Documentaries

Recorded and watched the New York Sack Exchange Saturday morning. To the shock of no one, Gastineau comes off as a narcissist but I enjoyed it, probably because it was limited to one hour. As someone who was five years old in 1981, I didn't really know any of them beyond Klecko and Gastineau. Didn't realize Marty Lyons was as charitable as he was. Cool story about Klecko being a truck driver when he was Temple too.

 

Squaring the Circle about the art design studio Hipgnosis responsible for many classic rock album covers. Fascinating. Available on Netflix.

 

Appreciate the heads up — definitely will check that out.

Maybe right now, considering the Rose Bowl score …

 

Now that I’ve watched “Squaring the Circle” I will second @garrow … fun and very interesting movie, especially if you’re a vinyl geek like me. Hipgnosis didn’t make every iconic album cover in the 1960s and 1970s, but they sure did a lot of them — including a few favorites I wasn’t aware of (“Argus” by Wishbone Ash, for example).

If you dig classic rock or just want to know more about the 1960s Swinging London scene, this film is highly recommended.

 

Platoon: Brothers in Arms. Really good documentary from the eyes of the actors. Sheen is the main narrator and comes across really sincere. Except for Forest Whitaker, everyone from the main cast is interviewed. Some of the more illuminating insights.

— sheen’s mother mailed 14 boxes of supplies ahead of him with a letter stating something akin to, “this is everything I wished we had brought when your dad did apocalypse now in the Philippines.”
— Dafoe talks about being on the last plane to land before the civil war broke out and the ensuing chaos as they weren’t sure when he would get out or if the movie would be made.
— a funny moment where Berenger is darting around his living room recreating one of the scenes from the film.
— half the cast got lost during their training one day, and cut down a pineapple tree to get food.
— they all hated stone at one point or another.
— Depp said one of the extras (who was a cop in the Philippines) almost pulled a gun on Stone because of his abrasiveness.
— another sequence where they talk about how the advisors would do nightly raids to keep the cast on their toes. Berenger says, “one guy, I won’t say who, got hit right in the balls by these explosive charges.” Depp goes, “all you heard was this screaming when one of the guys got in the balls.” Then sheen goes, “it was me, i got hit in the balls.”

 

Apple TV is free this weekend so I’m binging the Steve Martin documentary.

 

I really enjoyed that doc. The first half is all of Martin's early career and just how different and unique he really was.

The second half I was struck by how sincerely genuine his friendship with Martin Short is. Made me like Only Murders even more.

(Speaking of Only Murders, we watched S4 with my daughter home from college for the break. We zipped through it in 1 1/2 days. I really enjoyed having a second viewing a few months after originally watching. I enjoyed seeing the clues and caught a lot more of the one-liners. DaVine Joy Randolph is so goddam funny in her appearances. Her line-readings are awesome.)

 

Some documentaries that haven't been mentioned on this thread that I enjoy:

- Trainwreck, which is all about Woodstock '99 (I'm now an event planner for work and this is the shit nightmares are made of)
- The Dark Side Of... which is a Vice series. Dark Side of the Ring is fascinating for the stories of old school pro wrestling, and it's narrated by Chris Jericho. The Dark Side of the 90s has a great ep on trash talk shows during which they interview people behind the scenes on the Jerry Springer show, amongst others
- Obviously, the Fyre documentaries are fun

My husband and I bought a subscription to our local PBS station, which comes loaded with all the Ken Burns documentaries. We've been watching the Roosevelt one.

There's lots of amazing true crime documentaries out there, like The Jinx, Quiet on Set (about the 90s Nickelodeon sex abuse), Mommy Dead and Dearest...
Two absolutely wild rides are Sins of the Mother (about the Vallow-Daybell craziness) and The Girl in the Picture (about a guy who was a serial child abductor).

 

The Yacht Rock documentary was a good way to spend a flu ridden 90 minutes today. Michael McDonald is a king.

 

Feel better. That knocked my ass out even with the vaccine (the flu, not the doc, which I really do need to see).

 

Guess I'll put in my choices:

The Staircase;
The Murdaugh Murders (Netflix)​

 

True/False is coming at the end of February. I wrote a story about it 15 years ago that led to a lot of magazine work for a few years.

T/F is a documentary film festival. I’ve never been to any of the movies, but I might go this year. There’s also all kinds of music and parties associated with it.