Woodstock

Not really looking forward to being at work all day tomorrow, but it will be nice and probably stress-relieving to be able to get stuff done without interruption. Hopefully it goes quick! I'm glad to be home, now, though, and thought I'd be lazy and write this post at almost 3am in my warm bed.

So, earlier I watched the director's cut of Woodstock, directed in 1970 by Michael Wadleigh. I only mention that I watched that version because I think it bumps up the running time to almost 4 hours. Sounds a little awful, yes? It wasn't so bad. Once it started, I was really into it, and I really liked the editing and all of the musical performances. It was really cool to watch something where it had so much music, maybe 60%, so it was pretty relaxing and easy to watch. I must admit I don't know anything about Woostock other than what exists in cultural consciousness, so it was really neat to actually be able to see the crowds, see the people, and watch the performances. It felt like I was there, except with less bad acid. Yay!

Nanook of the North

Today's movie was really interesting, but maybe only to me. I watched Nanook of the North, directed by Robert J. Flaherty in 1922. It's got to be one of the first documentaries. It's silent, about an hour long, and it's so fascinating. It reminded me of an old book. I've got one at my desk with really cool binding, actually, that I keep meaning to pay for so I can just take it. See, I love old books. Often I don't read them, because I'm lazy and currently I have zero time to read. I have a bunch, though, and I have like, a fetish for them - I love going through them and looking at any annotation, bookplates, pictures, etc. I like them because I feel extremely connected to history when I look at them or read out of them.

This film was sort of like that. It wasn't really like, "an honest and excellent" documentary or something, but it was interesting. When I watched it, I could almost see the director filming it, and see the wonder that he felt for his subjects. It wasn't shot particularly well, but I was so interested in it. Interested in how this director navigated this territory with really, no rules or other films to guide him. I just liked thinking about it, and I felt that sort of connection to it that I do when I flip though an old book.

Crumb

Man, it is way harder to do this movie project and get ready for vacation than I thought it would be. I literally have no free time to pack or get anything organized. I really like to leave a clean house, too, so that when I come home it's not so depressing and awful, but I haven't had any time to really do anything. I'm going to be really happy to just have a break for a little while, it's been tough to keep up with the pace I'm at.

Today I watched Crumb, directed in 1994 by Terry Zwigoff. I've had it on my Netflix queue for a while because I knew it was supposed to be good, but I never wanted to watch it. I didn't know who Robert Crumb was, and I never saw any of his work, and so I always felt so enthused about the movie. Why would I want to watch a documentary about a comic artist that I knew nothing about? I was really surprised by this film, though. I was so interested in Robert and his brothers, and even though I knew nothing about them or their art, I was really intrigued and engrossed for the whole film.

The Up Documentaries

It's taken me almost a full week to watch all of these documentaries. I keep talking about these films, but I have so little dsire to sit down and write about them. I discovered recently that I lost something, a necklace I really loved, and so badly want to look for it and pout instead of working. I hate that feeling, when you lose something. First world problems up in here.

Anyway, the series, simply called the "Up" series, is directed by Michael Apted, and the first one was made in 1964. The first film is a bunch of interviews with some seven-year-old kids in Britain, and the filmmakers check back with this same group of kids every seven years to see how they are doing. The last one I watched as 49 Up, made in 2006. They still plan to do these films, the next one, 56 Up, is slated for next year. It was really interesting to watch all of these in one go - and sort of strange, in a way, to see people grow from 7 to 49 in the span of 6 days. Ebert writes in his review, " I feel as if I know these subjects, and indeed I do know them better than many of the people I work with every day, because I know what they dreamed of at 7, their hopes at 14, the problems they faced in their early 20s, and their marriages, their jobs, their children, even their adulteries" (The Great Movies, 475), and I felt that way today, at the end of all the films!

Hoop Dreams

I didn't realize how long Hoop Dreams was until I started trying to watch it on Netflix. It is about 3 hours long and I became immediately unhappy. "Sports documentary, ugh," I spat. I don't watch sports. I don't understand them. I'm a dork - I play video games and read and do stupid things in my free time. I definately didn't feel like watching a long documentary about basketball. Since I didn't know it was so long, I started trying to watch it at about 9pm. Netflix started screwing up and about an hour later, I was able to watch it on my dad's Xbox upstairs - neither blu-ray player would play the movie on Netflix instant without stuttering and buffering, and my Gold subscription for Xbox Live ran out. It was around 10pm when I was able to start the movie. Even though it was so late, I was so engrossed in this documentary! I was really shocked at myself, but I think part of it was how little I needed to care about sports to care about this movie. I felt like I personally knew all of the people, and I had to keep watching to see what happened to them. After the movie was over, my mom and I needed to know what happened to them since the film, so Anthony looked up the two boys to find out. I really cared for them, and I really felt for them during the movie.

Gates of Heaven

I first saw Gates of Heaven in a class about directors and their first feature films. We would watch their first film, and then a famous film, and compare their style. I had never heard of Errol Morris before, nor his 1978 movie about a pet cemetary. Over three days, I watched Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and Standard Operating Procedure. I fell in love. I really like documentaries. I always dreamed of making them, even though I'm not a director. Nothing is more interesting or more strange than real life. Errol Morris knows this. He is fascinated by his subjects. His shots are long and they linger on as the people continue to speak. It's wonderful.