Favorite Documentaries

A Decade Under the Influence will be out on R1 DVD at the end of September, for anybody who doesn't have IFC or was able to catch it in its limited theatrical run earlier this year.

And yeah, Scarface is going to get a 20th Anniversary re-release in some major American cities this Fall.

*BTW, for the record, DePalma's Scarface was released in 1983.

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Baraka........

__________________
~ Nikki ~

"I'm your hell, I'm your dream.......I'm nothing in between.......You know you wouldn't want it any other way".........

"Listen, when I slap you, you'll take it and like it"..........Humphrey Bogart..........Maltese Falcon.......

Graze on my lips and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie...........William Shakespeare.......

okay.. so it's not really a documentary.. but a fictional rockumentary.. muahaha

This Is Spinal Tap

funniest thing ever.

__________________
http://free.7host02.com/edmoo/hledmosig2.gif

"Lost in La Mancha" follows Gilliam's latest attempt to make this Munchausen-esque film based around Cervantes' deluded semi-hero. It's a marvellous expose of the chaos that can coalesce behind the camera. Trying to make the film in divisive-ole-europe was probably the first of many mistakes - but it's interesting to at least get a glimmer of Gilliam's working style (and to see how much he profits from some of the stringent organisation tied with big bucks of the Hollywood production scheme)

my rating:

five supernovas

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

i agree with many here... dogtown and the z-boys, crumb, bowling for columbine, and so many others are great... but my favorite is "lenny bruce: swear to tell the truth" it's a bio/docu. about the late/great blacklisted comedian lenny bruce... and it's narrated by robert deniro... great movie... they show it on the independant film channel from time to time... check it out if you get a chance. you will not be dissapointed.

Yeah, Keep the River on Your Right... was really good. Kong seconds this reccomendation for any of you who haven't seen it.



Has anyone else seen The Cruise? Very funny and interesting documentary about "Speed" Levitch who was then a tour guide for a New York City double-decker tour bus. He has since gone on to do private tours, and Richard Linklater used him as a character in Waking Life and gave him a little cameo in School of Rock.


For those of you willing to see a 9 1/2 hour documentary on the holocaust, Shoah has just been released to DVD.

__________________
Kong's Reviews:
Stuck On You
Bad Santa

Bowling for Columbine is pretty good.

I saw a documentary on tv not long ago called Air Jaws, about the Great White Sharks off the South African coast. The "Air Jaws" refers to the fact that the sharks can leap completely out of the water when they grab a seal. Truly amazing stuff, but kind of scary at the same time.

I don't know if I've said it on here before. I probably have, but I'll say it again.

I think Harlan County, USA (1976) by Barbara Kopple is probably the best documentary I have ever seen. Has anyone here seen it?

__________________
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

--------

They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I think Bowling for Columbine has to be in a list of best documentals without any doubt.It blow my head, is very good filmaking. Michael Moore has all my respect.

And the bear is awake again.....

yes i am.....so anyways i say Style Wars is amung a goodbreed of doc. film making

__________________
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

ROOOOOAAAARRRRR!!!!!

Michael Moore is quickly becoming one of Kong's least favorite documentarians and it doesn't even have very much to do with his films. It's just the fact that people laud him way too much. Sure, he tackles topics that need to be brought up, but he's also deceptive and somethimes he's not even earnest. (Do you really think someone who wanted to talke to a big CEO would act the way he did in Roger and Me?)

Furthermore, Moore's popularity seems to overshadow other documentaries that are far better. The documentary that Piddzilla mentioned, Harlan County, USA is absolutely amazing. It is a portrait of exploited and unrespected workers that is easily 50x the film that Roger and Me is. There are so many documentaries that are more involving, more earnestly made, more honest, and far less self-congratulatory than those of Moore.

Okay, rant over.

part of me is reluctant to have my say about michael moore. i agree with you kong that he's lavished with far too much attention, and really that's the key reason that i dont really want to say much about him: i feel that he himself has become more of a "hotbutton", charged issue than i'm really comfortable fueling fires about.

i dont really have much problem with moore, though all i've seen are roger and me and the big one. i've never really thought of him as much of a documentarian, and feel that his work on 'tv nation' shows him as first and foremost a media satirist and a master of self-parody [ie- the whole unassuming "unearnest"-earnestness with which he tries to confront roger moore: i didnt take that as self congratulatory or offensive in any way. it was a great way to draw attention to and make roger moore look absurd.] i laud him only for the fact that what he does he does cleverly, and because [i assume] he has some moral standing in that he doesnt just go around looking for any easy target he can find but digs a bit deeper for topics that actually matter [which i think kong seems to agree with me on] and is a bit less reprehensible than, say, the howard stern show. but i think ultimately he serves the same basic function [maybe a little closer to like 'the daily show', even though i havent seen taht in ages].

i suspect moore probably knows what his real calling is, or at least once did on some level. celebrity perhaps, has given him a big head [as it tends to do], but i think if he still fills that same basic entertainment niche and does so as well as he has in the past, i can enjoy him on my own and say to hell with all the stupid press he's getting and possibly groping for himself. and if nothing else he's at least worth a bit more press coverage than the likes of stern. i'll have to see bowling for columbine eventually, as well as harlan county.

i dont think anyone has mentioned 'mr. death' yet, but that's one of my personal favorite documentaries.

I think the reason to why so many don't like Michael Moore as a documentarist is simply because he is not "serious" enough, because he brings humor and satire into his documentaries.

I have only seen Harlan County, USA one time and it was a couple of years ago, but I seem to recall it was just as subjective and really manipulating too as Bowling For Columbine - only without the satire and the focus on the film's director.

This says more about big CEO:s than it does about Michael Moore. Michael Moore wants to appear as the average slob who asks straight and unconventional questions. I think the Michael Moore wanted to show how disrespectfully the General Motors CEO treats people that aren't influential or important to him. He did this to illustrate how ruthless the CEO was in his opinion. If Moore had done this film today, being as well-known and actually powerfull as he is nowadays, I think that CEO would have treated him differently.

Harlan County, USA takes sides (that of the miners') but it doesn't use the deceptive editing, staged events, and misrepresented information that Moore finds necessary to infuse his documentaries with. We see the subjectivity of the people that Kopple documented more than subjectivity of Kopple herself (although that's inherent in the film as well).

In the end, it's not possible to be completely objective (especially when you're making a film about politics/society), but it is possible to represent the things you are documenting in the most honest way you can. Kong expects Moore to be subjective (it's just his "thang"): Kong's just wishes he would be a little more honest as well.



If that's true then Moore would seem to have a very low opinion of the "average slob" as you call them. Then again, he did seem to make fun of the people he was also attempting to champion. Kong dislikes CEO's like Roger Smith as much as the next guy, but it seems a bit unfair to call him disrespectful just because he wouldn't have a meeting with a a man who seemed only interested in stirring up trouble (this isn't to say that Smith isn't disrespectul to the working class). At any rate, the issue of economic devastion in Flint caused mostly by automobile plant shutdowns and layoffs was and is an important one. Kong respects Moore for bringing extra spotlight on the topic, but Kong can't bring himself to respect the way that Moore purposefully mishandles information in order to manipulate (satire is one thing, deception is another).

Want your socks blown off? Turn off the Moore and put in the Chomsky.

Wow, Chomsky does docs? I've seen him interviewed in some - but never in a stand-alone one. Can you recommend any Kongini?

On the Moore thing tho - be careful what you say....In Columbine:
-he didn't stage anything to my knowledge (the bank for example, was not staged as unbased accusations suggested)
-the editing could be seen as deceptive - but the main case sited is that of one of Heston's speeches being used from a later date but attributed to the speech made 10 days after Columbine (yet it used EXACTLY the same dialogue as the described occasion - totally justified - no meaningful deception)
-i agree that he misrepresents stats, or at least presents the interpretation most favourable to his argument - but so does the "other side". Both pro and anti gun lobbies exaggerrate - reasonable people in the middle can make up their own minds. But overall his fact-checking and research is very thorough (note how no one has sued him over any of his books or docs - they're gone over with a fine toothcomb)

If he demonstrably does these things in other docs, then fair play - but there's been a lot of undeserved BS thrown at Columbine. That said, of course there are more regvealingand focused docs out there - with a more sensitive appraisals and evocations of the subject matter. But at least Columbine acheived the most focused of its aims to some extent: Debate.

Incidently - i just saw "Life and Debt", a great doc about the IMF's actions in Jamaica. It's by a writer/producer called something Black (her surname was memorable anyway )

There's a great documentary on Noam Chomsky, though it's a bit old now. It's called Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & the Media (1992). Terrific piece, a little over two and three-quarters of an hour in running time, it's quite comprehensive, covering multiple facets of his career and thoughts up to that point in time.



It was released on R1 DVD a while ago, but is probably out-of-print and may be fairly difficult to track down at this point. Certainly not impossible though. Well worth finding, for those who know and love Chomsky, those who hate him, or those who have no idea who he is.

Cheers Holds - it's just become my first ever DVD purchase. And i had to stop myself buying his more recent ones too. Damn Amazon i say. Damn it but i love it.

Really pleased there's a thread on documentaries as its one of my favourite genres of film... Besides the ones already mentioned, three personal and recent(ish) favourites of mine are (in no particular order):

Dark Days (2000)… a beautifully shot film which see Marc Singer go underground Penn Station and live with the homeless population which have set up residence there. During filing Amtrak served a 30 day eviction notice. The film shows real insight into their personal backgrounds and struggles to resettle with over ground life and a heartbreaking follow up on what happened afterwards. Best thing about the film… the homeless individuals featured in the film acted as crew, set up lighting rigs, dollies, and electrical wiring, mostly without the use of tools or real grip equipment or experience.








Also…


Tracking Down Maggie (1994)… Forget anything else you’ve ever seen, if you want a real cat and mouse case then this is it! Nick Bromfield relentlessly tries to arrange an interview with Thatcher and despite shunnery and snobbery travels across England and America and even turns up to her hairdressing appointment. Not intrusive as it sounds and highlights very little of whom Thatcher is, but by god is it a chase and a half!

&

Grizzly Man (2005)… documentary on amateur bear guru Timothy Treadwell, who travelled to Alaska for 13 summers to spend isolated time with Grizzly bears. On his last trip there was a famine and the bears turned on Timothy and ate him. Great insight into the madness of Timothy and a hard lesson that no matter what you might think, animals are animals not humans!!!

Anything by Werner Herzog,Ross McElwee, and Kazuo Hara...