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2019 DOCUMENTARY THREAD


RIPPA

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On 2/20/2019 at 9:43 AM, J.T. said:

We had a two hour delay this morning so I checked out Porndemic on Showtime On Demand.  It's about the HIV outbreak in the adult film industry in 1998.

I was already familiar with how unsettlingly business-like most adult stars talk when they're discussing their trade. 

I am not sure whether to feel sorry for Mark Wallace and Sharon Mitchell or bash their heads in with a baseball bat. 

They have both had more than their fair share of tragedy in their lives, but most of their wounds are self inflicted and they both seem to be quite the self righteous assholes in their interviews.

 

 

Enjoyed it.  Wonder if they will do a second one about the next HIV outbreak that hit the porn industry caused by Darren James

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Watched episode one of The Case Against Adnan Syed this morning on HBO before heading to work.

So far it is an intriguing tale of teen love and betrayal.  It is a little disconcerting that there is so much focus on Hae Min Lee's apparent flightiness in her relationships between Syed, Jay Wilds, and "Don": her boyfriend at the time of the murder. 

It is almost like they are vilifying her for being a teen girl on the typical quest for love and I'm a little uncomfortable with that.  Even so, I am a sucker for true crime docs and I am interested in this particular case since I live in MD now and it is a part of the local folklore that I have only heard bits and pieces of.

I'm also watching this because I hoped it would be a little more objective than the Serial podcast, but so far it's not.

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On 3/8/2019 at 3:01 PM, RIPPA said:

Interesting that they didn't wait till July to release it

Since it's CNN Films, I'm guessing they'll play it on CNN on the 50th Anniversary. 

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32 minutes ago, J.T. said:

Watched episode one of The Case Against Adnan Syed this morning on HBO before heading to work.

So far it is an intriguing tale of teen love and betrayal.  It is a little disconcerting that there is so much focus on Hae Min Lee's apparent flightiness in her relationships between Syed, Jay Wilds, and "Don": her boyfriend at the time of the murder. 

It is almost like they are vilifying her for being a teen girl on the typical quest for love and I'm a little uncomfortable with that.  Even so, I am a sucker for true crime docs and I am interested in this particular case since I live in MD now and it is a part of the local folklore that I have only heard bits and pieces of.

I'm also watching this because I hoped it would be a little more objective than the Serial podcast, but so far it's not.

I don't think there's any way for it to be more objective because...I don't think there's anything conclusive enough to show Adnan did it. I went into this thinking this would present evidence for how and why Adnan did it as a counterweight to Serial, but instead it's "The Case Against Adnan Syed or How and Why the Case Against Him is Bullshit."

What we did get that was different from Serial was giving Hae Lee a voice, the interviews with Hae's and Adnan's mutual friends, and new info about Don. If nothing else, it makes me even angrier that Don slipped through this without barely any investigating by the police into his alibi, his motive, etc. What was especially eye opening is hearing from multiple sources how distraught Adnan was to find out they found Hae's body and Don's response was to...try to hook up with Hae's friend. What in the total and complete fuck?! Not only that, but Don's response to the director's wanting to interview him was "I don't know how you tracked me down, I'm not defending my alibi, I don't even have that long to live, good bye." 

There are so many fucking red flags with Don and yet the police's response is "well you all have the benefit of hindsight when we don't have that benefit when we're investigating a murder and we have to make sure our arrest rate is 51% and our conviction rate is 100%." All I could think of was The Wire. These motherfuckers. 

I really, truly, honestly don't think Adnan did it. I think he got fucked by a corrupt and broken criminal justice system.

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19 minutes ago, Craig H said:

What was especially eye opening is hearing from multiple sources how distraught Adnan was to find out they found Hae's body and Don's response was to...try to hook up with Hae's friend. What in the total and complete fuck?! Not only that, but Don's response to the director's wanting to interview him was "I don't know how you tracked me down, I'm not defending my alibi, I don't even have that long to live, good bye." 

I don't think Syed did it either, but I can see how an investigator would not want to get played by crocodile tears.  I've been to enough Baptist funerals to know that sometimes the loudest mourner is trying to out-wail the next loudest mourner and not all that screaming is done out of grief for the deceased.

Don's response to Min's death certainly qualifies him as a complete douchebag, IMO, but it doesn't necessarily make him killer. 

However, being a former investigator for a law firm, that behavior would've put him high on my list of suspects because lack of empathy is the reddest of red flags.

I think Adnan got fucked because he's a Muslim and we didn't like them here in 'Merica then and we sure as shit don't like 'em now.

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I was also going to say that he was also fucked because of the color of his skin.

The shit that police captain or chief or whoever it was that was interviewed because it reminded me so much of the Wire. The just have to get their arrest rate above 51%, fuck everything else.

I almost want to go back and re-listen to Serial to see what I might have forgotten, but I'm sure I remember enough. At the very least, I'm hoping that this documentary brings more evidence to light.

Something else that was infuriating was seeing that the MD Court of Appeals wasn't unanimous in striking down the lower court's opinion and ruled that Adnan wouldn't get a new trial. 7 judges on the court of appeals and it was 4 against 3. 

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29 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Something else that was infuriating was seeing that the MD Court of Appeals wasn't unanimous in striking down the lower court's opinion and ruled that Adnan wouldn't get a new trial. 7 judges on the court of appeals and it was 4 against 3. 

The Court of Appeals did what it did because it was lazy and appellate courts are usually loathe to overturn lower court decisions unless there was a deliberate case of judicial malice.

Here we have the court saying that "We knew Adnan's defense was probably shit, but our case was so strong that even solid defense would not have changed the outcome."

I think that Is lazy because you're not testing your conclusion by holding a new trial and allowing the new evidence and seeing for yourself what the outcome will be. 

I also think it is cowardly to hid behind the poisoned well defense..  Sure, the case has received new attention thanks to Serial, but this shit happened close to two decades ago.  Certainly you can find a jury pool that hasn't been tainted at this time and date, right?

I think that bullshit like this is why I preferred fieldwork rather than litigation when I was working house investigation for a law firm in NYC.  It was fun to find out shit that people did not want you to discover, but once that information is in someone else's hands, God knows how it will be used.

Sometimes it gets used in ways you probably did not intend it to be used.

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10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I didn't see this posted and it hits HBO next week

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

This is the latest Alex Gibney doc

Really excited for this, I am obsessed with Theranos.

Now make one for Juicero!

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Episode 2 of the Case Against Adnan Syed has left me angrier than I was before.

I'm more convinced than ever Adnan didn't do it and it makes me so mad to learn even more about this bullshit case against him. 

It makes he even more upset because it's not like this case is even that unique where one person gets completely railroaded so there's plenty of more people in Adnan's shoes who are just as fucked. So sad. 

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9 hours ago, Craig H said:

Episode 2 of the Case Against Adnan Syed has left me angrier than I was before.

I'm more convinced than ever Adnan didn't do it and it makes me so mad to learn even more about this bullshit case against him. 

It makes he even more upset because it's not like this case is even that unique where one person gets completely railroaded so there's plenty of more people in Adnan's shoes who are just as fucked. So sad. 

Watched it this morning and yes, very difficult to sit through.  The injustice is ridiculously blatant.

Cops got their man and he looks like a guy that should be in prison and he's probably one a those Islamic radicalz anyway so case closed and fuck due process under law.

Not sure how many episodes I will be able to watch without needing a bucket of breakable stuff close by to hurl at the nearest hard vertical surface.

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1. Looks like they got everybody who's still alive

2. I have been pronouncing "Araya" wrong for literally my entire life

It's very cool seeing Dave Lombardo included in this. I was hoping his leaving Slayer on bad terms wouldn't mean his contributions would be glossed over. I also like Larry LaLonde being included. People mostly think Les Claypool when they think of Primus, but Ler can shred. He definitely deserves more recognition than he gets. Of course, the downside is Jeff Hanneman not being around for this.

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BTW, for those that didn't know, the book version of this film has been available from Bazillion Points for ages now (and for some reason I don't own it). Chock full of awesome photos. 

If they didn't get Dave for this movie I straight up wouldn't watch it...

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BTW, for those that didn't know, the book version of this film has been available from Bazillion Points for ages now (and for some reason I don't own it). Chock full of awesome photos. 

If they didn't get Dave for this movie I straight up wouldn't watch it...

I like Ian Christy's Roots show on Liquid Metal.  I'm sure you know, his brother is former Death drummer, Richard Christy.

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Funny coincidence that you mentioned Death because I just got Leprosy in on vinyl yesterday. Even though I got two other records at the same time it hasn't left my turntable. At one point I for some reason thought this record was boring (maybe because I had listened to the major tracks off of it live on Ultimate Revenge 2 and on the 'best of' comp Fate when I was a kid so many times I got burnt out) but I've never been happier to have been wrong. 

But anyway, this is a documentary thread, not the metal thread, so here's a documentary! The Bay Area was on fire for hardcore punk in the early '00s and this is a hilarious example. Long live Burnt Ramen! 

 

 

 

NSFW, btw. Unless you have a cool boss who will laugh with you.

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I'm a tiny bit surprised there's been no discussion here of Struggle, which came out on Netflix near the beginning of the year; there was a link to the trailer in the Upcoming thread, but maybe I was the only one who watched it?  Or maybe I just failed at board-searching correctly (tried struggle and Szukalski on this forum).

WATCH THIS.  The dude was, well, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, and certainly one of the damned weirdest.  Maybe he was already a bit known due to his cuckoo-bird banana-pants ideas about Easter Island and Atlantis, but...nevertheless.  Talk about living in interesting times; everywhere this guy went became an interesting time.  He could have just made the one sculpture that the movie is named for, and you would say, "Oh yeah, Szukalski, he was a stone-cold genius."  And then the other 90+ minutes of the film happens.

The other big takeaway from this film is due to Leonardo DiCaprio's involvement/financing of it: I had no idea his father was a comic book artist in that scene, but HOLY SHIT is George DiCaprio a seriously unattractive man (or had quite possibly the worst aging process in the Western world...or tried his hand at being a homeless person in Baltimore for a year for the experience).  Leo got *each and every single one* of his momma's genes except for that Y chromosome.  Holy shit snacks.

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On 3/14/2019 at 9:46 AM, RIPPA said:

I didn't see this posted and it hits HBO next week

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

This is the latest Alex Gibney doc

I honestly don't understand what made people believe in this woman.  Everything about her seems fraudulent.  Everything from her voice, her affect, to the fact that she is a Steve Jobs cosplayer, nothing about her seems authentic in any way...She doesn't even comb her damn hair.  

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