Grey Gardens/The Beales of Grey Gardens
January 5, 2007
Grey Gardens (1976) is an odd curio even by the Criterion Collections’ standards – a documentary about Jackie Kennedy’s aunt Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie who lived in a run-down, 28-room house on Long Island. How did these two members...
Tales of the Rat Fink
November 28, 2006
Ron Mann is a Canadian filmmaker who specializes in documentaries about alternative culture; be it comic books with Comic Book Confidential (1988), a famous dance craze with Twist (1992) or marijuana culture with Grass (1999). His latest film, Tales of...
Wordplay
November 20, 2006
There’s an episode of MASH where Hawkeye and B.J. become obsessed with solving a New York Times crossword puzzle and go to outrageous lengths to finish it. This episode perfectly sums up the kind of dedication these puzzles inspire and require. Wordplay...
Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema
November 6, 2006
While Brokeback Mountain (2005) may have placed Queer Cinema into the mainstream spotlight, it had been going strong for many years before with such notable examples like My Own Private Idaho (1991), Go Fish (1994) and Happy Together (1997) as the IFC...
Once in a Lifetime
October 26, 2006
In the 1970s, the New York Cosmos succeeded in bringing a significant amount of attention to soccer in the United States. Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos features narration by Matt Dillon with interviews with many of...
Wildboyz: Seasons 3 & 4: Unrated
September 29, 2006
With the recent death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, Wildboyz, with its irreverent, childish humour, just doesn’t seem as funny anymore. Not to mention the show’s concept – Jackass meets Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom – seems, well, played...
Monterey Pop
July 20, 2006
Shot on a weekend in June of 1967 at the height of the Summer of Love, Monterey Pop (1968) was documentarian D.A. Pennebaker’s look at the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival. Not only did this concert capture the essence of where rock...
Koko: A Talking Gorilla
July 12, 2006
Gorillas in the Mist (1988), the biography of Dian Fossey and her struggle to study and protect gorillas, was an important film in championing primate studies. In 1978, filmmaker Barbet Schroeder documented Dr. Francine “Penny” Patterson’s attempt...
Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman
July 7, 2006
The best superheroes, and by that I mean the ones that endure for years and years to be discovered and reinterpreted by subsequent generations, are the ones that reflect the human condition at its simplest level. One of the best examples of this is Superman,...
Harlan County USA
May 10, 2006
Harlan County USA (1976) is a fascinating documentary about a bitter coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. In 1973, the miners working in Brookside Mine voted to join the United Mine Workers Union. The Duke Power Company and its subsidiary Eastover...
