Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on July 10th, 2005
Prisoner of Paradise is the haunting story of German film and theatre actor, Kurt Gerron. This Oscar nominated documentary follows his rise and fall. Gerron was one of Germany's most popular stage and screen actors before World War II. He was the original singer, in fact, of "Mack the Knife" in Brecht's "Three Penny Opera". Gerron's popularity, however, took a different turn with the rise of Hitler's Germany. Gerron was Jewish and, eventually, was forced to flee. But later he was captured and then hired...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 25th, 2005
The First Amendment Project is a collection of 3 short documentary films which deal with the theme of “freedom of speech”. The first film, and the best one, is “Fox vs. Franken”. Comedy writer, left wing activist, and Stuart Smalley himself (you know…“You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you”), Al Franken, is the target of a lawsuit filed by Fox News. The documentary follows the lawsuit, and it reveals two important things: Franken is still a funny guy and Fox is an idiotic ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 24th, 2005
What happens after a physics student works on the Manhattan Project? Well, at least for this person, he becomes the most influential recording engineer in music history. This man is Tom Dowd. In Mark Moorman's fascinating documentary, Tom Dowd and the Language of Music, we are taken through the development of modern music through one of its most famous guides. The film is a mixture of interviews with Tom Dowd, as he also takes us to various biographical and musical locales in New York cities, and testament...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 20th, 2005
Synopsis
For awhile, the jokes made by people like Chris Rock were geared towards HBO being a naked channel, with 38 different versions of the Real Sex show that they would air on their 12 channels (my numbers may be off, but not by much, which is scary) were pretty dead on. But, as part of their documentary series America Undercover, an hour of time was spent discussing the happiest place on Earth, the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Nevada, where prostitution is legal and the party never ends.
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Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 20th, 2005
Synopsis
Troy Duffy, bartender, writes a script and suddenly is given a lucrative deal by Miramax to make this film, and his band is promised a recording contract. The script is for The Boondock Saints, that stunning little word-of-mouth success that has found quite a life of its own on DVD. But this is what happened before the film became a cult hit, as filmed by two of Duffy’s then-friends who were hired to do a making-of documentary. What we see is a man whose talent, though (on the basis o...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on June 16th, 2005
Synopsis
Why give a DVD about West Point to a guy to supports the Army? You’re probably going to get a lovefest DVD review about just how awesome the Army is anyway. Well, I’ll do my best to keep things in check. Besides, as an enlisted man, I hated officers (or just didn’t respond to too many of them), but I tried to keep an open mind.
As it stands, West Point: The First 200 Years, which was produced by PBS, is still a decent look at how the United States Military Academy has evolved to wh...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 18th, 2005
This is a review based on a screener copy.
Kelly Clarkson - Behind Hazel Eyes is a behind the scenes look at the former American Idol winner. The documentary format suits the work well. We get to see Kelly revisiting her old high school haunts, in the studio, and going camping with her girl friends (among other things). The portrait that emerges, or the portrait Kelly wants to have emerge (a slightly more cynical opinion), is of a young woman who hasn't lost touch with her "roots".
Right...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 9th, 2005
Synopsis
This documentary gives us the birth of skateboarding culture as we know it today. In theearly seventies, the Z-Boys of the title, a group of surfing enthusiasts from a hard luckneighbourhood, move from surfing to more and more elaborate skateboarding tricks, worked onin guerilla fashion in the empty swimming pools and the like. Director Stacy Peralta (who alsomade the surfing documentary Riding Giants) was one of those skaters, and so he ispretty damn close to the ma...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 13th, 2005
Synopsis
Robert Redford narrates this documentary look at the remote human cultures that are livingin harmony with the planet, rather than conquering (or raping and pillaging, if you will) nature.Think of this as a 47-minute lite version of the Koyanisqatsi trilogy. Everything is verydreamy and beautiful, and this is hardly a rigorous work. But the images are absolutelybreathtaking. Produced for IMAX, this has all the earmarks of those features: short in runningtime and subst...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on April 9th, 2005
Synopsis
Shirley Chisholm made history in 1972 as the first black woman to run for President of theUS. This documentary chronicles her run, doing so with a mixture of archival footage and newinterviews with people who were involved with her campaign, as well as those who wereinspired by it. Presented without a narration, the film lets the interview subjects and the film clipsspeak for themselves, backed by a very 70s funk soundtrack. Chisholm herself comes across as apassionate and ...
