118 - The Wrecking Crew

    A documentary about a variety of sessions musicians working during the late 50’s through the mid 70’s.
    I can’t remember when I first heard about the Wrecking Crew, but I’ve been pretty aware of Hal Blaine for some time.  Then I heard about Carol Kaye.
    It isn’t just Phil Spector’s production that made the sound of the era.  There was a quality to the performance that was going on.  These people played on nearly everything, and they did it perfectly.  There’s something unique going on in all of the hits, and they brought a certain amount of personality to the recording.
    As a documentary, it’s not especially good.  There isn’t too much to learn.  It’s interesting to a musician and a fan, but there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a deeper analysis going on.  Regardless, it’s good to see a more public acknowledgment of these musicians.

73 - Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

    A documentary about the life of Kurt Cobain.
    In 1994, when Cobain died, I was 13.  This is right around the point that music becomes really important to a kid.  And yet, I just didn’t care about Nirvana.  Sure, I liked the opening for Smells Like Teen Spirit.  There were usually some little things that I liked, part of a riff, or some part of the melody.  But Nirvana never resonated with me the way it did with some other people.  If anything, I thought they were a fairly sloppy band, and his writing was oblique and poorly done.
    I never identified with his suicide, either, which is a little odd.  It was a little surprising, but nothing more.

    I don’t know what I expected to find from this documentary.  I didn’t leave this thinking more highly of his work.  He reminds me a lot of Lennon, attempting to make artistic statements by noodling all over whatever canvas he feels like working on.  When he gets down to it, he can do some good work, but there is a lot of work that doesn’t have much merit.
    His background is explored more thoroughly than I expected.  He isn’t a very sympathetic person.  He mostly behaved poorly, bothered his parents, and got passed around a lot.  His ex-girlfriend Tracy actually seems to come off the best.  Their relationship fell apart, but she seemed to be remarkably supportive.
    No one comes across as especially bad, except Kurt.  I find myself a little more receptive to his unhappiness, and the things that pushed his mind around, but he made himself helpless against his demons.  It’s hard to feel that much sympathy for that.

68 - Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

    A documentary about Big Star, a short-lived, but very influential, band.
    I discovered Big Star over the last year or so, and it’s hard to explain how important they feel.
    Most music requires a certain amount of time for me to fully appreciate it.  I have to get used to hearing certain chord changes, certain vocal approaches.  Most of my favorite songs aren’t things that I fully loved when I first heard them.  They had to work their way into that position.  Big Star fits into a completely different category.  I don’t even know if I’ve completed listening to any of their albums.  But everything I’ve heard is incredible.
    It’s almost like I want to avoid listening to it, because they have a mystical characteristic to their music.
    This is a decent documentary, but it isn’t that great.  It might be that it was put together too late, since a lot of time is filled with very tangential players.
    The one thing that I got out of this was that I don’t actually care for Alex Chilton that much.  I think he had a role to play, but his disinterest with Big Star seems like a lack of self-reflection.  It’s hard to fault Chris Bell, but that may be because he died in 1977.  He didn’t have much time to mess up.
    Still, not a very great documentary.  But it’s nice to see Big Star getting more recognition.

64 - Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show

    A documentary about what showrunners do.
    A modestly pleasant documentary, but one without any real meat to it.  There is no conflict, very little exploration.  I think a “day in the life” approach might have served the material more effectively.  Instead, you learn everything you need to in the first ten minutes, and the rest just grinds the same information over and over.
    Mostly, being a showrunner is an exhausting job.  It’s satisfying, but it’s demanding.
    The one interesting bit is when they relate a few of the silly notes they get from the studio.  “Does Santa have to be old?”

59 - Winnebago Man

    A documentary about Jack Rebney, whose angry behavior in some commercial outtakes created an early viral video on VHS.
    This is a strange documentary, because it shouldn’t be that interesting.  The subject is a man who seems intent on not being known.  He refuses to talk about his background, and he seems to be perpetually annoyed.  He comes across a little like a conspiracy theorist, even if I agree with him politically.
    His refusal to engage makes him a difficult subject, but it also gives him an arc, albeit a small one.  By the end, he seems to realize what sort of effect his video has had on the world.
    The Winnebago Man clip is one that I return to every now and then, but I don’t find it as charming as some others.  Seeing it in this context though, I felt a greater sense of him being a decent person, but just deeply frustrated.  He curses a lot, he picks on other people, but there’s an undercurrent of humanity to him.
    It’s nice to have the mystery laid to rest by learning more about him, even if the result isn’t all that important.

51 - Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey

    A documentary about the recruitment and first tour of Arnel Pineda, who became the lead singer of Journey.
    I don’t care much about Journey.  Now and then, I find myself liking Open Arms or Lights, but I don’t pay much attention to them.  In fact, after watching the movie, I realized that I feel about the same way about The Eagles.  Most people passively like the bands, but I’ve never met anyone who actually was a fan.
    Arnel is a strange subject for a documentary, because he seems unusually normal.  He’s got a remarkable voice, and not just because of his ability to sing Journey’s songs convincingly, but because he’s a skilled imitator.  We see bits of him singing like Steven Tyler.  At one point, he runs into the singer for Chicago, and starts singing with him.  Their voices are nearly identical.  Outside of his role as singer, and his remarkable stage performance, he comes across as a very humble guy.  He’s appreciative of his situation.  Even when he grumbles about the annoyance of having to travel, he still looks at the bright side - he still loves getting to perform on stage with the band.
    There’s no conflict in this documentary, and it’s easy to keep waiting for something to happen to derail things.  You expect him to get caught up with drugs and women.  He eventually addresses that; he already went through that well before signing on with Journey.
    Beyond his shy charisma, I found myself appreciating Journey much more than I expected.  The songs are skillfully written.  The band performs them perfectly, and it doesn’t just sound accurate; it sounds passionate as well.  I never get the impression that the band is cocky or that they have the petty intra-band conflicts.  They don’t seem especially close to one another, but they all seem very professional.
    I also came out of this with a greater appreciation for the support crew that sets up for shows.  The amount of behind-the-scenes work that people were doing is remarkable.  I knew there was a lot of work, but there’s even more than I expected.
    This is a pleasing watch, but there isn’t much depth there.  But there’s still a value to a documentary that is pleasing, rather than confrontational or conflicted.  If anything, this left me with a sense of hope for musicians working together.

47 - Paul Williams: Still Alive

    A documentary, following Paul Williams, acclaimed songwriter and performer.
    While I would have recognized Paul Williams, I wasn’t familiar with the name until I watched Phantom of the Paradise earlier this year.  Then I discovered that he had written a lot of very well-known songs.  My curiosity was piqued, so I gave this a try.
    It’s not an especially good documentary, but it’s interesting.  It remains interesting through a certain charismatic charm that Paul Williams has.  He’s nice, he’s clever, and he’s skilled.  He’s fairly shy though, and that’s what makes this documentary fail.  There isn’t much insight into Paul, how he thinks, how he works.  In fact, they almost never talk about music at all.
    The most frustrating thing is that the documentarian doesn’t seem to have any particular insight or focus.  He just wants to follow Paul Williams because he liked him as a kid.  His lack of focus becomes a problem as the movie progresses, and you realize that you seem to understand Paul Williams better than he does.  It’s nice that he comes to the same realization at the end, but it seems like something he should have picked up on during the first day or two.
    Here’s the spoiler.  Paul Williams has a sense of regret about his drug and alcohol addled past.  He’s worked past it.  He’s happy to work now, and he’s found a sense of fulfillment in his normal life.

36 - Bridgend

    A documentary about a rash of suicides in Bridgend, Wales.
    This was a strangely frustrating documentary to watch, for multiple reasons.  First, this is a peculiar story that has nothing of interest behind it.  We learn nothing about the motivations behind the suicides.  It’s an interesting problem, but this manages to make it into something barely watchable.  A suicide is discussed by the surviving parents.  They describe having to identify the body.  Then they talk about how bothered they are that they don’t understand why it happened.
    A lot of the people they talk to speculate about the reasons why their suicide rate is so high, but there never seems to be any consensus.  The one instance that seems to have an reason is when a daughter had committed suicide, and the father kills himself sometime afterward.
    There’s a tiny amount of time spent talking about how the health services delay treatment.
    I guess what bothers me is that my feelings about suicide are a bit different.  I tend to lean toward empathizing with the suicidal.  The result is that I feel like all of the parents we see are just unable to observe their kids carefully.
    There’s a good amount of talk about how “selfish” suicide is, which has always bothered me.  I’ve always felt like that observation is, in itself, a selfish position to take.
    Meh.  This felt surprisingly dull to me.

26 - Off The Charts: The Song-Poem Story

     A documentary about the song-poem industry.  Musicians solicit lyrical submissions to craft songs from - for a fee.
     I used to have this on DVD, but I lent it to someone and never got it back.
     While I love the subject matter, and I think there's some fantastic material in this, I realized that this isn't a very well-crafted documentary.  In particular, the focus seems to be lost by the end of it.  The last 10 minutes or so just follows a guy who had submitted some song-poems as he attempts to do a live performance.  It's interesting, but it isn't really on topic.
     I would like to have some more figures from seeing this.  I know that many of the songs people submit are religious in nature, but the song-poems I've found cover some very interesting ground.  There are political songs, religious ones, but there are others that reflect just a specific interest, or an event that inspired the person.  One of my favorites is The Moon Men, which is a rambling coverage of the original moon landing.  It praises the astronauts, but it also adds a big dose of specific information, about them having to remain in isolation afterward.  It's a spectacularly strange performance, with the singer moving up and down the scale, but without a real end point to any phrases.
      I would also like to see more of an exploration of the meaning of the industry.  I like it.  It's exciting to hear your lyrics brought to music, and there's something generous about using your musical talents to put something like this together, even if it's for money.

23 - Mortified Nation

     A documentary about organized cringe readings, where people read from their teenage journals.
      This was one of my favorites from last year, and it's still a great watch.  It doesn't function the way most documentaries do, since it doesn't have an arc, or any real narrative design.  Regardless, nearly everything in it is entertaining, and it raises a lot of questions about how unique our teenage experiences are.
     All of the participants have done something unique, even as their feelings weren't all that unique.  One woman, early in the movie, has a remarkable amount of sexuality incorporated in her diary.  One woman is fixated on a guy in her class, and draws pages of her fantasies of getting married to him.  Neither of these thoughts are that unique, but they have been manifested in a unique way.
      The most unusual cases are a woman whose mother started a cleaning business, and another woman whose mother was abusive.

     It's easy to wonder if my own younger writings would fit into this mold.  It's easy to assume that I must have been embarrassing enough to warrant a cringe reading.  I can't tell.  I threw out all of my old writing.  This would be material that goes back to at least fourth and fifth grade.  I kept writing through around 8th grade.  All of that stuff is gone.
     And yet, I'm glad.  My experiences weren't that special, and I can't imagine anything that funny being in there.

173 - The Final Member

    A documentary about the Icelandic Phallological Museum, and the quest to complete their collection with the donation of a human penis.
    This is good.  It’s not as great a documentary as some, but it had a much more interesting core than I expected.
    The museum collects donations of penises from nearly everything.  Everything is well preserved, there are plenty of different displays.  The curator is an interesting guy, but he seems serious and driven to make his museum as comprehensive as possible.  There is a single specimen missing - a human penis.  The problem is that people need to legally make the donation before they die, since human remains are typically treated specially.
    An Icelandic icon in his 90s agrees to donate his.  A younger American agrees to make his.  To sweeten the deal, the American is interested in actually donating his before he dies.
    From there, the story gets more interesting.  There are issues with both donors.  There’s a minimum of five inches required to be the human specimen.  The old man is having some issues, because he’s shrinking as he ages.  The American is enthusiastic about the process, but… the longer we spend with him, he’s a very peculiar guy.  He corresponds with the curator constantly, and seems overly focused on talking about his penis.  He takes pictures of it in costumes.  He has this elaborate plan for how it should be displayed.  He decides that he wants it to be a patriotic kind of thing, so he actually has the head of his penis tattooed with a variation of the American flag.
    The ending to the story isn’t quite as fulfilling, but it’s still an interesting story, and I think it treats the subject matter appropriately.

160 - I Survived B.T.K.

    A documentary following Charlie Otero, whose family was mostly slaughtered by Dennis Rader, the serial killer.
    I watched The Hunt for the BTK Killer earlier this year, and I remember being impressed by the performance of the lead.  Since this was a documentary, I expected it to actually be a little more tame than the fictionalized account.  Instead, it’s actually got some much darker material in it.  And despite dipping further into darkness, it’s mostly about a strong sense of positivity in the face of hard times.
    The subject, Charlie, seems like an interesting guy, but the documentary focuses so tightly on his feelings about the murders, and his efforts to stay in control of his life that the movie never feels like it gets all that intimate with the subject.
    Where the movie really shines in in the courtroom footage of Dennis Rader.  It turns out that the fictionalized account of the story was actually sanitized quite a bit.  Seeing the courtroom footage actually details more of how these murders happened.  In particular, the hanging death of the girl was glossed over.  This information makes some of the other little details of Rader’s acts and artwork make sense.
    So, as it is, this was better than I expected.  I thought it would be a straight retread of the same material, but this was much more informative.

    Oddly, this is also released under a few other titles, including a strange title card at the end - Feast of the Assumption. 

155 - Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story

    A documentary about Stax Records, the soul label of the 60s and 70's.
    According to IMDB, this is actually an episode of Great Performances, but since it’s very long, and not broken into different episodes… I’m calling this a movie.
    I came out of this with more respect for Stax than I had, which was already considerable.  While Motown put out some very big crossover hits, Stax put out material with less polish, more energy, and more narrow appeal.  I did find a handful of Stax recordings that were clearly intended to ape an existing Motown hit, but those are rare, and kind of charming.
    This documentary focused less on the music, and more on the integrated atmosphere that Stax had.  I honestly didn’t know about this.  Since their market was almost exclusively for a black audience, and most of their artists were obviously black (the exception being Lynda Lyndell, who isn’t mentioned in this documentary) it was easy to assume that they were an exclusively black company.
    I would have liked a better focus on the musicians, but most of this focuses on events, cultural elements, and the business side of Stax.  This is still pretty interesting, and the footage from a massive concert was remarkable.  It explained how important soul music was as a community glue.  This is something missing nowadays… music is too fragmented to be so cohesive a force.
    The business elements aren’t explained in enough detail to be as compelling, but I have the impression that Stax was managed very loosely for awhile, then corruptly for awhile, and both of these combined to make the company insolvent.

130 - I Am Divine

    A documentary about Divine, an actor who utilized a transvestite persona and worked with John Waters quite a bit.
    I’ve never been a big fan of Divine.  I’ve heard two of the songs she’s recorded.  I’ve seen Desperate Living, Hairspray… I like John Waters though, and I think he fills a unique niche in movies.  But this movie gave me a better appreciation for the man behind Divine, for John Waters, and for the bizarre movies they made together.
    The movies were made around 1965-1970, and they were cheap, mostly no-budget movies.  Strange stories, outlandish behavior.  But it’s easier to appreciate them when you see some of the behind-the-scenes pictures of John Waters handling what looks like a Super-8 camera, shooting guerrilla-style on the street.
    The background for Divine is fascinating, and he comes across remarkably well.  He was gay, but it’s hard to say how aware of it he was.  He discovered drag balls as a way of getting attention, and it went from there.  His interest in getting attention seems to be his motivating force, but he doesn’t seem willing to step on other people to accomplish it.  He wants to outshine his competition.

129 - We Cause Scenes: The Rise of Improv Everywhere

    A documentary about Improv Everywhere, the NY-based performance art organization.
    I like Improv Everywhere, and I’ve been following them for a long time.  While this documentary is fun, it’s a bit dry.  There isn’t that much drama to be had.  The primary weakness is a reduced amount of footage of the actual events.  I would like to see a little more of the meat behind the process.  Coming up with ideas, figuring out how to go about executing them well.  Some more introspective information would be appreciated.
    Instead, I came out of this actually having less appreciation for the way the group is run.  Charlie is not presented as being especially thoughtful about the ethical side of some of his events.  To clarify, I don’t think he is unethical.  But I think his considerations should have gotten a bigger portion of the movie.
    I don’t like his unhappiness with how his appearance on This American Life went.  I haven’t watched his appearance on the TV show in a long time, but I remember his radio appearance very well, and I felt it was incredibly balanced.  It reinforced that the reaction to the event was negative at first, but it changed over time.

111 - Mortified Nation

    A documentary about the success of the Mortified stage show.
    I think I heard about Mortified on This American Life.  I liked it then, but I’ve had a hard time finding more about it.  This documentary explains the show, and explains what is so appealing about it.  It doesn’t have a strong main character or any obstacle to overcome, but it’s a joy to see people sharing some very personal writings.
    I kept my journals for a very long time.  I had one terrible one that was from the point when I learned to write up through probably first or second grade.  Then I started actually keeping dated notebooks during fourth grade.  All of the stuff that these people talk about - misery, wanting a girlfriend, feeling rejected… what’s funny is that I was accumulating those records about two years earlier than any of these people.  Of course, I kept it going for a long time too.
    But I also got rid of my old ones.  I scanned all my songwriting notebooks from high school, but I threw out all of my notebooks from 1st through 8th grade.  I looked them over at some point, and realized that I didn’t want to remember this version of me.
    I wonder how much it’s because I feel embarrassed about it.  Sadly, I don’t know how much of it I’ve come past.
    There are a few stories shared in the documentary that are noteworthy because they’re much more unique.  There’s a guy who denies his homosexuality, even as he details having sex with another man.  I never struggled with my sexuality, but I found this to be the most honest portrayal of someone with this problem.

96 - Superheroes

    A documentary about real-life superheroes - people who dress in costume and patrol for crime.
    I wasn’t positive what direction this documentary would take, but it actually balanced, in a strangely unbalanced way.  The specific problem is harder to pin down, and it’s mostly that the movie groups into themes, and this unbalances the movie.  It starts off seeming a little more like an effort to take a comedic view of these people.  By the end, it circles back around to being more inspirational.
    I expected some coverage of Phoenix Jones, who has been one of the higher profile heroes out there.
    Instead, I find myself identifying with these people.  I’m not sure exactly how, but they do reflect the same thing that comic heroes do for me.  Their intentions are great.  Some of them have figured out effective ways of contributing.  Some of them are mostly just a presence, since it can be very difficult to find the appropriate crime to stop.
    One of the groups comes across as being very well-managed.  The New York Initiative has a group of four people - sharing an apartment - but they actually work at staying in shape.  They get the gear they should have.  They plan their actions.  We don’t see them actually handle any violent crime, but we see them manage a drunk driver and a homeless guy who gets his foot run over.
    The other one who has found a niche that seems to work is a guy who works with a camera operator.  They get footage of drug deals going on in a park at night.  The guy confronts the dealer, tells them to leave, and warns them that they have footage of the deal.  It doesn’t go through perfectly every time, but it still seems more effective than some of these other heroes.
    Some of the heroes seem like they aren’t quite all there, but they never seem dangerous or stupid.  One of them seems a bit delusional, but there are implications that being a hero is one of the things that keeps him productive.

94 - Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

    A documentary about the making and impact of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
    This is a long documentary.  It’s about four hours long.  I started watching it on a whim, but it’s remarkably engrossing.  Since it’s covering a large number of movies, the subject matter always is moving forward, and time isn’t spent treading water on the same stuff.  Seeing this has increased my appreciation for the work that went into the Nightmare movies.
    The effects work is remarkable.  Most of the work they did on these movies involved practical effects.  With the low budgets involved, some of this was really incredible.  The rotating room set is amazing.  They worked with a variety of first time directors, which created some great careers.
    They aren’t broadly supportive of everything that happens with the movies.  They acknowledge bad decisions that were made - especially with Part 2.  If anything, this documentary has made me want to watch Part 2 and New Nightmare again.
    I’ve always remembered The Dream Warriors as being a good entry, but it’s another one of those ones that I’ve forgotten.  It’s easy for me to put off watching them as long as there’s more new stuff out there for me to watch.

39 - Nightmare Factory

    A documentary about practical effects work in movies.
    I like effects work.  I'm usually pretty impressed with the work I see, and if anything, I'm usually disappointed with CGI effects.  There seems to be a lot more room for error with those.
    I  didn't like this as much as I should have.  I guess it was because it was more of a love letter to the effects house, and not so much focused on the esoteric aspects of making an effect work.  There were a few highlights - I really liked seeing the effort that went into a car crash shot in Death Proof.
    The rest of it… I like their enthusiasm.  They're so in love with the movies they make, it's a little infectious.  I know I come across as being picky about movies.  I'm specific, but usually even the bad movies, I enjoy the time I spend with them.
    Not much to say about it.

15 - Shut Up Little Man!

    A documentary exploring the popularity of a series of tapes of two arguing roommates, Peter and Ray.
    One of my brothers has been into these tapes for awhile.  I've had a very casual interest in them.  I couldn't take longer stretches of them, but I think I appreciated the humor of it.  This is an effective documentary, because I came out of it feeling more strongly about the tapes.
    Their arguments are drunken, and packed with a terrible sense of cruelty.  They're mean enough that it seems like it would have been difficult to live near them, let alone be anywhere near them.
    The story of the creation of these tapes is fascinating though.  Initially created out of sense of self-preservation, it seems remarkable that the subjects were aware that they were being taped, but never seemed to care.  The two guys who taped their neighbors seem to be remarkably decent, too.  They have clearly had a lot of time to wonder about their moral and ethical position.  More importantly, they've reached an unusual relationship to the tapes.  I understand this, and it's strange.  The humor is mostly gone, and they're left with a very intimate portrait of these two men, roommates, fighting savagely.  As much as they argue and fight, they seem to have a strangely intimate relationship.
    I once taped one of my roommates in college.  He was unintentionally hilarious.  He wasn't terribly bright, and he would say incredibly ignorant things constantly.  I occasionally have a sense that maybe I shouldn't have taped him.  But I haven't spread the recordings of him around the world.  But I understand their quandary.
    The one area that I find more confusing is how the play based on the tapes was possible.  It looks absurd, but it also looks remarkably dull.  It loses all sense of truth.