Archive for category: Documentary
4 April, 2013 (10:56) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, Film Reviews, Stanley Kubrick | By: Sean Axmaker
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. So goes the quote so often attributed to Freud, but it’s hard to make that case for coincidence and happenstance in the films of Stanley Kubrick. You can’t completely remove chance from cinema, with all its actors and technicians and moving parts, but the detail-oriented, notorious micromanager Kubrick [...]
Tags: Rodney Ascher, Room 237, Stanley Kubrick, The Shining | No comments
12 February, 2013 (18:16) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, DVD, Film Reviews | By: Sean Axmaker
In 2005, Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer in the West Bank village of Bil’in, bought a video camera to document the birth and childhood of his fourth son, Gibreel. At the same time, Israeli settlers started building an illegal settlement on farmlands near his village. As his fellow Palestinian organized non-violent protests, Burnat turned his [...]
Tags: 5 Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi | No comments
27 February, 2012 (13:31) | by Richard T. Jameson, Documentary, Film Reviews, Musicals | By: Richard T. Jameson
[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] That’s Entertainment, Part Two begins where the first compilation should have ended, with (a portion of) the first performance of “That’s Entertainment” by Fred Astaire, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan and Oscar Levant in Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. Around this footage Saul Bass has devised one of the [...]
Tags: Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Movietone News 50, That's Entertainment Part Two | No comments
26 October, 2011 (16:58) | by Jeff Shannon, Documentary, Essays, Television | By: Jeff Shannon
“Lives Worth Living” premieres on the PBS series “Independent Lens” on October 27th at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT). For more information, visit the film’s PBS website and filmmaker Eric Neudel’s website. To be disabled in America, in 2011, is to occupy the midpoint of a metaphorical highway, some stretches smooth and evenly paved, others rocky and [...]
Tags: Eric Neudel, Independent Lens, Lives Worth Living | No comments
9 May, 2011 (17:47) | Blu-ray, by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, DVD | By: Sean Axmaker
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (Flicker Alley) Serge Bromberg is one of the most dedicated film preservationists in the world today. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, his documentary on the legendary unfinished film, represents a different kind of detective work but the same spirit of discovery, preservation and presentation of cinema saved from neglect. In 1964, French director Henri-George [...]
Tags: Henri-George Clouzot, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno, Romy Schneider, Serge Bromberg, Sergio Reggiani | No comments
24 March, 2011 (06:33) | Documentary, Guest Contributor, Interviews | By: guest
By E. Steven Fried One of the great pleasures of SIFF 2004 was the opportunity to see Thom Andersen’s 169- minute video essay, Los Angeles Plays Itself. Utilizing hundreds of unauthorized clips of obscure and well-known films [you will never see this on DVD] Andersen poses the question:why is the most filmed city in the [...]
Tags: Los Angeles Plays Itself, Thom Andersen | No comments
9 March, 2011 (18:15) | Blu-ray, by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, DVD, Film Reviews | By: Sean Axmaker
Excalibur (Warner) The myth and legend of King Arthur has long been a favorite fascination of popular culture, the source of countless novels and movies and the inspiration for an iconic Broadway musical that became the nickname for John F. Kennedy’s too-short inspirational time as American President: “Camelot.” Forget the real-life history, the very mention [...]
Tags: A Film Unfinished, Adam Cherniakov, Excalibur, John Boorman, Yael Hersonski | 1 comment
21 September, 2009 (08:26) | by Robert Horton, Documentary, Film Reviews | By: Robert Horton
[Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The line between cool observation and active participation in a documentary film is a flimsy and untenable one. How can anything remain truly documentary with a camera whirring away as an extra guest keeping its unblinking eye focused on the people it considers? If the project is [...]
Tags: Best Boy, Ira Wohl, Movietone News 66-67 | 1 comment
5 September, 2009 (18:46) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, Werner Herzog | By: Sean Axmaker
It’s easy to see why Werner Herzog was so fascinated by Timothy Treadwell, the former beach bum turned self-made wildlife activist and grizzly bear guardian who spent thirteen summers living amidst the grizzly bears of the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska until he, along with his girlfriend and traveling partner, Amie Huguenard, was [...]
Tags: Grizzly Man | 1 comment
12 August, 2009 (17:56) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, Film Reviews | By: Sean Axmaker
Mark Hartley’s unabashedly affectionate Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story Of Ozploitation!, his tribute to Australian genre cinema, is one of the rarities that justifies my passion for documentaries about films and film history: a smartly made look at an otherwise neglected aspect of film history and culture, packed with colorful stories, witty observations, [...]
Tags: Mark Hartley, Not Quite Hollywood, Ozploitation | No comments
12 May, 2009 (00:01) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, DVD | By: Sean Axmaker
Of Time and the City (Strand) If Liverpool did not exist, it would have to be invented. And in some ways, that’s what Terence Davies does in his cinematic essay, a personal remembrance of a city that he recalls from his ambivalent perspective of troubled affection and critical commentary. Freely mixing history and remembrance, documentary [...]
Tags: Alexander Korda's Private Lives, Of Time and the City, Rembrandt, Robert Mark Kamen, Taken, Terence Davies, The Private Life of Henry VIII | 1 comment
26 January, 2009 (19:10) | by Sean Axmaker, Documentary, DVD, Film Reviews, Roman Polanski | By: Sean Axmaker
Is Marina Zenovich’s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired in fact the “DVD of the Week” this week? I mean, is it the standout film this week, or an overlooked masterpiece, or a superior use of the DVD medium? Or am I just reaching to fill the slot of a weekly feature? Some of the [...]
Tags: Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired | No comments