Favorite Documentaries

Here's a couple more to add....

Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002, Paul Justman)
A tribute to The Funk Brothers....the group of studio musician’s who really created the sound of Motown...Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes and others...and went uncredited/unrecognised for years. Sprinkled inbetween some of the interesing memories/interviews is a tribute concert for these wonderful jazz/R&B musician’s.

Lewis & Clark - The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997, Ken Burns)
About the two-and-a-half year expedition of Lewis & Clark into the uncharted territory of the west. Everything about it was fasinating. Ken Burns did a fabluous job with this.

"The Luckiest Nut in the World" by Emily James

THE most amusing analogical breakdown of the last fifty years of world-trade abuses and inconsistancies you'll ever see. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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

500 Nations (1995 - Jack Leustig)
A very well researched, beautifully photographed, and accurate history of Native Americans...

Volume One: The Ancestors - Early Cultures of Northern America
Volume Two: Mexico - The Rise and Fall of the Aztecs
Volume Three: Clash of Cultures - The People Who Meet Columbus
Volume Four: Invasion of the Coast - The First English Settlements
Volume Five: Cauldron of War - Iroquois Democracy and the American Revolution
Volume Six: Removal - War and Exile in the East
Volume Seven: Roads Across the Plains - Struggle for the West
Volume Eight: Attack on Culture - I Will Fight No More Forever

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My favorite documentary is Beyond The Mat.It shows the lives of 3 wrestlers.Terry Funk - He is a Hardcore wrestling legend who acts crazy in the ring and out of the ring is a family man.It shows how this man has been wrestling all his life and but still loves his family very much, he takes so much pain in wrestling his family wants him to quit, he has quit many times but has returned back to wrestling.He's 58 years old and is still one of the greatest wrestlers in the world.Mick Foley - Mick is probably the craziest man in wrestling, he takes so much pain it almost ruined his entire family life.His wife hates it that he takes so much punishment in wrestling and one other times his wife and kids went to a wrestling event and Mick was taking so much pain, was pouring so much blood his kids were just crying thought their dad was going to get killed.After the event the his wife was so mad at him for taking so much punishment in front of the kids.Mick Foley is one of the greatest wrestlers in the world and will always be.And it also shows the life of Jake "The Snake"Roberts, how wrestling ruined his entire life,Wrestling made him and his dad hate each other, wrestling made him and his daughter hate each other, wrestling made him leave his family, wrestling made him take drugs, He was a great wrestler but a sad man.Its a great great documentary.

Has anybody seen Beyond The Mat?

Yep, very funny doco. Im not a pro wrestling fan at all, in fact I hate it. But it's always fun to see a doco that shows that it's choreographed entertainment, it's theatre, not a sporting event.

Modern wrestling is more aerial ballet than combat sport, more acting than athletics.. Doesn't matter how good you are, just popularity. This one is must see for people who think wrestling is real or in anyway a test of strength.

Also very funny to see how serious the families and fans take it. The whole thing is a giant illusion yet the fans still act like it's spontaneous and the families complain about the pain there loved ones endure. Imagine how they would be if it was actually real combat like Ultimate Fighting where people die.

Anyway, real funny film that is kinda like watching an episode of Springer where the guests have become world famous.

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******"The Majority Is Always Wrong" Steve Mcqueen in Enemy Of The People******

What?Very funny?Are you kidding me?Its not funny to see families watch their husbands take so much punishment.And by the way nobody has died in UFC.You know people in this buissness travel 300 days a year, never see their familes, and also sure wrestling is entertainment, but it sure as hell ain't fake, wrestlers get injured, paralyzed all the time.Cause of the punishment they take, and you call a guy falling 16 feet of a cage through a table fake?Have you ever been in a wrestling ring?Do you know how hard the mat is, its basically all wood, I've been in a ring and its hard as hell when you fall.I think this documentary shows us the realness of wrestling.And to anybody who wants to see wrestling buissness the way its runed then see this, its a sad documentary and it shows how these wrestlers lives are in the ring and out of the ring.

Sorry if I offended you.....to me its all self inflicted pain and seperation. Like kids in their backyards playing "Superman", jumping out of trees and breaking legs (which happened to me at 6) or Springer guests whacking the hell out of each other. I cant have sympathy for them, its something that you may ponder doing at 7 years old but not as an adult, if you do that amuses me. (Hell I liked Rocky III as much as the next guy back in the day)

As for the wives I can only laugh at falling in love with one of these guys even though they know what they do for a living. What is sad IMO is the children who have to watch daddy act like a member of the Jackass team and bang themselves up. Then daddy explaining that because he gets paid for it, its all ok. We obviously see this lifestyle choice in 2 different ways.


Again sorry if my seeing this doco as a comedy much like SEX: THE ANNABEL CHONG STORY "offends" you. IMO both just a amuse the hell out of me, to imagine people make money at it and more humourous is the fans who pay those $$ to see it- for the record my girlfriend loves wrestling but she too laughs her ass off at it and "Beyond The Mat".

As for "Ultimate" you are referring to the one thats televised, Im talking about the underground fighting you can only get on bootleg.

Different strokes for different folks. We agree to disagree, after all it is just one mans opinion.

I am a Pro Wrestling fan, But i do not take it in any way seiously. I understand that its just as deckard said "Like A ballet", But thats why i like it, Its like a soppy.

any way i found the docco very interesting but nothing new.

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It's a god-awful small affair, To the girl with, the mousy hair, But her mummy is yelling "No", and her daddy has told her to go, But her friend is nowhere to be seen, Now she walks through her sunken dream, To the seat with the clearest view, And she's hooked to the silver screen, But the film is a saddening bore, For she's lived it ten times or more...

has anyone seen the doc A Decade Under the Influence? It was in limited release this spring but I'm planning to catch it on IFC later on this month. It takes a look at the films from the 1970s and how society affected the film and vice versa. Definitely want to check this one out.

Crumb is our MoFo Movie Club pick this week. We'll be discussing it next week.

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NEW (as of 1/24/05): Quick Reviews #10

I've been meaning to watch that for so long.

Anywho, a documentary I saw recently: Devil's Playground, an interesting look at the Amish community and the tradition of rumspringa, the time when an Amish kid is given the chance to experience the outside world before they make the choice to become Amish (or not).

Not the best I've seen, but very good. I lived near an Amish community when I was young, and knew quite a bit about the culture, and this film still surprised me.

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You were a demon and a lawyer? Wow. Insert joke here."

Other documentary faves:

Promises
Winged Migration
I am Trying to Break Your Heart (the Wilco documentary)
The Kid Stays in the Picture


.... and I'm still hopeful for IFC's A Decade Under the Influence. Starts playing tonight!

Bowling For Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
The first & only documentary that I have ever seen at the cinema, and probably the only one that I'll see for a long time

Keep The River On Your Right - A Modern Cannibal Story (David Shapiro & Laurie Shapiro, 2000)
Saw this one time on late night Ethnic TV, thought it was gonna be a funny spoof kinda thing... boy was I wrong. The biggest suprise film I have ever seen, it'll make you laugh, gasp & cry.

Dogtown & Z-Boys (Stacy Peralta, 2001)
I don't even like skateboarding, but this is one of the best films I have ever seen. Just to see what the culture was like back then is worth the price of hiring it alone.

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Movies I Watched Last Week:
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) ****
Drive Well, Sleep Carefully (Justin Mitchell, 2005) ****
Grilled (Jason Ensler, 2006) ****
An Inconvenient Truth (David Guggenheim, 2006) ****
The Family Stone (Thomas Bezucha, 2005) ***1/2
Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone, 1982) ***
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Yeah, I've agreed with this one before. It is such a gem. I can't believe where they found all that awsome 70's footage. It all looks so cool and the music and the interviews and the (Sean Penn) narration is supberb too. The only thing I thought was annoying was that it felt a little too long. They patted their own shoulders a bit too much in the end...

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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".

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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.

Oh man the final third of a film is a disaster. All the good work gets lost in some severe egotripping...you literally hear three identical buckets of praise addressed at three different men, one after another.

But if you can tolerate a bunch of adults talking how great they are for 90+ minutes, this is a great film.

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(signature space for rent)

I like Steve Irwins documentaries.

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Madhead

watched A Decade Under the Influence this weekend and really enjoyed it. It gave some great insight into the filmmaking world of the 70s and it was awesome to see so many of the people they interviewed.

Gotta recommend "Stone Reader" - a doc about the doc-maker's several-year search for the writer that wrote "Stones of Summer" (a well reviewed/received but non-selling book from the 70s) The writer never wrote again/disappeared.

It's a kind of ponder on book-loving. S'good.

finally saw part of Bowling for Colubmine last night. Thought it was kind of sensationalized but at least Michael Moore is entertaining. Not true documentary, IMO. Seemed like there was plenty of clever editing.

I watched parts of A Decade Under the Influence on IFC the other week. I definitely liked that. I need to break out some of my 70s movies again. Is it true that Scarface is going to be re-released in theaters?