seems unimaginable to the astronauts who were apart of the voyage to the moon, the idea that someone compiled a very successfully very compelling documentary out of some scraps of documentary footage is amazing. Where did all this footage come from?! Who's recording on the shuttle?! Insane. Well shot, the footage of the take off showing each part breaking off from the shuttle, all great moments on film. All this footage, but the movie wasn't completed until a little over two decades later.

It used a lot of classical music and a great score over the majestic scenes of floating in space, landing on the moon with a soft thud, returning to Earth. It captured exactly the mood you'd imagine for something about space. Maybe this is the thing that brought that mood to life and everyone has just been capitalizing on that every since.

Babies

This one was an observational documentary. I don't know if I was expecting that, but I should have from what I'd seen from the trailer. There wasn't much fancy editing or music in it, but it would pop up every once in a while. I wonder why they chose that angle instead of using a voiceover and making it sort of an anthropological study or something similar to Marching the Penguins.

Something I found interesting with this type of observational doc is that sometimes they did this thing where they used "baby perspective," getting low on the ground with the baby. Or letting the baby explore their space with no interruption. That was a interesting angle to take. There were a lot of moments where the kid was getting into something and the mom or dad just didn't interrupt them at all. As if they weren't even there to stop them from crying or stop them from eating toilet paper.

It was also interesting to see the different cultural practices of the different countries. When they had the montage of washing their babies, the Namibian mother licked her baby clean...at least I assume that's what she was doing. The Mongolian family, apparently, never let their son off of the bed until he could crawl. That's at least how it was cut.

Watching this made me think. I've always wondered, what in the world are you supposed to do to keep babies entertained? I know that millions and millions of people have raised children successfully, and it's clear from this how. Nothing. You don't have to do a damn thing! The baby in Namibia played with dirt and rolled around. The baby in Mongolia couldn't even move. The baby in Japan and the baby in San Francisco had all these toys and books and all kinds of things to play with, but how much of it was really necessary, entertainment-wise? Building their intelligence at an early age...I guess that's a different conversation for a different day.

No End In Sight

Wow. Some heavy stuff. I feel so much smarter now. That's why I got into this. To learn things I didn't know before. I feel like getting into a debate with someone about the goings on of this war. I still find it crazy that I've been raised during war time. And it's so frustrating that these things are happening that no common human civilian can even do anything about. We're just stuck. They're just stuck. It sucks.

This one utilized a lot of documentary techniques. Voice overs, text, interviewer speaking on camera to the interviewees, separated sections. There's not much score really, which I think really works. It's used in a meaningful way when used. It all worked together, but at some times, each technique had its weakness. The titles sometimes were unnecessary at times when they footage could have spoken for itself. But also, I like that they weren't afraid to jump cut the interviews. Sometimes you just gotta jump cut.

Even after watching all of this, I still fail to understand how it's possible for a country to come into another country, mess it up, kill their dictator as if he's their dictator, and then go on to rule it like they have any any sort of jurisdiction within that country

This documentary watching project that I'm doing should be renamed "No room to complain" project. Cause everything I watch that explores the hardships of different countries and cultures other than my own, just gives me another reason that, by comparison, I have no reason to complain. Sad to think that this movie was made 3 years ago, but we're still in this situation today. It's insane. It's insane too that Obama inherited this problem.

I'd like to say more about this one, but it was pretty much just as depressing and hopeless seeming as I expected.

The Thin Blue Line

A man who was sentenced to die for a crime he most likely didn't commit.

I searched all over and couldn't find a trailer for this one.

Very interesting stuff. Building the case as you build the movie. It's kind of like Capturing the Friedmens that way. You're not entirely sure what to believe. You can see a guy in orange and one not in orange, but you still feel like that can't be the whole story. That can't be the end. Also, even though as you watch you begin to form your own story as to what happened, I still felt, that the filmmakers did an okay job showing both sides. Which is a weird thing to do when you're basically trying to argue for this dude's innocence.

The tone of this was really kind of cool. It was kind of dark and kind of quiet. It felt like a doc version of Blade Runner or the original Terminator. They used these reenactments of the scene of the crime from different angles and different Roshomon-esque ways of how it could have gone down. But it kept from being like a trutv/Court tv sort of documentary with how they used and reused the same scenes. I think it worked. As did other people. This is a very popular, pretty famous documentary.

Funnily enough, I feel like if you were to make this movie now, they'd overthink everything. You'd try to make it too stylistic and polished, but the simplicity of this is what made the tone of it work. Something like the reveal of the make and model of car would have been done with too many effects. So, in that way, the dated look of the whole thing really worked for it.

Something that could have helped this, and yes I know, this is a very famously "good" doc, but something that could have helped it would have been lower thirds. There were so many people talking back and forth, throwing names around. I know this wasn't made before the whole idea of compositing names over video on a documentary. I've been watching The Up Series. I know around what time they started doing that. So It could have definitely be strengthened in that way. Regardless, though, the storytelling was there, so it was okay.

One more thing I wish, where I think it would have a bigger impact, is if you couldn't tell who was already in prison. There are very few designers who would jump at making a bright orange collared shirt or jumper. So you know some of the end, which sucked, but was also sort of gratifying because it was kind of a relief to know that everything wasn't a disaster.

Also, the accents where just hilarious.

Confessions of a Superhero

I think it tried to do a little too much. I was trying to show us too much and get through all of these characters. They went home to talk to Wonder Woman's parents and talked to them about her childhood and how she got to LA. I don't know if all of that completely jelled. I don't really know what else they could do. But eventually it just sort of started dragging on and on.

You know, it did bring humanism to these people I see all the time. But I still feel like when I drive past these people...I don't know if it has changed my opinion on them. It still makes me sad to think people have to do that for a living. They're stuck in this job and it's not even that enjoyable really.

I wouldn't advise aspiring actors to watch this. In that respect, it was super depressing. It makes you think of how many people are in LA trying to act and get into movies. A very small percentage of people in Hollywood even have the talent to do what they're trying to do. On the other hand, it's not always talent that gets the grease...if that's what they say.

And on the other hand again, this thing got really cringeworthy. Superman lying about being Sandy Dennis's son. Batman lying about being a martial arts expert. Wonderwoman doing that really embarrassing audition scene on camera (This is for the...American Idol...DVD...boardgame.). The Hulk is exhomeless. It's really kind of cringeworthy, the whole thing.

On the upside of all of this, it's nice to see that most of these people have significant others though. It's nice to see that everybody can find someone for them.

Crazy Love

I strongly recommend not watching the entire trailer because I hate when trailers give too much away. Maybe stop half way.

Something I found interesting about this was that they interviewed both sides. They got both perspectives on what happened. This obviously clinically insane person, and the victim that he preyed upon. This man had to basically sit and defend himself for all of his horrible actions that were indefensible.

I thought this was going to be a slow one to watch. The actions took place mostly in the 50s and there's not much archive footage from that time, so you have to rely on pictures and interviews and. But fortunately, that exposition went mostly pretty quickly. When they got into the story, it started to take off. But even so, at the halfway mark, I couldn't even imagine it was going to go where it did.

It's always fun to get to the end of a movie and for the end of the movie to completely skew what you were watching at the beginning. They really disguised that well, I think. You have to go back and see how people answered certain questions and in what way they retold the past. It wasn't like a movie like Dear Zachary where the story is sort of building and changing as you watch. The whole story is over and done by the time they got into the production of the doc.

Eventually, to me, without giving anything away, this thing just ends up being a sad story of someone settling for something they think they deserve. Entertaining to watch though.

Born Into Brothels

This was the kind of movie where it's so easy to take for granted the difficulty in telling a story like this. This women spent 2 years on and off living in the red light district of Calcutta, getting to know and forming a deep relationship and emotional connection with these children. It's looks like they just filmed that and put it up on the screen. But it was, of course, more than that. This one was sort of a variation of the observational documentary, but not quite. It's similar in that it's mostly just watching these kids do their thing, but it also has elements of other ways storytelling. Some voice over, some stills, some "pop" music.

What I found interesting was that the fear in making something like this is to not exploit the kids of their situation. You want to call attention to the problem and the issue of the film, but without using the kids to advance that. That's a thin line sometimes. So, of course Zana Auntie couldn't just sit there and observe these kids and stick a video camera in their face. She had to take action and try to better their lives. And that's where the story came from.

In that was, it was as though the filmmaker has to be in it. If she was going to help them, she had to be an active part of the story as well. We had to see the relationship she was forming with these kids. She had to be helping them. But you still get the sense that she IS the filmmaker, even though you know she's not holding the camera.

This movie is much more uplifting than what I expected. I think I went into it thinking that the kids were the sex workers. That's why I've avoided it so long. This is only partially true. Of course they do sort of show some child and teenage sex workers, it's all about the children OF the adult sex workers and them attempting to overcome this fate. Doesn't have a Hollywood ending by any means (it's real life after all) but not a complete and utter downer either.

28 Up

They got lower thirds! Just like I thought.

28 Up was strange in that I don't see where they can go from here. The questions have started to get a bit repetitive and they now all seem to be fully formed adults. We're going to see them at 3 more stages in their lives and all I can think that will happen at that time is more children and/or divorce, which will be sad to see.

Most of these kids (who are now older than me, so I guess they're not kids anymore) are married in this one. Which at 28 makes sense, but most of them got married at or around the age I am now. Which makes me feel weird. But also, a lot of these, or I'd say most of these 28 year olds look and act like I thought they were going to be in 35 Up. So I can't imagine how old they're going to look for that one. It does make me wonder, though, at what point they stopped contacting their parents are started contacting them. If this was the US, I'd guess they'd have to wait until this edition, 28, before they wre fully adults. But for some reason I feel like in the UK, 21 would be considered adult and they got with them directly then.

One thing that I think is strange about this whole thing is what it does to its subjects. I was wondering how they were going to work around some kids not being able to or wanting to do the interview some year and I guess this was how since two subjects opted out this time around. They just use more b-roll from the past editions to fill time. I didn't like it. It didn't really show any progression of the characters, of where where they were at the time, just where they came from. I hope they show up in the next one.

So interesting, besides his voice during the interviews, which is very apparent throughout the entire doc, Michael Apeted isn't present in this thing. We watch them do activities, but he never participates. He's not on camera. When he's almost on camera, he's in the shadows and you can't make out his figure. Still with that pervasive voice over though.

One thing the focused on was the differences between classes and therefore the different styles of education. This is something that is mostly a glaring issue in the UK, not so much in the States. Some of the private school posh students dropped out, but the guys still put so much worth in their education and would still support even lower classes sending their kids there. Others would disagree. One of the girls riffs that she doesn't even think of her class until the program comse around every 7 years. Which is really interesting. Like a self fulfilling prophecy

Also, I'm completely in love the sole black dude at his 21 and 28 year old state. I'm totally bummed to have to witness him become my mother's age.

21 Up

The subjects are still pretty open, even though at 21, they don't seem very eager to share their lives with the whole world. They're more aware of the fact that his will be seen by many people. More so than they were as 7 and 14 year olds, definitely. That puts a self aware spin on things. And even more interesting, they now confess to the fact that at 14, they may not have been as truthful as it seems basically because...well, they were 14, and they had the same insecurities everyone else has as a teenager.

What I also find funny is that at 21 looking back at 14 and 7, they think they are looking back on their most foolish times, but I'm sure the next time we check in with them, they'll be older and wiser and be embarrassed by what they see here.

Charles (one of the kind of kids that you think of when you think of rich British school children) is one of the ones most aware of the impact of the film. He even makes a comment about how, as a rich "character" in the movie, he was meant out to be "bad" while the lower class kids were meant to be "good." That's how he viewed the film. And he spoke about the sort of manipulation you can use with editing and different ways to produce it.

Which is another funny point. It's not just to see the evolution of these kids, but the evolution of the filmmaking. Not something simple like going from black and white to color on the 7 Up and 7 Plus Seven, but the use of b-roll when we get to 21 Up and the filming style, the way the camera moves. LOTS of talking over video footage. I imagine on the next addition, they'll finally institute some lower thirds in this thing. I almost have all the names down, but that could definitely help.

I tell you what, if I have to hear Give me the child until he is seven and I'll give you the man one more time, I might hit something. I know these weren't meant to be watched back to back to back, and when they first started making these there was no such thing as VHS, let alone streaming Netflix, but they say it at the beginning AND end of each one. Annoying.

Seven Up/7 Plus Seven

I actually suffered through/watched My Generation last night and decided to clean my brain out by starting the Up series as part of my documentary watching project. I'm sure the creator of that terrible show was inspired by this groundbreaking series.

So far I've gotten through Seven Up and 7 Plus Seven. I can't find a trailer anywhere for this thing, which makes some sense because it began in 1964. The whole thing is basically interviewing a group of 14 7 year olds about what they think about politics, "colored" people, what their future holds, the class system of England, and other topics. The way they respond to these questions was surprisingly very honest. That was something that was very interesting to see, actually. I imagine that the 7 year olds would unknowingly just let a stranger into their lives, but the follow up with the 14 year old was the same. They seemed to be annoyed or shy about answering some of the questions, but they still seemed to answer truthfully.

The change in perspective from 7 to 14 years old, and even the change from kid to kid, class to class, was interesting. I remember being 14 and looking back on my thoughts and opinions as a 7 year old and thinking, how stupid. And unfortunately, their thoughts are captured on camera.

I'm excited to continue. This thing goes every 7 years until they're 42.

Last Train Home

What I find most strange about this is that the main issue of this movie is not something that's even crossed my mind in the past. Ever. I knew about China's over-population and that there are over a billion people there. I knew that there were tons of migrant workers making shoes and clothes and toys to later be stamped with the label "Made In China,"and I knew there's a holiday that they all celebrate, but I never even thought to think of the fact that these millions of people all might want to go home to celebrate this holiday with their families. All at the same time. Even the idea of that seems like an impossibility. Even when we see it happen on camera, it's still difficult to grasp what you're seeing.

This was a super heavy and depressing sort of observational documentary. The was very rare interaction with the camera or the people behind it. Even when the family was speaking aloud it seemed as if they spoke to themselves like that all the time, not the were responding to a question the filmmaker had just asked them. There were no talking heads, no on camera interviews, in the credits, it was obvious that they were working with just a skeleton crew, which really worked out since almost every scene is packed with people from frame to frame. I feel like I never get to complain about LA's crowded malls or bumper to bumper 405 traffic ever again.

Also in the movie, they touched upon the dynamics of family. The migrant working couple in the movie left their son and daughter home with the grandmother as they went off to the industrial city to make money for the family (as they'd been for 13 years) so their kids can have better. This turns into resentment as the now teenage daughter grows up feeling that her parents abandoned her and had no interests in raising her or her brother. She doesn't like her parents, has no emotional ties to them, defies and disrespects her father like I've seen no child do before in a documentary and eventually decides to make her own life for herself. It's a depressing version of cosmic irony because where she feels her parents didn't love her enough to stay home, and for this reason she quits school and works in a factory herself, the truth is that her parents loved her so much, they'd do this terrible job 24/7 almost every day of the year to make sure her life didn't turn out the way there's is.

Waiting For Superman

The experience of watching something in a theater instead of my small computer screen felt very weird. Being a child of a life-long teacher, I was really interested in what this movie had to say. I knew I was going to cry a little bit, so I was prepared for that. It was good, but I also had some problems with it.

The great stuff. I love putting the focus on education in this nation. How can we call ourselves a superpower and yet in a study done by the Program for International Student Assessment, we're ranked 24th out of 29 (TWENTY-NINE!) countries in math skills? And similarly in English. This obviously a problem that needs attention, and that's what documentaries are for and that's what this one was doing...by making you cry hard.

This sort of reminded me of a sort of Spellbound, but with a school lottery. They took a while to build up to the lottery at the end of the movie. They introduced us to the characters and we got to know the families and their struggles. I thought they balanced the kids families, the statistics, the (really fun) graphics, and Michelle Rhee's struggle really well. They sent us through this first before they tore our hearts out. At the Charter school lotteries each character we'd spent time with was put into a lottery in their respective schools districts and picked, or not picked, to have a better future in a better school system. A school that, the movie implied, would care more about their success.

Some things I had problems with are some of the race related things. Most all the graphics used, not racially ambiguous drawings of people, but white people when clearly, the movie focused on all young children of color until they introduced the girl in San Francisco half way through. And on that note, I didn't really feel like she was necessary at all. I see what they were trying to do by introducing tracking in schools and how that can harm a child's education as well, even in a school that wasn't as bad as some of these inner city schools, but to see the stark contrast between her future public school and the road ahead for some of these other students, was a little jarring. Especially in the end. Which I won't ruin.

And speaking of the end, I really didn't like the fact that there was no follow up, as most documentaries have. I think the theater was surprised that we didn't catch up with a few of these kids a few months later and see if they're doing okay and still on the right path.

And overall, the thing I found most interesting is that in this film, we place the problem with the schools. The schools aren't teaching our kids and they're holding them back and failing all these students. I feel like that may be a little unfair because the problem isn't as easy as that. Blame can't always be placed on just the schools. In a large majority of those schools with all those failing students, standing right behind them are failing parents. As my dad says, the worst thing about this country, the number one thing that's a problem in this nation is piss poor parenting. That can funnel into just about every other aspect of our lives. Including education.

It was very well done though.

Endless Summer

This is the oldest doc I've watched so far. Grey Gardens was old, When You're Strange had old archive footage in it, but this was from 1966. Even just the idea that this was made and made well is fascinating to me. if it were made now, it wouldn't be as good. The proof of that (I'm guessing, I have no basis for this because I haven't seen it) is in the remake (maybe?).

Usually, I think narration or voice over seems lazy, like you couldn't create enough content so you had to voice over what was happening to explain the story to the audience. Narration in this gets sort of a pass, though. It definitely made it a bit more interesting since they clearly didn't get any audio. It made it seem like they were doing an anthropological study reel that you'd later watch in class. I the 60s. Except this study has to do with human beings and the "thrill and the fun of the sport of surfing." Kind of cool.

Despite the voice over, it was easy to forget that this thing was actually being filmed It just seems like we were going on this trip with these guys. Even WITH the voice over. How'd they do that? That's the best kind of doc. The camera just disappeared.. And I think that gives some credit to the script too. The editing, combined with the script was a pretty good combination. And the music really pulled it together (except for the foley, which, besides the sound of the waves crashing, was pretty bad). But where'd the find people to drag them around the world? How'd they pay for this without online banking? Crazy.

Some cons:

The continued use of phrases like "primitive" Africa, "poor little African boy," "being good africans they threw a few rocks," that stuff was bothersome. I guess I should just think of it as part of the times, and it was interesting that they were introducing surfing to these communities, but the cultural insensitivity was still a bit annoying. Like... shut up voice over. And I bet they probably didn't even think of the fact that the camera might not even be allowed in some of these countries and tribes. But it was made in the sixties. As was Breakfast At Tiffany's with their horrible spoof of a Chinese man. Yikes, 60s.

I mean, I just knew that in Africa we'd see some non-primative black people. But no. Every person they talked to and surfed with that wasn't one of these primitive Africans was a white dude. You just forget that there are so many white people in South Africa in the first place. And no Hawaii's surfing in Hawaii at all? Oh sixties.

Speaking of 60s, that sixties corny humor in the voice over was kind of funny. And the innocence of being bale to just hitch a ride without considering that you might be kidnapped or killed.

Watching endless footage of surfing reminds me of being friends with skaters in high school and watching endless and endless footage of skateboarding tricks, and super cool aerials and rad grinds, etc. Since I don't and have no idea how to surf, it's not very fun after the first 17.

This whole thing made me want to learn how to surf. I'm in the right place for it. Not the right season though.

Surfwise

I really liked it. It looked really great.. I liked how the story progressed. It was shot really well and, regardless of how stupid it sounds, I think the filmmakers really captured the sun.

What a crazy man attempting to raise his family in a mostly impossible and definitely crazy lifestyle. Clearly not one that could be maintained for longer than the children were children. For all his attempts at not being "attached to the physical world at all" during this time, it was interesting to see how much video footage and photographs they had from this period in their lives. A lot to base a documentary off of.

It was interesting to see his family go from a sort of idyllic sort of family cult lifestyle and transition into this sort of dark days towards the end as everybody went their separate ways. It was also interesting to see the perspective of the children. A lot of the older kids took the point of view of understanding how messed up the lifestyle was growing up and held a lot of animosity for their dad even to this day, but the younger kids, the kids born in the 70s seemed to be of the opinion that the lifestyle wasn't so bad and one of them was even thinking of "treating" his kids to the same kind of lifestyle, except on a boat. It's sort of like the old kids grew up with the truth, but the younger kids didn't have to experience all the bad. They came in during the decline of everything. The were born just as the older kids began wanting out of the lifestyle.

The filmmakers let the family go on the this long video diatribe, speaking with the sons and one daughter about what they missed out on. The fact that they couldn't go to medical school, they couldn't understand making monthly payments, they couldn't adjust and assimilate for a while, and then they come back to Doc, their dad, and he's babbling on and on about how no other child of God's earth got the opportunity that his kids got. "You only take what you need. If you take more than you need, then you're taking something from somebody else."

Sound and Fury: Six years Later

The brother's family with the infant son who got the implant wasn't profiled in the movie, which was a shame. I really wanted to see what he speaking level would have been like since they implanted him as an infant. They did catch up with the family of the little girl who wanted an implant and, without giving anything away about the original or the update, it was interesting to see where everyone was 6 years later.

Sound and Fury

What a clever little tlitle. This reminded me of the sort of documentary they'd make you sit through in health class. Maybe because it looks like it was filmed on Betamax and cut on a toaster. I imagine my 16 year old self being pretty fascinated by it and remembering it whenever I'd think about a cochlear implant.

I like the way the juxtaposed both family's decisions about the implant. It's a pretty controversial decision in general. But having that large family disagree so furiously over it was really compelling to see. Each had their point of view that was right in their eyes. Despite that last closing lines of the movie, I feel like they didn't much take a hard stance on the subject. Just let everyone speak their mind. As a viewer, though, I brought my own perspective to it and I saw in it what I wanted to see. That the hearing people were right and the deaf people were wrong.

This whole idea of it being good that you can't hear is controversial and very interesting, in general. As a hearing person, I of course am going to think that it's better to be able to hear. There are more opportunities afforded to hearing people. The world is built for hearing people. The world is easier to navigate as a hearing person. I can't wrap my head around the idea that it's better to not be afforded these opportunities. But I'm a hearing person so it's easy for me to not get it. I can get wanting to be who you are the way you were made and embrace that. You're a part of a community that you otherwise wouldnt' be. They don't want their community to go the way of the Natives and just get smaller and smaller...but it just seems too hard to have to live with. A difficulty you don't have to have.

When they got into it and they had the hearing parents where they just go ahead and get the implants for their kids and their kids don't know anything about the deaf lifestyle or identity or culture or community. That seems a little strange. That probably has something to do with the hearing parents, choosing the implant and giving their kid the opportunity to not have to learn how to sign. They use the excuse of saying a speech therapist said it was better not to learn it because they'll use it as a crutch. It seems more like they feel like it was implanted because it's bad to be deaf. I wouldn't say bad, more like different. The world handicap has such a band connotation. It's more like an impediment to all the possibilities and opportunities of the world.

Tricky subject.

The Business of Being Born

I don't know what I expected when I went into this, but I really really liked what I found. One of my top five that I've watched so far. This was made for a particular reason. To open people's eyes about hospital births vs home briths. And I will admit that my eyes have been opened. And I liked that feeling. Be warned, though. This is a movie about giving birth at home, so there are many many on camera births in this movie.

I kind of enjoyed how they showed the doctor's perspective and bounced back and forth between the midwife's opinions. Maybe it was supposed to be used to show both perspectives, but the argument on their side seems so strong that it really just made the doctors sound like Aholes.

It's interesting for something like this, though. At what point is something a biased one sided story and at what point is it a movie that's trying to open your eyes to the realities of the maternity care system just by revealing of facts? I think it did a great job at presenting facts as true but not making them absolute. The hospital works for some cases, as we definitely see later on in the film.

This movie was super uplifting every time a baby was born. Smile from ear to ear. It was awesome. Almost made me want to have a baby. I didn't care for staring at so many vaginas, really. That's just not a thing that I make it a habit of doing all the time, but that's part of birth and I know that it would be. I remember in middle school we had the option of watching a real birth in Mr. Love's health class, and my 12 year old self chose to watch, for curiosities sake. I was scarred for the rest of middle school I think.

Abby Epstein did a great job with this one. Really kept my attention and I felt like I was learning the whole way through.

Gates Of Heaven

There's no trailer for this on youtube, so I'll just use an excerpt from the film. The movie is about pet cemeteries but it also discusses morality, religion, and the afterlife.

I found this list of the 25 best documentaries of the last 50 years and since I've seen a fourth of them already I decided it could be a good idea to make my way through them. This one was on that list.

Honestly, I don't think this was that great. It's not that it needed it to be super exciting or have a bunch of sex crimes, mysteries, or suspense, but the things that make a documentary, to me, are the premise, how they execute that premise, the characters they choose to follow, the storylines they create, and how it's all cut together to evoke an emotional response. Now, I was paying attention to this almost the whole way through, and I was a bit confused in some parts. It was a quiet kind of thing, kind of slow at times, with no music at all and just sort of short interviews with various people involved with the story. It was fine, but I don't think I would ever put it in a list with best docs ever. Ebert disagrees, but he liked I Paul Blart. I guess I'm supposed to take everything into consideration with this one? How hard it was for Errol Morris to get it made, the fact that he went into this small town and profiled these random people, the whole Werner Herzog eating his show situation? I don't know. Maybe since I'm not a pet owner and religious, I just don't get it.

The thing with this is that to me, getting a pet is like forcing a child upon yourself that you know is going to die before you do. I don't want to go through that pain. Besides not being a pet person, that's one reason why I don't think pets are for me. It's like I'm setting myself up for terrible sadness. Millions and millions of people disagree with me, of course. And my view is probably a super cynical one. But I'm a cynic, so that makes sense. As one of the old ladies said "you miss your pets just like you miss your family." That doesn't appeal to me...except for my grandmother's dog Caesar. The best dog ever. And then they went and buried a little white dog named Caesar in the movie!

I still haven't decided if I believe in Heaven, but if there is one, the kind they show in the movies, are there pets and animals in Heaven? I find it would be quite complicated to have dead elephants, lions, and pet dogs mingling with humans inside the pearly gates. And if not, then what do they do? Separate it by class of animal. If so, what about those situations where different animals are friends. Or something like Catdog.

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room

I don't know if I like the opening being like a reenactment of the guy killing himself. I haven't decided what I feel about reenactment type stuff in documentaries. I think I don't feel good about it. It was used kind of weird here.

This kind of thing is interesting. It was kind of the situation where your mother or teacher catches you doing something. And you don't know what to do, but you still don't want to admit that you're embarrassed that you got caught. That's what Jeff Skilling was like during his indictment. Awkward.

This one seemed to break a lot of my "I don't really care for that in a documentary" rules. They used a ton of pop music, they had a voice over throughout the whole thing, they had the interviewer speak on camera, etc, but it worked here. It kept up with itself and kept me engaged. It was a tight, compelling, well told story. Very confusing at times, but good nonetheless.

It is unfortunate that no one got properly blamed for something like this. Jeff Skilling is responsible for thousands and thousands of families losing their futures and all he gets is 24 years? While some guy selling crack cocaine on the corner will get life in prison? That's damn ridiculous. And then Ken Lay basically got the easy way out.That's kind of a messed up thing to say, but really, not paying for your consequences is just the easy way out. It is interesting, though, that this was made before Lay and Skilling went to jail. I guess they wanted to pump this thing out as soon as possible. That makes sense.

I can't even wrap my head around wanting to have this type of control and power in a business. To be that type of person, that type of money hungry person where you don't mind ruining lives to get a bigger bank statement...I don't get that. I can't understand it.

Another frustration to pick at: Why don't people answer how they're supposed to answer?! Answer with the question in your answer! Otherwise, the interviewer is going to be in the doc

When You're Strange

This was in my queue...so I watched it. And now I know more about the Doors. But I feel like probably not as much as I'd know if I'd watched Oliver Stones The Doors.

I thought the opening of the movie was like a reenactment. they got an actor to pretend to be Jim Morrison as if he were still alive, listening to himself die on the radio. I...didn't like that. As if he's still alive just kind of wondering the world. From doing a little bit of research I found out that was actual footage of the real Jim from some movie he did back in the day. That's better I guess and it was used nicely for effect.

I don't think I liked the structure of this one, over all. The present tense was very weird to me. It makes it seem like an episode of Behind the Music. The tone of the whole thing was kind of cool. A very quiet kind of dark tone. And it knew what it was in that respect...it just didn't feel like enough. Like it wasn't full enough, if that makes an sense.

On one final note, It's amazing to me that musicians were/are still able to make music on all these drugs. They're still able to remember all their lyrics when they sing live or do recording sessions. That's a skill right there isn't it?

Capturing The Friedmans

It sounds stupid to say that was awesome, but it was just really well done. I think that was one of the best ones so far. Just like another doc on the list Grey Gardens, this story was discovered while the filmmaker was attempting to make a different documentary-one about clowns in NYC. He stumbled upon this story instead.

Going over it more and more in my head, I think we were presented a pretty biased view of what happened. Originally, as I watched, I was thinking they were giving both sides. But the filmmakers knowingly presented one argument, and then immediately discounted it with one of the boys saying the complete opposite. I supposed it still allows the views to ultimately draw their own conclusions though.

One thing I like is the use of music. There's not much throughout the whole thing. It's just the natural noise of the room. It really depends on what kind of doc you're doing, but it most definitely creates a tone for the movie. I liked it. This doc really just knew what it was. It was sure of itself and its identity and the tone they wanted to capture. And it worked. It was very well done. A doc that definitely knows what it is and with multiple personality disorder, if that makes any sense. This is the ultimate he said she said. This family was just ripped apart by this horrific thing and they just don't remember it the same at all. The filmmakers have more of the whole story, but they don't let everyone else in on the whole story. It's interesting.

It's interesting though. This doesn't really seem like anything elaine wants to even talk about. And letting news like this out when it concerns someone who entertains children for a living can ruin someone's career. What the hell is he doing being interviewed in this documentary?! I really really wonder why and how they got them to reveal so much about their lives.

The method of using the interviews to slowly reveal and unravel the story is very interesting. It was done very sharply here. You use present tense to not give away the ending and not reveal the truth or what ultimately happens. As I got more and more into the story and the web of lies and half truths and fabricated truths were revealed, it really created this blanket of uncertainty. You don't know what's real, who to believe, and ultimately, when the thing was over, I still didn't know what I felt was the truth. Whose truth is the real truth? The authorities were just so sure that this happened. Even if they figured out it didn't and were sure, they' find a way to make it true. If I know anything, it's the kids are stupid. And kids will admit to anything that you tell them to be true. But on top of that, regardless of whether or not Arnold didn't touch this particular group of kids, he still had incestuous and jailbait nudie pic magazines. I mean, that's pretty horrific and terrible on its own. That alone makes him a pretty yucky guy. To then put focus on this other thing, this other particular instance where he possibly may not be guilty seems like small potatoes.

Grey Gardens

This was sort of painful to watch. Depressing. I think I was supposed to find it kind of funny (which it was at times) and fun to watch these two eccentric women bicker with each other, but it was just more just sad watching this middle aged woman cling to her mother who she really couldn't leave. With no money and no real skill to speak of to turn into money to pay someone to care for her mother...there's really no leaving. It was interesting how much Edie and her mother argued and seemed to get on each others nerves, her mother just  seemed to treat her rotten...or more like a mother treats a daughter, and Edie just takes it. And she keeps coming back for more.

This movie was also scary for the fact that it doesn't seem like it took too much to turn their house into a raccoon infested shithole. They just didn't care for it. They didn't even seem to use every room. They used the bedroom and the den dining kind of area sometimes, but they were in a huge East Hamptons house. What'd they do with all that space?

While listening to Edie speak, I did wonder how much was BS and how much she actually believed to be true. All her proposals. Her dancing skills. Im going to go ahead and go out on a limb here, but I'm thinking that more than half of it is probably embellished a bit. But it was interesting that the filmmakers were sort of part of the story because Edie and her mother needed the companions, so unlike regular docs, they spoke to the filmmakers as if they were people, not as if "pretend like the camera isn't' there." They were there. It was company they don't' usually have, so why wouldn't they speak to them? They would.

I guess now the next step is to watch the HBO movie based on this doc that Drew Barrymore won an Emmy for.

And to sum up, in the words of Little Edie Beale on the subject of her mother "She's a lot of fun. I hope she doesn't die."