Good Documentaries

justine

justine

stop the penistry
did you see the whole thing? it's definitely one of the weirdest docu subjects i've encountered.
 
S

Stavrogin

Yeah, I had to travel a bit (dogpatch venues don't screen these types of film) to see it at the theater but well worth it. Grim stuff but really fascinating.
 
justine

justine

stop the penistry
Serving Life is on netflix instant - pretty hard to watch, although i did have to put a bit of effort into not being cynical over the warden's motives for the hospice project (free semi-indentured labour vs. minimum wage outside works). anyway, i highly recommend it.

i was also left wondering why most of these men were even in prison.

 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
saw this a long time ago and remember it being good.

next day edit - ok, my memory failed me. tried watching it last nite and bailed...

[This video is unavailable.]
 
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Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
What the beejeeezuz has Glen Tilbrook done to himself, he looks like a garden gnome (he used to be the beautiful one) Will go back and watch it all, looks very interesting. Just watched 10 mins so far. Great Band[/quote]
 
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Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
It's not so much the facial hair, that can look very good, think; Brad Pitt or Santa Claus. It's the design I think that's not working for him. He'd look 10 yrs younger without it. I feel really bad for saying it now, he's a very cute gnome.
 
d gray

d gray

tried to do his best but could not
Founding member
this was really good -

M_JeffLynneMrBlueSkyFilm630_121712.jpg
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Not sure where else to put it, (it's a short interview) but I like this, I know he gets up everyone's nose,
but he makes a few good points here and at least he is passionate about it. So, good for you Russell on taking on Paxman and congrats on your guest post as editor of New Statesman.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Depressing to watch Erik, but thanks for posting:
RE propaganda for Drone Attacks:
"In general, the CIA and other American agencies have claimed a high rate of militant killings, relying in part on a disputed estimation method that "counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants ... unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent" - bit late then.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0
 
Bruno Dante

Bruno Dante

Skygazer said:
Not sure where else to put it, (it's a short interview) but I like this, I know he gets up everyone's nose, but he makes a few good points here and at least he is passionate about it. So, good for you Russell on taking on Paxman and congrats on your guest post as editor of New Statesman.
Click to expand...
I saw this recently too. It's a bit of an 'everything's shit' type rant with little in the way of solutions but I still thought he was right in what he said. He's absolutely spot in his assessment of the political status quo.
By the way, I'm not sure if anyone caught this recently on BBC Four - Mini, A Life Revisited (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03fvc2j). Michael 'Mini' Cooper was a controversial figure in 1970s Britain when he gained attention as a notorious child arsonist. He set fire to a church as well as his own family home and was put into care. Apart from his ambition to burn down St. James' Park (he's from Durham) I couldn't help but like the young lad. He was clearly intelligent and it was difficult to find fault with a lot of what he said in the arguments he had with the authority figures who were trying to rehabilitate him. At times he was, quite simply, funny as fuck. The orginal documentary was made in the 70s, then there was a follow-up in the 80s. This doc looked mainly at that first film but also brought the story up to date. It's utterly tragic in parts and had me close to tears at times. 'Mini' is free now but he's spent most of his life locked up in institutions. In about 1990, after years with committing an offences, he was caught setting fire to a building and received a life sentence.
Edit: Looks like the whole thing is on youtube for anyone interested:

 
Black Swan

Black Swan

Abord the Yorikke!
Bruno Dante said:
I saw this recently too. It's a bit of an 'everything's shit' type rant with little in the way of solutions but I still thought he was right in what he said. He's absolutely spot in his assessment of the political status quo.
Click to expand...

I have watched that documentary and couldn't help loving that boy. What defiance! The system definitely failed him, starting with two absolutely stupid parents, one brutal and the other one passive and religious. They have followed Mini Cooper and met with him again to find out what had happened to him after Roddam's film. It is "Forty minutes" with Johnny Oddball in two parts, also on you tube. He has now written a book which his friend Franc Roddam will help publish.
 
Bruno Dante

Bruno Dante

Thanks, I'll check that out too. Incidentally, I meant years without committing an offence before he got his life sentence. And yes, I agree about the parents. It was very frustrating watching it. His mother was, as you say, a bit of a religious nut, which was fairly common in that part of the world at that time (I was born in '74). The father was a bastard. Thick as pig's shit and used fear and violence to try and instil discipline. He wasn't exactly atypical for his era either.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
The documentary is upsetting, you can see how with the best of intentions ( the staff clearly had a fondness for him) a brilliant wee boy's life gets totally screwed up.
Yes, the father was brutish, but like you said Bruno, not particularly out of the ordinary for the time.
But in the era of ground breaking documentaries such as those - and they were valuable - you have to wonder did putting him in the spotlight across the whole country and documenting him, also lead to his life being messed up, even people as diverse as Sam Peckinpah saw the film and was moved by it so much he wrote to Roddam.

Mini made many attempts at running away, trying to get to Roddam, claiming that he was his uncle.
I think the second one done by Forty Minutes may have done more harm than good.Though again the intentions by Roddam in suggesting the follow up was an attempt to help.
 
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