Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:
- British tax payers are still paying off debt from the First World War. Worth it?
- So now I have to leave Facebook to get a Facebook message?
- Did your favorite documentary make this list of the best documentaries?
- Should we wipe all evidence of these allegedly racist movies from the face of the Earth? Or at least make them very hard to see? (By the way, I think this guy misreads the ending of “Apocalypto.”)
- PC scold campaign backfires. The people refusing to play along don’t seem all that “ignorant” to me. My guess: White folks’ reaction to these shirts is evidence that, deep down, they wish they had more of a group identity.
- What group is more insufferable, perpetually victimized pro movie critics or angry, over-protective fanboys? Generally, I scoff at critics who bitch at the rabble and their frightful lack of couth. But I don’t have much sympathy for the nerdlinger hordes and their over-concern about the critical reception of their beloved superheroes. Who gives a shit what Critic X thinks of Aquaman? And who gives a shit about Tomatometers? In the immortal words of William Shatner: Get a life.
- Touching. Who says animals don’t have feelings?
- Just how awful is Woody Allen for making movies about white people? And when is Wes Anderson going to get this treatment?
- How to square our overlords’ hyper-concern with sexual harassment and rape culture with the drive to create “gender-open” restrooms? A funny thing from the piece: The idea that, by making restrooms “gender-open,” college administrators will prevent them from being used for gay hookups. Oh, we’re discriminating against gays now?!
- When someone does something that offends you, is your first reaction to get them fired? If so: What the fuck is wrong with you?
- Armond White on one of my favorite contemporary movie figures.
- Just how much like Hitler is “Idiocracy”?
- So all that stuff about Hitler hating Jesse Owens was U.S. propaganda?
- Jack Donovan on maintaining male spaces.
- I had a great time making fun of the narrator of this documentary on eels. “A fish that had once been an accident on my hook began to wedge itself in the crevasses of my . . . imagination.”
- If she’s okay with it, what’s the big deal?
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Who doesn’t like Gone with the Wind? Bizarre.
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Any depiction of the old south that doesn’t emphasize slaves’ suffering is automatically racist. I think that’s the idea, as silly as it may be.
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After seeing Siskel & Ebert plotz over it, a friend and I (also big basketball fans at the time) ran out to see HOOP DREAMS. We both still joke about how painfully boring it was.
As for the others on that list, I liked THE ACT OF KILLING and GIMME SHELTER. SANS SOLEIL is on Hulu+, I should get around to it soon.
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SANS SOLEIL is probably a top-ten movie for me. THE ACT OF KILLING is good? I haven’t seen that one. There are three or four others on here that I haven’t seen. Not sure all the picks are good. I thought GRIZZLY MAN was pretty lousy. Though I did really like WH’s doc about those guys in prison.
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THE ACT OF KILLING is pretty wild. It’s not every day you meet up with retired Asian death squad executioners and get to reenact the atrocities of their youth.
What didn’t you like about GRIZZLY MAN? I enjoyed it enough. Are you bummed b/c Herzog didn’t include the audio of Treadwell being eaten?
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I found it deeply silly. Admittedly, I find most Werner Herzog movies deeply silly. Bless him for being such a nut, but I’m still perplexed at his rep for being profound. His insistence that GM is some great man vs. nature struggle rather than the sad story of a lonely kook with a death wish seems weird and even a little gross to me. I didn’t want to hear the death tape, but I found WH’s dangling it in front of the audience to be almost exploitative. I love the melodrama of him listening to it for us while we watch his reaction. Again: gross.
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This is my favorite Herzog documentary. Ahem.
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Have you seen the “Werner Herzog” meditation on Where’s Waldo on YouTube, or “Herzog’s” reading of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel?
Wonderful entertainment, all of them.
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Is that actually Herzog reading those spoofs or an impersonator? One of the many great things about ol’ Werner is that he has no problem making fun of himself.
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I found Grizzly Man a slog, though not for the same reasons as you. I thought it was decently constructed, but listening to that epic idiot Treadwell and his whiny/screechy voice made me want to set things on fire.
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Sounds like our takes on it are pretty similar, actually. When I say I found it “silly” and “gross” I partly mean that the Grizzly Man is ludicrous and pathetic. Are we supposed to laugh at him? Sometimes it seems we are. Every time I tried to take it as comedy I remembered this guy was eaten by large carnivores and felt a little sick. I guess some take that disconnect as evidence of the movie’s brilliance, but I think it’s more likely that Herzog is trying to impose his epic death struggle viewpoint on material that is basically tabloid in nature. (That’s why it ends up feeling exploitative, IMO.) There is no epic struggle in GRIZZY MAN. It’s a gay dude prancing around in the woods and talking to bear shit, then getting eaten. Lots of bizarre personality stuff to reckon with there, but Herzog doesn’t really do much to bring it out or highlight it, other than show the existing footage. For him, the whole movie is about the guy’s demise. And when that comes he drags it out in a preposterous way and presents himself as the only one really man enough to take it. Herzog is glimpsing the heart of darkness, and he’s doing it for US. Silly.
If Herzog made more movies focused on people and how weird they are (tabloid-style stuff), and ditched the macho-conquistador aspects of his work, I’d probably like his movies more, though he’d become a less impressively ludicrous figure (which is maybe the whole point of Werner Herzog). He’s genuinely interested in people. INTO THE ABYSS is weird, hilarious, and ultimately kind of touching. He keeps finding new sides of his subjects, and new, unexpected side trails off the main story.
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“After seeing Siskel & Ebert plotz over it, a friend and I (also big basketball fans at the time) ran out to see HOOP DREAMS. We both still joke about how painfully boring it was.”
Haha. Yep. That was a yawn. Kinda like a documentary equivalent to ‘Citizen Kane’ – boring as shit, but you’re *supposed* to acknowledge its greatness.
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KANE isn’t my favorite film, but I enjoyed it a helluva lot more than HD. I wouldn’t put them in the same category.
Every once in a while, usually when I see it on some damned list like this one, I think to myself, “Huh, I saw that movie a long time ago. My tastes have changed. Maybe I should give it another shot?” But then I think, no, that’s OK, I can go my whole life without caring about that movie.
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That’s something I occasionally ponder: films I change my mind about on a 2nd viewing. The list is pretty small.
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Great point about Wes Anderson. Seems to me that the people who complain most loudly about this aspect of Allen’s work don’t like him or his films; it’s just another cudgel for them in the whole Soon-Yi thing. “Oh, you don’t think he molested his daughter? Well, y’know, he’s racist too!”
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The whole premise is stupid. Allen is a white (Jewish) dude who makes movies for and about the people of his social group. He probably doesn’t hang out with blacks, blacks certainly don’t attend his movies in large numbers, and, probably, Allen wouldn’t know how to appeal to blacks even if he studied up on the subject. In light of all that, who really gives a shit that there aren’t many black people in his movies? You have to exist deep inside the PC bubble to get upset about something like this.
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Hey, wasn’t Bobby Short in one of Allen’s films? Heh. Short is probably the whitest black guy in the world. Though I do enjoy him in limited doses.
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“Birth of a Nation” is painful to watch because of the blackface makeup. You’re embarrassed that D.W. Griffith either didn’t have the courage to ask actual black people to play the roles of the bad guys, or he was so deluded he actually thought that the viewers would suspend disbelief and not notice the hawk noses and thin lips under the shoe polish makeup.
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To modern sensibilities it’s pretty shocking. Blackface and minstrel shows were a part of mainstream entertainment back then, though, and they had a long tradition. Also, I’m fairly sure there are lots of blacks in BIRTH. It’s just that the blackface performers are foregrounded because they were the pro actors in Griffith’s company.
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“Did your favorite documentary make this list of the best documentaries?”
Nope. “When we were kings”? Bwahaha. Fuck off. I never cease to be amazed how many people wet themselves over this load of crap. A ‘documentary’ about the rumble in the jungle, that contains no interviews with Ali or Foreman, next to no fight footage, but instead contains sixty goddamned minutes of hearing Norman Mailer wanking himself, and swooning over how badass President Mbutu was.
And lots of random footage of some music performers during rehersal and Ali jogging around Kinshasa.
WTF
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I don’t remember getting much out of that doc either.
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The critics love “When We Were Kings” because blacks.
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