Finally, after many years, the documentaries of Fred Wiseman are on DVD. You'll need to go to his website to purchase them--and they are fairly expensive, somewhere around the thirty-five dollar range. As of yet, I haven't seen any reviews of the DVDs as to their quality. Still, Wiseman's documentaires are among the finest ever done, and even a bare bones DVD is good news.


http://www.zipporah.com/

the last time i was in harlan county was probably 96 or 97, virtually all my family is from there on my mothers side, i first thought this was gonna be a moonshiner doc, and got really excited, then when i read imdb i saw that is was about the mines. My grandfather i guess moved from there and stopped working in the mines before all that happened, as i have never heard about it.

harlan county is a diffrent place, when i went neighbors shared phones, and some houses still didnt have running water and electricity, and they hated outsiders where we went.
My uncle went into a cafe of sorts ordered a cup of coffee, the waitress brought it, a guy reached over his shoulder with a long nosed revolver, dirty hairy type gun, and stirred his coffee and told him it was time to leave.

but i imagined its changed past my youthful encounters with it....the creeks have brilliant tasting water, that makes me get all marcel proust when i taste it....
its a fun trip

thanks for the movie, def look it up

be careful with that creekwater. That flavor you could be tasting might be bc of the "straight pipes".

Spellbound, Fog of War and American Movie are my 3 favorite documentaries.

American Movie is probably the saddest/funniest/best documentary I have ever seen.

no review of "the king of kong"?

this wasnt in depth enough for you?



saw Dark Days the other night and it just didnt do it for me. i didnt care about any of the people and thought going B&W was a mistake. turned it off after ~50 minutes.

have DIG! on tap.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...54859593416473

Palestine is still the issue.


Great documentary that was banned by BBC and Discovery following 9/11.

John Pilger wrote great books on international policy.

HBO showed a documentary on Joe Louis last night, should be repeating it the next few days, super good imo, more about race relations in US 20th century, really heartwarming, interesting and beautifully paced.

i watched the 1 percent on cinemax last thursday, pretty intresting, nothing earth shattering though.
Basiclythe heir to the johnson and johnson fortune feels guilty for the rich having all the money.
I still havent seen born rich, but its probably not as good as that, atleast from what i read about it

wow,they look really interesting,thanks for the link

I've looked through this thread and haven't seen Deep Water mentioned. It's from the same producers that did Touching the Void.

Deep Water - The stunning true story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who enters the most daring nautical challenge ever – the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race.

This site has a trailer, highly recommended!
http://www.deepwatermovie.co.uk/

If you get a chance to see “From Mambo to Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale” on PBS, I found it riveting. Some of the musical numbers gave be chills, especially the huge salsa concert in Yankee Stadium in 73.

It's basically the latino influence on the big musical movements that started in the S. Bronx - mambo, salsa, hip-hop/breakdancing. About every few minutes watching this thing you see something that is about the coolest thing you've ever seen. Mambo dancers going nuts, Tito Puente going nuts, salsa dancers going nuts, early hip hop DJs setting up renegade clubs in burned out Bronx buildings, and a ton of really cool old breaking footage - from where it started. I've already watched parts of it 3 or 4 times.

Also one of the most amazing things to me is 3 or 4 scenes from Bronx gangs in the 70s that looked straight of The Warriors. The big peace meeting, the outfits. I always thought gangs looked mostly like today and that movie was just someone's very active imagination. There were so many really cool styles. No sign of the Baseball Furies or the dudes on roller skates though unfortunately.

It really drives home the point that something like hip-hop could ONLY be born out of near total desperation, in a place the rest of the world had mostly forgotten at the time. With acres of burned out apartment buildings, where kids could set up an entire club night after night, stealing electricity from the streetlights, and no one even bothers them. We'll never create a new art form in our worthless cushy existence. Look for some aweome music coming out of Somalia in the near future.

Here's a NY Times review that doesn't really do the awesomeness justice IMO. http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/09/14...on/14pare.html

Here's the trailer for the documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpo9s...eature=related

And here's one of the songs from the 73 Salsa concert: http://youtube.com/watch?v=72WK_7zfQYo&feature=related

There's another one that I'd really love to find, but haven't yet.

And here's Tito Puente going nuts: http://youtube.com/watch?v=5ZW7p0dnLss

If you stick with to about a minute in, he gets really out of control.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0951318/
just watched this its called BraBoys, it seems its the equivlent of a football gang in england but surfers, in Aus. Its narrated by russle crowe, and pretty good. I would give it 3.5 out of 5. I didnt regret the time i spent watching it, its a bit melodramatic at times, but it defintly made me want to visit the filming location

This is a pretty long thread. I cruised through the last 15 or so pages, so if this is a dupe of an earlier mentioned film, I apologize.

I'd like to recommend A League of Ordinary Gentlemen. It's a documentary about prefessional bowling. More specifically, its about the PBA trying to stay afloat in an era where bowling is not the popular spectator sport it once was.

Watching this, I can't help but wonder if this is a portrait of poker 15-20 years down the line. The initial explosion in popularity that came when bowling was initially televised should be familiar to any poker player. It is an interesting thing to consider while watching this.

Update: One review mentions the quality of the dvds is rather poor but still serviceable, and they also lack any sort of extras or commentay. Still, though, Wiseman's work is stunning. I recommend Welfare, High School, and especially Titicut Follies, a documentary that was banned in Massachusetts for over thirty years. It details treatment of the criminally insanse at Bridgewater State Prison, a facility known for housing Albert De Salvo, The Boston Strangler.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple

Very impressive documentary. I knew the basic stuff before, but this went deeper in Jim Jones' mind. Not directly of course, but they interviewed members of the church + Jim's adopted son and also had lots of old footage.

I thought this one was quite interesting.

I had been given this docu awhile back and it sat on my desk until this evening when I knocked over some papers and saw it sitting there.

Good Copy Bad Copy Website w/ free View

Its a interesting look into copyright, pirating, and remix culture that is proliferating the internet these days.

It contains extensive interview clips with Girl Talk, Lawrence Lessig, Nigerian Film Producers, Danger Mouse, the Pirate Bay and others.

I found it very interesting being that I have a music production background and I specifically worked in remix segment of the industry until I went back to school.

I believe though everyone can enjoy viewing this nicely done hour long film and gain a keen insight on these cultures. Which will be very important in future legal considerations on what will be free to do on the net. Since these cultures have seemed to magnify beyond the very small sub-culture they once were, as a direct relation to the ability to access mass amounts of information and education on the internet worldwide.

confessions of a superhero hasn't been mentioned yet. Its a really interesting character study concerning the weird people who dress up as superheroes and basically panhandle to tourists in Hollywood. Its available to watch instantly on netflix

Also, is American Movie really a documentary? I watched it in highschool, so I don't remember it all that clearly, but it seemed a little over the top IMO. wasn't it kind of fake?

OMG I almost forgot! You absolutely have to watch The Money Masters . I believe the entire thing is available on google video. It may take a few sittings, as the narration is not entertaining in the conventional sense, but it is probably the most informative and thought-provoking film I've ever seen. Really, you should all take a look at this.

How was Planet Earth not among the first mentioned? Nothing I say can do this series justice, simply amazing. Everone should own the DVD boxset (It's a BBC production btw, not Discovery channel).

I just bought Blue Planet and Life of Mammals, will give feedback when I get round to watching them. The first couple of episodes of Blue Planet was awesome.

Both are excellent like most of the BBC/Attenborough collaborations.

Anyone else here not really watch movies ? I just can't sit through a movie anymore I just love documentaries so much more I like learning about real facts rather than just watching some movie with no meaning to it. Anyways these are my favorites ..

American Drug War was great, shows some insane facts about just how much BS it is ... http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...arch&plindex=1

Orwells Rolls in His Grave about the media today ... http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...arch&plindex=2

Freedom to Fascism, just how free of a country is it when everything you do you must get permission from the gov't ? ... http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...arch&plindex=0

Zeitgeist is a great film about open minds imo. Some is factual some of it isn't but what it should do is make you think for yourself with an open mind.

The Woman Who Thinks Like A Cow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ycu3JFRrA

Such a fascinating documentary, this one is well worth a look.

http://www.tvokay.com/movie/deep-water.htm