Voyeur (2017)

I had been putting off watching this documentary.  It seemed interesting, in the sense that it was about Gerald Foos, a motel owner.  Foos is just an ordinary guy, which I suppose is the point.  You could walk past him a thousand times and never suspect that he was looking in on his guests.  And by looking in, I mean that he had installed special vents in the rooms that allowed him to watch them having sex and whatnot.

The story came to light because Foos sent a letter to Gay Talese, a writer for the New Yorker.  Foos explained his story and told Talese that he could write it, assuming that Foos could remain anonymous.  It wasn’t until much later that Foos changed his mind and allowed the story to be written anyway.

You might think that there’s not much to the story, like I did, and you might have been right.  The thing is that Foos isn’t so good with the facts.  He gets dates wrong.  He recalls a robbery that might not have happened.  Talese is writing articles, taking Foos at his word.  When it comes out that Talese didn’t even check the most basic of information, it looks bad.

This is where the story shifts.  Part of it is about the immorality of the whole situation.  But then the story becomes the story, itself.  It all goes off the rails, a lot of which is Talese’s fault.  Part of why newspapers have fact checkers is to make sure this doesn’t happen.  You check facts first.  Then, you publish.

Of course, it’s easy to take Foos at his word.  He’s disarming at first glance.  Plus, the events happened decades earlier.  One can understand if he doesn’t recall things accurately.  The actual motel doesn’t even exist anymore.  However, it was so simple to do a search of the records.  Much of the drama could have been avoided had this been done.  This isn’t to say Foos’s story wouldn’t have been published.  If it had, the narrative would have been different.  This is as much the sin of Talese as it is of Foos.

This isn’t the Great American Documentary.  It is an interesting study on why diligence is important.  Admittedly, Foos had his problems.  He recalls times when he could easily have been caught.  He had initially decided never to reveal what he witnessed for obvious reasons. He knew what he was doing, assuming his story is accurate.  The fact that he wasn’t caught was more luck than anything else.

Talese did have more of a responsibility.  He got caught up in the story.  Maybe he didn’t have access to all the facts, but he had access to enough.  The last thing a journalist wants to do is pass fiction as fact.  Again, it wouldn’t have necessarily killed the story.  You just point out what has been verified and what hasn’t, assuming you put it in at all.  He could also have asked Foos to clarify.

This isn’t going ot change anyone’s perception, but it is an interesting story.   If you’ve gone through all your preferred movies during the pandemic, you might want to give this one a try.

 

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Three Identical Strangers (2018)

My mother and I were talking once about adopted children finding their biological families.  I felt that if I were adopted, I’d at least want to know about my family’s medical history.  It’s something that’s important to know about.  My mother held that it doesn’t matter as much, as you still need to lead a healthy lifestyle.  I actually thought of that conversation going in to Three Identical Strangers.

As you may have gathered from the trailers, it’s about a set of triplets that reunite at age 19.  It starts with Robert Shafran starting at Sullivan County Community College in 1980.  He cant figure out why everyone is being so friendly towards him…until someone calls him Eddy.  It turns out that one Eddy Galland had gone to the same school the previous year, but had decided not to return.  One of Eddy’s friends drives with Eddy to Robert’s house, where they discover that they were separated at birth.  This leads to some media coverage, which leads to the brothers discovering that there was a third brother, David Kellman.

The first hour covers the three brothers going through the talk-show circuit and getting to know each other.  They all seem friendly and get along pretty well.  They did manage to get in touch with their birth mother, who was single and didn’t feel that she was in a position to raise three boys.  For the most part, they’re happy to be reunited.

The adoptive parents wanted to know why the three children were split up.  It’s common to keep siblings, especially twins, together when being adopted.  The official story was that the adoption agency was afraid that parents wouldn’t want three children at once.  There was a suspicion that there was more to the story, but the triplets weren’t that eager to press it.

This is where the story goes sideways and where I’m going to stop giving out details.   I will say that this isn’t necessarily a feel-good movie.  The coming attractions present stuff from the first half of the movie, which gives the impression that it’s more upbeat.  There was something going on behind the scenes that makes you wonder about people.

It takes about an hour to really get into that part of it.  However, once it gets going, there are a lot of major revelations.   The more people dig into the story, the more bizarre it becomes.  I would say that the movie isn’t one for children.  This is mostly due to the subject matter being aimed at older adults.  The situations are rather heavy.  The movie does look into the nature-versus-nurture debate, for instance.  There are also ethical concerns raised about what happened with the children.

I still feel like I would want to know about my biological family if I found out that I was adopted.  My mother was correct in that knowing isn’t always that important.  You still have to take care of yourself and watch out for certain problems, regardless.  I would still like to at least meet people that I’m related to.  I have to wonder how things might have been different if Eddy or Robert hadn’t gone to the same community college.


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Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)

I’ve seen people propose that Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye run on the same presidential ticket in 2020.  If I were to pick two celebrities, I probably would have wanted Carl Sagan for president with Fred Rogers as his running mate.  Both were great communicators.  Both were even-tempered people.  The primary difference is a balanced ticket.  Whereas Sagan dealt with science, Rogers worked more with emotion and feeling.

It actually surprised me years ago to learn that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.  He wasn’t known for bringing religion into the show, which ran from 1968 to 2001.  It was a very simple show that dealt with all manner of topics.  It was usually something simple, but there would occasionally be shows on something more serious, like assassination.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor covers Rogers’s adult life, starting with his nearly completing Seminary.  He did eventually go back to become ordained, but felt that his calling was in television.  The movie has interviews from his family and people who worked on the show.  François Clemmons recalls what it was like being asked to play a police officer when he didn’t have a great image of police at the time.

Clemmons also recalls what it was like when someone spotted him at a gay bar.  When the news got back to Rogers, Clemmons was asked not to go back.  The main concern had more to do with advertising.  Being gay wasn’t as welcomed back then and there were certain lines the show didn’t want to cross just yet.  However, Rogers did eventually make it known that he accepted Clemmons just the way he was.  This is the only time the movie shows him being pragmatic.  I really got the sense that Fred Rogers wanted to reach children and give them a safe space.

There aren’t many revelations with this movie.  You’re not going to come out of it thinking of him differently.  The only thing that really shocked me was finding out he was a registered Republican.  However, he’s presented exactly as I would expect him to be presented.  Mr. Rogers wanted to speak to children to let them know that they were special, not in the sense of being entitled, but rather in the sense of having value.  In a sense, that kind of surprised me.  I would have thought that there was more to him, but Fred Rogers was Mr. Rogers.  Despite what others may have thought, there didn’t seem to be much more than was presented in the show.

The movie is rated PG-13, but I’m honestly trying to think of anything that would be overly objectionable.  I think it comes from some historical footage.  One clip shows a hotel owner pouring cleaning fluid in a pool to scare off African-Americans.  Still, I think most of the people seeing this movie will be adults.  It will either be the children who grew up watching the show or the parents of those children.

In a way, the documentary shows how easy it was to just watch Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.  The show was so simple, it was difficult to think that there would be any deeper meaning.  The show was very much a product of its time, but also of Fred Rogers.  He did put a lot of himself into that show, with the puppets representing different aspects of himself.  I’d say that anyone who grew up watching the show should probably watch the documentary.

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The Search for Life in Space (2016)

For some reason, I always fall into the same trap.  I know that most space documentaries will offer little new information, yet I watch them.  The Search for Life in Space is just such a documentary.  As you might imagine, it deals with extraterrestrial beings and how we might find them.  Most of the documentary deals with possible planets and moons within our own solar system, but does mention the Kepler telescope and the extrasolar planets that it has helped to find.

From what I’ve read, the movie was made for IMAX and was originally shown in 3-D, which makes sense.  The movie isn’t too big on plot or giving out a lot of detail.  It mentions a few moons that might be suitable.  This seems to be mostly a way of showing some nice pictures.   I wish I had the chance to see it in 3-D.  I should warn you that the soundtrack does leave something to be desired.  It was good, but not great.

It’s the kind of thing I could see playing on loop at a science museum on a screen in the corner.  At just over 30 minutes, it’s also the kind of thing that a teacher could show to a science class.  It’s pretty generic and could be understood by pretty much anyone.

There were a few omissions. I don’t recall it mentioning the Drake Equation or the Fermi Paradox, both central to the topic.  I don’t also don’t remember the movie mentioning Europa, although I may simply have missed it.  Europa is a pretty good candidate for extraterrestrial life.  I don’t get the impression that this was meant to be informative.  It seems like it was meant to be pretty for the really big screen.  If you can get it streaming, go for it.  If not, I wouldn’t worry about getting it on DVD.

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Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory/La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (1895)

I’ve often wondered if inventors understand things that they set in motion.  Gutenberg didn’t invent the book.  He didn’t even invent the printing press.  He did make a moveable type that made it cheaper to print books.   Thanks to him, I grew up with bibles in every hotel room.  I sometimes wonder what he would think of things like newspapers, romance novels or even the Internet.  Paper isn’t even required any more.

The same could be said of movies.  I’ve been looking at IMDb’s lower-numbered titles.  These aren’t necessarily the earliest, mind you.  I did get curious to see what had gotten the #1 spot, or rather TT0000001.  That belongs to Carmencita.  #10 belongs to La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon, or Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory.  Both films are short and appear to be simply a recording of everyday events.

Carmencita is a woman dancing.  Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory is, as you might expect, people walking out of a factory.  They’re leaving through one large gateway and a regular door.  There are apparently three different versions.  What’s the difference?  It appears to be the presence or absence of a dog and/or a horse.  (It’s easy to find the different versions on YouTube.)

It’s hard to find a list of movies from this far back.  Clicking on 1895 on IMDb doesn’t even bring up this movie, let alone any others, so it’s difficult for me to judge what the industry was like back then.  It is what you would call silent, even if it is accompanied by music.  It’s also in black and white.  There’s no dialogue of any kind.  I was hoping to see if the content was the norm or the exception.  Were most films of the day just shorts like this?  According to Wikipedia, feature-length films started about a decade later.

I wonder if the pioneers of film technology could imagine people having a video camera in their pockets.  We can record videos of our cats or of our neighbors and post it online for all to see.  I remember there being a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere in Russia; it was well-documented because everyone had dashboard cameras in their cars.  Everyone has the ability to record motion pictures now.   I think there were stereoscopic still pictures back then, so I think 3-D movies would have been conceivable.  I would think adult movies would also have been considered.  I have to wonder, though, how the makers of this film would have reacted to modern technology.

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The Toys That Made Us (Season 2)

I grew up with a lot of toys.  I don’t know if my brothers and I were ahead of or behind the curve in terms of numbers, but we did have quite a few.  That’s what caught my attention when I saw The Toys That Made Us.   Several of the toy lines I grew up with were featured in some of the episodes.  The show is split into two seasons, with the first season covering four toy lines like He-Man.

In the second season, four more toy lines are featured:  Star Trek, Transformers, LEGO and Hello Kitty.  All four of these toy lines have name recognition.  Star Trek is a well-known TV and movie franchise.  As for Hello Kitty, if you don’t know the name, you’ve probably at least seen the cute face.

I actually found this season a little more informative than the previous season.  Part of that is because I grew up with two of the toy lines.  We had all manner of Transformer toys.  As for LEGO, I think we still have a few hundred pounds of the bricks stashed away in closets somewhere.

Another reason for my increased interest is that I wasn’t really aware of the Star Trek and Hello Kitty toys. I’ve watched a lot of the Star Trek shows, although I never really got into the collectible end of it.  (Well, ok.  I bought the trading cards, but that’s it.)  Hello Kitty was never really my thing.  I had some passing knowledge, like the character’s name is Kitty White.  Most of the additional information was totally new to me.

This season also seemed to go into more detail, overall.  The first season seemed like it was jut a brief rundown of how the company rose to power and, in some cases, subsequently failed.  Here, the toys seem to be a lot more successful.  Star Trek is still around.  Even though LEGO and Hello Kitty have had problems, neither brand is going away any time soon.  I’m ot sure if Transformer toys are still in stores, though.

One good thing about the series is that each episode is independent of the others.  You could watch just one on the toy you liked.  You can watch them out of order or in order.  Each episode is under an hour, making it relatively easy to binge four or all eight in one sitting.

I think this show is banking mostly on nostalgia.  All of the brands have been around longer than the average college student.  In fact, I think most of them are older than I am.  I would imagine, though, that most people reading this have played with at least one of the brands in the second season, if not the first.  If you didn’t have LEGOs, you probably had a friend who did.  I don’t think you could make it through elementary school without seeing that cute feline face at least once.

I’m curious to know if there’s going to be a third season.  The opening theme states that it’s an eight-part documentary series.  This doesn’t preclude more episodes.  However, I’m not sure what they would pick for new episodes.  I can’t imagine any of the four brands in this season not being among the ten most recognizable.    I can’t think of any other name in toys that would match up to these.

If Netflix does want to do something similar in the future, it would probably be better to focus on a different product, like video games.  Around the 1970s and 1980s, home computers and video consoles were being introduced.  Atari and Commodore would both be good candidates if a series was done on electronics.  I don’t know that I’d hold my breath for another four episodes on toys.

IMDb page

The Black Ships (1970)

It’s somewhat frustrating to try to review a title and be able to find almost no information on it.  This is especially true of shorter films.  Charles and Ray Eames made a short film about Commodore Perry’s expedition to Japan called, simply The Black Ships.  It’s done with artwork at the time and explanatory narration.

The Smithsonian Institution is listed on IMDb as a production company, which I would infer to mean that they may have used the short film as part of an exhibit..  However, I can’t find anything to back that up.  This is exactly the kind of short film a museum might play on loop.  It’s short and informative, but not too deep.  It’s apparently made for the shorter attention span of someone that‘s passing through

Finding information is made more difficult by the fact that I get information on Black Ships, directly.  Black Ship is the term given to a Western vessel by the Japanese from the 16th to the 19th centuries.  According to the film, the technology and appearance of the ships was new to the Japanese, who tried to copy as much of it as they could.

The short is available on DVD.  I’m not sure most people would get the set just for this, though.  I would think interest in this subject is going to be fairly narrow.   Even a school wanting to use it for a class might find it lacking.  You could probably find something more informative elsewhere.  If anything, it might be assigned as additional viewing outside of class if the school library had it or it were made available online.

IMDb page

The Toys That Made Us (Season 1)

Some brands are so ubiquitous, it’s impossible to imagine someone that doesn’t know what they are.   If you walked down a busy street in a major city, I’d imagine that everyone would know what Taco Bell is.  You’d probably be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Microsoft.  The same goes for toys.  Netflix produced a documentary series about eight toy lines, dividing them in to two seasons.

The first four episodes deal with Star Wars, Barbie, He-Man and G.I. Joe in that order.  Even if you didn’t play with any of those toy lines, you’re probably familiar with them.  Most people my age either had some of those toys or knew someone who did.  That’s how popular these toys were.

Each episode details the history of the toy line.  We see interviews from key people, like designers and writers  In the case of Star Wars, they were made to cash in on the success of the movies.  With He-Man and G.I. Joe, the reverse was true.  The comics and TV series were made to promote the toys.  Either way, toy companies were talking about millions of dollars in sales every year.

Each episode runs under an hour.  There wasn’t much that I would consider new information.  You don’t really get to see a lot of the details.  It’s more like who the major players were.  Some people came up with the general idea.  Some people developed characters or art.  In the case of He-Man, the comics and TV show were one man’s quick-witted attempt to get the company to produce the toys.

I think most of it is the perspective  As a child, you can forget that there’s a business end to the stuff you want.  To companies like Mattel and Hasbro, these are how they keep the lights on.  Most adults won’t be surprised by this.  It’s kind of fun to see what people (and the companies) had to go through to get the products to market.

I don’t know that the series is meant for a general audience.  If you didn’t own one of those four toys, you’re probably not going to be interested in that particular episode.  Each line had it’s ups and downs.  I do remember playing with He-Man as a child.  That was probably the most interesting episode to me.  The others didn’t seem to have that same connection.  I knew people that were really into Star Wars and I think we had a few of the smaller G.I. Joe toys, sure.  I just didn’t feel like I took anything away from those episodes.

I think, if anything, the series is geared more towards collectors.  I might watch the next four episodes, mostly because it includes two toy lines (Transformers and LEGO) that I played with.  The opening theme indicates that this is an eight-part series, so I don’t know that there will be a third season.  I’d be interested to see what they might do with that, though.

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Atlas (1976)

A lot of things happened in years ending with 76.  I was born in 1976.  200 years before that, America broke away from England.  Also, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, was published.  Atlas was produced to coincide with the 200th anniversary of its publication.

It’s a short video, only 2½ minutes long.  The video shows how Rome grew from a city to an empire and back again.  Most versions seem to repeat the video.  The first time has narration.  The second time is just the animation with music.  (The version on the Eames YouTube Channel has Russian subtitles.)

The animation is pretty simple.  It shows Rome and the surrounding empires and groups, like the Huns, and how each group changed over the corresponding years.  The time frame runs from circa 500 B.C. to A.D. 500.  The short is safe for people of all ages.  It’s just a map with changing lines and either narration or music.

There’s nothing objectionable like fights.  It’s not particularly elaborate, but it is at least somewhat informative.  It helps people visualize what the map looked like over the span of a millennium.  It’s exactly the kind of thing that a teacher might show to a third-grade class.

IMDb doesn’t list who the narrator is and I can’t find any information that would suggest a particular name.  I would imagine that it’s narrated by Charles Eames only because the voice is male.  If anyone can tell me definitively, please leave a comment.

IMDb page

901: After 45 Years of Working (1990)

After seeing Powers of Ten, I had wanted to see more movies by Charles and Ray Eames.  The good news is that many of their short films are available.  The bad news is that only a few are available streaming.  Powers of Ten can be seen on YouTube, either directly or through the Eames Official Site.  Another is this video, 901: After 45 Years of Working.  (Both movies make up the first disc of The Films of Charles & Ray Eames.)

The movie documents the closing of the Eames workshop after the death of Ray Eames.  It’s narrated by Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles Eames and features several people that were working at the workshop at the time of its closing.

The film documents the way the office looked as everything was being moved out.  There were a lot of slides that were being donated to the Library of Congress, which Ray Eames had been helping to catalogue.  There was also a lot of art and furniture.  Much of it was to be distributed, but I don’t recall if it was mentioned exactly where all of it was going.

The film is meant for people who have an interest in the Eames.  It doesn’t appear to have a rating, but I would say that it’s safe for all audiences.  There’s no cursing or violence.  I don’t recall any nudity, but if there was, it would have been as artwork hanging in the background.  It’s not a particularly exciting movie, but it is at least informative.  It’s exactly the kind of movie you could show in an art class one day if need be.

If you don’t have an interest in the Eames or in furniture, I’m not sure if you’ll make it through the entire video.  However, it is available streaming, so it’s worth at least a few minutes of your time.

IMDb page

Powers of Ten (1977)

The new Philip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science opened a few months ago.  Back before it moved to its current location, it was located right at the southern end of I-95.  I remember going there as a child a lot.  One of the things I remember was this dark room with a film called Powers of Ten, made by Charles and Ray Eames.

The concept is simple.  It starts out in  Soldier Field in Chicago with a couple having a picnic.  The filed of view is a square with text on either side.  On the left shows the distance, vertically, in numbers.  (We start with a square one meter by one meter.)  On the right side is the same information, horizontally, in powers of ten.  (Instead of 1 meter across, it’s shown as 100 meters.

The narrator explains that as we zoom out, the distance across the square increases by one power of ten every ten seconds, so that after one second, we’re at 10 meters, then 100 and so on.  After a few minutes, we make it to 10²⁴ meters, which makes our entire galaxy no more than a distant point of light.  We then zoom back in reducing a power of ten every 2 seconds until we’re back to 1 meter across.  We then work inward until the field of view is 10^-16 meters across.

The entire film is a short 9 minutes, but it imparts the sense of scale quite well.  We go form a normal size to a very vast scale, then down to a very small scale.  The movie was made in 1977, which probably would have made for a smaller upper and lower limit, but it’s still pretty vast.  The last few lines of the narration point out that the film covers 40 orders of magnitude.  It’s a bit much to comprehend, even after watching the movie.

While I grew up watching the film a lot, I don’t recall many other children mentioning it.  In fact, I only recall having a conversation about it once where the other kid mistook the narrator’s voice for the voice of Winnie the Pooh.  (To be fair, Phil Morrison does sound like the voice from the Disney films, but I don’t think he ever actually voiced the character.)  The web comic xkcd did reference it once, which I would take to mean that the film has a certain amount of prominence.  However it’s not the kind of thing I’d expect to see on TV or even on Netflix.  (You can rent this film as part of a DVD set, but I don’t think you can get it streaming.   I have seen it on YouTube, though.)

It’s worth noting that there was an earlier version, released in 1968.  I haven’t seen this one yet, although I imagine it might also be available through YouTube.  I have seen both offered on one DVD through Amazon, so I know that both versions are available.

I still think of this short every so often and go to watch it on YouTube.  Maybe one day, I’ll get around to purchasing it on Amazon.  I wonder if it was carried over to the new science museum.  If I ever get the chance to visit, I’ll have to check it out.

IMDb page

Official site (Eames Office)

Yume to kyôki no ôkoku/The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)

Some documentaries are straightforward.  You’re presented with information meant to teach you about a given subject.  Others, not so much.  The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness takes a look behind the scenes Studio Ghibli Primarily, the movie focuses on the production of The Wind Rises, which was Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent attempt at a final film.  (He had previously announced his retirement several times before only to direct another movie.)

Another movie, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, is mentioned, only because it was in production at the same time and was supposed to be released at the same time as The Wind Rises, although The Tale of Princess Kaguya is shown as having too many delays.  Thus, the documentary focuses on The Wind Rises with The Tale of the Princsess Kaguya having a small role.

It starts with a meeting about how merchandising sales and not having released a movie in the previous year.  It shows storyboarding, animating and voicing the movie.  The parts showing the animating didn’t seem to focus on too many people, although you get the impression that there’s a much larger team at work.  Likewise, only the Japanese voice of the movie’s main character is shown.  Those producing the movie knew that they wanted Hideaki Anno to voice Jiro Horikoshi, although they weren’t sure if he’d be available.  No other recording for the voices are even mentioned.

The movie also has segments with Miyazaki talking about things like the Fukushima disaster.  In one scene, he responds to a letter from someone and talks about his father.  Other parts of the movie cover the history of Studio Ghibli, as well as Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata.

It comes across almost like a bonus feature for The Wind Rises, as there is a lot of behind-the-scenes footage.  This doesn’t mean that you have to have seen The Wind Rises.  If you’re a fan of any of the studio‘s movies,  you’ll want to watch this movie.

My mother once asked me if knowing more about a movie takes away from the enjoyment.  I have been known to watch the bonus features when I have a chance and will also read the trivia section on IMDb.  I don’t think this would take away from watching The Wind Rises at all.  Since you get to see some of Miyazaki’s opinions on certain topics, it does give you insight in to his personality.  It might affect your opinion of him as a person, but it didn’t affect my ability to watch his films in the future.

It is worth noting The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness doesn’t have many heavy spoilers, although some information about the movie is mentioned.  You see scenes from the movie being voiced and animated.  I don’t think there would be enough to ruin the movie nor does there seem to be any assumption as to whether or not the viewer has already seen it.

People unfamiliar with animation and Studio Ghibli probably won’t get as much out of this.  In fact, I could almost see the documentary being used for a class on animation.  We sometimes think of studios and directors being something mythical and we can forget that actual people are involved in the making of a movie.  There’s also the business side of movies.  Merchandising can bring in a lot of revenue.  (There’s a reason lunch boxes were so popular in the 1980s.)  If you’re interested in Studio Ghibli, I’d watch this documentary.

IMDb page

Carmencita (1894)

Sometimes, curiosity gets the better of me.  I’ll click on Wikipedia links until I end up looking up information on a movie, and suddenly I’m reading about useless buildings.  While looking at IMDb, I got curious about the seven-digit number assigned to each title.  Was there a title number 1?  Apparently, there is.  It’s called Carmencita.

This is one of those unusual cases where I’m not really reviewing a title.  Instead, this is more to point out something of interest.  This is probably a title that you’d never come across in your usual routine.  IMDb has it listed as both a documentary and a short, both of which are correct.  (I’m not sure what to call it other than a documentary, as it’s documenting the dance routine.)

Carmencita is only about 24 seconds long and is produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company.  William K.L. Dickson was the man who made the motion picture camera for the company and subsequently produced and directed a few short films.  One of these films was of a dancer named Carmen "Carmencita" Dauset Moreno, who demonstrated one of her routines.

It’s difficult to really go into any detail, since it’s such a short routine.  There is some significance in that Ms. Moreno is the first person to appear in an American film.  (Edison Manufacturing Company was called "America's First Movie Studio”.)  It has also passed into the public domain due to its age, meaning you can find several copies on YouTube.  It’s not the kind of thing that’s difficult to come by.  I write this more in the hopes that someone will read this and find it at least mildly interesting.

 IMDb page

The Last Man on the Moon (2014)

Everyone’s heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.  They were the first two people to walk on the in that order.  You may not know the name Eugene Cernan.  Of the twelve people to have gone to the moon, he was the last person to leave.  He was the one to turn off the proverbial lights.  I hadn’t heard of him until this documentary showed up on Netflix.  I actually found it around the time of his death earlier this year.  I’m not sure why I held off on watching it until last night.

The documentary covers his life, starting with him joining the Navy when he was 22.   He was eventually selected for the Gemini program, which dealt with low Earth orbit.  He then joined the Apollo program, which was about getting to the moon.  He was on Apollo 10, which was a test run for Aldrin and Armstrong.  It wasn’t until Apollo 17 that Cernan got his chance to set foot on our only natural satellite.

I’ve always had a fascination with going into space.  It seems kind of depressing to think that there’s this entire universe out there and we haven’t sent someone past the lunar orbit.  Sure, we’ve sent probes to Mars.  We’ve even sent two machines out past our solar system.  I hate to think that we won’t actually send someone to another star within my lifetime.

I think that may have been why I put off watching the documentary.  Cernan was the last person to leave the moon.  When visiting a launch site, he regrets coming.  The site had been unused for decades and he didn’t want to remember the Apollo missions that way.

The documentary is partially clips like that, showing Cernan with friends or at a rodeo.  There are also historical clips, like the module going down towards the moon or coming back.  There are also interviews with Cernan, his family and from other people who worked in the space program.

Cernan admits that being an astronaut wasn’t great for his family life.  The training was intense and the trip to the moon was three days  each way.  It was difficult on his wife to have to sit there hoping everything went right when we were doing something that was entirely new.  There was always a sense that something catastrophic might happen.  In fact, catastrophic things did happen.  Equipment didn’t always work.  Human error was always a possibility.  Being an astronaut wasn’t that easy.  I imagine it still isn’t.

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Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press (2017)

You may not have heard of King Pyrrhus of Epirus.  He beat the Romans in the Battle of Heraclea, but suffered a greater proportional loss than the Romans did.  Thus, the term pyrrhic victory has come to mean a situation where one technically wins, but comes at a cost so high as to undo any advantage gained.

Terry Bollea may have suffered a similar victory in suing the gossip site Gawker.  If you’ve never heard the name Terry Bollea, either, you can be forgiven.  You may know him better as Hulk Hogan.  Gawker made public a sex tape of Hogan.  (Interestingly, the sex tape has its own IMDb page.)  Hogan then sued Gawker out of existence.  It’s natural to sue over something like this.  It’s a violation of his privacy.  He did win, but it ultimately cost him his relationship with the WWE.

The question isn’t so much if Hulk Hogan was correct in suing.  The documentary focuses on the role of an independent press.  Did Gawker have the right to publish the sex tape?  Since Hulk Hogan is a celebrity, then yes.  Not only would the tape be relevant, but there were parts to it that eventually came out and proved more damaging to Hulk Hogan than the original clip.

The documentary then pivots to the sale of the Las Vegas Review-Journal to a mysterious group of investors.  The reporters for the Review Journal suspected Sheldon Adelson of being part of that group.  The reporters investigated and found that they weren’t far off.  They ran with the story, which resulted in a lot of said reporters leaving the newspaper.

You’re probably wondering why I’d give away so much of the documentary.  Part of it is that it is history.  You may or may not have noticed Gawker going away.  You may or may not have read about the case in the paper.  However, I don’t consider it spoilers if it was a news story.  There is also the issue of the documentary making a good case.

When I added the documentary to my list on Netflix, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to watch it.  I’ve never been a fan of Hulk Hogan or wrestling in general.  I had come into it thinking that Gawker had done something sleazy and was now facing the music.  The documentary does make a good point of showing how even something as salacious as posting a sex video is worthy of protection under the First Amendment.  If we don’t protect Gawker, it sets precident for other media to be sued.

The important things for a journalist are accuracy and relevance.  Was it actually Hulk Hogan in the tape?  Yes.  All claims made by Gawker were accurate.  Was it relevant?  As it pertained to a celebrity, the answer is also yes.  I would agree that Gawker could have used some discretion.  Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

The point that the documentary makes is that a free press is necessary for a free society.  Part of their charge is to call out the excesses and misdeeds of those in charge.  This is why it’s so disturbing that President Trump would disparage the press.  He’s discrediting those who are supposed to be keeping an eye on him.  This is exactly why not interfering with the free press is engrained in the First Amendment.  Newspapers cannot be afraid of the government.

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Silicon Cowboys (2016)

Growing up, I would hear of people having office computers that were huge by today’s standards that easily cost five figures.  For that money, you’d have processing speeds measured in kilobytes or, if they spent enough money, a few megabytes.  Today, we can hold in our hands devices that would leave those computers in the dust and they cost less than we make in a month, not more than what we’d make in our lifetimes.

My first computer was a Commodore 64.  Titles were limited by what had been made (or ported) for your system.  This meant that my family was limited by what was available for the Commodore.  For years, companies had tried to make a portable computer that was reasonably priced and could run IBM software.  This would mean that IBM wouldn’t have an effective monopoly on personal computers, much like Windows has today.  The problem was that this meant having to copy IBM’s internal code.

Enter Compaq.  They realized that they could try writing the base code and fix what didn’t work.  Yes, they were stumbling in the dark, but it was better than being sued out of existence.  It eventually worked.  Compaq was able to release a portable computer that could run any software that an IBM computer could run.  Customers were all over it.

Silicon Cowboys shows the story of how Compaq was founded and its rise and eventual acquisition by HP.  Having a personal computer was kind of a big thing back then.  It was kind of like the scene in Back to the Future where Marty is visiting his mother’s house when she was a teenager.  From him, televisions are common.  It’s common for a family to have three sets in their house.  For someone in the 1950s, not so much.

Compaq was founded in 1981.  When we first got the Commodore, I was in elementary school.  (It would have been somewhere in the mid 1980s.)   People might have had a computer, but it was nowhere near the saturation we see today, where a home might have a desktop, three laptops and a few iPhones thrown in for good measure.  By the time I was in high school, personal computers were everywhere.  My middle school and high school both had computer labs.  By the time I entered college, I already had an email address.  I don’t know that any of this would have happened without Compaq.

The story is an interesting one.  It focuses primarily on the business end of it, showing how the founders didn’t really know what they wanted to do when they quit their jobs.  They had even considered a Mexican restaurant at one point.  Considering the mortality rate of the companies that had tried before, they had no reason to expect to succeed.  Yet, they did.

There is a certain historical context that I think the documentary was missing.  I’ve come to realize that children born the day I graduated high school have since gone on to graduate high school, themselves.  That generation will have grown up with computers being ubiquitous, much like I grew up with three televisions.  The documentary compares taking on IBM to taking on Google today, but I wonder how things might have been different had Compaq failed.

It’s hard to say.  Compaq effectively forced IBM out of making personal computers.  We now have Windows dominating the market for operating systems.  Had this not happened. we probably would have still had personal computers.  If not Commodores and Apples, then some other manufacturer might have become big.  I would have liked to see the documentary go into this a little more.  Either way, the computing landscape would definitely look a lot different had it not been for Compaq.

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Amelia: A Tale of Two Sisters (2017)

Amelia Earhart is one of those names that was well before my time.  As such, I think the context is different for me than it was when she was alive.  Today, flying is something we take for granted.  It’s said to be the safest method of travel.  In the 1920s and 1930s, when Earhart was active, flying was still new.  Granted, gender roles were still difficult to overcome at the time.  Amelia’s sister, Grace, married and had a family.  Grace’s route was by far the more common route for women in that era.  However, Amelia was determined to fly and to do so professionally.

Amelia:  A Tale of Two Sisters does show the disparity between the two sisters, but tends to focus on Amelia Earhart, as she was the one to make headlines.  The documentary shows how she had to basically be a passenger on a flight, as she wasn’t really trusted to fly.  She did eventually make a solo transatlantic flight, something that only Charles Lindbergh had done previously.

What most people know her for, though, is her attempt to fly around the globe with Fred Noonan.  In early July of 1937, they disappeared just shy of circumnavigation.  There are theories as to what happened.  The most common is that they went down in the ocean and were never able to make it to land.  Another is that they did make it to what was then called Gardner Island, where they managed to survive for a period of time.  There’s no concrete proof of this.  A third theory is that they were captured by the Japanese.  The documentary doesn’t mention any proof of the third theory.

I watched the documentary mostly to learn a little more about Amelia Earhart.  I knew going in that it would be kind of basic, but I knew very little about her.  I wasn’t even aware that she had a sister, which is why this documentary caught my attention.  The amount of information is exactly what I would have expected from a 40-something-minute episode.

It goes into her early life and how she knew from first seeing an air show what her career path would be.  There is also material on her parents and her sister.  There are interviews from three people, including Earhart’s niece, Amy Klepner.  The other two are Ric Gillespie with TIGHAR and Dorothy Cochrane with the National Air and Space Museum.

A good portion is dedicated to her disappearance with some repetition of material.  It’s the kind of thing that a beginner to the subject, like myself, will enjoy.  I think someone looking for detailed information on Earhart will probably want to look elsewhere.

After Porn Ends 2 (2017)

Porn isn’t something you’d think of as having a golden age.  Today’s porn is different than when I was growing up.  All we had was VHS and you had to go to a store to get it.  There weren’t any of these fancy Web sites with their flashy banners and whatnot.  And there were big names, too.  Everyone knew at least one, even if you didn't watch the stuff.

Starring in an adult film could change your life.  It could define what you could do with your life, both during and after.  A few years ago, a documentary came out called After Porn Ends.  It showed how gaining that level of recognition could limit what you could do afterwards.  Not many people were able to hold ’normal’ jobs because everyone saw them as a porn star.

After Porn Ends 2 is a direct sequel to that documentary.  It doesn’t follow up on any of the previous stories.  Instead, we have a new batch of people who have made their living making adult films.  As with the original, many don’t work much outside of the adult industry.  Some market adult novelties.  Some have tried their hand at art.  Many have retired only to go back to what they know best.

In the first documentary, many of the stars had their regrets.  Here, a lot of the stars seem happy.  Again, many haven’t been able to move on.  Instead, some have embraced it.  A few talk about the movies they made and liking the recognition they get on the street.  Lisa Ann was able to play Sarah Palin in an adult film and became known for it.

This isn’t always the case. Janine Lindemulder was sent to jail for back taxes.  When she got out, her child had been taken away from her.  Between her tattoos and former career, she didn’t really stand a chance.  There’s also Darren James, who was diagnosed with HIV after coming back from Brazil.  It made headlines, forcing him to come out to his family about what he did for a living.  It caused the adult film industry in Southern California to cease production for several months.

There’s a much wider spectrum in this movie.  Each star is featured for a few minutes while we see what they think of having starred in adult films.  There are also a few people that are getting into the industry talking about how they expect their careers to go.  We even get to see adult stars going back several generations, including Georgina Spelvin, who is 81.

As you might imagine, this is not a movie for children.  Some of the stars go into explicit detail about what they did and what their plans were.  And yes, nudity is shown.  (There are several clips from adult movies.)  This is not a movie for children.  This isn’t to say that you have to watch porn to enjoy the documentary.  Each segment is short enough not to become boring.  I just wouldn’t watch it with your parents.

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Secrets of Underground London (2014)

I’ve always had a fascination with forgotten and abandoned structures.  It’s interesting to see something that was once used now sit empty.  It’s a piece of history preserved.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in an abandoned rail station.  Secrets of Underground London looks at a few places, mostly abandoned and forgotten, beneath Brittan’s capitol city.

The entire documentary is part of a series called The Secrets of Britain.  The episode is just under an hour, as you might expect.  Each segment deals with something different.  One is about underground rivers. Another is about Churchill’s underground bunkers.  We even get to see a Roman amphitheater buried beneath London.  The episode is almost a travel guide of places you’ll probably never be able to see.

There are a few places that aren’t off limits, like the London Silver Vaults.  It apparently started as a secure vault that started letting people in.  there’s also a segment on the London Underground, mentioning the system’s map.  The episode ends with the expansion of the British Museum.  They’re having to carefully excavate around the area so that they can build downward.  (Since the episode aired several years ago, the work might be done already.)

The episode is pretty generic and is perfect for short attention spans.  It’s the kind of thing a teacher might play for a class when they need to waste an hour.  The only thing that might be scary is the story of a ‘haunted’ cave.  The segment doesn’t go into much detail except to say that someone was supposed to have died there.  Two men spent the night there as part of a challenge.  One was so scared that he blocked the memory of what happened.

This is the kind of thing that’s more of an overview.  Each segment could probably be developed into its own documentary.  I would imagine that there’s no shortage of stuff on Churchill, alone.  I could also see finding something on the London Underground.  This is exactly the kind of thing that PBS would run during a membership drive.  I could even see them giving out a copy of the six-episode series.

If you’re interested, I’d recommend looking into getting it streaming.  I was able to get it through Netflix.  I’m sure places like Amazon would have it, as well.  I don’t know that this would have a lot of replay value.  If you’re thinking of giving it as a gift, maybe a Secret Santa sort of thing.  It’s not the kind of thing that you’re going to watch again and realize you missed something.

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Tesla: Master of Lightning (2000)

Those that get credit aren’t always those that did most of the work.  Thomas Edison is a name synonymous with electricity.  Marconi is associated with radio.  Both of these men owe their fortunes to Nikola Tesla.  Tesla was able to invent a working alternating-current motor.  It was Tesla who first patented a viable radio system.  (Edison did, however, invent the electric meter used for billing.)

If you associate the name Tesla with electric cars only, there’s a reason for that.  As they say, the business of business is business.  Edison was, first and foremost, a businessman.  Tesla was a great inventor, but he seemed to lack the social and business skills to achieve fame and fortune.  He did well for himself, at least for a little while.  He sold patents to Westinghouse and received royalties that could have bankrupted the company.  In the end, he died bankrupt.

I found a documentary on Netflix about Tesla.  I was interested to know more about him; when I saw the 87-minute running time, I thought I had something.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  The documentary seems to be made for a general audience, which is typical for PBS.  It comes off as boring and long-winded.  This isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable.  It’s just that I found myself bored about halfway through.  It’s one of those documentaries that you keep expecting to end every five minutes.

This isn’t necessarily to sleight PBS.  There does seem to be an audience for this.  The problem was that I was looking for something interesting on someone that I didn’t know much about.  This wasn’t really what I was looking for.  The documentary doesn’t really do justice to Tesla.  Here was a man that was able to come up with great inventions.  The narration was flat and was used to tie together some still and video shots.

There were only two notable scenes, and I’m bringing them up mainly if you’re thinking of letting children watch this.  First, there was an electrocution of an elephant shown.  They do actually show the elephant being electrocuted and subsequently falling over.  They also mention electricity’s use in the death penalty.  This isn’t as graphic, but is still shown.

The documentary does seem to hype Tesla.  He was a great inventor and I’ve heard that his hatred of Edison may have been well earned.  However, it seems like several other people involved were downplayed.  Westinghouse did have a contract with Tesla and it was Tesla’s decision to tear up the contract rather than let Westinghouse go bankrupt.

I feel like a documentary about Tesla could have been done better.  This is one of those situations where reading a book would probably be a better idea, as it can go more in depth with the various aspects of Tesla’s life.  There seems to be so much going on that I wouldn’t be surprised if most of it was being left out.  If I’m going to recommend a documentary to inform people of Tesla, this probably isn’t going to be it.

Netflix seems to have a mixed bag of documentaries.  There are some good ones on the streaming site and some bad ones.  This was one of the ones I wish I had avoided.  I do recommend finding out more about Tesla.  I just don’t recommend renting this documentary.

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