At this point you could have a library of Bruce Lee’s work, and a library about films discussing Bruce Lee. Documentaries and films about Lee have become pretty much a sub-genre on to itself, with every decade releasing at least three new films about Bruce Lee and his legacy. I expect an Oscar level film about Bruce Lee any time soon, now. “I Am Bruce Lee” won’t shed new insight on Lee as a fighter or actor, nor will it really provide audiences with something new or enlightening about knowing Bruce Lee.
Tag Archives: Documentary
The American Scream (2012)
The common Christian stereotype is that Halloween is almost always celebrated by Pagans and Satanists, as well as people with a demented sense of reality. What the director of “The American Scream” Michael Stephenson accomplishes, is destroying such an antiquated cliche and explores a world of folks who adore Halloween and are just working class individuals looking for an escape from their lives. “The American Scream” has an undercurrent of sadness to it where the happiness and smiles are really seeking to cover the heart ache and desperation behind the subjects who treat Halloween like an event every single year. I’m proud to be one of those people who anticipate the month of October right around the beginning of August, and these folks featured aren’t so different.
Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day (2012)
Zeppelin is thankfully not a band that has spent many years announcing their retirement only to return a few years later for a revival tour. When they perform it’s a special occasion, because they rarely ever get together to jam. When they’re together, they make magic, and you know it may never happen again. Since the death of John Bonham, the surviving members of Zeppelin have spent years hesitant to try to re-capture the magic that was Led Zeppelin, so they don’t make it a habit of re-uniting and continuing on. In 2007, the band came together to perform at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert for a rare line up of some of their greatest and most rocking tunes ever recorded, and took it upon themselves to make it available to fans.
Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012)
At the end of the day, Katy Perry’s awfully immediate documentary about her life on the road is as hard hitting and candid as your normal fluff piece on an entertainment TV show. “Part of Me” is really supposed to be a film for the Katy Perry fan club where she strives, enjoys life, and reveals her hardships from a struggling Christian singer to a fairly so so pop star. It’s all fluff and should really be called “Katy Perry is Amazing” when all is said and done. Continue reading
The Definitive Document of the Dead (2012) (DVD)
With the “Definitive Document of the Dead” you have to take the good with the bad. It completely glosses over Romero’s production of “Day of the Dead” to where it’s almost an irrelevant foot note in the legacy of the Dead films. Yet, the documentary does go back to Romero years after “Day” to where he’s directing “Land,” “Diary,” and “Survival” implying that they’re all valid and relevant projects of Romero’s career. Difficulties in Hollywood and the studio system are side stepped, and often times the documentary can never decide if it wants to be a Hollywood inside look or a fandom tribute, so it tries to be both.
Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television (2004)
The one downfall about “From Comic Books to Television” is that realistically a documentary about EC Comics should be longer than an hour. I mean this is EC Comics, one of the biggest influences for many horror icons, and it deserves more than fifty six minutes for audiences. EC Comics is a powerful force in horror and continues to spawn horror fans to this day. That said, “From Comic Books to Television” is a nice and entertaining look at the legendary run of EC Comics. Beginning life as Educational Comics and eventually transforming in to Entertaining Comics, “From Comic Books to Television” explores the creative explosion of EC Comics, and how it managed to change the comic book medium for better or for worse.
Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective (2011)
The main problem with “Still Screaming” is that though it does cover one of the most popular horror movies of all time, the story of “Scream” and its inception just isn’t very interesting. Sure, Wes Craven happened upon one of the most trendy slasher films ever made and created something of a resurgence in a decade that almost saw the death of the horror genre, but the making of the film and the series of weak sequels is just a series of normal studio anecdotes compiled in to a ninety minute mediocre documentary. There isn’t a lot of magic behind “Scream.” Not like “Return of the Living Dead,” “A Nightmare On Elm Street,” or even “Psycho.” It was a studio fueled film that brought the right talent to the forefront and it succeeded in reviving a sub-genre. It’s barely a tale of independent filmmakers scraping dollars together to make a bang up horror film.