Reality Bites - And 2 Documentaries that Don't.

[sisabet]

A corellation to my recent "Is Matt Damon Hot?" post is that suddenly I am flooded with rec's for both "Courage Under Fire" and "Saving Private Ryan" and I just have to say: no.

Also - since I stated I have never seen Colin Farell in a movie that did not suck - I am being pimped high and low on "Tigerland" and I just have to say: no.

See - I don't like real-life based movies. I really don't like them. I've seen "Saving Private Ryan" because it is important to see it and I have done my duty and now I never ever have to see this movie again. Ever. I refuse to watch it again and this refusal is for my own sanity. I know that war is terrible and I know there are atrocities committed and I know that on the battlefield there is nothing clean or neat when there are bodies being ripped apart. I just don't want to see it in technicolor glory in surround sound with actors all around. I know it is realism - I just don't like it - I find it upsetting and more so then it probably should be.

I'll watch all the documentaries you want me to watch. Real footage - yes, hard to handle- yes, difficult to take - I can take it. Gimmee. I'm not so into the "dramatization" of the events, though.

But, y'know - I'm like that about everything. I am not a fan of movies based on true stories, unless that true story is about a murder. For some reason, stuff like "Fatal Vision" and "Heavenly Creatures" escape my dislike of docudramas and biopics.

Oh lord - I really hate biopics. I just - well - I *know* that person is not Audrey Hepburn and no amount of melodrama is gonna make me think otherwise. I remember going to see some movie a few months ago - maybe "Team America: World Police" and every single trailer was for any upcoming Biopic: there was "Alexander" and there was "The Aviator" and there was "Finding Neverland" and I was so disappointed. If it hadn't have been for the Sponge Bob trailer - I coulda stayed in line in the lobby for popcorn and not missed a thing.

I watch movies to escape. To enter a world that is not my own. Sometimes, sometimes there are movies that are important to see, that offer an insight into humanity and they are not an escape. I'll watch them - but they just sap the life right out of me. For every "Welcome to the Dollhouse" I would rather have a "Donnie Darko" - because is you are gonna go bleak - do it in a fantastical way with a resident christ figure and make me love him. I'll watch WttDh, but dammit - I already lived through enough of that - I don't need to see it again.

But - speaking of documentaries - I saw two really great ones on Encore this past week.

The first one was Don McGlynn's "The Howlin' Wolf Story" - it will be rerun on Encore/Starz True Stories again on December 28 and 29th and is just - see - this is what a look at someone's life should be. This is why those cursory overviews that "Biography" does will never be satisfying to me. McGlynn interviewed everyone still alive -let me rephrase - he interviewed everyone still alive who was important to Chester Burnett (normally these looks at blues legends ends up with pop stars just being fanboys and we never get to know the subject) and then he found *great* footage and we get uncut, full length performances. This is also why I don't like biopics - not when we can do stuff like this instead.

This next documentary may have changed my life - at the very least I wish I had seen it before the VVC Master Class, I might have saved myself some embarrassment (at least the cutting room floor revelation would have been in private). "The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing" is a documentary about film editors and the development and importance of their craft, and once I got over my disappointment that this was not the Ice Skating movie, I was just enthralled. For one thing - I get what they are talking about - I get it!!! And what they do and how they do it is just do freaking cool and the movie references everything and they interview directors and then their editors and Quentin Tarantino basically come right out and says he wants his editor to be his mommy - but a lot of the other editors do allude to the fact that by the time the film-maker gets to them, he/she is a beat down, shell of a man/woman. They need the editor to pull it all together.

Also - this movie confirms my opinion that James Cameron is a dumbass. AND! XXX was influenced by cubism! For real - it was - there is this whole Vin Diesal motorcycle stunt and why they did what they did - well actually it did not work for me - but they had real and valid reasoning! This is the best movie ever. Seriously -- the guy who edited "Cold Mountain" - Walter Murch - is a nut! In the good way - he has to stand a certain way when he is working and he keeps his finger on his keyboard key to cut like he is drawing in a Western and while I really don't care for his style of movie and pacing at all --- I totally get what he is talking about. Also - apparently he has a new theory about film editing every single day and so do I. Well not about film editing but every single other thing - I have a theory about it.

"The Cutting Edge" repeats on Encore December 23 and 31 and again January 14th and I cannot recommend it - especially to vidders - highly enough.

So there ya have it: I am down on dramatizations of real-life and while I don't need a reason for not liking something other than not liking it - I think it is important to note that I actually do watch more real-life programs (documentaries) than anything else. So I don't think it is that I hate reality. Perhaps I just hate reality when it is scripted?

Next Documentary I watch - "The Fog of War" Robert S. McNamara, Vietnam and what the hell were we thinking?

Comments

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

Hm. Do I get Encore? ::checks DirecTV schedule::

No, for I am a cheapass with only basic cable. ::pout::

I highly recommend Walter Murch's slim little book, In the Blink of an Eye, in which he talks about film editing theory in the context of the way people's eyes and brains work...except it's not at all as dull or dry as it sounds. He never gets very technical, he's talking about the way people *think*, not about optic nerves and stuff. And he's just so damned excited about it. It's a delight to read.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Laura, email me your address through my profile page and I'll send you a VHS of it (after we tape it the 23rd)

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

You are the cat's pajamas!

::off to email::

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

Oh you have to see Murch in action. We watch him edit a scene in Cold Mountain over the course of the documentary, he makes choices and explains them and you can see him matching the scenes and at one point he is choosing a section of a scene and he says something along the lines of there being good movement in this bit, so this is the bit he uses. Just - it was very interesting.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

::drools::

Thanks to valarltd, it looks like I'll get to see it after all!

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much with you on this. It's the rare "based on a true story" movie I'll watch, and those are virtually never on TV. I'm not much interested in biopics -- although Ray is intriguing me, for the performance itself, and because Foxx had Ray's approval going in.

Real-life-based movies upset me badly. I was a sobbing wreck after Mississippi Burning, and one jerk of a guy with us said, "I don't get why you're upset. It's just a movie," and I think I screamed at him that it wasn't, it wasn't just a movie, even if things didn't happen exactly the way they did in the movie, they happened. Real people did these too-real, incredibly horrible things to other people.

I also walked out of Platoon at the point when they're flying off and leaving the guy behind to the Viet Cong. My boyfriend followed me out to the parking lot where I was walking up and down, crying and holding myself, and told me how badly I'd embarrassed him. And I just looked at him, and told him to take me home. At least, that's what I did in my memory. I hope I did that.

Modern war films like that, and films like Schindler's List, or Mississippi Burning, the common thread seems to be man's inhumanity to man, cases where it's not personal, almost, it's this horrific dehumanizing of whomever you're fighting or destroying. And yet I don't have a problem with (in fact, have a fascination for) fictionalizations about serial killers. Not so much "regular" murders, though. Hmmm.

Thanks for the mentions of the two documentaries, they both sound great. I'd love it, if you remember in future, if you'd post about those docs you find the most interesting. I tend to go for the fiction over non-fiction, but I do enjoy documentaries.

[luminosity]

I have yet to see Platoon all the way through. I saw Schindler's List *once*. I know it's a masterpiece and everything, and it totally gutted me, and I don't need to see that little red coat ever again. I can't go through that again. I saw Saving Private Ryan by accident (we walked out of The Avengers), and was gutted again. I guess I already know about man's inhumanity to man, and seeing it up on the big screen, during an activity that I pursue for pleasure is just too much.

Re serial killers. That sort of fascination held me in its thrall until I read the books about the Hollywood Stranglers and the Shoemaker's Son back to back. I had nightmares for months. I'm no longer fascinated, except in a very distant "Ooh, look at the supernova" way. Now I actively avoid knowing anything about the subject, if I can help it. Yes, yes, this is my head in the sand.

[missmurchison.livejournal.com]

My friends practically had to peel me off the theater floor after the little red coat part of Schindler's List. I haven't gone to any war or reality-based movies since.

But watching that movie still doesn't compare to the horrible experience of having to explain to my kids why they don't have many relatives on their father's side of the family. Or the way I feel every time I remember exactly how their great-grandmother and great-aunt died. My mother-in-law told me that story, but I haven't been able to bring myself to hand the ugly legacy down to my kids.

I don't need to be horrified by "entertainment" as well.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, this is my head in the sand.

Oh, but that implies to me somehow that you're "hiding" from something you shouldn't be, and I don't think that's the case, with the serial killer books. I've never gotten nightmares from any of these things, so that's not an issue for me, but I don't know that it's a particularly healthy fascination. *g*

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I really love Schindler's List for the devices employed in storytelling, but I have only been able to get thru the movie in one go - one time (the first time at the theater). I think it is important people see it and it is a movie I have re-watched - I just have to take my time and a lot of breaks.

I still haven't made it all the way through Platoon or Mississippi Burning - and I have been watching both of these movies for years and years - I feel like I have seen them - but I haven't - not in one go.

And I can watch fictionalized serial killer movies - like Copycat, any of the Hannibal movies, even that "Murder by Numbers" Sandra Bullock vehicle - but I can't take reality or realism. I tried to watch "Dahmer" and turned it off an hour in and I was creeped out for days. I did watch "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and still feel uneasy when I think about it. In the abstract, I want to be scared world of film, the concept of serial killers is just another bogeyman. When that line blurs - I start freaking out. A recent exception that I was actually able to watch was the A&E Green River Killer movie, but I had read the book and felt invested in the movie. But dude, I was so creeped out.

I'd love it, if you remember in future, if you'd post about those docs you find the most interesting.

Oh yeah - I should probably do that! I'm watching more and more now with Sundance's Doc Mondays and the current Doc Revival.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

It sounds like something similar to my own issues with RPS -- it doesn't matter to me if it's fictionalized, or that it bears no resemblance to reality, it's the reflection of something that is real that hits some button. I'm much more likely to be creeped out by fictionalizations of real serial killers than "true crime" books about them, come to think of it.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

I can read true crime books all day. I can watch all the Forensic Files and Profiles that Court TV can through at me and I'm fine.

I think the breakdown happens because when I am reading an account of something that really happened (and I don't like fictionalized retellings - give me a good old fashioned investigation) or when I am watching one of these doc-type shows -- the part of my brain that is processing all of this is more the informational center. Yes, I am horrified by what I read/see -- but I am also allowed a curiosity as to what happened, how they discovered this is what happened, and how someone was caught. Then I want to know *why* or *how* this person became this monster.

When I am watching a fictionalized account of a real-life serial killer - say Dahmer or Gacy -- I can't put it at an intellectual distance to analyze - it is bypassing all of those gates because it is masquarading as entertainment. And my mind immediately expects to be soothed or scared or any of the vast gamuts of emotion that watching a movie/movie has me classically conditioned to respond. And when it comes to real life killers - this *horror* really happened to someone -- the entertainment expectation just becomes way too icky.

[just-eunice.livejournal.com]

"The Cutting Edge" repeats on Encore December 23 and 31 and again January 14th and I cannot recommend it - especially to vidders - highly enough.

And now I'm drooling and setting my DVR. Thank you muchly for the heads up.

Next Documentary I watch - "The Fog of War" Robert S. McNamara, Vietnam and what the hell were we thinking?

Definitely a documentary that does not suck, but is equal parts frustrating and depressing. Be prepared to spend some time stomping around your living room asking your dog "Do we ever fucking learn?!?!?" If Sid is anything like Cody he will roll over for a belly scratch and look at you with sympathetic eyes that say "Dude, I'm sorry y'all suck so much, but on the upside opposable thumbs means you can reach that spot right there so it's not all bad."

[thisisbone.livejournal.com]

I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't seen Saving Private Ryan, or Platoon, or Schindler's List, or Mississippi Burning, or anything at all that even hints that it might be difficult to watch. I go to the movies to be entertained, not leave feeling like I've been worked over and hung out to dry.

I will watch documentaries (as you say). I love documentaries. But movies made from "real life" are just agonizing to me.

Having said that, I still feel safe in recommending Tigerland! (No, wait, hear me out!). It's set at a boot camp in Louisiana, not in Vietnam. Yes, it's about the draft, and training, and yeah, a lot of them are headed off to Vietnam at the end of the flick, but it's not a war movie. It's a movie about one man's brand of courage and the extent he's willing to go for his friends. It's a thing of beauty, and if I can watch it, complete and total la-la-la wuss that I am, you can probably handle it, too.

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

But you have to understand - I've already seen "Full Metal Jacket" and I can't take boys in boot camp again.

[luminosity]

Oh God, FMJ. Vincent Dinofrio. JESUS CHRIST. I can't watch that again either, and it's been on all month long. I mean, I see the genius that was Kubrick, but damn. No.

Give me vampires and sentient hamburger drive-throughs. Give me apocalyptic demon-goddesses. Give me space aliens. I can't bear a real look at the KKK.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I left a Kubrick triple feature (FMJ, the Shining and Clockwork Orange) one evening feeling like I'd been beaten with a padded 2x4.

No real-life movies here. I'm even iffy on war dramas. I did The Big Red One, Bridge on the River Kwai, Force 10 from Navarone and Hanover Street and that's plenty for me.

[luminosity]

Yeah. Putting the viewer through the wringer was a specialty of Kubrick's in his later movies. I loved The Killing and Dr. Strangelove, though, and I'll watch them every time they're on, especially The Killing.

[lierdumoa.livejournal.com]

"The Cutting Edge" repeats on Encore December 23 and 31 and again January 14th and I cannot recommend it - especially to vidders - highly enough.

Oooooooh! I told my dad just a month ago that I wanted to major in film (good thing I got into vidding early) and he called me up telling me about that. I haven't had tv access, but I think this time around I might just be able to catch the program! W00t!!!



As for Matt Damon, I'm a big fan of Good Will Hunting, and I remember thinking he was hot in it, though I was in junior high at the time so I'll need to go back and double check that.

[smartwomn1.livejournal.com]

We wandered into The Cutting Edge when surfing recently...and were captivated. We had to watch the whole thing and then discuss in detail.

(And I have not seen Private Ryan because there are somethings I simply do not need to see.)

I'm with you on biopics

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

but don't let that stop you from seeing Kinsey. Fascinating, infuriating, funny, touching, and completely worth 2 hours of your life.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

Fog of War is quite good. My sister and I watched it with our father, a retired social studies/history teacher of the Baby Boomer generation. It blew his mind.

[destina.livejournal.com]

I am being pimped high and low on "Tigerland" and I just have to say: no.

Say yes. It's a good movie. Also I am writing fiction for it. But don't tell anyone.

[cosmic.livejournal.com]

I too most do my final pimping of this movie. It's just so, so good. Well, mostly it's Colin Farrell being so, so good. and sexy.

But I understand your anti-real people movies thing. I've been wanting to see McNamara's Fog of War for ages now. And now I also desperately want to see The Cutting Edge. I wonder if I can rent it from somewhere...

[melinafandom.livejournal.com]

Courage Under Fire isn't a biopic or based on a true story. It's completely fictional despite being set during a real war. With the multiple-perspective storytelling, it feels nothing like a docudrama. It's just a really, really good movie with some amazing and unexpected performances. (It also isn't nearly as graphic or violent as Saving Private Ryan.)

[sisabet.livejournal.com]

It is the real war thing. I'm saving up all my current energy to get through "Black Hawk Down" although I have to admit that most of my CuF avoidance is probably due to the "Lifetime Movie of the Week" impression I got from the previews/commercials.

[melinafandom.livejournal.com]

Really, it couldn't be less Lifetime movie of the week -- I have no doubt that if Courage Under Fire had been released in November instead of the summer, it would've received multiple award nominations. It's not a traditional war movie or docudrama -- it's almost a mystery, with the events shown from different perspectives of the people involved. It's more character driven than any of the other war-type movies mentioned here.

Black Hawk Down is a great movie too (once you learn to tell all the characters apart -- there are something like 35 speaking roles) but if anything it's far more of a traditional "based on a true story" type of movie than Courage Under Fire. Chock full of hot men, though :) If you get hold of the special edition, the documentary on the actors' military training is very entertaining.

[klia.livejournal.com]

I'm with melina123. CuF couldn't be farther from a Lifetime Movie. And if you're avoidy of war movies, anyway, *beware* BHD. It's an excellent, excellent film, but it's freaking brutal! I *love* war movies, and I felt gutted at the end. CuF is far less intense, IMO.

It's a shame you're drawing the line at Full Metal Jacket, because even though Tigerland is set in a training camp, it bears *no* similarity to FMJ at all. It's field (jungle) training, not basic, and the movie is really all about the rebellious Boz (Farrell), and how the guys all bond and learn to trust each other and work together. Sorry, I'm *not* a Kubrick fan, because his films are so stylized and histrionic, so I didn't like FMJ much at all, Vincent or no.

[abelladonna.livejournal.com]

Oh, so many good things in your post to comment on, and all I really have to say is this: Heavenly Creatures!

[darlulu.livejournal.com]

Iceskating!Cutting Edge is one of the guiltiest pleasures I own. Aside from the kick-ass ending (yes, my sappy heart always speeds up a little bit when Doug catches Kate as the music swells and then there's that guy in the audience pumping his fist in time with the flag in the background), it also gets me uber-inspired to go out and exercise so long and hard I'll fall face first into my salad from exhaustion and ultimately shape up into a fit, hot Moira Kelly bot.

But anyway, yay for vid inspiration via video editing!Cutting Edge. And yeah, James Cameron is a total dumbass.

[mlyn.livejournal.com]

Wow, I have to watch The Cutting Edge. Redeeming aspects of XXX? This I have to see.

(Keep in mind that I've been writing XXX fic. I have nothing against the movie, except that it's a stinker.)