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Author Topic: DOCember 2017  (Read 18077 times)

Bondo

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DOCember 2017
« on: November 12, 2017, 12:18:48 AM »
I don't know about you but I've got a ton of Documentaries queued up and the precise confines of December just won't do.

1SO
4 Little Girls
Bing Crosby in Dublin
I Captured the King of the Leprechauns

Pearl Jam Twenty

Bondo
After Porn Ends 2
Betting On Zero
City of Ghosts
The Farthest
Fire At Sea
Fire In The Blood
Five Came Back
Gaga: Five Foot Two
Get Me Roger Stone
Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
Kedi
The Keepers
Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
National Bird
Nobody Speaks
Risk
Sherpa
Trophy
Vietnam War
Voyeur
Whose Streets?

Corndog
The Work
Whose Streets?
Kedi
Escapes
Spettacolo
Bronx Gothic
Behemoth
Dolores
I Called Him Morgan
Unrest
Oklahoma City
Last Men in Aleppo
Flesh and Blood
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992

DarkeningHumour
Mea Maxima Culpa
Caligula with Mary Beard

FLYmeatwad
Betting on Zero
Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated

11/8/16
AlphaGo
I Am Not Your Negro

Knocked Out Loaded
The Worst Lie Is The Documentary

oldkid
Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond
Joan Didion: The Center will Not Hold
George Harrison: Living in a Material World
The Life and Death of Marsha P Hanson
The Confession Tapes
I Called Him Morgan
The Kindness Diaries
Minimalism
The Square
Encounters at the End of the World
Into the Abyss

pixote
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2016)
Tickled (2016)
The Other Side (2015)
Kedi (2016)
Zero Days (2016)
Icarus (2017)
The Work (2017)
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 (2017)
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016)
Holy Hell (2016)
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016)
City of Ghosts (2017)
All This Panic (2016)
Jane (2017)
Risk (2016)
Kate Plays Christine (2016)
Karl Marx City (2016)
LoveTrue (2016)
Oklahoma City (2017)
Antarctica: Ice & Sky (2015)
Seasons (2015)
Detropia (2012)
School Life (2016)

ProperCharlie
A Day In The Life of a Coal Miner

smirnoff
Cropsey
Who Took Johnny?

Teproc
Makala
« Last Edit: July 01, 2018, 01:29:56 PM by pixote »

pixote

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2017, 12:39:22 AM »
I'll be surprised if you make it all the way through Fire at Sea.

I started working on my DOCember lineup the other day, but I still have about eighteen noirs to watch first.

pixote
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oldkid

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2017, 12:50:27 AM »
I have quite a few to watch myself

Joan Didion: The Center will Not Hold
George Harrison: Living in a Material World
The Life and Death of Marsha P Hanson
The Confession Tapes
I Called Him Morgan
The Kindness Diaries
Minimalism
The Square
Encounters at the End of the World
Into the Abyss

And that's just Neflix Instant
« Last Edit: November 12, 2017, 12:59:02 AM by oldkid »
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Bondo

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2017, 09:11:03 AM »
The Farthest (2017)

One word was echoing in my mind watching this..."NERDS!" The Voyager missions are certainly impressive feats of science, giving us significant insight into the four outer planets and now drifting into interstellar space. But watching this film at times is like listening to someone with autism talk about an interest you don't quite share, the film doesn't always know how to cater its discussion to its audience. Take for example the photographs that Voyager took. They are black and white and often grainy in appearance, a learned eye might be able to appreciate this, but for me it is just blah, and I could have done with far less of the originals before they do some data thingy to colorize them. Anyway, it makes the whole thing drag on longer than it really needed to.

1SO

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2017, 10:21:10 PM »
4 Little Girls (1997)
* * * - Okay
...and I feel shame rating this so low, but the importance of the church bombing that took the lives of the four children is dampened by Spike Lee's surprisingly dispassionate approach. 10 years later, Lee would make When the Levees Broke, which informs us and moves us. I can't tell if time has, perhaps not healed this wound a little, but placed it within the larger context of America's racism. I also knew quite a bit about the time and place going in, so while the tragedy is unmeasurable, the impact just wasn't as strong as I expected. My biggest reaction was Bill Cosby's brief and now awkward appearance where he talks about what these girls might've grown up to be.

This was like a segment of 60 Minutes where at the end my main thought is "racism is a terrible thing." How much more productive we could be as a nation if we didn't have to spend so much time dealing with racism and racists? How many lives, how much money, how much more could we achieve? The 4 little girls are a monument to how we have needlessly held ourselves back.

Corndog

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2017, 08:21:53 AM »
Will participate when I can. Have a few documentaries on the docket, not that I will get to them all:

Kedi
Escapes
Spettacolo
Bronx Gothic
Behemoth
Dolores
I Called Him Morgan
Unrest
Oklahoma City
Last Men in Aleppo
Flesh and Blood
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992
The Work
« Last Edit: November 20, 2017, 07:18:07 AM by Corndog »
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

pixote

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2017, 01:36:28 PM »
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992

I might have to add this to my list based on the title alone.

pixote
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Bondo

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #7 on: November 19, 2017, 08:32:20 PM »
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017)

The branding of this makes it out to be a documentary about the Hulk Hogan-Gawker trial, and that would be about half right, but it is really a patchwork of four stories: (1) the facts of the Hogan trial; (2) Peter Thiel's funding of said trial as representative of wealthy infringement on justice and free press; (3) a case study in wealthy figures directly purchasing control of media; and (4) the broader effect of a crisis in free press in the age of Trump. Though each links to the next in a reasonably clear way, I am not sure it quite holds together as a logical case.

In their effort to sell the end point, they build up the Gawker trial as being clearly about a free press. In this I think they miss the dismount and thus have a crack in the foundation. I think Gawker was wrong. Increasingly in the age of revenge porn, we recognize that the non-consensual distribution of sexually explicit material is a wrongful action. I am not convinced there should be a public figure or newsworthiness exception to this. When "The Fappening" happened a couple years ago, we don't argue that because the people whose photos were hacked are famous, it entitles outlets to publish without fear of retribution. I don't see any difference when it comes to Hulk Hogan. Perhaps you can report on the content of the tape, the fact of the affair or his use of racial slurs, but you don't get to post pictures or videos from the private recording. So Gawker should have lost, though the size of the damages and subsequent impact on Gawker as a media outlet was probably undue.

Then we turn to Peter Thiel's role in funding it. I guess I don't have a problem with it. The ACLU and NAACP are noted as third-party funders of litigation that fits their legal agenda. They are great organizations that have accomplished much good. Just because Thiel's motivations are suspect doesn't preclude him from acting in a similar manner. He is, or at least should be bound by the typical legal ethics as it relates to these instances, the decisions over cases must remain with the actual client and not the funder and the filing of cases should not be made to harass or discriminate, they must have legal basis. If someone like Thiel can meet these standards, it is on the potential defendants to meet their legal obligation as journalists.

The third story, regarding the purchase and gutting of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is finally a portion that taps into something truly concerning. Arguably the role of major corporations or wealthy individuals buying media outlets is inherently problematic because they are naturally newsworthy and one doesn't expect an entity they own to be introspective. This is hard to police on the individual scale of one newspaper or one news station. The solution of that is supposed to be competition. The problem, one that this section does not sufficiently delve into, is the concentration of media that significantly cuts down on the competition.

Can the media survive in an age where the President directly calls it out as an enemy of the state, where wealthy conspirators attempt to silence the dissent either through acquisition or litigation? Under the laws of 2016 I'd say yes. But if the Trump Administration is able to begin changing policy in substantive ways such as making it easier for people to win suits against the media or failing to enforce antitrust laws, it could cripple the media landscape enough to take the resistance to the authoritarian turn with it. As a documentary, this puts too many eggs in the Gawker case basket, overplaying the injustice in that specific case and leaving insufficient time to properly expand on the broader aspects of the threat to media in the current era. While it tells some interesting stories capably enough, as a documentary clearly coming with an argument to make, it does so less than convincingly.

smirnoff

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2017, 02:06:55 AM »
Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017)

In their effort to sell the end point, they build up the Gawker trial as being clearly about a free press. In this I think they miss the dismount and thus have a crack in the foundation.

That's as far into the doc as I got and the reason I didn't return to it. They moved on to the Peter Theil stuff like the Gawker matter was settled but I was still hung up on feeling that Gawker was wrong, in spite of it all. I was not persuaded and then lost the train of thought, and eventually stopped paying attention and turned it off. :-\

I look forward to reading your comments on Betting On Zero.

Bondo

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Re: DOCember 2017
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2017, 05:57:00 AM »
That’ll be an interesting one. On one hand I saw the John Oliver segment on Herbalife and believe it. On the other, I have good friends who run a shake shop to sell Herbalife products.

 

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