The Documentary Thread

[Reed]

Going Clear taught me that Scientology propaganda videos are the most cheap-looking and laughably bad things ever. Seriously: you have several top Hollywood names in the fold and that's the best you can do? At least bring in Tarantino to direct you some stylish shit.

 

Also, the total void behind Tom Cruise's smile is the scariest thing ever. It makes me think that infamous story about Christian Bale basing Patrick Bateman partly on him is 100% true.

 

What a wasted opportunity Scientology is. A religion based on an evil galactic overlord could have been the greatest thing ever.

[Tabe]

Another from the "gee, this has been on my Netflix list for awhile" files:

Mirage Men - What if a lot of UFO hoaxes and "coverups" were actually disinformation spread by the government itself? This movie sort of tells the story of Richard Doty. Doty was apparently an Air Force guy who was involved with one Paul Bennewitz. Bennewitz lived near an Air Force base in the 1970s and noticed some strange stuff - stuff he thought were UFOs. He started filming things and contacted the Air Force. Doty was assigned to feed disinformation to Bennewitz and apparently somehow convinced him that aliens were invading. Or something. And Doty's actions apparently drove Bennewitz crazy and ruined his life. And this movie covers some of that. And there's maybe a good story to be told there. But it's structured in such a terrible, confusing fashion that you'll have no idea what's being talked about most of the time. And so much of what's being talked about is such obvious nonsense (Doty actually claims to have seen a film of "a live alien sitting and talking") that the film loses all credibility. If you want a movie that shows the UFO crowd to be a bunch of crackpots and lunatics, this one does the trick. I was hoping for more than that. Not a LOT more than that but wanted a little something. 1/10.

[Reed]

 

My favorite take on the whole UFO/conspiracy stuff.

[Tabe]

Last night was a "time to start clearing stuff off my Netflix list" kind of night. First up:

Occupy Unmasked - Documentary claiming to expose the true origins of the Occupy Wall Street movement that seemed to rise out of nowhere back in 2011. And, to some degree, it succeeds in that regard. There's some rather damning video and email information shown detailing how the media helped to, well, create the movement. Unfortunately, that kind of hard-hitting actual investigative stuff is a small portion of the movie. The rest of the movie is more of a Breitbart and Brandon Darby hit piece akin to Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments where they show Occupy protesters that are clueless to the movement itself. They also spend a fair amount of time talking about rapes & sexual assaults at the various Occupy sites. And then there's a long diversion into a tangent somehow trying to link murders of Cambodians post-Vietnam to the Occupy movement that is just truly bizarre. Mostly, though, the movie is a lot of Breitbart ranting intermixed with clips of Occupy protesters swearing at cops or looting. In the end, this is not really a quality documentary but there IS some good stuff to be seen here. It's just lost in a mess of other nonsense. 4/10.

[Mistah Na1m4rk]

 

 

What a wasted opportunity Scientology is. A religion based on an evil galactic overlord could have been the greatest thing ever.

 

It isn't too late to start your own.  Work in a Lucha mask angle to it and I think you're golden.

[Curt McGirt]

Re: Going Clear

 

Why do you think they would spend any money on propaganda videos? No point in it when they can keep the shekels in their pocket. The entire empire was built upon keeping other people's money, and the money's better spent on pimping. 

 

I don't think it's very strange that David Miscavige looks eerily like Joseph Goebbels. In other words, he's an insane criminal, and the organization should have their funds frozen and confiscated before far more serious criminal prosecutions begin. At the very least their IRS religious qualifications should be squashed immediately. These people started out being just plainly fucking bat-shit, harmless only to themselves, and ended up a complete fascist organization with recognition from the state. How the fuck that ended up happening is through sheer cowardice and should have never happened.

[Mistah Na1m4rk]

Re: Going Clear

 

I don't think it's very strange that David Miscavige looks eerily like Joseph Goebbels. In other words, he's an insane criminal,

What are you, a phrenologist?

[Craig H]

I don't get how law enforcement folks can go after FLDS, but Scientology is untouchable. Going Clear was great stuff though, mind boggling too how people could let themselves get swindled by LRH. LRH also looked creepy as fuuuuuuuck.

[(BP)]

Holy shit, Miscavige is really short. The secret to rising in Scientology is clearly to make Tom Cruise feel like he's average height.

[Curt McGirt]

 

Re: Going Clear

 

I don't think it's very strange that David Miscavige looks eerily like Joseph Goebbels. In other words, he's an insane criminal,

What are you, a phrenologist?

 

 

 

...no.

 

But hey, it's only obvious.

 

Looking at Hubbard talking too I immediately said to myself "would you trust this man?"

[Tabe]

Hey, Tabe watched another couple documentaries:

Whitey: United States of America vs James J Bulger - Tells the story of notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, his arrest and trial. The focus here is mostly on a few of his victims but there's a ton of screen time for Bulger's attorneys (with audio clips of Bulger phone calls) and the prosecutors. I was vaguely familiar with the Bulger tale - criminal protected by FBI who goes on to commit a LOT more crimes - but...wow. This is a convoluted mess of a story involving corrupt FBI agents, local police looking the other way, mobsters, and everything else you can imagine. Bulger is generally willing to confess to any of his crimes but adamantly denies that he was ever an informer. No, the reality he says, is that the FBI were *his* informers - that he paid them. He also claims the FBI gave him immunity in return for agreeing to protect one of its agents. Those claims seem laughable until his people start explaining his side. He's supposedly a "top-level informant" for a very long time but his file is roughly 700 pages in total - some of which are duplicated and nearly all of which could be from other sources. A normal informant of his level would be generating thousands of pages a year. Then there's the fact that some of the FBI guys around him got convicted of big-time felonies. So it all makes for a really interesting melting pot of intrigue. The documentary tries to sort it all out for you and generally succeeds in that mission. This is a great story, especially if you're in the mood to be really mad at the FBI. 8/10.

The Good Son: Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini - Documentary telling the story of Boom Boom, his dad, and the fateful night he fought Duk Koo Kim. We got a lot of info on Mancini's dad, the original "Boom Boom", who was an excellent fighter before serving in WW2. We then get a lot on the career of Ray as he rose through the ranks to become possibly the most popular fighter in the world outside of Sugar Ray. The world was opening up to him and he was in line for a major money fight once he defended his title against Kim. That fight - which was an outstanding slugfest outside of its tragic ending - derailed Mancini personally and professionally. He's made his peace with it and is able to discuss the events matter-of-factly but at the time, it was obviously very rough for him. People were terrible to Mancini, calling him a murderer, saying awful things to his young children, the whole nine yards. We also get interviews with Kim's widow, his trainer and his son (born after the fight). His widow and son meet with Boom Boom at the end of the movie in a nice moment that serves to settle and close any remaining issues for both sides. Overall, this is a thoroughly competent documentary but nothing special. Most puzzling is the decision to use bad quality footage for Ray's fights when good quality is surely available and, much of the time, to have it "playing on a TV" in a small section of the screen instead of actually showing it to us. So we end up with something that's...OK but that's about it. 6/10.

[The Natural]

Taken from "The Best Films of 2014 Voting/Pimping Thread":

 

Pimping two films I haven't seen mentioned:

 

Night Will Fall is a documentary that tells and shows footage from a documentary in 1945 about liberated concentration camps. The footage from 1945 is shelved and has only recently been shown in this film. Night Will Fall aired on Channel 4 in the UK this year before Holocaust Remembrance Day, advert free. I can't ever remember the channel doing that, it was the right call. I strongly recommend this film though its HORRIFIC viewing. Such evil on our fellow man/woman.

 

Citizenfour is a documentary about Edward Snowden and features interviews with him who revealed the spying surveilance programs. I've had an interest in freedom vs. security and the right to privacy since I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, as such I had to watch it even if it showed at a late time on TV. This won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the recent Academy Awards.

 

[Dolfan in NYC]

[Tabe]

Another day, another documentary:

Atari: Game Over - Were there really millions of Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges buried in a New Mexico landfill? This documentary seeks to answer that question. It also brings together the guy who developed E.T. (Howard Warshaw) and a few execs from Atari. So we kind of weave together three stories - the rise & fall of Atari, the career of Warshaw (the only dev at Atari whose every game was a million seller), and the search for the cartridges. And the movie succeeds on all three fronts. The story is well told, it's coherent, it's detailed enough, and the parties are all interesting. And the stuff with the landfill is very interesting. This is a terrific documentary, the best video game doc I've seen in awhile. 9/10.

[Reed]

I don't get how law enforcement folks can go after FLDS, but Scientology is untouchable. Going Clear was great stuff though, mind boggling too how people could let themselves get swindled by LRH. LRH also looked creepy as fuuuuuuuck.

 

I'm kind of sad that the one sci-fi author who came up with the (admittedly great) idea of turning his work into a religion was such an awful hack.

 

Can you imagine if JRR Tolkien had less morals and decided to tell the world Middle Earth was real and Gandalf regularly appeared to him in visions?

 

There would be the one religion people would want to join.

[Reed]

Oh, and from the book Going Clear:

 

"Jesse Prince says that when Hubbard was angry at someone he would command Miscavage to hit or spit on them, then report back when he had done so.”

 

Straight up Bond villain shit right there.

[Cliff Hanger]

Watched Going Clear today. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but dies an ace job of presenting it's case. The absence of Lisa McPherson was disappointint. Will watch citizenfour this week, but the smart move was waiting til dad leadlves town before that. Electric Boogaloo remains the doc I most want to see with no Avenue to do so.

[Execproducer]

Electric Boogaloo is worth going out of your way to watch. It is fairly typical of the rise-and-fall-type of story, but a lot of great characters and you'll probably have a few "Oh shit, I really need to see that movie!" moments.

[Mistah Na1m4rk]

Oh, and from the book Going Clear:

 

"Jesse Prince says that when Hubbard was angry at someone he would command Miscavage to hit or spit on them, then report back when he had done so.”

 

Straight up Bond villain shit right there.

 

The guy is 4 feet tall, this would be like Goldfinger's henchman being Herve Villechaize instead of Oddjob.

[Tabe]

Another weekend, another documentary review:

Life Itself - Also the name of his autobiography, Life Itself is a documentary chronicling the life and career (and, ultimately, the death) of film critic Roger Ebert. This is at once an interesting, funny, moving, slightly disturbing, and flawed documentary. On the one hand, it does a terrific job of capturing Ebert's early career and his rise as a partner with Gene Siskel. And we get some fun outtakes, some of which I'd seen before. And there's a nice interview with Gene's widow. And we get lots of footage of Ebert as well as he undergoes treatment with his wife Chaz by his side. That's where the slightly disturbing part comes in - Ebert's cancer treatment included the removal of his lower jaw. He's left with, well, the skin from his chin hanging down, making it so you can look through his mouth and see his neck. That's a bit unsettling. Through it all, Ebert maintains a mostly good attitude, staying funny, communicating via his trusty Macbook. He keeps busy, writing a lot and still watching movies. Unfortunately, he declined faster than expected and so the director was left finishing sooner than he wanted, at least as far as Ebert footage is concerned. And there's where the "flawed" aspect of the movie comes in. They left out an entire segment of Ebert's career - his partnership with Richard Roeper, which lasted nearly a decade - entirely, a terrible oversight that wounded Roeper personally. And they never directly get Ebert's final opinion on Siskel. They were enemies at first and that shifted over time but even Gene's widow isn't sure 100% certain of how they felt about each other. The director spent plenty of time with Ebert to get a full answer from him on this topic but never does. An interesting, if sad, side story is that Siskel never told Ebert he was sick with his brain tumor before passing. Roger was deeply wounded by that and he vowed to make his own illness known so that people wouldn't feel hurt by not knowing. Anyway, this was very good. 8/10.

[Reed]

I remember a couple of years before he died Ebert was asked what he would do if the cancer came back and he was adamant he wouldn't have chemo or surgery or anything like that because his mind all the stuff he went through the first time around simply wasn't worth it. A very frank and shocking confession, but probably the attitude a lot of people would have had.

[Tabe]

I remember a couple of years before he died Ebert was asked what he would do if the cancer came back and he was adamant he wouldn't have chemo or surgery or anything like that because his mind all the stuff he went through the first time around simply wasn't worth it. A very frank and shocking confession, but probably the attitude a lot of people would have had.

They touch on that. He quit treatment and it hastened his demise. His feeling was that every surgery and treatment left him a little worse off than before and he was tired of it.

[Tabe]

Ya know what, let's do a couple more documentaries:

I Am Street Fighter - Originally produced as a pack-in for the 25th Anniversary Street Fighter package, Capcom eventually released this doc as a freebie into the wild. This generally focuses on the players and tournaments for SF, rather than the games themselves. Obviously, there's a lot on the games but that's not the focus. And that's OK. What's here is very good and interesting. Profiles of several top players, tournament directors, and so on. There's a lot of stuff with one hardcore SF-related collector. And there's lots of discussion on USA vs Japan as far as skills and why things are what they are (fewer arcades in the US = less in-person competition and, thus, lower skills, etc). All in all, I liked this one a lot. I like the SF games and have played just about all of them. If you're a fan, you'll like this. 8/10.

Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story - Wanna see Lance Armstrong get eviscerated for 90 minutes? Well, here's your movie! This movie tells the story of Armstrong's career while also telling the story of his PED usage in parallel. There are interviews with Greg LeMond, Betsy & Frankie Andreu, and several others - all of them just shredding Armstrong. The depth and breadth of the manner in which his legend is torn down is pretty amazing. There's also some stuff in here on the media and its canonization of Armstrong as well as plenty of stuff on Lance's (in)famous vindictiveness towards those he believes wronged him. I mean, we're talking about a guy who sued people for defamation for saying he was using PEDs - while he was using PEDs. Amazing. Anyway, on the whole, there's not a ton of new stuff here since we all know the Lance story already, but it's still very good. 8/10.

[RIPPA]

[Tabe]

Catching up on some reviews...

Artifact - When I first read the summary of this one, something like "Jared Leto and his band in a lawsuit with their record company", I assumed the "band" in question was some kind of vanity project for Leto. See, I only know him as an actor. Apparently I've been living under a rock as Leto and his band - Thirty Seconds to Mars - have sold something like 15 million albums worldwide. Anyway, this documentary covers a turbulent time for the band, one where they are embroiled in a lawsuit with their record company, trying to get out from under a one-sided contract, and also the recording of their This is War album. While covering a lot of standard ground - evil record company, band somehow millions in debt despite sold out tours and platinum albums - this still is really good. We get a nice look into the creative process for the album itself - a subject that has always fascinated me. I've sat in on recording sessions but this is still something that is completely foreign to me. I just don't have that gene, I guess Anyway, this is good stuff, and a solid look at a predatory industry. 8/10.

The Sheik - Biographical documentary covering the career of The Iron Sheik. Given that the movie uses the name of another (very famous) wrestler as its title instead of the guy it's actually profiling, I did not have high hopes for this one. Happy to say I was wrong! This is a terrific look at the life of the Iron Sheik. It's told in a mix of present day and flashbacks in a way that works really well. You get a lot of great vintage photos - including some that DO show Iron Sheik with the Shah of Iran, his wedding, and so on. Some great early footage too. And the modern day stuff is covered too - Sheik's crazy rants on Youtube, his dust-ups at conventions, relations with his family, drug use and, yes, the murder of his daughter. It's all here. And it's well-covered. However, this is far from perfect. Iron Sheik's actual career isn't covered in any great depth - we get his early training, his WWF title win, and his drug bust with Hacksaw Duggan. That's about it. Nothing on his feud with Slaughter, his team with Nikolai, or much of anything else. So that's a disappointment. And the movie false attributes Sheik's return to prominence to his video response to Michael Richards's racist rant at a nightclub when, in fact, it was his verbal attack on B Brian Blair in a shoot interview that did it. Other than that, this is pretty excellent. Some terrific interviews too - including with The Rock. Well worth checking this out! 8/10.

I Hate Christian Laettner - The latest in ESPN's 30 For 30 series of sports documentaries. This is yet another fine entry in the series. During his college career with Duke, Laettner attracted an inordinate amount of hate from opposing fans. This movie attempts to answer the question of "why?" and succeeds admirably in that area. Lots of great stories told here by pretty much every important person in Laettner's life - and Laettner himself. All the key points of Laettner hatred are covered in depth. You'll come away with a new understanding of Laettner and, because he actually comes across pretty likeable in his interview, maybe even a new appreciation for him. This is not a perfect feature by any means - it's an ESPN production, so there's definitely some pro-Duke bias going on here. For example, they try really hard to portray Laettner as being from an average middle class family of blue collar hard workers. And they almost succeed, except they left in Laettner referencing his family's STABLE OF HORSES. Beyond nitpicks like that, this is a good one. Check it out. 8/10.

Back Issues: The Hustler Magazine Story - Documentary telling the story of infamous porn mag, Hustler, and its founder Larry Flynt. Some good stories to be told here, including an interview with the guy who tried to kill Flynt and ended up paralyzing him. The entire story of the magazine is told, from its humble beginnings to becoming a hit magazine thanks to features like nude photos of Jackie Kennedy. Also covered in great detail are some of the legal cases involving Flynt and Hustler, including the landmark parody/1st amendment case that Hustler won involving a fake interview of Jerry Falwell. Having said all that, while there's some good stories here, this just isn't that great. It's alright and mostly interesting, just not great. 5/10.