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.