Hookers at the Point: Five Years Later (HBO late night, and I was bored) No Maps For These Territories (which was awesome)
I want to finish:
Planet Earth (Blu-Ray) (which I have and will finish watching some day) Guns, Germs, and Steel (which was interesting but I never finished reading it and I wanted to do that first...I have the book. Is this on DVD?)
Why We Fight. This movie hit me, hard. I don't even know why. I was all alone when I watched it, and just in the mood for feeling miserable, I guess. I balled non-stop through most of the movie. It's a very entertaining film.
Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room. Was great for me, because I'd always been interested, but completely missed it while it was going on. Scary to think that a company could do things like that.
I have The Fog Of War, but I haven't had time to watch it yet. Looks like a good movie.
These were great, too... especially Enron. I'm from Houston and in the O&G sector, so it really hits home. There are a lot of things and people I recognize. I remember looking down from my office near their building and seeing all the people exiting with boxes. They all looked so sad. I was horrified. I knew folks whose husbands, wives, children, parents worked at Enron, Arthur Andersen, and other firms that were somehow connected. Lay, Skilling, and Fastow fucked up so many lives with their greed. In any other age, they'd have been hanged.
Fog of War was the only film I ever watched that made me kind of understand where McNamara was coming from.
Why We Fight... if you ever had a tinfoil hat and were looking for a vast conspiracy... this IS your vast conspiracy. Sometimes I wonder where the world would be if the US and the USSR and associated allies had not spent on resources so stupidly during the Cold War. What would have happened if we said, "ok, we want butter. To hell with your guns." I realize a lot of advances in technology, especially in aerospace and plastics, were made as part of the effort to have bigger and bigger guns along with keeping butter around to forestall a revolt, but I think maybe whole parts of the world could have been fed for the cost of one battery of Titan missiles and associated warheads.
The World at War is widely considered to be the best WWII documentary ever. With 26 hour-long episodes created for the BBC, it goes into crazy detail and provides a startlingly unbiased, sobering and rich account of all facets of the war. I've seen every episode and it's all really interesting, basically like watching a season of good TV. What's said a lot about it is that it strikes a perfect balance between conveying the heroism of the people involved and communicating that the war really, really sucked.
When it first came out, people didn't know what to do with it. Not only was it WWII in color, but it addressed a lot of things that people had not dealt with since the war. In America, we didn't really see the war first-hand, at least as far a non-soldier. The only thing close to it anyone had ever seen was combat footage from Vietnam, which was still rather scrubbed. The best way I can sum up the series is to say that it is unflinching.
I think summer shall be the summer of documentaries.
I've watched
The Corporation
Spellbound
Wordplay
Planet Earth
Blue Planet
Super Size Me
Roger and Me
Bowling for Columbine
Fahrenheit 911
Why We Fight
The Artistocrats
But there's plenty left to put on my boyfriend's Netflix list!
One documentary I will never watch: An Inconvenient Truth.
I think summer shall be the summer of documentaries.
...
]
One documentary I will never watch: An Inconvenient Truth.
Also I also refuse. I suppose I can't really judge it having not seen it, but from what I have seen and heard of it, it is a silly propaganda film. Also I cannot stand Al Gore.
themightypuck on
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
There isn't enough salt for me to watch Al Gore propagandize global warming.
Medopine on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
Inconvenient Truth is basically an Idiot's Guide to Global Warming for Dummies. It dumbs down the science considerably, but when there's people who don't believe it even exists, you kind of have to.
I don't get what's wrong with Michael Moore's documentaries as entertainment. There's the very skewed, one-sided and twisted opinion, but it can be at least entertaining sometimes.
It's just... by comparison, there's really better out there.
Inconvenient Truth is basically an Idiot's Guide to Global Warming for Dummies. It dumbs down the science considerably, but when there's people who don't believe it even exists, you kind of have to.
I'm one of those dummies. I mean, I believe climate change exists, I just don't agree with all the doom saying. I will check this out though.
Inconvenient Truth is basically an Idiot's Guide to Global Warming for Dummies. It dumbs down the science considerably, but when there's people who don't believe it even exists, you kind of have to.
I'm one of those dummies. I mean, I believe climate change exists, I just don't agree with all the doom saying. I will check this out though.
I'm with you. I'm an air quality scientist in California, and I've gotten to see all the data. I mean ALL the data involved in the debate, not the cherry-picked data used by Gore and the doomsayers. Personally, I do believe that if we don't do something, we may wind up being screwed, but the doomsayers are totally wrong, and the data is far from conclusive. You could actually prove anything you want with the all data, which is the problem. You have to come into it with a preconceived conclusion to get the conclusion from the data.
Anyway, enough of that, that's not what this thread is about.
I really want to see "Sketches of Frank Gehry," mostly to see if I can figure out what was going on in his head when he designed the Disney Music Hall. I don't know how widespread this news got, but the particular angles of the building combined with the coating on the outside of the building is causing it to reflect so much sunlight that the buildings across the street are actually heating up.
"End of Suburbia" was an interesting and somewhat scary film. It was interesting to me anyway because I have to deal with this kind of stuff on a regular basis, namely the planning of new communities and how they relate to energy consumption and the resultant emissions.
"Manufacturing Consent" kind of goes along with "The Corporation." It's based on Noam Chomsky's book of the same name, so you have to take it for what it's worth.
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" is one I would highly recommend, especially with hybrid vehicles becoming the big thing now and the questions on the federal level about mileage standards. Definitely see this one.
Inconvenient Truth is basically an Idiot's Guide to Global Warming for Dummies. It dumbs down the science considerably, but when there's people who don't believe it even exists, you kind of have to.
I'm one of those dummies. I mean, I believe climate change exists, I just don't agree with all the doom saying. I will check this out though.
The time period really throws some people off, but I recall Gore keeping it somewhat realistic.
From IMDB: Forty runners compete in the most grueling race on earth, the Badwater 135. The film documents the trials and tribulations of these athletes as they run 135 miles through Death Valley in July and explores the motivations behind this seemingly masochistic contest. A celebration of the perseverance of the human will beyond the limits of the human body.
I saw the Penn & Teller: Bullshit on Wal-Mart, and they mentioned the documentary...
Does that count?
I wish the search function worked, so I could point you to the "Why Bullshit! Is Bullshit" thread I did about a year ago, or one of the endemic Wal-Mart thread we have that was spawned from that thread. That episode really proves how much of a hack Penn really is, because he spends the whole episode setting up strawmen.
I've been watching a lot of Errol Morris lately, namely because I have his collected works sitting on the coffee table in front of me, and they are all absolutely phenomenal.
Everyone should go buy his TV Series, First Person. It's fantastic.
The Fog of War is interesting, but if you want to see the absolute limits how just HOW interesting Errol Morris can make things, you need to watch Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
FCaOoC is about a topiary artist, a lion tamer, a robot builder and a blind mole rat expert.
Louis Kahn was a pimp. An awesome pimp who made great architecture and was burned in over 80% of his body. Frank Gehry, meanwhile, can suck my left nut.
I rather enjoy watching documentaries and couldn't even name most of the ones I've watched, though a lot of them have already been posted. A good one that hasn't, though, is Koyanasqatsi. It's purely visual and sort of new-age hippie in character, but it makes an interesting observation about the built environment's relation to the natural one. Also, I'm surprised noone's talked about Frontline, though. Just about everything they cover is both extremely interesting and well put together.
Zeitgeist - I just watched it today. I wouldn't agree with everything (or even most) of the conspiracies that it proposed, but It's definitely covers some very interesting and controversial topics.
Other docs that are similar are American Dictators and America: Freedom to Fascism
The thing about Zeitgeist is that, even if 9/11 was a hoax, that doesn't change a god damn thing. We're still in the war, we still have to protect our interests.
Though I use their episode on recycling as my excuse for being lazy and throwing cans in the trash ><
I thought aluminum cans were the one thing they said was worth recycling...
Perhaps.
I'm really lazy.
I think the core of the recycling episode was that it's silly to recycle things that are infinite. We can eventually run out of aluminum without recycling, we aren't going to run out of trees.
Am I the only person who didn't like the Aristocrats? It’s an hour and a half of the same joke over and over, quite literally. Even when you tell the joke right, it’s not that good. I really don’t understand who this movie is marketed towards.
Posts
Gunner Palace- Second Iraq War documentary, some funny parts and some sad parts. Been a long time since I've watched it. Go Documentary Chanel!
After watching some men's wheelchair basketball on the Rick Mercer Report the other night I really want to check out Murderball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murderball_%28film%29
Hookers at the Point: Five Years Later (HBO late night, and I was bored)
No Maps For These Territories (which was awesome)
I want to finish:
Planet Earth (Blu-Ray) (which I have and will finish watching some day)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (which was interesting but I never finished reading it and I wanted to do that first...I have the book. Is this on DVD?)
These were great, too... especially Enron. I'm from Houston and in the O&G sector, so it really hits home. There are a lot of things and people I recognize. I remember looking down from my office near their building and seeing all the people exiting with boxes. They all looked so sad. I was horrified. I knew folks whose husbands, wives, children, parents worked at Enron, Arthur Andersen, and other firms that were somehow connected. Lay, Skilling, and Fastow fucked up so many lives with their greed. In any other age, they'd have been hanged.
Fog of War was the only film I ever watched that made me kind of understand where McNamara was coming from.
Why We Fight... if you ever had a tinfoil hat and were looking for a vast conspiracy... this IS your vast conspiracy. Sometimes I wonder where the world would be if the US and the USSR and associated allies had not spent on resources so stupidly during the Cold War. What would have happened if we said, "ok, we want butter. To hell with your guns." I realize a lot of advances in technology, especially in aerospace and plastics, were made as part of the effort to have bigger and bigger guns along with keeping butter around to forestall a revolt, but I think maybe whole parts of the world could have been fed for the cost of one battery of Titan missiles and associated warheads.
When it first came out, people didn't know what to do with it. Not only was it WWII in color, but it addressed a lot of things that people had not dealt with since the war. In America, we didn't really see the war first-hand, at least as far a non-soldier. The only thing close to it anyone had ever seen was combat footage from Vietnam, which was still rather scrubbed. The best way I can sum up the series is to say that it is unflinching.
I've watched
The Corporation
Spellbound
Wordplay
Planet Earth
Blue Planet
Super Size Me
Roger and Me
Bowling for Columbine
Fahrenheit 911
Why We Fight
The Artistocrats
But there's plenty left to put on my boyfriend's Netflix list!
One documentary I will never watch: An Inconvenient Truth.
You watch Michael Moore :P
Also I also refuse. I suppose I can't really judge it having not seen it, but from what I have seen and heard of it, it is a silly propaganda film. Also I cannot stand Al Gore.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Yeah with a HUGE grain of salt.
There isn't enough salt for me to watch Al Gore propagandize global warming.
It's just... by comparison, there's really better out there.
Because I've seen a shit ton of rockumentaries, but this is probably the best, even though it's fictitious.
I'm one of those dummies. I mean, I believe climate change exists, I just don't agree with all the doom saying. I will check this out though.
I'm with you. I'm an air quality scientist in California, and I've gotten to see all the data. I mean ALL the data involved in the debate, not the cherry-picked data used by Gore and the doomsayers. Personally, I do believe that if we don't do something, we may wind up being screwed, but the doomsayers are totally wrong, and the data is far from conclusive. You could actually prove anything you want with the all data, which is the problem. You have to come into it with a preconceived conclusion to get the conclusion from the data.
Anyway, enough of that, that's not what this thread is about.
I really want to see "Sketches of Frank Gehry," mostly to see if I can figure out what was going on in his head when he designed the Disney Music Hall. I don't know how widespread this news got, but the particular angles of the building combined with the coating on the outside of the building is causing it to reflect so much sunlight that the buildings across the street are actually heating up.
"End of Suburbia" was an interesting and somewhat scary film. It was interesting to me anyway because I have to deal with this kind of stuff on a regular basis, namely the planning of new communities and how they relate to energy consumption and the resultant emissions.
"Manufacturing Consent" kind of goes along with "The Corporation." It's based on Noam Chomsky's book of the same name, so you have to take it for what it's worth.
"Who Killed the Electric Car?" is one I would highly recommend, especially with hybrid vehicles becoming the big thing now and the questions on the federal level about mileage standards. Definitely see this one.
From IMDB: Forty runners compete in the most grueling race on earth, the Badwater 135. The film documents the trials and tribulations of these athletes as they run 135 miles through Death Valley in July and explores the motivations behind this seemingly masochistic contest. A celebration of the perseverance of the human will beyond the limits of the human body.
It's really good.
I don't think it does. But that doesn't make it any less awesome.
My Backloggery
One dude in the film was getting blisters under his toenails from all the running
Okay...that scares me in places that I didn't know I had.
And I'm honestly surprised that I seem to have been the only one to have watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price.
I saw the Penn & Teller: Bullshit on Wal-Mart, and they mentioned the documentary...
Does that count?
I wish the search function worked, so I could point you to the "Why Bullshit! Is Bullshit" thread I did about a year ago, or one of the endemic Wal-Mart thread we have that was spawned from that thread. That episode really proves how much of a hack Penn really is, because he spends the whole episode setting up strawmen.
Though I use their episode on recycling as my excuse for being lazy and throwing cans in the trash ><
Your wish is my command.
Edit: Here's the Wal-Mart thread.
Everyone should go buy his TV Series, First Person. It's fantastic.
The Fog of War is interesting, but if you want to see the absolute limits how just HOW interesting Errol Morris can make things, you need to watch Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
FCaOoC is about a topiary artist, a lion tamer, a robot builder and a blind mole rat expert.
-PSN&360&steam: dei2anged
Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy.
Sex: The Annabel Chong Story.
Inside Deep Throat
I thought aluminum cans were the one thing they said was worth recycling...
Perhaps.
I'm really lazy.
Louis Kahn was a pimp. An awesome pimp who made great architecture and was burned in over 80% of his body. Frank Gehry, meanwhile, can suck my left nut.
I rather enjoy watching documentaries and couldn't even name most of the ones I've watched, though a lot of them have already been posted. A good one that hasn't, though, is Koyanasqatsi. It's purely visual and sort of new-age hippie in character, but it makes an interesting observation about the built environment's relation to the natural one. Also, I'm surprised noone's talked about Frontline, though. Just about everything they cover is both extremely interesting and well put together.
Other docs that are similar are American Dictators and America: Freedom to Fascism
I think the core of the recycling episode was that it's silly to recycle things that are infinite. We can eventually run out of aluminum without recycling, we aren't going to run out of trees.
Am I the only person who didn't like the Aristocrats? It’s an hour and a half of the same joke over and over, quite literally. Even when you tell the joke right, it’s not that good. I really don’t understand who this movie is marketed towards.
Come on people! It's one of the most engrossing documentaries I've ever seen, and it was cruelly, cruelly robbed of an Oscar it rightfully deserved.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I was happy that I finally found the Criterion Edition of it after hearing nothing but praise heaped upon it.
I found it ultimately incredibly boring.