Director Matt Mamula’s “Die Like an Egyptian” is a bittersweet and gripping short documentary about our attempts to control our own death’s in a manner that allows us the illusion of control in the after life. For us, old age and mortality can be horrifying and harrowing a prospect, and director Mamula spotlights an older man who is racing against time to build himself a prominent memorial that will not only give him relevance after death, but perhaps help him garner a sense of control.
Tag Archives: Documentary
Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013)
Director Cullen Hoback’s “Terms and Conditions May Apply” is one of the most important films made in years. It is also the most important film made this year. In an age where everyone and their grandparents are connected to some form of personal computers and are freely relinquishing personal information for the sake of using some novelty program, director Cullen Hoback explores in his film how the click of one button will destroy not just your freedom, but the entire world’s freedom.
Meta: The Culture of IPL (2013)
Director Adam Evans pulls together a very entertaining and informative documentary on a subject long overdue for a documentary: Gaming tournaments. There have been many documentaries about gaming in general, but very few have tackled the inherent emotion and intense training that go behind tournaments. Not to mention there’s almost nothing about the dynamics of team gaming. Director Adam Evans explores that facet that is shockingly compelling, and helps identify gaming as something more than a hobby. Especially with $100,000 dollars on the line for the winning teams.
Vanessa Del Rio: Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior (2007)
Vanessa Del Rio has slept with a lot of guys. And girls. And she was a prostitute. And you know what? She’s not ashamed of her past. Not a single bit. You have to admire her for that.
And to top it off, she’s not vehemently opposed to sleeping with you if it tickles her fancy either. That’s the general point of “Fifty Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior,” the notion that Vanessa Del Rio has slept with a lot of men and is not ashamed to admit that she’s loved every minute of it. While most porn stars in her age have all but renounced their pasts and forgotten their roots, she’s still the ravishingly down to Earth porn vixen who remembers every fuck and is not afraid to mention in detail most of her escapades.
History of the Eagles (2013)
For the Eagles it was a risky venture breaking out from the shadows of Linda Rondstadt. For a time they were her back up group, and were going to stay that way. That is, until they decided that they had much more to offer the music world than back up vocals for someone as amazing as Rondstadt. In the end, standing up for themselves and breaking apart from Linda Rondstadt proved an incredible but successful risk for the group. Unlike the Pips, they managed to show the world they were much more than back up vocals. For many years they had to show everyone that they were a true rock band, a true group of artists and truly contributors to the mythos of classic rock much like The Who and Led Zeppelin.
Don't Say No Until I Finish Talking: Richard D. Zanuck
Richard Zanuck is a man who spent most of his life living under the shadow of his father Darryl F. Zanuck, and what is most peculiar and quite riveting about Richard Zanuck’s story is that rather than trying to step out of his dad’s shadow, he embraced his father’s status and used it to his advantage. Often times we hear of someone chastising their own status as a wealthy successor, but Richard Zanuck used this fact as a means of bettering himself, and carving his own niche in the Hollywood business.
Conspiracy Cinema: Propaganda, Politics, and Paranoia [Paperback]
The reason why society hasn’t completely written off certain conspiracy theories is that decades after the introduction of certain theories, some of them have turned out to be true. Many people write off or dismiss conspiracies and the people that believe them, as quacks or nut jobs. Most times many people conclude that conspiracies and their believers are merely trying to find rationale in a senseless world, and feed off of their conclusions. But to them, someday they will be proven correct. It’s happened before with certain conspiracy theories once thought completely insane or moronic, and there is a fraction of society that are firm in their stance that we’ve yet to see the secrets unfold before our very eyes.
Author David Ray Carter doesn’t so much build a reference guide of movies that contain conspiracies, or movies about conspiracies, but offers up a very detailed guide of movies that are about some of the most unusual and popular conspiracies of all time. The author thankfully takes an objective tone for much of the book, allowing the reader to pretty much approach the material with an interest and an open mind. Much of this will be ridiculous upon first glance, and some of it may seem absolutely moronic, but the point of the book is to keep an open mind and consider that there are people that actually subscribe to these theories and will go to war for them. I can only imagine how mentally exhausted author David Ray Carter must have been combing through all of the titles for the book, but lo and behold, there are so many documentaries here for consumption that will appeal to the interested viewer.