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Author Topic: DOCember Group Marathon 2014  (Read 13436 times)

Jared

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Re: DOCember Group Marathon 2014
« Reply #110 on: December 28, 2014, 11:43:13 AM »
Manakamana

Cable car goes up, cable car goes down, cable car goes up, cable car goes down, etc.

It is a pretty overwhelming shot, which is very fortunate considering you spend two hours with it when watching this film. Some of the passengers are more interesting than others, and it is actually a tad suspenseful when the car gets into the lodge, as it goes mostly dark for 45 seconds or so each time. What kind of person(s) are you spending the next 9 minutes with?

I liked it, although  not as much as Leviathan last year.

Jared

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Re: DOCember Group Marathon 2014
« Reply #111 on: December 28, 2014, 12:11:58 PM »
One Day in September

A documentary covering the tragic comedy of errors that led to the death of 11 Israeli Olympians at the 1972 Munich Olympics. 

Really just a kind of infuriating story, particularly how pathetic the German government was in their handling of the situation. Particularly disgusting is the level in which some cared about the continuation of the games far more than this scary and violent situation.

The centerpiece of the movie is the fact that they are able to interview the one surviving terrorist of the event, and get a never before described perspective of the whole situation. They also interview spouses, teammates, friends, and government officials.

Really liked this one. I'd probably say, since it is sports related, that I think it is probably better and more interesting than any of the 30 for 30s I've seen, and that is saying something.

Bondo

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Re: DOCember Group Marathon 2014
« Reply #112 on: December 29, 2014, 11:13:07 AM »
A Life in Dirty Movies (2013)

Profiling sexploitation film director Joe Sarno, A Life in Dirty Movies plays as a bittersweet eulogy not only to the man, but to the type of movies he preferred to make, namely softcore films that pushed the boundaries in the 60s but would be left behind in the 70s, upstaged by increasingly hardcore films. Aside from glancing back at his history, the documentary details an attempt to make a new film and encounters the technological havoc that the internet has been to the industry, aside from the changing tastes of consumers. So in this way, it is a quiet, slightly oblique exploration of the history of mainstream erotica/porn.

It is a pretty gentle film, dominated by Joe's wife Peggy and plenty of supportive talking heads like John Waters. This isn't a film aspiring to present a complete, warts and all, view of its subject. Sometimes this is a weakness. As much as it talks about Sarno's distaste for hardcore, it kind of buries any discussion of the dozens of hard core films he made under pseudonyms. Having seen one of his credited soft films and one of his uncredited hard films, it is actually the latter that stands out more as representing the intriguing, progressive approach Sarno took to the genre in tending to make the films centered on female character drama and female pleasure. That said, its biggest problem is that which Sarno and others note, the requirement to have a certain number and duration of explicit scenes tends to get in the way of story and threaten its ability to be viewed as artistic.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about the documentary though is that unlike Broadway Idiot which stripped my interest in seeing the featured musical, A Life in Dirty Movies did a great job in piquing my interest in watching more of Sarno's films by placing them in a particular political and social context that seems intriguing.

B

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« Last Edit: December 29, 2014, 11:14:47 AM by Bondo »

PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: DOCember Group Marathon 2014
« Reply #113 on: December 29, 2014, 04:36:23 PM »
A Story of Children and Film (2013) 7/10
So this is Mark Cousins? My interest in The Story of Film: An Odyssey has just gone down a bit. Not that this was bad, it's an interesting idea, looking at children in film and their various depictions, situations and types of performances, and there are enough insights that I didn't mind watching it. But for every insight there's some annoying hyperbole or useless musing, and Cousins is a really tedious narrator to listen to. I also don't like how spoilery some of the clips shown are, but I guess that's to be expected.

 

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