Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category
Tuesday, June 17th, 2003
Well somebody loaned me a RUN RONNIE RUN screener and it happens to have THE REAL CANCUN on the same disc. Not sure what happened there but somehow accidentally I dropped the disc into the player and pressed a combination of buttons that caused it to play the movie and then also I watched the whole thing. It was weird.
What the movie is: the producers of The Real World tv show cast a bunch of rich kid morons in their early 20s and then paid them to go drink jagermeister and high five each other in front of cameras. I thought it was funny that they called this a “reality movie” since they apparently are going for an audience that does not know that there is such a thing as documentaries. But after seeing it I realize that it’s actually better not to call this a documentary. A documentary you find real people who are already doing something (pimping, selling bibles, living in subway tunnels, living in a house infested by raccoons, etc.) and you attempt to follow them with minimal interference in their actual life. This is the opposite where you find people and make them go do something. For example I do not believe that these kids, if they had gone to Cancun on their own, would’ve paid money to go bungie jumping and have a dolphin encounter and that type of crap. That was for hollywood. The only major difference from The Real World is that they don’t make them have a job and they use cameras that look more like film. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: MTV
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, May 28th, 2003
Harry here – the idea that this film is reviewed the same day I review FINDING NEMO disturbs me. I don’t know why, but be afraid of Vern. He sees disturbing things. Perhaps, he is a disturbing thing.
Dear Harry,
I think maybe I confused you somehow with my BUBBA HO TEP review. Actually it turns out you guys have been covering that one for a while and that wasn’t the first review you guys published. Some of the newsies in talkback pointed that out if you missed it. But here’s one I think you really truly haven’t reviewed before, the documentary CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS. I’m not sure why you guys haven’t reviewed it yet. Maybe because it’s not about mummies, it’s about child molesting.
Okay so it ain’t exactly “cool news”. Shit I feel like kind of an asshole even bringing it up. It’s like when you recommend a holocaust movie to somebody. Yeah it’s true, THE PIANIST was a great movie, probaly one of the best I saw last year, but I still felt like a jerk recommending it to people. “Hey, you doing anything this weekend? Yeah, why don’t you sit down for 2 hours and watch this guy survive the nazis.” That’s why they came up with the “remember Adrien Brody’s Oscar speech?” advertising campaign. Own the Oscar triumph. You’ll want to watch it again and again despite, you know, what it’s about. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Jarecki
Posted in AICN, Documentary, Reviews, SIFF | 1 Comment »
Saturday, May 24th, 2003
Hey folks, Harry here… Vern here caught THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED up at the Seattle International Film Festival and… well it’s turned him into an obvious Commie Pinko Anti-American Burn-In-Hell Lily-livered Cock-Sucker, like it did me back when I saw it. So those of you that like to belittle someone with information that you haven’t seen, go right ahead. The problem is this, after you see this documentary, it’s really hard to trust anything any media tells you… Including this site. More than anything, political parties and affiliations aside… This is all about questioning authority and looking for more information, even from this documentary. Stories are never as cut and dried as a 2 hour Documentary, but at the same time… the complications of what happened after the events in this film aside, what DID HAPPEN and WAS CAPTURED here is an astonishing and powerful work that all should see.
Dear Harry,
It’s your personal buddy Vern here reporting from lovely Seattle where I plan to actually get off my ass and see some movies at the film festival this year. I’m gonna have to miss the cartoon one where it’s the matrix but I did get a ticket for the mummy one where Bruce Campbell is Elvis. Also I was wondering man were you serious about wanting to see werewolves in the Matrix? That one threw me off there bud but there’s another movie that me and you see more like eye-to-eye on and that’s THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Colin Powell, Donnacha O'Briain, Hugo Chavez, Jesse Helms, Kim Bartley, politics
Posted in AICN, Documentary, Reviews, SIFF | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 14th, 2003
both directed by Martin Bell
Well this is an incredible, classic documentary and a pretty good narrative type companion piece, and both were filmed in Seattle and now that I saw them I wonder why in fuck’s name I took so long getting to them. The real winner of the two is STREETWISE, academy award nominated documentary about runaway kids on the streets of Seattle in 1984. The story behind this is that the photographer Mary Ellen Mark (web site) was doing a photo essay for LIFE magazine. At the time Seattle was considered one of the country’s “most livable cities” (imagine that) so she thought it would be the perfect place to photograph homeless kids. If it can happen in seattle then shit, it can happen anywhere. Well the photo essay turned out good so she decided to get her husband Martin Bell to direct a documentary about the same kids she took pictures of. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Edward Furlong, filmed in Seattle, Jeff Bridges, Martin Bell, Mary Ellen Mark, Tom Waits
Posted in Crime, Documentary, Drama, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, January 1st, 2003
Well I’ve been on a documentary kick the last couple weeks and I been meaning to see this one since it first came out, for reasons that do not need to be explained. If you’re stupid, well I’ll just explain it to you then, it’s because this documentary is about people who Write for the world wide web type medium. You know what I mean? Do I have to spell it out for you?
What I’m getting at here is that I also Write for that same medium. If you have not seen my web sight, it is the one you are reading right now. Check it out.
This movie focuses on the web when it was first becoming a phenomenon, and in particular it focuses on the web journal type web sight. Although at times my sight can be PRETTY fucking personal, I have never quite understood that type of web sight. Because everybody likes to Write all about themselves, yeah, but who the fuck wants to read it? At least I talk about Vin Diesel and shit, to reel them in. I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and read somebody’s random musings of the day. Not to be harsh but I really don’t give two and a half fucks about your relationships, even if you do Write in all lower case. (read the rest of this shit…)
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 1st, 2003
Supposedly this is the highest grossing student film of all time. It’s only about 50 minutes long and it’s a documentary about one of the shittiest and most unlikable rockstars who ever lived. But it’s great entertainment. The film was directed by Todd Phillips, who went on to do a controversial HBO documentary called Frat House and then the teen comedy Road Trip. In that one there was some dude who put a mouse in his mouth and that was supposed to be the ultimate grossout. Well obviously the individuals who said that haven’t heard of Hated.
You see when I said GG Allin was the shittiest rock star who ever lived I meant that literally. One of this dude’s trademarks was that he would take a shit on stage and then wipe it all over his face and ass and throw it into the audience and etc. Or one time he takes a banana and sticks it up his ass and then mushes it up and throws it out there. Basically, he is like the most mentally illest motherfuckers you ever come across in the correctional system, but with a microphone. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Todd Phillips
Posted in Documentary, Music, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Saturday, October 12th, 2002
This is a tricky review to write because what I really want isn’t for you to give two shits what I think about how well this movie is made or how entertaining it is or whatever. What I want is for everybody just to go out and see this movie, bring as many friends as they can, then go for food and discuss it. Then go to the vernanda group on yahoo and discuss it with me. You can have your own personal oprah book club with this picture. It’s an interactive movie, it requires feedback. Because it asks a simple, very timely question – why in the hell is there so much violence in america? – and then it leaves it to you to answer it.
Now that’s not what some of the reviews will tell you. But I mean come on, you don’t trust those other assholes do you? Opinions about Michael Moore are like assholes, only assholes have them (or whatever mark twain said, I can’t remember). Alot of people expect Mr. Moore to be preaching to the converted or telling you what to think or something. They expect it so much that they sit there and watch this movie that doesn’t even come close to doing that, and then they leave and describe some non-existent movie that is not the same one ol’ Vern saw. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Michael Moore
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 1st, 2002
You know, there are alot of really spectacular documentary type pictures out there and it seems like a common feature to almost all of them is a really strange cast of characters that you couldn’t make up. Pictures like AMERICAN MOVIE, AMERICAN PIMP, GREY GARDENS, CRUMB, SALESMAN, DERBY, BIGGIE AND TUPAC, PARADISE LOST, WRESTLING WITH SHADOWS, BROTHER’S KEEPER, BEYOND THE MAT… these are full of these people that are too real to be in a fictional movie and yet somehow more interesting and bizarre than most of the people I ever end up hanging out with. Not that I’d want to hang out with that maniac with the lopsided head in PARADISE LOST, or Jake “The Snake” Roberts. The american movie dude seems kinds of cool, though.
But I mean how do they know it’s gonna happen that way? What if they zero in on a topic that in itself is fascinating but then it turns out all the people involved are pretty regular and don’t have anything funny to say about it? How is it that guys like the Maysles and this Nick Broomfield can have such high batting averages in this department? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Nick Broomfield
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Monday, June 3rd, 2002
SPOILER ALERT !!
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Vern is one of my very favorite Internet writers about anything, much less movies. A reformed outlaw who channelled his energy into writing about films after his last stint inside, he’s been a constant presence on the web for the last few years, and he’s got a voice all his own. Here he is with a look at the new documentary from the always controversial Nick Broomfield:
Dearest Harry and Moriarty,
It has been a while since I’ve had my works printed on your page there (ain’t it cool news) but this time I got somethin that I think will move your heart. I know how much Tupac and Biggie Smalls mean to you young people today so I’m sure both of you are very anxious to see BIGGIE AND TUPAC, the new documentary about them from Nick Broomfield (who directed the Heidi Fleiss picture and maybe more in this vein, KURT AND COURTNEY). Because Tupac means to a young man like Harry or Moriarty the same thing Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash meant to their dads, only with more tattoos and brighter colored suits. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: hip hop, Nick Broomfield, Tupac Shakur
Posted in AICN, Documentary, Reviews, SIFF | 23 Comments »
Saturday, April 27th, 2002
Okay so you’re familiar with skateboards, right? Well what this documentary is about is a specific team/subculture of the skateboarders, in the ’70s, in a wasteland of a beach resort in california. The team starts up around the Zephyr surf shop, a shop apparently known for its unique shaped boards and handpainted graphics inspired by hispanic gang grafitti around the neighborhood. The shop plucks up young street kids who know how to surf. During the off hours, when the waves aren’t good for surfing, they practice on their skateboards, going up concrete embankments, putting their fingers on the ground the way their favorite surfer did on the waves. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: skateboards
Posted in Documentary, Reviews | No Comments »
