A Certain Kind of Death. See what happens to bodies recovered by the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office that are never claimed by next of kin. Available to watch on YouTube.
Warning: Lots of graphic images of dead bodies.Cinemania.This documentary about the culture of intense cinephilia in New York City reveals the impassioned world of five obsessed movie buffs.
Also available on YouTube.
[quote=“Accidental_Martyr, post:61, topic:724902”]
A Certain Kind of Death. See what happens to bodies recovered by the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office that are never claimed by next of kin. Available to watch on YouTube.
Warning: Lots of graphic images of dead bodies.Cinemania.This documentary about the culture of intense cinephilia in New York City reveals the impassioned world of five obsessed movie buffs.
Also available on YouTube.
Yes, big warning on A Certain Kind of Death. There are only a few real bad scenes, but they are bad. Don’t watch it during dinner, for instance.
But if you’re looking for a way to put things into perspective: maybe this will do it. It’ll make you stop and think about the real stuff.
Since someone mentioned movies about movies, how about “American Movie”?
Or how about “Audience of One”? The latter is about a guy who inherited a megachurch from his parents (and it’s no longer a megachurch) and wants to make a big-budget movie about a Biblical story; which one escapes me right now. I’ll put it this way: a local pastor self-published a book about his faith journey, and in it, he said that when he was in college, he would watch TBN while high, and also while not high, and thought, “I grew up in the church, and I have never known anyone this weird.” He’s “this weird”.
While we’re on a religious theme, I recently saw “Deliver Us From Evil”, about a priest who molested children in numerous parishes and a lot of people in the hierarchy knew about it, and also “All God’s Children”, which is on You Tube and is about the abuse of children in MK (missionary kids) boarding schools in West Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s especially disturbing because a disproportionate amount of the abuse was committed by women against girls. These people belonged to the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.
And then there’s “The Flat”. It’s about a Jewish man who, while cleaning out his grandmother’s apartment in Tel Aviv, stumbles upon an explosive family secret. I’ll leave it at that.
Miss Alabama Nursing Home - Apparently, a lot is on the line in the Miss Nursing Home pageant world. So much more energy involved than you might imagine.
This one follows the happenings surrounding a woman from Enterprise, Alabama. She’s in a nursing home and is in the big competition. It covers the short time leading up to the event.
Lots of pressure on her. The management at her home are practically having strokes trying to make sure everything is “just right” and “perfect”, particularly when it applies to the woman and her every projection. It seems far too much for an elderly person to care to endure, but she does her absolute best to make everyone (including herself) content.
So to see her sitting slumped in defeat at the end of the film, trying to eat some of the special peaches she’d bought earlier in hopes of celebration: really slashes at the heart. It will get to you, good.
Several years since I’ve seen this one, but it stuck with me.
More details: http://www.detailproduct.com/p/full-frame-documentary-shorts-vo2_6247881
And nearwildheaven, forgot to say earlier: I 100% agree on Ginger Baker. Something ain’t right with that boy!
:eek:
I’ve been going fully off the information from this thread for ideas, lately, and didn’t expect that to happen so quickly. I really appreciate you guys coming through like that. You have great taste.
Here’s a good one. It’s called Televangelists with Louis Theroux. (I have also seen it called Born Again Christians, which is a more appropriate title given the overall content.)
Louis is up to his usual tricks, and he most certainly intended to trivialize the subject when he started out. But somewhere along the line I think he found something of himself in the subjects, and he began working it more respectfully than he might’ve originally planned. He does manage to find the most oddball-like examples to focus upon, but that’s to be expected.
He starts at a mega-church, then makes the rounds to visit other Christians in the city, before returning to the church again for prayer service. I find it interesting how he is unwilling (unable?) to say a prayer, despite trying to pretend to “get into” the experience. That’s one of the key moments in this one, and quite interesting and almost sickly amusing to watch. I’m almost surprised he left it in for everyone to see.
Somewhere midway through, he meets a group known as The Family (very interesting history behind them, btw. will link in more in the future). Fools for Christ. They take guitars and tambourines out on the streets to get people involved in song, and Louis goes with them to ham it up, as he loves to do. That’s another good part of the watch.
Yeah, it’s a winner. Interesting throughout.
BTW: Being that we’re a very small group of people having harmless, innocent discussion of topics covered in documentaries: there’s nothing sneaky or underhanded happening in this thread, period. Just to put that to rest if anyone thinks otherwise. Doing what we’re doing, we’ve got leeway and everything’s just fine.
And if I link into article, interview, book excerpt, or whatever provides further information into a certain topic, and you’re already into that subject: it’ll be worth your time to read. I won’t bother posting it, otherwise. But I will almost always put an excerpt before the link. No problem with that, for anyone.
This one is about asthma, but it’s also about the people of Tristan da Cunha and their lovely home. The islanders are of strong interest in that field of study, because they have some peculiar connection to it, genetically.
Lots of good footage, including from the time the volcano blew in 1961. Parts one and two, each about 15 minutes:
Something kind of funny when you think about it, is the psychological aspect of filming a documentary in a very small, closed society like an island.
No one in the world is going to be more interested in the finished work than the islander. They are each - together and separately, no doubt - going to pick apart every nanosecond of that film. And they’ve seen every potential consequence coming from a mile away, already - more so than the filmmaker or anyone else but another islander could ever hope to conceive of.
And in the case of an island like Tristan, it becomes even more extreme. They must face one another every single day and have no choice in that from birth til death, so it makes them otherwise-inexplicably reserved if someone tries to come at them to get into their minds.
That’s what it is.
So if you sense an odd vibe while watching an island doc, maybe that’s why.
Trouble in Paradise: The Pitcairn Story - Very interesting case that caused quite a big clash on Pitcairn Island and elsewhere. This one covers the spectrum of “wow!”, and unless you’re already familiar with the story, you’ll be stunned.
It makes you wonder about the various remote islands (possibly including Tristan, unfortunately), and exactly what goes on there in society.
The Man Who Ate Himself To Death - This is the story of a guy on Guam, who lost his ability to walk because he got too heavy. It follows the process he attempts to make himself better, and it does a good job with the ups-and-downs. It’s interesting all through.
It has a surprise in it that I’ll mention in the next paragraph, so if if you want to see for yourself, don’t read on…
He dies apparently due to an overdose of drugs, while his wife is present. Her 911 call and her story after it don’t match up from what I recall, but no investigation followed. She most likely only helped him commit suicide, so maybe that’s why.
This one will stay with you a while, for sure.
Hands on the Hard Body - A look at people willing to go to an extreme to win a pickup truck.
I’ve watched about half of Hoop Dreams, and it’s a good one. Waiting until just the right time for the last bit, later, because no way I want to miss what happens.
So NO spoilers, please. :p:p:p
:D:D:D:
Yes, good one. Great pick.
Last Days Here - This one covers a short time in the life of a very minor “rock-star”. He is Bobby Liebling, a founding member of the band known as Pentagram. His peak in existence was from around 1968 until the early 70s, so he was centered right in the thick of things. All the nasty drug habits you might imagine as being a part of his life, are there - and he’s been plowing through the years with his addictions, ever since. The fact that he’s from a privileged background may have helped him to be preserved all this time, no question.
The movie follows him trying to “get it together”, in his fifties, as he hooks-up with a young woman whom he loves very much. His die-hard fans see it as a perfect opportunity to convince him to begin playing again: so we watch as he stumbles toward that goal.
BTW: I (for one) will take you up on this, once I’ve seen it. And if it wasn’t for the thread, it wouldn’t have likely occurred to me to watch it, either. It would have escaped my awareness.
Really, something says BK is going to be a winner for me, but I can’t quite tell why.
I have a feeling about it. 
Plaster Caster
Documentary about Cynthia Plaster Caster, the legendary groupie who became famous for making plaster casts of rock stars’ penises, including Jimi Hendrix’s.
My Kid Could Paint That
Follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead, a young girl from Binghamton, New York who gains fame first as a child prodigy painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy concerning whether she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents’ assistance and/or direction.
Yeah, this is a really weird situation. Myself, I’ve always sort of found that type of art and its followers to be FOS (but I’m not an art-expert, either, so no offense intended toward anyone else).
To me, it looks like a case where people are so desperate to express meaning that they’ll stoop to ridiculously low levels to do that. Add some big, bad bucks into the equation and it turns into a runaway train.