You would think that an apparent 2 hour documentary on Bob Dylan would feature, I dont know, maybe Bob Dylan. If you figured thats what youre getting here, think again. There are maybe 3-4 minutes total Dylan footage, and its almost always silent and looks like it came from a camcorder in the nosebleed sections of an arena. Even the constant music being played throughout these interview clips is not from Dylan, but rather the tribute band that happens to be run by the films producer and interviewer, Joel Gilbert.
Standup comedians live interesting lives. The typical stand-up comic performs for fifteen to thirty minutes, two or three times a week. For many their sole purpose in life is to make people laugh. Many often suffer from depression when their acts bomb or they go through dry spells where they cant get gigs or write new material. However, the best ones make their own breaks and find their way into their audiences heart. Sometimes that can be accomplished through a MC. This MC or master of ceremonies can often take a grand event such as a tour that lasts 30 days & 30 nights and turn four men into superstars.
The day that Bruce Lee left us was truly a tragedy. The Game of Death was Lees pet project, the one where he could truly show off his skills for the world to see. He never finished it. Even though there was ninety minutes of footage, it was never completely restored to make a complete film. Instead, a mere eleven minutes and seven seconds was used in a 1978 movie called Game of Death. The plot was revised and every camera & stand-in trick was used in the book to finish the movie. The rest of the footage was either lost or found its way into the documentary, Bruce Lee: A Warriors Journey. One has to often wonder what the casting process behind casting a body double & stand-ins were like for somebody as unique as Bruce Lee. One also has to wonder how easy it would be to make fun of it.
<>I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
To Date 42 men have taken that oath to become President Of The United States. While our current president is #43, Grover Clevelands terms did not run consecutively and so he often is counted twice.
Animal Planet has created their own new genre of television show over the last few years. Nature shows have been around forever. I remember spending time with my family as a kid watching Animal Kingdom. Since then very little about that type of program has changed. With Discovery Channel the nature show certainly became more sophisticated. Everything changed with Shark Week. Now we have an entire cable network dedicated to animals, so it stands to reason the nature show, like the animals themselves, had to evolve.
No, this is not the movie that promised to show us men turned inside out. It is, in fact, a curious mixture of genocide documentary and concert film. The performance is by rockers System of a Down. The lead singers grandparents were survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and so that atrocity is the primary focus of the film, which cuts between concert footage, personal interviews, grisly documents and academic talking heads. By extension, the film also takes a stand against all forms of genocide, and is an explicit invitation to the audience to get involved in the fight for justice.
Can animals actually talk to humans? Can we understand each other enough to consider it communication? Heck. You dont need to watch some show on television to answer that question. I can do it for you right here and now. Im Athena. Im Ginos 13 year old Siberian Husky, and Ginos letting me communicate with you so that I can tell you what I thought about When Animals Talk. Im here to tell you that we can talk pretty good. We also understand a lot of your human words as well. My favorite are words like Belly Rub, and Want.
Extreme sports, whether it be skateboarding, surfing or skiing have only come into popularity within the last decade or so. However, their roots often go back many more years. Take the case of extreme skiing. That kind of skiing is not usually found in the United States and forces patrons to go off to slopes like Chamonix in France. Origins of the sport suggest that we can go back almost 40 years to find a true source. The documentary Steep tells the tale of extreme skiing from the fathers of the sport and listens to the pioneers creating new and exciting challenges going forward.
By Gino Sassani on February-4-2008 in
Disc Reviews
I have watched these DVD episodes of the Ira Glass series This American Life, some segments more than once, and I have to say I just dont get it. Perhaps it is because I never heard the radio program on which they are based. It is a somewhat popular show with a cult following. I tend to avoid public radio at all costs as it is far too heavy handed in its liberal politics for my particular tastes. Still, I approached the series with an open mind that knew literally nothing going in. Im sorry to report that I still seem to know nothing about the show.
By Gino Sassani on January-30-2008 in
Disc Reviews
PBS and producer Steve Boettcher have put together a rather nice time capsule. This four part series looks at four aspects of television: Late Night, Game Shows, Sit Coms, and Variety Shows. Each hour-long entry looks backward to the very infancy of the medium of television. The pieces examine the pioneers who gave birth to these genres and the innovative people who followed. Theres no question that some of the vintage clips alone are priceless
Prepare to take a journey behind the curtain, with the all-access pass that is Show Business: The Road to Broadway, a documentary chronicling the fates of four musicals that beat the odds to reach theatre’s “big show.”
That’s the premise for Show Business, and it certainly does get behind the scenes with Wicked, Avenue Q, Taboo and Caroline, Or Change, showing how they made it to Broadway, and then how they vied for the big prize: the Tony Award for Best Musical. Hardcore musical fans may not learn anything new here, but the average viewer will likely be enlighted considerably. At the same time, theatre buffs will likely be much more excited than most viewers about seeing stuff like rehearsal footage and interviews with show creators.
I don’t think any documentarian in history has been as famous as Ken Burns. His series on the Civil War is what first made him a household name, and his in depth looks at baseball, New York City and jazz are what has solidified his place in the American consciousness as the world’s premiere documentary filmmaker. He is so well-respected, in fact, that his method of making still photographs interesting by zooming and panning is actually known as the Ken Burns Effect.
I can still remember the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was just after my birthday in June, and I had some time to kill on a weekday afternoon. I didnt recall seeing a lot of hype, and it seemed no one knew just how huge the film was going to be. My expectations were not really high. The film looked interesting, and I was just looking to escape for a couple of hours. By the time I left that theater, I felt a little bit like Indiana Jones himself having made some grand discovery. I had to tell my friends.
I’m not much of a soccer fan. I played a few years as a kid, for a local community club, but quit well before puberty. I almost never watch it on TV, even when the World Cup bandwagon rolls around. The only players I can name are Pel, Beckham and Hamm. And Knightley, but I suppose the Bend it Like Beckham star doesn’t count.
With my limited knowledge and appreciation of the game, I didn’t expect much from this HBO documentary. Sure, I know sports stories can be dramatic and exciting, but the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team? Not my first choice of subjects. Imagine my surprise when I became totally engrossed in the inspiring story of these women who gave their all when hardly anyone cared, who fought through all kinds of adversity, who dared to dream.
Would you believe me if I told you a nature documentary was responsible for the advent of the summer blockbuster? Common film lore says Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was the first of the now familiar summer smashes. Jaws was based Peter Benchley’s book of the same name. Benchley was inspired by Blue Water, White Death, a groundbreaking documentary film about divers on a nine-month expedition to seek out, film and swim with a Great White Shark.
That’s one reason you should watch Blue Water, White Death. There are easily a hundred more.
In August 1945, the world was transformed in the blink of an eye when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That act of destruction sparked the end of World War II, and the beginning of endless suffering for those who survived.
It was the first and only attack with nuclear weapons in our history, and the story of White Light/Black Rain is the reason it should never, ever happen again. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the bombings, but when you meet the survivors, it seems that the worst victims were those who lived.
Sometime after 1990 when Blue Planet was released, I remember really wanting to see it. Unfortunately I was young and with time my interest in the worlds around our own dwindled. Recently with the advancements in technology my interest in space has sparked up again, making for just the right time for Blue Planet to land in my hands. After nearly 20 years I’ll be able to set my eyes on this for the first time, and in hi-definition. Then of course there’s the additional documentary The Dream Is Alive of which I’ve never previously heard of. The footage on this one is over 20 years old, so my expectations aren’t extremely high.
This is, I gather, part of a series of documentaries under the wider umbrella of “America Undercover,” and is not the first of the taxicab ones. What we have here is a collection of vignettes as various people hail a cab and, captured by the cab’s security camera, engage in revealing conversations with the driver. Most of these discussions deal with relationships and sex (the guy and his transsexual girlfriend, the guy with the big woman fetish, the guy with a thing for “crazy chicks” and so on). Over the course of the hour, this becomes a little tiresome, and one hopes for a passenger with something else on his/her mind.
Mars has always held a certain fascination with us mostly earthbound humans. What child has never looked to the heavens at night, mind filled with more questions than they could ever hope to find answers for? If you are one of these star crossed dreamers, Roving Mars be a thrilling journey indeed. Im sorry to say that I missed the Roving Mars IMAX experience. Im sure it was available at one of the several IMAX facilities here in Tampa. Life, as usual, is often too busy to get to everything I want to see. As I wat…
Famed for his obsessive love of petroleum jelly as a medium for sculpture, Matthew Barney uses 45 000 pounds of the stuff in the creation of Drawing Restraint 9. This film documents the making of that piece, which is both sculpture and film, done aboard a Japanese whaling vessel. Intimately involved in the production is Barneys collaborator and partner Bjrk.
For those, such as myself, for whom this is a first exposure to Barney, this film is both intriguing and frustrating…
Perhaps Woodstock is the best known music festival, but only one has kept strong for several decades and still going - Glastonbury. A small town in the southeast of England is the host to a sizeable music festival that spans for several days and attracts in excess of 150,000 people. Like a lot of you Im sure, I had never heard of this music festival and after watching this once Ill probably never get wind of it again.
The first disc of Glastonbury is a documentary on the festival it is not in chron…
Since its release first as a Dan Brown novel and then as a less successful film, The DaVinci Code has stirred up more than its fair share of hornets nests. What most folks seem to be forgetting is that the stuff was fiction. Brown NEVER claims to be offering a secret look inside the workings of the Catholic Church. So why do we need this investigation? The self-professed documentary isnt really a look at the story at all. Its merely a lot of real wackos trying to fill our heads with their claptrap conspiracy the…
Theres no question that our home world is full of amazing wonders. While there have been hundreds of documentaries made to capture the uniqueness of our planet, none have ever been made with the scope, technology, and budget as the BBC mini-series Planet Earth. BBC reportedly spent $25 million to send filmmakers literally across the globe in an attempt to create the mother of all nature films and I believe they have succeeded.
Planet Earth was originally broadcast over 11 episodes on the BB…
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Inside Bob Dylan’s Jesus Years: Busy Being Born… Again! 
Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show 
Orangutan Island - Season 1 
Screamers 
This American Life 
The War (Ken Burns) 
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Secrets of the Code 
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