Becoming Led Zeppelin (Netflix) If you’re a huge Led Zep fan, you’ll love it. But there are a lot of long live performances padding out the length.
Oddly, they kind of gloss over the origin of their name – Keith Moon saying they’ll go over worse than a lead balloon…like a lead zeppelin. They do attribute the name to Moon but not the whole story.
(As a bonus: I was watching with captions on and an early scene showed Little Richard singing “Long Tall Sally” and I discovered the lyrics that were unintelligible to me for all my life. What sounds like “Long tall Sally she biffy spee she got…” it turns out she’s “built for speed”.)
I just saw Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, about the ill-fated Carnival cruise ship that suffered a fire and power failure and was dead in the water for 5 days with non-working toilets. They interview passengers and crew. A flaw is that at the end they quote many passengers talking about how great the crew had been but the documentary fails to include anything positive about the crew’s actions.
I’ve been on a dozen cruises and I’m sure I’ll go again. If you were on the fence you will probably never go near a cruise ship.
It you want a gripping follow-up but in book form…The Only Plane in the Sky about 9-11 is just terrific.
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Also watched a season of an expat multi-generation Icelandic community ice fishing on Lake Winnipeg…they earn their money.
Sunday Best on Netflix is about Ed Sullivan’s life-long dedication to integration and civil rights. I came for the great performances by black artists on his show, but came away with quite a lot of respect for a man who has always been a bit of a cartoon caricature to me. The high point is his succinct letter to TV critic Harriet Van Horne.
I’ve also been watching some of the Trainwreck episodes: the most recent one, about P.I. Moms, could have been 15 min shorter…and it was only 45 min long. Heh. Interesting enough story, but not really what I’d consider a trainwreck. I feel like the upcoming one about Area 51 might be similar, but I’ll still watch it. I think my biggest complaint about the series is how hard Netflix makes it to know when there’s a new episode/what’s coming up next: they seem to treat them as completely separate titles vs entries in a collection.
I hadn’t known about the 7/7 or Sunday Best documentaries, but I’ve added them to my list!
I enjoyed the first part of HBO’s Billy Joel documentary (Billy Joel: And So It Goes), and am looking forward to tomorrow night’s second half.
Speaking of HBO, heads up that S2 of In The Eye Of The Storm starts on Sunday.
I was never a die-hard Billy Joel fan growing up—though I did enjoy plenty of his hits. Honestly, I always thought he came off a bit arrogant. But after watching the documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes, I’ve changed my tune. Turns out, I misjudged him. He’s not just incredibly talented—he’s thoughtful, generous, and far more humble than I gave him credit for. The documentary was a real eye-opener. Definitely worth a watch.
My biggest complaint about Trainwreck is when Netflix shows me a promo for an episode without making it clear (to me) that it’s an upcoming episode that isn’t available yet.
Not a documentary, but Dopesick is a very powerful and moving docudrama about how Purdue Pharma relentlessly promoted Oxycontin and the terrible tragedies of deaths and opioid addiction that resulted. It’s an 8-part miniseries but trust me, well worth the time.
We just watched The Pigeon Tunnel, directed by Errol Morris. It’s a fascinating conversation with John le Carre mostly about his father and the nature of betrayal.
I watched this after Hulk Hogan died. I knew Vince McMahon had been in hot water before, but I didn’t realise quite how insane he is. His relationship with his family had some real Succession vibes.
I watched Sunday Best tonight and came away genuinely moved. I hadn’t fully appreciated how courageous Ed Sullivan was—he insisted on breaking racial barriers by featuring Black performers on The Ed Sullivan Show long before it was socially acceptable. He helped launch artists like Harry Belafonte, Stevie Wonder, Nat King Cole, Nina Simone, James Brown, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, Mahalia Jackson, Ike & Tina Turner, and many others—ushering their talents into the American living room when segregation was still the law of the land.
Ed was humble, too: “I never thought I was the attraction. I just kept looking for the best thing to put on the show.”
This wasn’t just showbiz—it was social progress. A true door-opener.
And, I was one of those lucky, wide-eyed kids who sat cross-legged in front of the TV with my family and watched the Beatles perform on his show in 1964. I became a life-long fan. Not quite as much a fan as I was with Topo Gigio…but, close.
After watching this documentary, I understand just how much heart and backbone was behind the curtain.
I think my biggest complaint about the series is how hard Netflix makes it to know when there’s a new episode/what’s coming up next: they seem to treat them as completely separate titles vs entries in a collection.
