I forgot Michael Palin! I was going to say I found his original trek, Around the World in 80 Days, the best of the three he’s done because of the time limit involved … he was ahead of schedule and took a fun detour, and then gets behind schedule and has to race all the way back home to make connections and make it in time. Great stuff.
Great nominations here. I can second just about every one of them. To the person who named Errol Morris, kudos; I’ll just provide the title of his single-best film, Gates of Heaven, also his first.
Also, I’d remind viewers of the classic documentaries, the ones that established the rules for subsequent decades. Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, from 1922, is probably the single most influential documentary ever made, and it still holds up as an entertaining piece of film today. (Unlike 1914’s South, about the Shackleton expedition; although some parts of it are undeniably thrilling, there’s a lot of travelogue footage that strikes a modern viewer as weird and unnecessary.)
Nobody’s mentioned Waco: The Rules of Engagement yet, either. Even if you reject the filmmakers’ agenda and conclusions, it’s still got a lot of provocative information everybody should be familiar with. Similarly, I don’t think anybody’s mentioned Straight No Chaser, either; it’s about jazz great Thelonious Monk.
And re the mention of Leni Riefenstahl: Triumph of the Will is the infamous piece, to be sure. However, I think modern audiences get a lot more out of her Olympiad. First, it’s far less political (the occasional “glamour” shots of the Nazi leadership aside), focusing on pure athleticism. And second, you can see the influence of Riefenstahl’s camerawork; she pioneered many of the slow-motion and subjective filming styles considered commonplace today.
And finally: Don’t bother looking at Oscar nomination lists for great documentaries. The Academy nomination process is screwed up in this category; Hoop Dreams, Hands on a Hardbody, Roger & Me, Brother’s Keeper (from the guys who made the brilliant Paradise Lost), Crumb, American Movie, and Mr. Death are only a handful of the dozens of fantastic documentaries to fail to get even a nod from the Oscar team. They tried to fix it this past year, but some rather skanky manipulation by certain people experienced in the politics of the film industry skewed the results.
Cervaise’s Thelonious Monk mention reminded me of another favorite: “A Great Day in Harlem” (or is it “A Good Day in Harlem”?).
In any case, the doc tells the story behind an remarkable photo shot on a Harlem stoop and curbside in the 50’s; the photo shows some of the greatest jazz musicians of the era, if not ever, all in one place at one moment in time.
This film is NOT for jazz fans only. What fun!
I’m going to agree with some of the previously mentioned titles, and add some of my own:
American Movie: I have a signed poster of the two main characters at home after meeting them at my local theater. It’s a great movie about perseverence.
Hands on a Hard Body: I was so happy to hear others mention this one! I think this is the BEST documentary on competition ever made. I can’t recommend it enough.
Gates of Heaven: Roger Ebert calls this the best American film ever made. Another Errol Morris documentary. This guy makes great movies (though I didn’t like the Stephen Hawking flick as much). This one is about a couple of pet cemetaries in California. The linking scene with the old lady is film cinema. I think what makes them interesting is that they’re more about people instead of events.
Trekkies: I literally came close to pissing my pants watching this one. Funny. It deals with the Star Trek sub-culture. I think it presented the topic fairly evenly, not too abusive to fanatics, but not too forgiving, either. The director recently did another pic called “Six Days in Roswell” that I’m looking forward to.
One I hated:
“Buena Vista Social Club”: The subject matter was good, the film was horrible. I don’t know how Wim Wenders thought this was going to work. It basically has three shots: The “swirl”: rotating around a performing artist to the point of nausea; The “Ry check”: Film an artist performing, and slowly pan to Ry Cooder’s awe-struk expression; The “wobble”: Filmed on the back of a moving vehicle with no stabilization. And only one song was played all the way through (over the end credits!). Terrible filmmaking (but I did go buy the album, since the music that they did get out was good).
One more for the “good” column:
Ghengis Blues: A blind blues musician (Paul Pena)travels to a remote region called “Tuva” on the Chinese/Mongol border to perform in an annual throat singing contest. Throat Singing produces multiple tones simultaneously; Paul is self-taught and one of the first outsiders to perform at the competition. Some uneven parts, but overall a good flick.
spooje wrote:
Someone once described the sport of baseball as “six minutes of action crammed into three hours.”
The same can be said for Ken Burns’s 9-part Baseball documentary. <rimshot>
One thing I did notice was that Baseball spent a huge amount of time dealing with the unfair exclusion of black men from professional baseball. It spent almost no time dealing with the unfair exclusion of women from the sport. Maybe because there’s no gender-neutral term for “third baseman” that takes less than 4 syllables.
A few favorites not mentioned yet:
Decline Of western Civilization: Takes on the early '80s Los Angeles punk scene. Shows vintage clips from bands such as Germs, X, the Circle Jerks and Black Flag. Makes me wish I was there, even if Lee Ving from Fear would have kicked my ass for being a longhaired type.
Hype!: Talks about the Seattle scene, interviewing a large amount of people and having neat vintage performances from some seminal bands in it.
Decline Of Western Civilization Part II - The Metal Years: Get to see Ozzy make breakfast and spill orange juice all over himself! See the guitarist from W.A.S.P. embarass his poor mother while totally smashed in her swimming pool! Listen to a whole slew of musicians all of whom make Dave Mustaine from megadeth seem damn eloquent in comparison! Okay, I’m a metal geek… Sue me!
Kudos of earlier mentions of Hoop Dreams and Crumb, two documentaries I loved.
Yer pal,
Satan
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I have met Paul Pena, a truly warm and generous (not to mention marvelously talented) man. Say what you want about how messed up the Documentary category of the Oscars is, but they did get one thing right by nominating Genghis Blues last year.
Absolutely - that is a fantastic series, catch as many as you can. I bought the book as well, and while the book is good . . . the TV series will really blow you away.
Anything by Ken Burns. Oh, and mikedog to criticize the “Baseball” for being “eastern-centric” seems silly. After all, professional baseball began on the east coast.
I also thoroughly enjoyed “When We Were Kings”, I believe it won an Oscar actually.
I caught a marathon of “The Great Commanders” on the History Channel this past Sunday and found it very interesting.
- NM
JoeyHemlock: actually, I like A Brief History of Time, the documentary with Steven Hawking. I guess I came into it really interested in astrophysics, so that helped.
I’d like to know if anyone has seen The Plow that Broke the Plains. It’s supposed to be pretty good, but I fell asleep during it in my college documentary class.
I saw American Movie at Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign, IL, a few months ago. Roger spoke with filmmakers Chris Smith and Sarah Price and the subject of the documentary, Mark Borchardt, after the screening. Also, audience favorite Mike Schank has set up a phone number where you can call and talk to him personally, so Roger borrowed a cell phone from the audience and we all got to scream “Hi, Mike!” to him. He was in bed when we called.
American Movie was not nominated for an Oscar. Apparently, this had something to do with the filmmaker’s refusal to completely remove a 7 second scene where Mark watches the Oscars on TV. They did cut the scene down to 3 seconds to avoid a lawsuit, but the Oscar committee still wouldn’t nominate the film.
I’ll second stuyguy’s recommendation for The Donner Party. Amazing story.
For anyone whose lost track of what’s been happening in the Balkans, I highly recommend Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation. Very intense, and a real eye-opener about the roles various participants have played in the ugly mess that’s been going on since 1989. You’ll be angered, amazed and greatly saddened by many of the events that are described by the documentary. This is definitely not the sound-bite guff we usually get from the media.
If you love dogs, you must see War Dogs: America’s Forgotten Heroes, which is all about the dogs that were used during the Vietnam war to help scout the Viet Cong. There are amazing tales of devotion and perserverance, and I guarantee that you’ll make liberal use of a box of tissues when you watch this.
That’s at my friendly local Nissan dealer in Longview, TX!
I’ll watch anything in documentary form, so I’ve seen and enjoyed just about everything on this list. Somebody brought in Triumph of the Will and was playing it in the lunch room one day. I was rather PC-horrified, working with as many Jewish people as I did, but one of them told me to ignore the politics because it was a masterpiece. Good enough for me.
I’ve noticed that nobody has mentioned Harvest of Shame. Brilliant use of the medium and it got results.
I just watched the last half of American Hollow by Rory Kennedy tonight. It wasn’t bad. I wish I had gotten to see the whole thing. I love documentaries about areas I am familiar with and this definitely fits that description.
Some reviewers criticized Burns’ “East-coast centric” doc “Baseball”, not just me. But, I’m a Cards fan and would have liked to have seen more Cardinals. I’m sure others would have liked more Dodgers or Giants or Cubs. Baseball is a “no-win” subject. There weren’t too many of us who were experts of our Civil War. Perhaps that’s why we enjoyed it so much. But there are too many people that take baseball way too seriously, that if you mess anything up or leave anything out, they’ll jump your case.
It’s like arguing with Simpsons fans about where Springfield is or when exactly the show started going downhill.
Burns’ work runs hot and cold for me. His T. Jefferson doc was lackluster. He doesn’t seem adventuresome…he sticks with the same style and format for every film. Slow fades to black to White font on black bgrnd. Same narrator and voices.His strength, however, is in his research and storytelling, where all good movies come from.
“Genghis Blues” was a terrific doc except for one scene. The two brothers who make this film appear in the film, talking about their youth and when they became interested in making movies. WHY? Very disjointing and perhaps should not have been nominated for an Oscar.
Two others to nominate: “When Billy Broke his Head and other Tales of Wonder” and “Stetl”.
Is there anybody here who has produced their own doc?
Mike
One tough thing about a lot of documentaries is that it becomes difficult to seperate the filmmaking and the subject matter. BVSC, for me, was a perfect example of this. I loved the subject matter (bought the album after seeing this documentary), but hated the filmmaking style. The same thing can be said for Genghis, probably. I don’t remember the scene in question; perhaps on that day I was in need of a good story and could ignore the technique.
One of the things I like about Errol Morris so much is that he is an incredible filmmaker. If you look at my favorite films of his (Vernon, Florida and Gates of Heaven), the stories are just about everyday people in non-extraordinary circumstances, but he has an eye for the interesting.
For my money, I’ll take a documentary about something odd or new to me. Historical documentaries don’t really do it for me.
Gunslinger, have you ever stopped by to see this contest? Or thought about participating?
Also, I want to add Shoah. A 9+ hour documentary about the Holocaust as told by survivors, Nazi officers, and other eyewitnesses. I rented the whole thing from my public library and while it began rather slowly, before I knew it, I had watched the whole thing in one sitting. On the other end of the spectrum is a theatrical movie (70 minutes, I think) based entirely on Nazi transcripts called The Wannasee Conference where decisions were made on how to handle Jews, Poles, and a lot of other folks. Very absorbing and scary. The two of these together make for a very powerful weekend.
Two very good political documentaries are A Perfect Candidate, which is the story of the 1996 Virginia Senate race between Oliver North and Chuck Robb, and Feed, which documents the 1992 presidential primaries as seen in large part by the satellite feed, before they go on the air. See Jerry Brown fussing with his tie, Ross Perot telling rude jokes, Bush waiting patiently in silence, Clinton getting last-minute instructions and Pat Buchanan taking umbrage at a college student asking the why he and his wife don’t have kids; also watch the small-town TV newscasters gossiping like housewives over a back fence. Great stuff, much better than The War Room.
Has anyone seen The Last Party, Robert Downey Jr.'s project covering the 1992 Democratic National convention? Is it any good?
Great nominations here. My favorite, though, and one of my favorite movies of any type is *For All Mankind *. The producers (from Austin, TX), went to NASA and went through every foot of film from the Apollo missions, much of which had never been viewed publicly before.
Except for the intro scene of Kennedy’s speech, There is no other footage in it, but mission film. The only voice-overs are modern-day comments from the astronauts themselves, with no identification, explanation or any other kind of text, or interviwer’s questions–just the film and astronauts voices. It’s all strung together in order as if it were one single mission, waiting room at launch to carrier deck after recovery. It was very powerful.
I was living in Austin when it came out ('89?), where it played for a whole 2 weeks, since there was a home-town tie. What made me go see it was an interview with an Apollo astronaut who said that it came closer than anything he’d seen to show someone who’d never been what it was like to go on a moon mission.
Memorable parts-- Man sitting alone in waiting area, suited up, waiting for the word to go get in the capsule… The liftoff… The really small space for such a long time… The frantic work during the Apollo 13 accident… The Command Module pilot finally voicing disappointment at having to stay behind while the other two went down to the surface… The thoughts they had in the capsule alone, thinking about the procedures for bringing the capsule back solo, should the LEM fail to make it back off the moon… The astonishment they felt that though they were SO far from earth in such a strange, hostile place, they oddly felt at home… The fun they were having… Coming out of the capsule in the bright sunshine and blue sky and water after splashdown.
It was great.