We’ve seen a slew of movies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the fictionalized ones simply haven’t connected with the public.  Even last year’s Oscar winning The Hurt Locker couldn’t manage to pull in large numbers at the box office.

What’s unique about The Tillman Story is that it puts a face on the war, and consequently humanizes it.  You can’t casually dismiss the story of Pat Tillman and his amazing family.  This is not a fiction movie, this is as real as it gets. And it is ugly.

Pat Tillman was charismatic student-athlete who attended Arizona State University on a football scholarship, and later played in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals.  He gave up that career when he, along with his younger brother Kevin, enlisted in the Army shortly after 9/11.

The two eventually became Army Rangers, and Pat did a tour in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was during his second tour, in Afghanistan,  that Tillman’s life was cut short.

Initially Tillman was painted as a  hero who died valiantly trying to save his fellow soldiers during a Taliban ambush.  Tillman was praised and awarded the Silver Star posthumously. However, things did not add up to Tillman’s family. They realized that there was much more to the story.

Continue Reading →

Sandman is a fascinating documentary that made the festival rounds way back in 2006.  It played at both South By Southwest, and the Toronto International Film Festival. Today the film is finally being released on DVD and Blu-Ray.  It is the perfect time for the film to be released, given that we have seen at least two documentaries this year that blur the lines between fact and fiction.

Catfish is out in theaters right now, and Exit Through the Gift Shop was out earlier this year.  Both films were controversial for their “is it real or fake” aspect, and they are still hotly debated by film types.

Director J.T. Petty made a film called Soft For Digging (how creepy is that title?) back in 2001, which has gained a bit of cult acclaim in horror circles. He approached HDNet about an idea for a documentary based on a voyeur who menaced his Washington, DC neighborhood while he was growing up.

Hours and hours of videotapes were confiscated, but the man remained free because the victims opted to drop charges rather than face the humiliation of having the tapes aired in public court.   The man still lives in the same house in the same neighborhood to this day. Pretty interesting stuff, huh?  Unfortunately, the man refused to participate in Petty’s film, and Petty had to find a new course for his film.

So Sandman explores the uncomfortable similarities between voyeurism and watching horror films, bringing in noted experts such as  professor Carol Clover, a PHD who wrote Men, Women, and Chain Saws.

Continue Reading →

One of the few documentaries ever to show at Cannes, granted a private screening for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the agitprop activist documentary Countdown to Zero delivers a blast from a collective past when the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed like a gigantic mushroom cloud over the horizon.

Nowadays that threat feels obsolete, something left behind long ago with duck-and-cover drills, double-knit polyester pants suits and Charlie’s Angels posters, existing in the 21st century only as a creaky plot device in action movies. Countdown to Zero flattens that misapprehension to the ground, presenting an all-too-vivid picture of our still insanely nuclear-weaponized world. If that doesn’t sound so appealing, be assured that the filmmakers have sweetened the medicine with incredible access, footage, graphics and visual effects that make the message gripping, even (although one hesitates to use the word) entertaining.

The film begins with footage of Robert Oppenheimer, the director of WWII’s “Manhattan Project,” the brilliant theoretical physicist who let the genie out of the bottle, the eternal bearer of the awful epithet “father of the atomic bomb.” His desolate eyes haunt the film like a specter, bearing witness to his post-war advocacy of nuclear disarmament (which got him the thanks of security clearance stripping and blacklisting).

This gravity is quickly countered by the jubilant celebrations of country after country who thereafter develop nuclear weapon capability for themselves. Crowds cheer, strangers hug, de Gaulle crows, “Our national glory is restored!” Walter Cronkite intones the phrase “membership in the nuclear club,” and it’s a club everyone wants to join. “We will make the bomb even if we have to eat grass,” Pakistani leaders vow, and when they succeed, devout citizens rejoice, “Allah is great!” Sobering and terrifying as it is to see the world map click into the nuclear red country by country, it’s hard to counter with much conviction when Irani president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad argues against western hypocrisy, “Why should only you have it?”

Continue Reading →

Earlier this week, we brought you a review of the true crime documentary Cropsey.  The documentary explores the urban legend behind several unsolved child murders that occurred on Staten Island. Tonight you can catch the movie on the Discovery Channel sister network, Investigation Discovery.

The channel specializes on fact-based investigative content about culture, history and the human condition.  The Investigation Discovery channel will be adding documentaries to their lineup, under the brand ID films. Cropsey: The Urban Legend will be the first documentary to air on the channel, followed by Final Judgement (aka No Tomorrow) in October.

Final Judgement illuminates the role of the media in the criminal justice system, and provides commentary on the death penalty.

A third Discovery channel spin-off, named Planet Green, will be presenting documentaries under the name Reel Impact.  Upcoming documentaries include Sharkwater, No Impact Man, The Cove (Academy Award winner),  and Black Wave: Legacy of the Exxon Valdez.

Cropsey will run tonight, Friday the 13th, @9pm ET on Investigation Discovery.  Check with your cable provider for availability.

Continue Reading →

I’ve always loved history. Discovering what happened in the past is always a great way to make sure things go smoothly in the present and in the future. I also love comics. So, when these two things meet, you can imagine how happy that makes me.

Case in point is the new documentary about the history of DC comics called Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics. In it you get to see a whole bunch of great current and former DC artists and writers discuss the formation and history of one of the greatest media companies ever. Narrated by Ryan Reynolds, the documentary features interviews and commentary by Neal Adams, Karen Berger, Dan DiDio, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Dwayne McDuffie, Grant Morrison, Dennis O’Neil, Paul Pope, Louise Simonson, Mark Waid, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman. Yes, that’s lot of amazing people.

“From the bans to the breakthroughs, from humble pulp beginnings to the literary rise of the graphic novel, the story of DC Comics holds a mirror to an ever-evolving enterprise and the society reflected in its comic book pages,” said Diane Nelson, President, DC Entertainment. “It’s a true American story – Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics is a riveting, exciting, surprising revelation of that fascinating history and the men and women who forged it.”

I’ll bet money that that’s completely true. In fact, no bet necessary, I’ll be buying this when it comes out because I know it’s going to be fascinating.

Check out the trailer for the documentary after the jump. Secret Origin arrives on DVD November 9th.

Continue Reading →

Who isn’t fascinated by an urban legend? Almost every community has some sort of local tale that is unique to its geographic region, and on Staten Island, that legend was known as Cropsey.

Cropsey is a documentary film that examines the finely blurred lines between fact, fiction, and urban legend. Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio hail from Staten Island, and remembered the tales that were passed about during their childhood about “Cropsey.”

Essentially, Cropsey was yet another manifestation of the boogeyman-the man who will get you if you go where you ought not be alone at night. However, the Staten Island community was understandably spooked when a 13 year old girl with Down Syndrome inexplicably disappeared. Suddenly, Cropsey appeared all too real. Eventually, there were four more disappearances in the area.

What really sets this movie apart is the foreboding presence of a massive decaying mental institution, where unspeakable negligence and atrocities befell the defenseless people committed to the facility. It is the perfect backdrop for a crime story.

Willowbrook Mental Institution housed thousands of patients (most of whom were mentally retarded), and an unannounced on-site report from the facility in 1972 (by an extremely young Geraldo Rivera) is horrifying to witness.

Continue Reading →

In the previous millennium, when I was an idealistic young thing attending Barnard College, the women’s college affiliated with Columbia University, there was a lot of talk about who before us had walked the hallowed halls: anthropologist Margaret Mead, writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zora Neale Thurston, Francine du Plessix Gray, Patricia Highsmith and Ntozake Shange, recent United States ambassador to the U.N. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, musicians Laurie Anderson and Suzanne Vega (whose song “Luka” was then on all the airwaves), NPR’s Susan Stamberg, nationally syndicated columnist Anna Quindlen, choreographer Twyla Tharp, pre-Omnimedia Martha Stewart, whose daughter had also recently attended.

We students looked up to these women, our heroes. No trivia about them was too slight to swap and discuss. But I can only remember a couple of times when the name Joan Rivers was mentioned, and then only with a smirk. It seemed unbelievable that someone like her—brash, crass, undignified, disfigured by plastic surgery even then—could have once been part of our very serious undertakings in academia and feminism. Above all, we were earnest, and serious, and she was not.

The truth is that we failed to recognize Rivers for the pioneer she was. Those were the early days of “Seinfeld.” The backstage world of stand up comedy was still a mystery. There was no Comedy Central. We had no idea how brutal the world was in which she had risen. What a boy’s club. We were feminists, but we still thought we had to be ladies, or at least decorous. We disapproved of Joan Rivers.

Continue Reading →

As you Flickcast readers know, I’m a huge fan of SyFy’s Destination Truth. I’ve urged you to watch it. Are you? If not, why? You know I have impeccable taste and that I never steer you wrong.

Perhaps this final bit of evidence will convince you. I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Gates at Comic-Con this year. Just being around him is an adventure. Do you know how many White Shirts (the preferred color of security this year) I had to dodge just to get into the SyFy press room? Do you know how many times my phone went out as I was trying to find them? Do you know how dehydrated and shaky I was? Yeah. You have no idea. This was hardcore. Press badges mean nothing in the wilderness of Comic-Con.

All humor aside (and I’m quite ill as I’m writing this, so it’s probably not as funny as I think it is), it was fantastic to talk to Gates. He talked about the dangers of filming Destination Truth, the things he still can’t explain, and just how they do laundry in far-flung locations. After the jump, watch the delight that is Josh Gates, and be sure to check out the exotic delight that is Destination Truth when it returns to SyFy on September 9th.

Continue Reading →

Okay, finishing up the documentaries this week with two stellar, if unnerving, entries: 1945’s The Battle of San Pietro and 1946’s Let There Be Light. I mentioned last week that Report from the Aleutians came under some scrutiny from the Army, but these two were lucky to have seen the light of day (pun kind of eh, intended).

I recently went through John Huston’s autobiography An Open Book, which provides a lot of details regarding Huston’s troubles with Army censors while making all three of these films, and while I’m going to focus on the films themselves, the stories behind them are almost as compelling.

San Pietro was controversial for its depiction of war, and it was only through the intervention of General George Marshall, who said it’d make a good training film, that it was shown. Let There Be Light wasn’t so lucky.

The Battle of San Pietro depicts the eponymous battle between Allied Forces and the Italian Royal Army and Germany. But the actual battle is not the main focus, just as the Aleutians were not the main focus of Report from the Aleutians or the Mason General Hospital in Let There Be Light is the main focus, as we’ll see. In all three, Huston uses his setting to address a larger theme—the daily life of soldiers; the brutality of battle; the psychological consequences of war.

Continue Reading →

[Note: I said that I would be covering all three of Huston’s war documentaries in one article, but upon watching Report from the Aleutians (and other personal/professional affairs), I’ve decided to draw them out. I may condense The Battle of San Piedro and Let There Be Light, but we’ll see. And I also have Across the Pacific to get into before Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but as much as I’m looking forward to covering that film, I’m enjoying myself all the same watching these.]

Before I even started considering a retrospective on Huston’s articles, I still wanted to watch all his films—at first the big ones, then go on to the ones that looked interesting, after that, eh, maybe the obscure-but-still-kinda-uh-well-liked ones? Then everything—if I could stand it—beyond. Either way, be it as casual viewer or retrospective writer on assignment, Huston’s WWII propaganda films weren’t something I was particularly looking forward to.

It would be a neat curiosity, since the bulk of Huston’s work was based on novels, and this would be one of the few (perhaps only? I haven’t gotten that far ahead in my research) Huston works not based on existing material. Nevertheless, my first glimpse of Report from the Aleutians (1943)’ first five or so minutes all but confirmed my fears—I figured it’d be dated, being all 70+ years old, WWII-ish, and well, topical really. It dealt with something that happened a long time ago and whose importance would be all but lost on my generation and probably my parents’ as well. And even if you like documentaries, at first glance it looks like not much more than simple propaganda—which really was my greatest fear with all three.

I find propaganda fascinating (if you don’t, check out Disney’s war cartoons—ever wanted to see Donald Duck as a Nazi?), but when I’m watching the film for the sole purpose of better understanding Huston, I just got this image of the US Propaganda Department breathing down his neck and telling him everything he can and can’t talk about—which is to say not the ideal collection of films to give insight to the man.

Continue Reading →

Over the past few decades, the concept of the “comic convention” has gone from the dank basements without air conditioning where sweaty fanboys gather to pick through old comics back issues that they can’t find anywhere else, to multi-million dollar franchise and major media show which has become the San Diego Comic-Con.

Documentarian John P. McGarr has taken that evolution down on film, and brought to us The Con. The synopsis at least explains it better.

THE CON is a documentary about conventions over six years in the making, covering over twenty shows. Horror, comic, sci-fi, adult conventions and more! From OJ Simpson’s infamous appearance at the NecroComicon horror convention to San Diego Comic Con, fans, celebrities, promoters and vendors (even the bootleggers!) share their experiences and explain why they’re part of THE CON!

Stan Lee may be apart of this film as a talking head, but this isn’t actually the Morgan Spurlock/Stan Lee comic convention documentary that’s also in production. Check out the full trailer after the jump, keep your eyes peeled for copies of The Con surfacing around local convention DVD booths, ironically enough.

Continue Reading →

Chris Farina’s World Peace…and Other 4th Grade Achievements is one of the more fascinating documentaries you will ever see. Over the course of eight weeks, students in 4th-grade teacher John Hunter’s Charlottesville, Virginia class take on the roles of nation leaders, UN representatives, the World Bank, tribal chieftans who negotiate the trade rights to their resource-rich lands, arms dealers, and even a weather goddess in a comprehensive game designed to promote discussion, foster negotiation skills, and, of course, ultimately achieve world peace.

With each child’s duty defined, Hunter then introduces a number of crises ranging from economic hardships to global warming to mercenary attacks to even a saboteur whom the students must unmask, put on trial, and prove guilty.

It may sound like too much to cover in the span of a one-hour running time, but Hunter explains the game with concision and clarity, and Farina maintains pace by breaking up the game’s progress into eight installments—one for each week it’s played. The structure is similar to that of a television series: Hunter summarizes his goals for each step and provides a narrative arc for the whole, while Farina follows the children around as they deal with each week’s crisis.

It’s startling how quick the children are to adopt their roles and the seriousness with which they play them. Perhaps less surprisingly, this often leads to violent arguments, such as the dispute between a tribal chieftan who grants land rights to one of the world leaders and is furious upon discovering that his friend has farmed the rights out to others.

Continue Reading →