{"id":1247,"date":"2011-01-17T07:19:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T13:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2011-01-17T07:19:56","modified_gmt":"2011-01-17T13:19:56","slug":"quasi-documenaries-and-actual-documentaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/01\/quasi-documenaries-and-actual-documentaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Quasi-documenaries and Actual Documentaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, 13 January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, I listed off the books I read in 2010<\/a>. I mentioned that I had read God Hates You, Hate Him Back<\/em>, a book I received free from the publisher with the intent that I write a review of it. Well, HERE\u2019S MY REVIEW<\/a>. So, you know, more stuff to read!<\/p>\n

And noticed how, in my post for January 11th<\/sup>, I complained that I\u2019m sick of hearing of Loughner as an \u201calleged\u201d shooter? Well, now, apparently, he\u2019s been upgraded to \u201csuspect.\u201d Yeah, it\u2019s true. They called him a \u201csuspect\u201d at least three times on my drive home from work this evening. Oh, that\u2019s so much better.<\/p>\n

In other news: Court orders blood transfusion for baby boy.<\/a><\/p>\n

This evening, my wife and I watched the film Thank You For Smoking<\/em><\/a>. It was decent; worth a watch. We seem to have stumbled upon this sub-genre of comedies that are designed to look like a documentary in parts. It\u2019s hard to explain but, we\u2019ll be watching the movie, and it\u2019s constructed in the usual narrative format, when, all of the sudden, they\u2019ll be a narrator of a quick succession of cuts designed to imitate a news clip. Idiocracy<\/em> was like that. So was The Darwin Awards<\/em>. I think Confessions of a Dangerous Mind<\/em> was like that in places, too. It seems to be a mini-trend going on lately.<\/p>\n

Friday, 14 January 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today we watched the documentary Man on Wire<\/em><\/a>. It details the story of Philippe Petit\u2019s desire to highwire walk between the Twin Towers. I know, it doesn\u2019t sound that compelling. I first heard of the documentary in the weeks leading up to the 2009 Oscar ceremony. I didn\u2019t know anything about it but, when we watched the Oscar ceremony, Man on Wire<\/em> won the award for Best Documentary. The short clips and very brief words they said about the film really pique our interest, and so we immediately put it on our Netflix queue.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where it sat for nearly two years.<\/p>\n

The disk finally arrived in our mailbox a couple of days ago.<\/p>\n

And it was a very well-made documentary! At one point, I even told Jennifer that I was nervous \u2013 to which she replied, \u201cthat shows that they did a good job making this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Man on Wire<\/em> has the converse of the clich\u00e9 that I mentioned above: it\u2019s a typical documentary, but it\u2019s liberally interspersed with drama; as if we\u2019re suddenly watching a work of fiction. The footage is sped up in these parts, reminiscent of Vaudeville and silent films. The film is also almost entirely in black-and-white.<\/p>\n

The ending is no secret: Petit did<\/em> tightrope between the Twin Towers, as is common knowledge. The fun, though, is seeing how he planned it out. The planning was extensive; including several trips back and forth between America and Europe, numerous dry runs, and lots of site scouting. I had been unaware that Petit performed his stunt without permission from either the city of New York or the Twin Towers management. Seeing how he and his troupe got around security at every step made for an engaging story. With the beefed-up security since 9\/11, it\u2019s tough to see how anyone could do something like this again.<\/p>\n

Go rent it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday, 13 January 2011 A couple of weeks ago, I listed off the books I read in 2010. I mentioned that I had read God Hates You, Hate Him Back, a book I received free from the publisher with the intent that I write a review of it. Well, HERE\u2019S MY REVIEW. So, you know, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1257,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}