Archive for the ‘Documentaries’ Category

  • 06 May

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    HotDocs 2011: The Future Is Now!

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    There’s something to be said for “talking head” movies. When intelligent people discuss interesting or novel ideas in passionate ways, you don’t necessarily need an overall story arc, narrative thrust or cinematic quality to the proceedings – smart people saying smart things can be engaging enough. Certainly none of those other elements would hurt, though, and the addition of them can lead to fascinating viewing. So I had my hopes up for Gary Burns and Jim Brown’s latest film The Future Is Now!. It purported to have a bevy of experts (in fields of architecture, art, evolutionary science, etc.) talking about what the future might have in store for us and how our lives might change. To do this, the film wraps the fictional story of a disconnected cynical man being shown what humanity might achieve as he gets to interview these thought leaders. I bought into this rather odd concept and the claims of “a cinematic voyage through endless future possibilities” partially due to the directors’ previous film – the fun and very sharp Radiant City – which combined wonderfully staged interviews of urban planners with the story of a suburban family trying to cope with the many pros and cons of living in their neighbourhood. So I expected The Future Is Now! to be filled with smart people, clever structural devices and superb filmmaking.

    Though I can’t blame them for trying something different, the only thing that works are the actual talking heads – and only when they are allowed to go off on their own tangents and aren’t forced into answering specific questions. Had they but only filmed these curious thinkers chatting to a single static camera, the film would’ve been far more thought-provoking. The artificiality of the construct that a Woman Of Tomorrow (a TV news reporter) is able to line up all these people to convince this one cynical guy (dubbed the Man Of Today) that the world has hope finally sinks the film. That’s not to say it doesn’t occasionally induce a certain amount of percolation of ideas in your brain: the architect Shigeru Ban does pro bono relief work that has far reaching benefits, the author Rivka Galchen briefly mentions the concept of parallel universes spawned every time a decision point is reached, Richard Dawkins sees genetics as “a branch of information technology” and even Jean-Paul Sartre (as the ghost of yesterday) chimes in to point out the logical fallacy of seeing oneself as completely different from everyone else. Whatever inspiration evolves from these moments is constantly undermined by the framing story and its unfortunate proclamations.

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  • 04 May

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    HotDocs 2011: Hot Coffee Review

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    In Rodrigo Cortés’ thriller Buried (the one with Ryan Reynolds making cellphone calls from a coffin) there was one bit of highly effective satire involving the company employing Reynolds’ character (as a truck driver in Iraq) and their insistence of getting liability out of the way before they would help him escape from asphyxiation that struck me as both hilarious and outlandish. There is a nihilism in Cortés film that was rather off putting, it is practically a deal breaker for recommending the film (beyond its handsome craft), that I find myself now reconsidering after watching, Hot Coffee one of the big ‘issue’ documentaries at this years edition of HotDocs. If nothing else, it shows that the intentions of the founding fathers of the U.S. constitution probably had no idea that lobbyists and unfettered capitalism would go so far in undermining so many of the rights (and checks and balances) implicit in the formation of the land of the free.

    You probably heard of that case in the early 1990s of the old lady who spilled a cup of coffee on herself in the car after purchasing it from a local McDonald’s restaurant. It was a gag in Seinfeld, late night talk show fodder, and the poster child for frivolous civil litigation in the United States. The jury awarded Stella Liebeck $2.86 Million dollars. The initial thought is, holy Jackpot! After you see the photos of Ms. Liebeck’s inner thighs and all the skin grafts and whatnot, it is crystal clear that those are some serious burns, and that McDonald’s had its coffee makers set a egregiously high temperatures and had hundreds if not thousands of customer complaints up until that point, it becomes less of a case about common sense of one lady, and more of a case of media spin. But it’s not the media at the heart of things, it’s those damn lobbyists (while not unique to the United States, but certainly America has turned corporate advocacy it into an orchestrated art-form and if the middle-brow comedy of Thank-you for Smoking was not enough to sway you, perhaps the hand-over-mouth personal tragedies outlined in the workmanlike fashion of director Susan Saladoff might change a world-view or two. At the very least, you will know what a Tort is and why its reform is perhaps better described as a deform, meaning taking the Jury of your peers out of the equation in favour of recommendations given from firms/individuals often employed by the corporate defendant, or otherwise at the behest of their lobby.) It is certainly worth repeating that most of the great advances in safety in consumer goods comes from injured parties costing the company enough money to consider safety the wiser and cheaper alternative to ignoring a low-on-the-companies-priority list issue.

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  • 02 May

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    HotDocs 2011: Boy Cheerleaders Review

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    In order for these young boys to compete in a typically all girls cheerleading competition, it is going to, as their flamboyant instructor says, “take balls.” Taking gender politics of the 21st century and throwing them up in the air before skeet shooting them, Boy Cheerleaders follows a bunch of rough and tumble (yet often framed in pink) pre-pubescent boys in equally rough and tumble Leeds as they train for the National Cheerleading Championship in London.

    The film puts special focus on young Harvey, with his adorable freckles and passion for dancing, who is fully committed to becoming a real life Billy Elliot, to even win back his father who appears to have abandoned him. In fact, all of the boys that get special focus in this 60 minute documentary seem to lack father figures. So Ian Rodley, who makes the posturing of Christopher Guest in Waiting for Guffman seem understated. Rodley is a caricature, a character, and the coach for DAZL DIAMONDS, the boys dance team with pink pom poms and unusual musical choices. He plays for the camera, but is honest and committed in the way you would expect of a coach determined to show the world that boys can compete in this all girls sport. He uses an inordinate amount of cuss words both to the moms and the boys, but he seems to pull the things that matter for these boys into focus.

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  • 02 May

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    HotDocs 2011: Fightville Review

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    It was a Mixed Martial arts weekend here in Toronto as the UFC comes to down as a huge live event, but also in the form of a documentary film as one of the opening nights Galas at this years HotDocs. Fightville chronicles two fighters as they grind out bloody local-league fights and train at the gym (in a non-descript strip mall located by the Piggly Wiggley,) both as a way of working out their own personal issues and living the dream of a professional fighter. A short ways into Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein’s (Gunner Palace, How to Fold a Flag) MMA documentary, you may find yourself reeling from the plethora of pontification on the sport by way of trainer/UFC-competitor Tim Credeur. As he attempts to sculpt two troubled young men into fighters, you get acclimatized to the mythic manner of speaking (the filmmakers are guilty of getting into that game, throwing up title cards quotes from such a diverse collection of individuals – Walt Whitman, Friederich Nietzsche, Bruce Lee, and most telling, P.T. Barnum.) One of the two young men makes his walk to the ring dressed as Alex, in full Droog attire, from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. It’s unclear, exactly how that removes the social stigma that clings to the the sport in some circles, and I’m not sure if it is an act of total misguidedness or one of ironic self-awareness. All of this spectacle and hubris melts away somewhere near the halfway mark, when you start to see these guys as passionate, struggling, and sacrificing hopefuls for a sliver of the american dream.

    Fightville is fortunate to have found Dustin Poirier, whose meteoric rise into the UFC is captured right from the very beginning. As a boy he was in and out of institutions (you can read the worry lines on his mothers face) before finding Tim and the Gladiators Academy Gym which have provided a very disciplined outlet for his troubles. Poirier is very open, honest on camera; a conversation about craving ice-cream sandwiches while trying to trim down for a weigh-in is disarmingly charming. In the ring or during one of many training montages, he is a different story: Intense, intimidating and frankly kinda scary. Poor Albert Stainback, the above mentioned young Droog, struggles a bit more with balancing life and combat. Between them, You get the contrasting picture of what it takes it is to keep focused – there is precious little money to be made outside a few fighters at the top, and real life has a way of intruding on training.

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  • 28 Apr

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    HotDocs 2011: Beauty Day

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    Beauty Day opens with a most decidedly not-beauty moment for Ralph Zavadil (otherwise known as Cap’n Video). As his camera rolls and documents yet another of his solo “stunts” for his cable access show, the jovial Cap’n (looking like David Lee Roth after a week-long bender) launches himself off a high rung on the ladder he’s propped up against his fence. The plan is to plunge right into the middle of his tarp covered pool to demonstrate a new way of opening it for the season. As the 14 year-old videotape footage shows, things go horribly wrong – the ladder yields from Ralph’s push off, he drops short of the pool and lands square on his neck on the concrete breaking 2 of his cervical vertebrae. “Unfortunately, I didn’t think it through all the way” says current day Zavadil – not with any bitterness, sadness or regret in his voice, but with the self-deprecating tone of someone telling a really good story to his buddies. Of course, when you’re wearing what appear to be reindeer antlers with multicoloured headlamps on them, you need to make sure you aren’t taking yourself too seriously.

    So why has director Jay Cheel decided to focus his feature length debut on the star of a decade old cable access show from St. Catharines, Ontario who sounds like a bad impersonator mixing French and Newfoundland accents? You can certainly see the initial appeal – Cap’n Video was a staple of the TV diets of teenagers in St. Catharines in the early 90s (a “Jackass” show before “Jackass” existed) and that failed stunt gave him world wide attention (a “Real TV” segment, Japanese TV, talk shows, etc.). However, there’s got to be more than just that, right? You bet there is. As with many of the best documentaries, the people themselves become just as fascinating as the central storyline. By the end of the film, I had not only become somewhat attached to Ralph and his friends and family, but quite disappointed that I couldn’t spend more time with them. They are interesting, funny and show a great spirit towards how they live their lives.

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  • 28 Apr

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    HotDocs 2011: Resurrect Dead – The Toynbee Tiles Mystery Review

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    Here is why the current trend in documentary filmmaking, the re-purposing of a ‘standard talking heads doc’ with a more structured genre-framework (eg. Man on Wire, The Cove, King of Kong), has yet to find its quality ceiling or go stale. Who would have thought a quirky street art mystery (following on the heels of the wildly successful Exit Through The Gift Shop) would ultimately be about respect, community, passion and human dignity? Prepare to have your mind expanded.

    What do Stanley Kubrick, Street Art, a renown meta-history professor, short-wave radio, David Mamet, the construction of a mammoth telescope in Chile, bringing the dead back to life and pigeon husbandry have in common? In Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, Jon Foy and Justin Duerr tackle the vexing mystery of message-laden linoleum tiles that have been fused into the asphalt of various North American city streets since the early 1980s. All feature the cryptic near-haiku:

    Toynbee Idea
    In Movie 2001
    Resurrect Dead
    On Planet Jupiter

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 26 Apr

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    HotDocs 2011 – Preview

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    And perhaps best of all, they remind us that there is an audience interested in intelligent conversation.”

    Coming in just shy of cracking the 200 film mark, the stuffed lineup of this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival was released a few weeks ago. The quote above is from festival Executive Director Chris MacDonald as he kicked off the Press Conference which announced the headliners, special events, retrospectives and other highlights among the many shorts and features to be screened between April 28th and May 8th in Toronto. The photo above is Cap’n Video engaging in some of that thoughtful debate…

    Here’s a short preview of this year’s festival:

     

    Some of the Main Events

    • Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold – Morgan Spurlock’s latest film appears to be trying to have things both ways – while purporting to be a close look at product placement in our culture and the seeping influence of advertising, Spurlock actually financed the entire film via the placement of ads within the film. His pitch to advertisers is that the film is about his pitch to advertisers – including them. I expect that it may show some interesting board room discussions and give numerous examples of insidious marketing, but it’s going to be an awful tricky line for him to walk. The film is the opening night gala for the festival.

       

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    • Project Nim – Seriously, isn’t Nim Chimpsky the best name ever for an animal? Particularly when it’s a chimpanzee (wouldn’t be quite as great if it applied to a kitty now would it?). James Marsh’s newest film (and first documentary since Man On Wire after sneaking in one of the Red Riding trilogy films) documents the life of Nim as part of an experiment to see if one of our closest relatives on the evolutionary scale could be raised as a human, take on our characteristics and relate to us. From everything I’ve read, it sounds fascinating.
    • Conan O’Brien Won’t Quit – While O’Brien was in between gigs (and prohibited from appearing on TV), he staged a whirlwind tour to vent his frustrations and his comedy to adoring fans (is Team Coco still a relevant term these days?). The doc promises not only some of the best footage of those live shows, but behind the scenes and reflective interviews.

      » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 13 Apr

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    Trailer: Resurrect Dead – The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

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    There is nothing I like more than a good science fiction conspiracy. I could read the article on Stanley Kubrick’s implicit guilt for faking the moon landing embedded in The Shining (here) over and over again. And I have. But wait. There is a real bonafide conspiracy out there involving Street Art, David Mamet, Short Wave Radio, Pigeon husbandry, raising the dead, Railroads, metahistory massive telescopes and our friendly cinematic auteur Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sign me up! Actually, there is decades worth of evidence gathered by various folks of mysterious tiles embedded in the road way by someone. Jon Foy puts on his best Errol Morris hat and makes a great talking-head / archival footage / re-enactment documentary. I just watched it, and it is still buzzing in my head. Apparently the folks at Sundance a couple months ago also like it and award it a directors prize.

    The trailer is tucked under the seat.

    Filmmaker Jon Foy and Philadelphia-based artist and musician Justin Duerr began planning a documentary film about the Toynbee Tiles in 2000. Five years later, they began filming their investigation of these strange street plaques embedded in the asphalt of major U.S. and South American urban intersections that had held Duerr’s fascination for over a decade. Having appeared on hundreds of reported examples from the mid-1980s to present, the cryptic four-line message of the Toynbee Tiles read: “Toynbee Idea / In Kubrick’s 2001 / Resurrect Dead / On Planet Jupiter”. While the text on the plaques was clear enough, neither Duerr nor the numerous media outlets that had documented the phenomenon knew what these tiles meant, how or why they were installed, or who was responsible for them.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 06 Apr

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    Kings of Leon Documentary: Jesus Camp meets No Direction Home?

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    Modern rock fans might have something to look forward to when the Kings of Leon documentary Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon screens at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month. I have always enjoyed really rock band documentaries, but there generally seemed to be one constant: if you didn’t already like the band, you probably wouldn’t care much for the film.

    This documentary, on the other hand, seems to be taking a different route – weaving a unique narrative about some boys from a devoutly religious family who form a Christian rock band which evolves into something more mainstream and popular, giving the band members the opportunity to rebel against their religious upbringing. And rebel they do.

    The trailer appropriately begins with a band member saying, “As soon as I knew we were getting a record deal, I never slept. All night long I knew that I was going to hell – and I wasn’t gonna be a preacher.”

    What are your thoughts on this trailer (or even rock documentaries in general)? If you are a fan of the band, does this interest you? If you are not a fan of the band, does the trailer leave you wanting more?

  • 22 Mar

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    Hot Docs! Beauty Day! Neal Cassady! Elmo! Full Line-up Announced

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    “Every year I say I will get to more than 4-5 screenings at Hotdocs, but this year I mean it! One of the largest documentary film festivals in the world, Toronto’s HOT DOCS just announced its full line-up which includes premieres galore (I won’t bore you with the stats) both locally and internationally.

    Some Highlights include the follow-up film from Man On Wire‘s Jim Marsh, Project Nim. A biography of the chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. Jay Cheel’s Beauty Day, a look at the life and blue-collar art from pre-Jack Ass stunt-tomfoolery pioneer Ralph Zavadil (aka Cap’n Video). Magic Trip, Alex Gibney (Client 9, Taxi to the Darkside) and Allison Ellwood’s look at Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road muse, and his ramshackle bus was which was tricked out with cameras to capture free-form impressions of America and the seemingly limitless drug-induced antics of its passengers. Sundance Special Jury Prize winner, Being Elmo, is story of how a shy nine-year-old Kevin Clash pursued his dream of becoming a puppeteer on Sesame Street. Raised in a low-income community, Clash’s talents were evident in his homemade prototypes and the puppet shows he staged for his mother’s daycare kids. In Bobby Fisher Against The World, the rock star of the chess world is a look at how this American Cold War hero became a vilified, paranoid recluse. Buck, A real-life horse whisperer overcomes his dark childhood and emerges as kind of an equine-rooted philosopher, proving his own maxim: horses make better people. Conan O’Brian’s post-Late Show stand-up tour is documented in Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. Love him or hate him, Morgan Spurlock takes a look at advertising and branding in the movies with the festival opener, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. UFC-themed doc Fightville charts two young fighters with potential and a dream in MMA. And a stylish look at poverty (oxymoron?) with Vodka Factory where the fntasies of big-city stardom cushion a single mother labouring on an assembly line from the brutal banalities of life in Russia’s backwoods.

    A massive catalogue/schedule to browse through, before the festival starts on April 28th and runs to May 8th, expect more coverage in the weeks to follow.

  • 28 Feb

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    VOD Review: Truth in Numbers?

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    My son recently had a french class project to do on foreign countries (his was Mexico) where the goal was to gather a lot of facts and points of interest in a simple table format. The suggestion was to go online and do research. While I supposed we could have gone down in the basement and blew the dust of the Funk & Wagnalls set that has not seen the light of day since the late 1980s, of course we just went to Wikipedia. All the information was right there. Of course, my son is in Grade 1 and it was more or less, ‘Just the Facts Ma’am,’ for this assignment. More challenging would be a grade 12 project on the life and politics of VP-candidate John Edwards or say the Abortion issue, but that will come later. For math, science and basic facts, Wikipedia is a magnificent resource for one-click shopping and links if you want to go deeper. Complex human social problems, and fuzzy ‘big issue’ science (climate change, cigarette smoking) or pretty much all of ‘capital-H’ History, well then the equation is not so simple.

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  • 22 Feb

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    Jay Cheel’s BEAUTY DAY Trailer

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    Friend of Rowthree, Documentary film writer and co-podcaster, Jay Cheel has been entertaining the blogosphere for years with the FilmJunk podcast as well as short films starring the eccentric Reed Farrington, Video Game faux-docs, and Mario Bava inspired horror shorts. He has stepped up to the territory of feature documentary filmmaking with Beauty Day.

    Before Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass crew were were risking their lives, and common decency for the sake of your entertainment, before Tom Green made an ass of himself in public for shits and giggles, there was Ralph Zavadil, a resident of St. Catherines, Ontario (Canada) that used to broadcast his dangerous and highly amusing stunts and general mayhem on the local community access channel, in the guise of his alter-ego, Cap’n Video. Cheel has turned the trials and tribulations of Zavadil into a feature documentary that captures Cap’n Video 15 years later against the backdrop of his famous shows, including a ‘neck-breaking’ pool jump, skiing off his roof and lighting his face on fire amongst other things. Beauty Day will be screening at the Museum of Modern Art on Sunday March 20th (and a follow-up screening on the 21st) before hitting the festival circuit, and a Canadian Theatrical release this spring. But for now, enjoy Ralph doing what he does best, lighting stuff on fire, casually dropping F-Bombs, and delightfully wrecking stuff! Cheel has an eye for wide-screen cinematography, and a love for John Carpenter, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog , so there is no doubt that this will be gorgeous on the big screen.

    After a serious on-camera accident and a controversial Easter episode, the Cap’n was pulled from the airwaves and eventually faded away into community cable obscurity. Now, fifteen years later, Ralph has decided to revisit the Cap’n in celebration of the 20th birthday of the creation of the character. With the help of his best friend Robert, he’ll attempt to get back on the air one last time and give the Cap’n the send off he deserves. In the process, we revisit all of the ups and downs in Ralph’s life and learn that those who are truly passionate about their art always manage to find an outlet and surround themselves with like minded, creative people.

    The trailer is tucked under the seat.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

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