Tag: Documentary

The documentary Fed Up was something I heard about many months ago when it was roaming the film fest circuit. Outside of having its own interesting topic, the significant other really wanted to see it too.

I try to only do one food documentary in a given month (because it is a very popular genre for whatever reason, like my last one Forks Over Knives) and this one is indeed again about health. But it has a very specific goal.

Obesity and diabetes in America. Okay. I guess that is what a lot of those are about too.

This one is brought to us (narration and produced) by Katie Couric who she has self claimed made a life out of reporting on these issues. Which issues? Well, clearly I am just filling this top half with filler until I start talking about them, so I might as well show you the picture now and get it over with.

The title is a pun. Pun’s make the documentary world go round.

So what is bad. Processed foods? I’ve heard that before. Meat? Nah, meat is normal. So what is it?! Sugars. Namely the high amounts of sugar in products like soda, processed foods and fast food restaurants.

It isn’t as simple as that though. The documentary first attacks the theory of carbs in vs carbs out and that all carbs are created equal. It also argues against a lack of physical activity with a lot of case studies.

In fact, using science, it helps explain just what these refined excessive sugars that appear in most processed foods contain versus the daily recommended amount. It explains how when the industry started to cut out the fat, they increased the sugar content to keep the taste, completely nullifying any gain.

And it introduced us to the lobby groups that have pushed to squelch the sugar information from getting out and the few government programs that have tried to note the excessive sugar type’s harmful effects.

It isn’t just a big witch hunt and they don’t say all sugar is bad don’t worry. Just certain types in certain environments and bad practices these people use that could have caused an obesity epidemic.

I found the documentary fascinating to watch really interested in what it was showing.

I just didn’t like all the tactics it used. It did some bullshitty stuff. For instance, when they were interviewing a “bad person” they showed an unedited part of the interview. So we saw him start to badly answer a question and then go for a do over. That is supposed to show that he is a liar or something. Because everyone else always talks to clear. That is cheap and bad.

It also featured a lot of extravagant animations to get the point through, some of which were pretty extreme. It definitely wasn’t dignified.

In other news, great topic and information, but bullshit fluff and bad documentary tactics dropped it down a peg for me.

Philadelphia in the 1970s was a rough place. The Flyers were winning Stanley Cups and beating the Russians (literally). A lot of bruisers and quite a few cruisers.

We also had the MOVE organization, which was a black liberation group founded by a man named John Africa. In fact, everyone had the last name Africa in the group. You can guess the reasons why. They were kind of Amish in away, just wanting to form their own community and raise their kids in a “natural” way.

Unfortunately, members of the Philadelphia Police Department frequently crashed their lifestyle and came to blows with the group (Also literally), which is why we have this documentary in the first place. Let The Fire Burn pieces together news stories, court records, and committee meetings to tell the story of the MOVE group clashing with the police from the 70s to the mid 80s. It does it without a narrator (where transition and background details are shown via text on screen only) and without modern interviews retelling the events. No, only things that were recorded before and after the events immediately.

And what this documentary does is tell the horrifying results of a few stand offs and a climatic end that you wouldn’t be able to guess. Unless you look at the title of the movie and put two and two together.

Ohhh. They must be talking a bout the fire burning a joint. Because of stereotypes.

And (not?) surprisingly, Let The Fire Burn is a powerful, eye opening, and awesome documentary. Shit. I wanted to multi task during parts of it, but I found it hard to put away. Some of the interviews with members of the MOVE group were just so well put together it is hard to find fault with anyone. Anyone outside of the Philadelphia Police Department that is.

I think what I found most surprising about this documentary is how it took this movie for me to learn about this subject. This seemed like a really big event, with really big consequences and holy shit why the fuck had I never heard about it before? I was angry almost that I just learned about it. I was angry with what they decided to do at the end of the last “showdown” and I was of course angry with what happened in the aftermath.

Let The Fire Burns is a great documentary that I recommend to everyone to watch. I don’t want to give anything away, because there is no way I can do the documentary justice. I also feel like it was incredibly unbiased, giving just the facts and just the news and committee meeting footage. Fantastic movie, horrible event.

In trying to watch at least one documentary a week, I get a bit excited when I get to see a newer documentary, freshly released and ready to take on the world.

Mission Blue came out mid August as a Netflix Original Documentary, which of course meant that it was immediately available to watch. Not running around the indie markets and festivals for a year first.

And hey. I like Netflix original stuff sometimes. Or at least I think I would, if I had seen anything outside of Arrested Development or House Of Cards (just season 1, shh).

Mission Blue is the new Orange Is The New Black.

Mission Blue is a very very simple documentary. It is about Sylvia Earle, a woman marine biologist from the mid 1900s and on who helped change the science around the world. She was certainly a pioneer in the field, being at one point the first person to go beyond a specific depth in the ocean, and even living in an underwater research facility for a few weeks.

And where is she now? Still doing science job stuff. Yay old people!

More or less, this documentary was made after a TED Talk in 2009 of the same talk, where Sylvia had a very simple idea. She wants to set up protected ecosystems and environments around the world’s oceans where no commercial development or farming can occur. No bullshit, just fish and fish accessories.

And hey, it is a good idea. Sure. Why not. Like national parks. As long as I can still eat my fish and power my car, then you know I am definitely fine with that.

Outside of this novel idea, we just get to see a lot about Sylvia’s life and accomplishments, what she is doing now, and bad stuff happening to our oceans.

Overall, Mission Blue was interesting, but just felt like a bio piece on a person. I guess documentaries can be used for that purpose, but it makes most of this feel like an hour episode of some show that probably exists on the Biography Channel.

Nothing about this was super elite quality wise or showing me that much that I haven’t seen before. But it was exciting seeing James Cameron, because James Cameron raises the bar significantly by being in this documentary.

In the town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, Luis Ramirez was killed.

Luis is a Mexican immigrant, one of the many to move to the small town over the last few years to work in nearby mattress factories. Shenandoah used to be a coal mining town, a lot of European immigrants, but that eventually shut down, so now they are just another small town with low incomes and high school football to get them by.

Oh yeah. High School Football. Like the team who ended up killing Luis Ramirez one night, turning a simple beating of a Mexican into a killing thanks to a few kicks to the head.

Shenandoah captures the town in its aftermath, how they were affected by the racial based beating, how the high school football team started to do after it, and how the court case went down.

I can’t even.

The unfortuante news is, you can probably already figure out where this story goes. Spoilers, there is a some major disappointment and parts of the documentary that will make you swell with anger.

But at the same time, this is a story I have heard before. I have read about it in books and seen documentaries of similar cases where racial injustice happened in small towns around America, and it still happens to this day. Maybe this one is more relevant because it wasn’t in the 1960s or 20th century, but just half a decade ago. But I just couldn’t find myself captivated by it nor did I find it really too shocking.

On top of that, I thought it was a shoddy documentary. It felt poorly put together, full of awkward scenes that didn’t really help tell the story, but was just talking to people in general. I am glad they went to Mexico and talked to the guy’s family about it, but it felt like it was filled with so much useless crap, I didn’t care by the end.

Well, obviously I still cared. And it is good to know that not everything ended so badly (outside of someone losing their life). But this documentary needed a lot more umph in it to make me care about something I have seen again and again.

Whew. Here we go.

I have long thought for the last 6 or so years, basically most of my entire college career, that college sports were weird. I get being a fan of a team if your family went there, or you went there, but any other reason seemed silly to me. All I knew was that it was a huge huge industry that made a lot of money for any number of reasons.

I have also always thought that college athletes were getting shafted. They appear in video games, have jerseys being sold, and make a ton of appearances…but for what? No extra cash.

But I have felt like most people don’t share my belief. Whenever I bring it up, people say that they get free college and that should be enough. Little did I know there was a documentary that shared my point of view, Schooled: The Price of College Sports. Not only did it share my POV, but it also had a whole lot of information to back up its stance, which I lacked.

I understand it is an uncomfortable subject, because it is one of those situations where “it has always been this way” so why change it? Well, if it is bad, it should be changed, tradition be damned.

And how much Duke sucks. I am pretty sure there is a whole hour devoted to that.

But this documentary goes over almost everything. The history of college sports, the history of amateurism in sports and the Olympics, how sponsorships in college sports started, and oh so much more.

This documentary was also kind of hard to watch. Because it also talks about UNC and its Academic scandal with the football team players taking made up classes. That was terrible. It was. I was literally at school during this moment.

It talked about Devon Ramsey, the UNC football player and smart kid who got set up and screwed by the system for a very minor amount of help, despite actually being one of the brightest players. And it sucked knowing that a school I went to had some bad things go on during it, but I know in my heart it is true.

I won’t talk more about the documentary, because it does a very good job of presenting the facts in an easy to understand way. It has a lot of details to back it up, and even features some people who don’t want things to change and disagree with it. It isn’t incredibly biased in that regard.

But hey, it’s on Netflix, and I thought it was great. It also features a lot of Arian Foster, of the Houston Texas. He tells a lot of good stories and he is now one of my favorite players outside of my favorite team.

When choosing my documentary to watch for this week, it was between The Revisionaries and Shenandoah. The reason The Revisionaries won out is because it is a lot more relevant to my current life, as someone who now lives in Texas and is responsible for school aged children.

Shenandoah, your time will come, don’t you worry.

It is almost common knowledge at this point that the Texas Board of Education has a lot more power than any sort of Board of Education should have. Because there are shit ton of people in Texas (And California), the standards that these boards set mean the books they chose will make a lot of money. They order more than they need to, so whatever the book is picked will make tons of money. So books try to make sure the standards chosen are met, so they can make that sweet cash money. If all textbooks try to meet their standards, then that means the rest of the country is affected by their decision. Ain’t no one making a textbook based on the Montana Board of Education.

It turns out one of these states is very liberal and the other is very conservative. So, what should be a not too important Board of Education becomes a battleground for different ideologies to lead the youth towards different values.

And this is seemingly public enemy #1.

Pictured above is one Don McLeroy of which a majority of the documentary is about. During the stupidly controversial evolution v creationism debate, he lead the board and was appropriately scrutinized. Thankfully logic won out, for the most part the science community won and Don was sent back to being a regular board member, not the head.

But the battle wasn’t over. It turns out Social Studies was a much more important subject to look at that didn’t get as much media exposure. This is where they determine what important parts of history are taught and what is left out. This of course can lead to a lot of bad things should it go unchecked. And well, to figure out who won that battle, you might want to see the documentary.

I thought it did a decent job of bringing this topic to light, but something was missing for me. Hard to really pin point it. Maybe the general boringness of the whole documentary? Having already knew about these facts, I didn’t find it really too eye opening or surprising. Just had me shaking my head on more than one occasion.

Decent info, some interesting characters, and a nice jab at Liberty University, which is always nice. But I just wanted more.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Such a hated and loved TV show. A reboot of an old toy franchise a few years ago, the series quickly spread across the internet.

The series, a show intended for little girls, quickly attracted them and more. Basically, every other group too, outside of the 65+ crowd. The number of middle aged / teenage men who liked the show and found it interesting became its own entity, and they were called Brony.

No other recent fan group has been as scorned or defiled as the Bronie. People have them assumed to be perverts, or a large gathering of internet neckbeards, known for their inability to not be socially awkward. And on some levels, both of those are true. There are definitely perverts and socially awkward neckbeards who like My Little Pony.

But the movie has a problem with that label. The documentary is about several Bronies, some maybe awkward, who have found enjoyment in the show, or have had the show help them in life some way, and their journy to Bronycon.

And they have new animated scenes done in rhyme to go over shit as well!

The documentary, Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony, was basically financed by John de Lancie. He is popular amongst nerd groups for his roles in Star Trek and Stargate, but he also voices a recurring villain character in the show, making him popular amongst Bronies as well. He saw that the fans of the show had a lot of backlash and wanted this documentary to kind of put a hold on that to show that they are just regular people.

And it was funded by Kickstarter, but that isn’t too important.

Sure, going into some people’s lives was interesting, I guess. Some people were bullied, some had Aspergers, some became famous for their music based around the show. Sure, there are also some interviews with the creator, the creator of Bronycon, and Tara Strong, the voice of a few of its characters, but outside of that? Just a bunch of regular people going to Bronycon.

And as a documentary, sure, it did a good job of showcasing their average lives and how the show affected them, but that is it. It didn’t really delve into any issue. I was just a documentary about bronies, made by bronies, for bronies, in order to elevate them to a higher status.

I just wanted more. Again, the cool professor pony they had through 3 segments or so? That was awesome. And that was about it. Hell, it even brought up that the creator left the show, but didn’t go over why. I had to look up that information on my own. What the hell, documentary?

Regardless of this documentary, I am still not a brony. I have seen like, half of season 1 of MLP:FiM , but haven’t had a lot of desire to run back to the show. However, I still reviewed My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.

Introducing a new genre type to Gorgon Reviews. The Horror Documentary. One part documentary, one part bump in the night, and one part magic.

This is not a genre I could even imagine existed. Sure, maybe documentaries about scary subjects? But this one also has some tense moments in it as well, with looking at places at night, scary images, and of course, scary stories.

Killer Legends wants to talk about four urban legends in particular, discovering why they became popular, where the truth really lies, and why people still talk about them today.

The hosts are Rachel Mills and Joshua Zeman, two nobodies basically. Just the movie makers and inquires.

There were some cameos from some clowns and wolf heads too, of course.

The documentary looks into four urban legends. The Hook, escaped mental patient, going after lovers lane people. The Candy Man, the man who ruined Halloween, and how often your treats have poison and razor blades in them. Then the call from your own place, babysitters getting found and killed while they are watching (or not watching) the kids. And of course, killer clowns. Or at least clowns driving around Chicago neighborhoods in white vans, trying to abduct kids.

Some of these stories you may already know the inspiration behind, because who doesn’t know John Wayne Gacy? But I thought each section was very well researched, if not super editorialized with some awkward and unecessary statements. It put a lot of great info out there, in particular with the Hollyween candy. This is important information, so people can stop living in so much fear. It is the worst hearing about people bemoan about “society these days” and such. All of them just being falsely nostalgic.

Either way, I thought this documentary was informative and every so creepy. Learning about the legend of the hook was the most informative for me, and gave me new movies to look out for in the upcoming future.

Killing Legends is a very new documentary and an exciting one in my book.

How exciting. In this documentary, I am not looking at anything controversial, mind blowing, or society changing. I am just looking into the lives of three(/four) people. The lives of a few Indie Gamers.

In Indie Game: The Movie, we discuss three games in particular. Fez, Super Meat Boy, and Braid, which is exciting, given that I actually own all three of these games. And have played two of them. And have beaten one of them!

All big names in their own right in the indie game industry, I got these games through various Humble Bundles in the past and they are all pretty damn unique. They were all also in different stages of the process.

Braid during filming was one of the first really big critically acclaimed indie games and sort of set the bar for indie games to pass in the future. Super Meat Boy in this documentary is working on finishing up the game and goes through their release on Steam and XBox and the nerve wracking wait to see how they did.

And Fez. Oh Fez. Fez who in 2008 won an award for best game design based on a demo, and then spent years in development hell, always tweaking and fixing. Fez wasn’t released when the movie was, so with Fez we got to see part of the development process and what it can do to a single person with all this pressure.

Thankfully they work in an environment where pants are optional.

I was actually impressed that I found this documentary interesting. I thought it would involve a lot more technical elements and show coding and how things were done. That worried me a bit. But no, it was all about the people behind their games and their genuine reactions to the events unfolding around them.

The creator of Braid was known to search the web for message boards where they talked about his game, responding to people. He was upset that people didn’t see what he saw when talking about the best features and the meaning of his game.

The creator of Fez almost had a nervous breakdown on camera it looked like, as he talked about a business deal with an ex partner that could ruin the chances of his game being released.

The two creators of Super Meat Boy lead me down a nostalgic past and seeing their success with their friends and loved ones was awesome.

Basically, it is a feel good documentary, and even better for people who know of those games or have played them. It delves into some theory (just a bit) about some hypocrisy in the gaming industry, and what really will make an indie game unique (and how to design a level, sort of), so it isn’t just human interest stuff.

It tells a nice story, but if anything, it lacked the other side of the coin. Someone who failed at making a game, either financially or through just making a bad game. It would have been nice to have a more “complete story.”

Hell, by the time this review is published, I will have hopefully played Fez.

Well then.

This documentary is brought to us by Netflix, where apparently there are documentaries called Are All Men Pedophiles?

That’s a title if I ever saw one. Just kind of, goes out and asks a bold question. It doesn’t make the claim, just asks the question. But it is still a very very eye catching title, so in that aspect it is doing the job it meant to do.

Are All Men Pedophiles? is only about 70 minutes long, so if it is going to answer that question it had to move quickly. But before it could answer that question, it had to delve into what the actual definition of a pedophile even is. My personal definition comes out of Great Britain, with the Paedofinder General (here and here). Ah, what great amazing satire.

You didn’t think I’d actually search the movie title on google for images did you?
I don’t want to be put on a list.

Well, the short answer to the question is no. Of course not. How could all men be pedophiles? That would be ridiculous. It did however imply that all men are ephebophiles though. What is that? Sexual attraction to mid to late adolescents, basically 14 year olds and highers. Aka people who have reached biological sexual maturity, but are not classified as adults in whatever country you live in.

There was a lot of evidence for this too. It went into the fashion industry, media, history, pre-history, biology and other science to help explain this all. To be honest, it all also checks out and seems pretty truthful. I found points it made hard to argue.

The end went interesting places as well, sort of defending pedophiles as its own mental condition. They don’t think anyone should be having sex with pre-pubescent children, no. But they do think that someone who is a non acting pedophile shouldn’t be looked down upon by society, given the fact that it isn’t a choice to love a certain person or gender or type. It’s all biology.

However, this is one of the worst put together documentaries I have ever seen. It repeats information constantly, not in a helpful way, but literally as if they never said it. The use of actual news footage was pretty awkward the way it was presented. All of the guest scientists/talkers felt awkward as well, no one really having any sort of charisma. It faded to black and used title cards. It was just seriously a piece of shit.

Which is sad, because it has great information in it. It points out the double standards in society and the absurd sexual offender list. The information, unfortunately, is just put together in a basket made of shit.