(1960) dir. Bert Stern
viewed: 02/05/10
After watching Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (2007), which featured clips from this film of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, I didn’t even spend a second wondering why I’d never seen the film and just queued it to the top of my Netflix list. It’s an amazing film, while [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Documentaries category.
Jazz on a Summer’s Day
Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
(2007) dir. Robbie Cavolina, Ian McCrudden
viewed: 02/03/10
I’ve been an Anita O’Day fan for some years now, but really, I didn’t know more than a general sketch or bullet points of her life and certainly not as much of her significance in true jazz circles. So, when I saw that there was a documentary about her [...]
Food, Inc.
(2008) dir. Robert Kenner
viewed: 01/01/10
While not necessarily breaking any new informational ground, Food, Inc. is the kind of informative and artfully produced kind of documentary that it would be great to get out to “middle America”. The film uses lots of cute and somewhat effective graphics to demonstate points and ideas (it gets a little [...]
Overnight
(2003) dir. Tony Montana, Mark Brian Smith
viewed: 12/30/09
Overnight is the part two of my The Boondock Saints (1999)-themed double feature. And I recommend the opportunity to watch them together in that order. The film The Boondock Saints is a good indie film about two Irish brothers who go on a killing spree in Boston, taking down primarilly [...]
Beautiful Losers
(2008) dir. Aaron Rose
viewed: 12/18/09
This documentary covers the art and aesthetics of a group of non-professional DIY-inspired artists who evolved their work from shared influences of graffiti, punk, skateboarding, and other stuff and developed through into commercial success and influential status. This group doesn’t seem to have had such a “name” but centered around a New [...]
The Cove
(2009) dir. Louie Psihoyos
viewed: 12/16/09
The Cove is a pretty amazing documentary. And while it’s quite possible to fault its potential as objectivity, produced by the organization that aims to highlight what the film’s subject matter consists of, there is a key element of what the film is about. The film is about documenting. It’s about [...]
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!
(2008) dir. Mark Hartley
viewed: 10/19/09
This film just blew through town a couple weeks ago, and it got covered a fair amount in the local rag. It seemed interesting and fun, and it brought to mind a little documentary extra that I saw when at the end of the DVD for Lady Terminator (1984), which was about [...]
Anvil! The Story of Anvil
(2008) dir. Sacha Gervasi
viewed: 10/12/09
While many reviewers referred to Anvil! The Story of Anvil as a real life This is Spinal Tap (1984), and while there is a modicum of truth there, the story of the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil is really something much more substantial than just some cheap laughs at the lovable [...]
Trumbo
(2007) dir. Peter Askin
viewed: 09/27/09
Trumbo is a documentary about Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, adapted to an extent from a theatrical piece written by his son Christopher Trumbo and heavily populated with excerpts from letters that he wrote to various people throughout his life. The film’s approach includes several semi-dramatic readings of these letters by a [...]
Trouble the Water
(2008) dir. Carl Deal, Tia Lessen
viewed: 09/11/09
While I’d long planned and wanted to see Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary about Hurricane Katrina and the disaster that it wrought on Louisiana, particularly New Orleans, but its daunting length, I think has kept me from it thusfar. This documentary, running at a more usual 90 minutes or so, [...]
