Documentaries Thread - The Bear and Badger

LarryDavid

pantyfire wrote:

I read a book about RAF bomber command a few years back. One thing that struck me was just how dangerous flying itself was then, navigation was rudimentary at best, mechanical failure was common, it was freezing cold, physically demanding/arduous and then you were getting shot at as well.

Most of the armour was stripped away too in order to enable them to carry more bombs. Plus they were firing comparative peashooters, against night fighters packed with 20/30mm cannons. They flew individually too, so the chances of hitting another bomber were quite high. Lot's of damaged planes risked ploughing on rather than turning back and flying right through 600-odd planes coming the other way.

In the early years it was quite common for the RAF to come back, debrief the crews and realise that most of them hadn't even bombed the right town let alone the intended target.

davyK

Re stripping away armour.

One technique was to examine planes that returned and to remove the armour from where the bullet holes were - the thinking being that it could still fly despite being hit in those places.

Yikes.

hunk

Weirdly disturbing documentry on how the US tested atomic bombs and it's effects on army personel. As if they didn't quite believe the impact of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nooo, they had to be sure and repeat the experiment 1000 times....

For science?

davyK

Aye. I have an uncle who was based with the RAF on Christmas Island which is close to where the UK tested their early nukes. A lot of guys he knew died of cancer. He remembers watching the explosions.

It's hard to believe it wasn't part of a study. He said there was feck all to do.

hunk

The fear in their eyes is still visible as they recount their memories.
PTSD must've been rife in the surviving group.

LarryDavid

On Company Business. Quite old (early 80's or so) and not brilliant production values but features lots of ex-CIA officers talking about their various missions for the Company - overthrowing democratically elected heads of state, ensuring the correct type of non-commie unions thrive and forming & training right wing death squads to torture and murder lefties in the third world.

Excellent doc on William S Burroughs, taking him back to his hometown and chatting casually about his long term heroin addiction, that time he accidentally murdered his wife, running wild with the Beats and all that lark. I love his voice as well.

Did You Used To Be R D Laing? Doc about the pioneering Scottish psychiatrist who experimented with LSD as a therapy tool in the 60's and questioned whether a fundamentally mad society had any right to diagnose someone as mentally ill. Obviously some of it seems kooky in retrospect but he's an engaging and funny man. Again, production values are slightly outdated.

Fascinating series about the earliest days of Hollywood & the silent film era. I haven't actually got round to watching them all yet but it's been excellent so far.

I might have posted this before. I forget.

Mis-labelled South Bank Show on Rough Trade and post-punk from 1979, onto which someone has thoughtfully added german subtitles. I've never listened to Stiff Little Fingers who open up the show but on this evidence they were shit. Features the Raincoats, who were great.

b0r1s

Just watched The Great Hack on Netflix. Excellent and scary. I’d actually seen Carol’s TED talk months ago, but the detail behind it is frightening. And there is a definite parallel with the CIA doc Larry posted above. Except now the power is in the hands of corporations. Christ that sounds like some crappy sci-fi / cyberpunk story, but it’s actually true.

hunk

Aye, the great hack is excellent.
Essential viewing for anyone trying to make sense of the state of politics the past 10 years or so.
It's the worst case scenario we've been discussing in the Brexit and US politics of the free thread since 2016. It is bonkers there's an actual basis to it as I was just speculating. Scary af because of the ramifications.

davyK

This isn't what you think - as it's not just about chess. Fischer went bonkers late in life - and this shows his rise and fall. Really quite sad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V14gXuzRdp4

RedDave2

hunk wrote:

Aye, the great hack is excellent.
Essential viewing for anyone trying to make sense of the state of politics the past 10 years or so.
It's the worst case scenario we've been discussing in the Brexit and US politics of the free thread since 2016. It is bonkers there's an actual basis to it as I was just speculating. Scary af because of the ramifications.

It's easy to dismess the talk of no more proper democratic votes being possible as OTT but then you see how clever they are. The Trinidad and Tobago thing was crazy - but very clever too. It's absolutely deliberately misleading the public

And the thing is, it's not just the right that is being tricked. That the Russians were organising BLM events was kinda crazy and if we think about some of the Trump stuff - many of us accept the piss tapes as pretty likely but that's kind of because we want to believe. And that's all it takes.

hunk

It's about controlling public opinion (and thus voting behaviour) with targeted ads. Whether that's propaganda or misinformation (aka fake news) it depends on what they want to achieve. And the shit is effective too going by the state of world politics. Regulation in some form is needed but the ruling (usually conservative) parties ignore the issue as it is a damn handy tool to have around. Social media corps halfheartedly (actually they don't) regulate as the money is too damn enticing.

Seems like the situation won't be fixed. Not in the near future.
Dystopian indeed.

Nina

LarryDavid wrote:

Fascinating series about the earliest days of Hollywood & the silent film era. I haven't actually got round to watching them all yet but it's been excellent so far.

Ooh, need to watch this, was looking for something like that!

Watched this last weekend

Which I thought was pretty cool. 3 puzzles posted, 2 have been solved but the 3rd is still unsolved. No one seems to know who's behind it. Clearly some smart people, they have managed to stay completely anonymous.

nick_md

Went down a right Davy Graham and Bert Jansch rabbit hole this week after discussing Led Zeppelin with colleagues, found these two docs very entertaining:

This first one covers the entire folk revival scene btw, not just Bert, and includes Dylan stuff and some amazing footage of Bert with Brownie McGhee that I hadn't seed before. Top stuff.

Just love Davy Graham, should be more widely known. I love this comment on a separate youtube vid:

On a very bleak Tuesday morning in the 1980's, I had the misfortune to be in a very large queue waiting to sign on the dole in the Camden Job Centre. Not a fun moment. But then like in a strange dream a man walked in wearing all white carrying a lute. He proceeded to play some absolutely beautiful music , like an angel dropped out of the sky. It was Davey Graham and he played for about 20 minutes and then left. It was an amazing thing to see/hear. Cheers Davey whatever realm you are now in

Facewon

Hunting for further reading on Marx I came across this site....

http://www.openculture.com/2014/11/david-harveys-course-on-marxs-capital-volumes-1-2-now-available-free-online.html

I assume it's been mentioned. Big list of docos in there.

davyK

Watched A British Guide to the End of the World an Arena programme from the BBC.

It covers different aspects. There's the usual tale of the laughable attempts at civil defence (inc. a Womens' Institute meeting discussing how much make-up a lady should pack up if having to leave home) but the real disturbing aspect of this was the tests carried out at Christmas Island in the late 50's

The men were deliberately left outside with their backs to the blast and told to cover their eyes with their hands. The light was so bright they could make out the bones and joints in their hands. They then had to engage in the tidy up - lifting the thousands of birds that were blinded, caught fire on the wing and lay dead - in a layer up to 2 feet thick in the sea.

They were drinking and eating contaminated material and swimming in the contaminated sea.

Cue stories of cancer, sterility and children born with rare forms of cancer. A national disgrace if there was ever one. I have an Uncle by marriage who was there as part of an RAF posting but he never really talked about it too much.

Nina

With everything going on, it might be worth to point out Traffic Stop. It's a 2017 documentary, was nominated for an Oscar short film, it's about 31 minutes long. It looks to be on HBO, not sure if that counts for the UK as well.

I remember it being good, but looking it up it seems only critics agree, all user reviews are negative. It's body cam footage of a women getting arrested over speeding, mixed with footage of her telling how this impacted her life.

It scared me at the time, not because I'd think I would ever be in that situation, but seeing that a police officer just can't deescalate such a simple situation.

davyK

The Kid Stays in the Picture got a screening recently. Bio of Bob Evans - Paramount producer (Godfather, Chinatown, Love Story et al).

Narrated by the man himself - in full producer mode. Excellent stuff. Rags to riches to rags and back again. Great stuff. I've added the book to my wishlist.

Was on TV but is YT-able I believe.

davyK

The Grassy Knoll 2020 (on Prime). Revisits the tired old story but this time has a really credible explanation. It actually ties in with the side story in The Irishman that must have drawn on the several books that have appeared in recent times, written by retired CIA and FBI agents. Not one of those wild wooly cheap History Channel ones. Includes an interview with the guy (now deceased) who claims he made that headshot from the grassy knoll.

The way the evidence is presented is at least reasonable and food for thought.

Facewon

I dunno, I did a pretty deep dive on JFK a while back, seemed to me it was his brother's assassination that was much more obviously dodgy.

davyK

My take on it is that :-

Bobby had the mob tied up so tight they couldn't operate.
Jack was dissolving the CIA , was pulling out of Vietnam, was retiring Hoover, and made a balls of Cuba (the mob lost a lot of money there when Castro got in and they wanted back there).

It seems Daddy , Joe, who was old mob (was a booze and gun runner) worked with the new gen to get Jack in - the election was tight and a small nudge in a few tactical states swung it - they had higher than normal turn outs.

So the CIA and mob in particular who got them in, weren't happy. They both had to go.

CIA stayed together, Vietnam went on, Hoover stayed, the mob got Bobby off their backs.

b0r1s

I'm guessing this has been posted in here before, but I found the making of God of War remake, after having recently finished it, compelling viewing.

Some key take aways:

The main guy, Cory, is a bit of a dick playing it up for the camera, but you can see the pressure on him by the end.

However, the build up to the first E3 showing shows how much he and they put into those events. The spoiler is it's a ridiculous amount.

You can see some of the crunch and a lot of the emotion and toll it can have on people.

We can all be quick to moan about a game, but I'm sure not many people set out to make a bad game. I don't think game developer is a job I'd want, but I'm glad someone is doing it.

regmcfly

Barlog is an absolute fud of the highest order and shit to his staff, but I'm interested enough in the rest of the making.

b0r1s

The Year Earth Changed on Apple TV+ is a BBC production with old Attenborough narrating, showing the positive changes that have happened during lockdown. It’s beautifully shot. It’s quite sad to know that the good stuff that has come out of lockdowns will soon revert once we go back to life as “normal”.

Raiziel

I’ll watch that this weekend. I watched My Octopus Teacher (Netflix) yesterday. Damn if I wasn’t almost in tears by the end of it.

davyK

Two parter on Prime at the minute called Uranium presented by an enthusiastic Aussie prof.

Enjoyable. And ends on an optimistic note.

Questor

The trailer for the doco about Anthony Bourdain, Roadrunner, dropped and you bet your life I will be searching this one out:

https://youtu.be/ihEEjwRlghQ

afgavinstan

Yep, popped that in the film thread too. It's gonna hurt like fuck but I'm excited to see it.

Questor

Yeah, I don't get upset by 'celeb' deaths but his knocked the fuck out of me

Questor

We also started a rewatch of the 30 for 30 documentaries that ESPN commissioned for their 30th anniversary. We've watched most of them before, but they are for the most part really rather good

yourfavouriteuncle

I don’t know why but i kinda lost the suicide fact and replaced it with cancer with Bourdain. Only remembered the other day once I’d watched the trailer and went off onto a wiki hole.

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