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."

American Swing

It was about, surprise surprise, swinging. Particularly an old swingers club in New York, Platos Retreat. I don't know what I was expecting but boy that was a bunch of sex in that one. I really wasn't expecting that much, I guess and I was surprised. From the beginning, I couldn't at all see how this movie was going to last an hour, let alone an hour and a half. But whatever. It was what it was.

At times, it wasn't so much about Platos, but more of a profile on its creator, Larry Levenson, except not a very good one. I was going to stop it half way through, but Marggy said I should just finish. They'd get into these long strings of discussing him as if he was the focus of the doc.

There was lots of old archival footage and a lot of it was quite hard to see. I know from my internship that it's quite difficult to get this old footage, so that part is commendable, but I feel like the filmmakers were just satisfied getting some of the old footage and didn't mind if you could make out what was going on.

I didn't like the flipping the video back and forth. That was weird and distracting. we were always taught not to do that. There are rules that you're not supposed to do in movies that people break for creative effect, but this should not be one of those things.

Overall, I feel like this should have been an hour long tv documentary or something. There was just something about it that dragged out too long. There was a sequence that was just terribly cut and I started to get bored. It was going back and forth between a Plato's tv ad people's first hand accounts of Platos. That was horribly cut.

The music was fun.

Food, Inc.

I remember Fast Food Nation was the freshman book we were all supposed to read as incoming college students at Ball State. We were supposed to read it and then we'd all have a big discussion about it the first week of school...or something. I never finished it and I didn't go to the discussion. I think I got through the chapter about the history of McDonald's or some other fast food joint. I wonder if the rest of it unfolded similar to the way this movie did.

The opening was pretty cool. It reminded me of the opening of Thank You For Smoking, sort of. The whole movie was very sharp and clean. I liked it. The opening voice over didn't feel so much like a VO, but more like an interview sound bite. I liked that. Use what you have and build your story with it instead of making up a script in post...although they of course could have done too. They could have shot Eric Schlosser's stuff last and used his interview to say the stuff that wasn't said by other people. Regardless, I like how they tricked me into thinking it was done the way it looks like it was done.

I found it interesting that they used some of the same sources or shots as King Corn or vice versa. Very strange. There was one shot that I swear was exactly the same. Maybe it was stock footage, but in King Corn, it really didn't look like it.

I enjoyed the graphics. I thought that really added a little something. And I thought the quiet b-roll of the grocery stores really worked with the tone of the doc. I could have gone without some of the music that went on for far too long in places where they could instead had silence, but that didn't happen too often.

Being a meat eater, I don't know if I'm allowed to be appalled at how they treat the animals at these plants and slaughterhouses. Really though, there seems like there should be a line that shouldn't be crossed. Like if you hunt for food, if you shoot the animal and it doesn't die, you're meant to "put it out of its misery." Making the animal suffer is over the top. I guess that's sort of the idea behind this. It's hard to get into a debate with someone about it when their ultimate argument would just be, "Well, you are going to eat this."

After watching that, though, there seems like there's really no excuse to not eat better. When somebody gives you picture and video proof and evidence that how you're eating is bad, unhealthy, and not good for the world, not trying to make a change to help improve yourself and the world seems silly. Especially if you have the few extra bucks to do so. One of the tags at the end recommended that "you" only eat food in season. That's going to be a tough one for me I think, but it can't hurt at all to give it a try.

March Of The Penguins

That was seriously a brutal film to watch. From the beginning of the movie, they were attempting to personify these animals because thinking of them as people with people feelings allows us humans to sympathize with them a lot easier, so it's easy for me to say this. I know it's nature and evrything, but I was less uplifted by the beautiful natural world of the antarctic and more horrified by all the death, killing, and backstabbing going on. Some of those chicks were stealing babies, sea lions and large birds were circle of life-ing all over the place and the mothers leave to find food, come back home with a throat-full, and one of the idiot dads is like "Sorry, I kilt ares!" as she looks over at the penguin icicle that used to be her baby. All unfun stuff. Everybody knows baby animals are the cutest kind of animals, and I've seen one dead baby animal too many. All in this one movie.

And that sex scene? How weird. It was like watching a porno, except they sort of wanted us to like it and think it was sensual and sweet. Like they were super connected on this deep emotional level. Like I was watching Zak and Miri Make A Porno. That's how it came off to me. But these are animals people. Doesn't that convey bestiality in some way? Probably not but whatever.

When it comes to production, that was a hard shoot. It deserves the Oscar for the shoot alone. It was beautifully shot and I can't imagine doing something like this myself. Th foley was perfect and really added to the enjoyment of the film. That's an underrated skill on nature docs like these. People always underestimate sound. It, like editing, is something you take for granted when it's there, but notice right away when it's done badly.

On another note, I find it strange that God does so much voice over work when he has such a thick, at times distracting, Mississippi accent. It's super there all the time.

King Corn

I've been meaning to watch this for a while now ever since I saw the trailer...3 years ago.

This was a long piece highlighting the prevalence of corn in our diets. From the corn fed to the cattle, to the corn used in sweeteners, to the corn you drink. It's pretty hard to avoid the dangerous and unhealthy kind of corn from day to day. Two guys movie to Iowa and decide to plant an acre of corn to see how it really is, up close.

This is the kind of doc that opens with an introduction of two people, when you know they're not the focus of the whole thing, so that was kind of weird. The focus is really on corn and the corn industry as a whole. I think it was a very strange opening to the doc, music wise, editing wise, the low camera angle the took when they were late for their meeting. It was a strange set up to get into the action and the point of the film. I feel like we came in the middle of the action. They had an idea and then dropped us in the middle of it without much setup.

I feel like the relying on voice over is so easy. Like you can not worry about having to ask all the right questions while you're there. You can follow up later and plug in the statistics and facts to fill everyone in. I don't know why it draws my attention. It's a completely valid way to make a documentary and it's done quite a lot. It just seems to break the action up sometimes. Like maybe it could be show don't tell. The whole time, I found myself trying to figure out how they could have done particular things on camera instead of in voice over. I guess I came from the features school of thought where a voice over means lazy. Bt even that's not always true when it's stylistic. Heathers has a voice over. Kiss Kiss Bag Bang has voice over. Both awesome movies.

Sad to learn that corn is fed to cattle and it slowly kills them. It's cheaper because farms grow so much of it but, unlike grass, which they used to eat, corn makes them heavier/fatter but kills them. Confine them, don't let them move, and feed them corn. Yikes. And this corn make sthe cow more fatty, which makes the beef more fatty. Which meakes you ingest more fat.

I found it surprising that the guys continued to eat MCDonalds and other junk, corn-fed, terrible for you, high fructose containing, crap food. You'd think they'd at least make an attempt to cut that out of their diets a bit. Especially since they talked to Fray the cabbie and learned about his family that's been affected so heavily by diabetes. Made me feel better about the fact that I stopped drinking pop in high school.