Documentaries

Watched the Questlove Sly Stone doc on Hulu. Way too busy and tried to overcontextualize a guy who basically just torpedoed his career with addiction.

 

The Pigeon Tunnel, Errol Morris film about John Le Carre. Didn't think it would focus so much on his parents, but worthwhile and features an eerie score.

 

Think this has the potential to be a good one, about the deadly Joplin, Missouri, tornado in 2011. Sounds like it is told from the perspective of teenagers who celebrated their high school graduation ceremonies a couple of hours before the tornado hit.

Netflix Making Joplin Tornado Feature 'Twister: Caught in the Storm'

 

The Rick Pitino/St. John's doc on Vice (every Tuesday night, third ep aired last night) is incredible. An absolutely perfect marriage between the format and a true media whore. You can't help but come away from it marveling at what a jerk Pitino is--in episode two, he displays little emotion while recalling the day his infant son died, while then-Providence ass't Jeff Van Gundy said he'll be haunted by Joanne Pitino's anguished cries for the rest of his life--but he'll never complain about how he's being portrayed as long as he's getting the attention.

 

We're about halfway through. I've enjoyed it because it was a nice reminder of how the Family Stone was a trailblazer in a time of racial divide and stereotypes, the 1st multi-racial, multi-gender act to become a superstar band topping the charts. Sly, sure he did drugs, but the accounts seemed to be that he genuinely cared about others and was not self-absorbed (as other superstars have been.)

And the music was so good IMHO.

 

The music was fantastic but I really didn’t like the framing device with all of the talking heads that the cause of Sly’s downfall was the fact that white society couldn’t accept black genius. The man was on Ed Sullivan and appeared at Woodstock. He was a true crossover artist and his artistry was well recognized. Whether he was afraid of success or otherwise, he just couldn’t stay clean.

 

I don’t disagree at all.

 

Watched the Scamanda doc on Hulu. It was also a podcast first, then given a few more little details in the video format (the podcaster is one of the main hosts).

Basically: a woman from California fleeced a bunch of people into thinking she had cancer and then they felt bad for her so they gave her money, donations from church, trips, backstage access, etc. She was faking it the whole time. Since her blog was a huge part of her soliciting sympathy and garnering people wanting to donate to her treatments, she was able to be put in jail for fraud.

 

Binged the Beckham documentary on Netflix. Great access and I can’t tell if I really like him and Posh or whether they are incredibly manipulative. It is crazy just how big of a personality he is and the contradiction that he got where he was as a soccer player by working super hard yet really wanted to be famous more than anything.

 

Finished Court of Gold on Netflix, damn the semi-finals and final was good. Forgot how Curry was off then caught fire in the last two games. Some really good snippets (Kerr likes to use the F word; Wemby is very well respected by others). Also, think LeBron/KD/Steph, what a 3 some and they played so well together.

 

Interesting podcast today between Pablo Torre and Ezra Edelman about his Prince documentary getting spiked by the new lawyers representing Prince’s estate and Netflix. Basically was done to protect the Prince “brand” and have feel good content like a less icky Purple Rain Broadway show and a sanitized documentary which is all positive.

 

The Pablo episode with Wesley Morris last fall as they went over the film as two of the few people to have seen it was one of my favorites of last year.

Made me miss Grantland’s Do You Like Prince Movies? podcast so much. Which then makes me miss Grantland.