Documentary Station - Reviews, Recommendations, etc

[Hugo Rune]

The last article I read about the purchasing of land was back in January or so. Doug died in December 2015 and so his wife continues the cause. They had just started to get into the throws of negotiating with the Chilean government about releasing control of the purchased land bck to Chile when Doug died. However they were/are expecting the negotiations to take many years as the Tompkins' obviously wanted to secure a deal with a significant number of riders attached that would continue to force the govt to treat the land parcels as conservation areas. This is sadly still counter intuitive to the govts expanding need for power and their very profitable logging contracts with Big Business, so no doubt things will not move forward for some time.

 

[Hugo Rune]

I recently watched You've Been Trumped on Pivot. It's about Trump's plans to build golf courses in Scotland. It's pretty heavy handed, but very interesting.

Well this one did me no favours at 2am when I decided to flick it on to see "what kind of style it was". 2 hours later I was further cursing Drumpfs name and endlessly reading around the topic. But, thank you.

You are quite right, it is a touch heavy handed AND incredibly one sided. Yet, if one takes the end cards at their worth, neither Drumpf, his people, the government nor the police wanted to get involved and give their take on the issue. And I'm not surprised. The strong arm tactics used are standard developing company tactics to discourage any party from staying - Drumpf and his people can spend all year in court over a 5m boundary line after the fact, whilst the regular Joe could never afford such litigation.

But the sheer arrogance of the man, to destroy a completely unique ecosystem for a golf course, with promises of enriching the tourist industry in Aberdeenshire... the course is up and running right now. Having cost him £1 billion to develop, it now loses on average £1.3m a year. The current yearly amount of tee-times equates to roughly 1 month of golfing, was built by an Irish company and its workers, and the entire site hires approximately 150 people - not the 6000, as promised as part of the Economic Impact Statement used to get it through Planning Permission.

The government leader, Alex Salmond took a £1b payoff in his own constituency and blithely handed over one of the most precious pieces of UK coastline with nary a blink or a second thought.

If it weren't for the devastation wrought upon the ecosystem and the damage caused to those local families lives, I'd say this is vindication, especially given Drumpf has just lost a Supreme Court battle regarding the development of a large offshore Wind Farm. His comments in the press that the ruling is "hellbent on destroying Scotland’s coastline and therefore Scotland itself [...] History will judge those involved unfavourably and the outcome demonstrates the foolish, small-minded and parochial mentality which dominates the current Scottish government’s dangerous experiment with wind energy"

He beggars belief - but why should I be surprised. After all, he's running a Presidential campaign based on Authoritarianism, scaremongering, religious bigotry and an ever expanding troupe of half truths and lies.

If you are able to find it (and of course are interested) I just read that the film maker here created a follow up, about the environmental damage of luxury golf courses around the world, and in fact has interviews with both Donald Drumpf and Junior - A Dangerous Game

Hugo - Holes 3, 5, 9 and 17 are all racist. Hole 2 has bad hair. I mean really bad. Hole 12 had some terrible views on the migrant crisis and hole 1 wanted to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out.

 

[1001001]

I had basically the same reaction. I will check out A Dangerous Game. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Have a new one for this thread. Last Man on the Moon. It's an interesting and heartfelt look at the Apollo space program through the eyes of Gene Cernan, who was part of the last mission to the moon. My Dad (who's an avid astronomer) and I have watched many documentaries about this, and we both felt that it was among the best.

 

[1001001]

I watched two more documentaries recently on Pivot.

One was called Caucus. It was about the campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination for President, specifically focused on the Iowa Caucus. Bizarre and sad, and totally entertaining. Watch Michele Bachman deteriorate right before your eyes!

http://caucusfilm.com/

The second one was Head Games. It was about the problem of head injuries and concussion in sports. Not just football, but soccer, hockey, etc.

http://headgamesthefilm.com/global/

I found both worth watching.

 

[Hugo Rune]

Have a new one for this thread. Last Man on the Moon. It's an interesting and heartfelt look at the Apollo space program through the eyes of Gene Cernan, who was part of the last mission to the moon. My Dad (who's an avid astronomer) and I have watched many documentaries about this, and we both felt that it was among the best.

I found that Netflix UK had uploaded this a few weeks ago so watched it the other night. Interesting doc, very nicely put together, but the material that I found most interesting was only just touched on towards the end - the fact that Cernan, like many astronauts, became an obsessive about the program and the achievements that went along with it. He lost one wife because of it and still, over 80, he's realising he is pushing his second wife away too, following his obsession. He makes a comment about "wanting to give back" to all those people who come to see him (and other astronauts) at conventions etc, and he packs his schedule to the point I wonder when he sleeps. But what just seeped through was the hot-rod arrogance both he and other 60's pilots spoke about at the beginning of the doc. There was a tinge of chasing and fanning his own relevance to the world even to the detriment of his family life.

Interesting doc, thanks for the recommendation.

Following this I watched two documentaries about the social divide in the USA, from an angle of inequality - Inequality for All with Richard Reich, who was a social policy driver in many Democratic presidencies from the 70's onwards, and then Requiem for the American Dream covering Noam Chomsky's take on the topic. Both were fascinating looks at the peaks and troughs of US societal/financial/moral stances and programs through the countries history and how the true concept of Democracy was abandoned from almost the get-go and how propaganda and plutonomy has led to the state we are in now where a disenfranchised public begin to look up to, at its most extreme, Totalitarianism as it's best option. Reich's doc is more economic driven, looking at data sets from 1900 to present, whilst Chomsky's is more moralistic. Not for everyone, but from an outsiders POV, both enlightening and chilling viewing (and with a lot of humour from Reich's side).

Hugo - has probably watched 20 docs since this thread evaporated. Thanks to those still contributing

 

[1001001]

I found that Netflix UK had uploaded this a few weeks ago so watched it the other night. Interesting doc, very nicely put together, but the material that I found most interesting was only just touched on towards the end - the fact that Cernan, like many astronauts, became an obsessive about the program and the achievements that went along with it. He lost one wife because of it and still, over 80, he's realising he is pushing his second wife away too, following his obsession. He makes a comment about "wanting to give back" to all those people who come to see him (and other astronauts) at conventions etc, and he packs his schedule to the point I wonder when he sleeps. But what just seeped through was the hot-rod arrogance both he and other 60's pilots spoke about at the beginning of the doc. There was a tinge of chasing and fanning his own relevance to the world even to the detriment of his family life.

Interesting doc, thanks for the recommendation.

I watched that one too. I agree with your assessment. I thought the narrative was a little scattered. At first I really couldn't figure out what the story was supposed to be. I suppose the real issue is that, to reach those lofty heights (no pun intended), you have to be driven. It's not about his career (he could have been a salesman or a lawyer, or...), it's about who he is. Who they were. It's his nature. So he succeeds in one arena to the detriment of the others.

I watched After Porn Ends on Netflix. Obviously, it's about what happens to porn stars when they get older. Suffice it to say, the men fare better than the women. Mildly interesting.

 

[Owain Taggart]

...but the material that I found most interesting was only just touched on towards the end - the fact that Cernan, like many astronauts, became an obsessive about the program and the achievements that went along with it. He lost one wife because of it and still, over 80, he's realising he is pushing his second wife away too, following his obsession.

Yeah, that was heartbreaking. It really was quite candid though, and I'm glad he realized what he was doing to himself and his family.

There was one part where I was disappointed, moreso for its lack of inclusion. In the 70's, Cernan and Schmitt came to my region to study the rocks, ie a basin created by a large asteroid impact, and NASA believed that what had happened in the region could also be found on the Moon. So they studied the rocks, such as shattercones to better help them understand what to look for on the Moon, and they did this as part of mission prep. This is one of the reasons they wanted a geologist on the crew. For whatever reason, the documentary crew chose to omit that, though it could have easily been slotted in after the bit about the training.

 

[publiusr]

I'd like to see a Documentary about C.P. Ellis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Ellis
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...KKK-leader-became-friends-with-Black-activist

With trump popular--you really need more folks like W. Kamau Bell. It's easy to throw Trump supports and the like under the bus--but Trump is actually what a lot of fly-over America look like when they begin to break left. George Wallace--were it not for his ugly streak--actually would have been called a Progressive. There is an opportunity here--to get a lot of poor folks back into DNC roles.

C.P. Ellis was a monster of a dixiecrat--but he never fell for the blue-blood GOP types. He and Ann Atwater found out they both had more in common. Both were democrats at heart--while blue-bloods who hate gov't would go after public education that both Ellis and Atwater fought for.

Libertarians liked to joke about how the fastest way to find a Klansman was to go to a union rally--and the fastest way to find a union man was to go to a klan rally. Ellis never fell for the anti-gov't crap that tea-partiers went for. Libertarians don't like either borders or picket lines--and an arguement about the role of boundaries--and how poor folks south of the border get exploited by tourists and free-traders might be interesting. My concept would be that Carlos Slim needs to support Mexicon being a solar and geothermal powerhouse--so that non-oil energy money could flow there instead of Dubai--no one should ever have to stoop to being a field hand. That should be for robots only.

Still a documentary on Ellis might be a documentary America needs to see.