Only twenty minutes in, but I'm totally down with this already.

EDIT: Just finished, damn I wanna listen to 'em all now!

What's the release schedule gonna be with these? Will it just be alternating each week between WAYDM, Intermission and this, or will it be much more loose?

Last edited by Owen_Ward (2013-05-20 04:40:57)

Cool idea, good discussion, too.

For me, the biggest distinction between documentary film and journalism does have to do with ethics and expectations. A hard-news journalist has ethical obligations that are much more well defined; and as a consumer of journalism I thus have a whole slew of expectations that modify how I engage the information. Also, maybe it's overly cute to put it this way, but hard-news journalism is, at its core, telling the unadorned facts of a story (and doing so in a certain order), whereas documentary film is storytelling. A good journalist needs a feel for narrative, no question, but storytelling is something else entirely. 

And yeah, Steve James' Stevie is great. It's a good example of the filmmaker being part of the story without it being obnoxious. I think it has to do with the filmmaker's personality. Steve James just seems like this earnest, non-douchey, mellow guy—not someone who's looking for any excuse at all to elbow his way on camera.

Eddie, good work mate.

This was very interesting, and I'm excited to hear more. Curious to hear what the panel thought of Searching for Sugar Man. I found it pretty underwhelming. The story was kind of interesting, but the movie itself really didn't have a point. At the end I was wondering why they had bothered to make the movie in the first place, and what everyone else seemed to see in it. There was too much focus on Rodriguez himself and not enough on the impact his music had on South Africans, which to me was the really interesting part of the story.

You always have to keep in mind who the documentary is made for. If Searching for Sugar Man was made for South Africans, then, well, they already know all about the influence he had. It's the actual person that would be interesting.

Yeah, you could sense the filmmakers struggling with the fact that his story was way more compelling than his personality. Given the way the film builds up his legend for us before he actually appears, it would be tough for anyone to live up to that hype. Still, it's surprising that the guy didn't have more to say. The first half of the film presents details about his early career, how some record company screwed him, and other stuff, but then when he's finally right there, in the flesh, we don't hear him comment about most of those details. I actually liked the film, but it's peculiar in that way.

I'd like to hear television documentaries, like Louis Theroux's, covered too.

Would you guys be interested in doing an episode on behind the scenes docs like Hearts of Darkness ? What makes the good ones stand out from the crowd?

Oh man, that would be a great topic.

I loved that you brought up the propaganda tactics of so many documentaries, especially political / social ones.

I imagine you don't want to get too political in this show, but I'm pretty sure that people will be fine with you not only criticizing the 'form' of certain documentaries but the content as well —I mean, I imagine you don't have many "Loose Change" fans around here. It'd be fun to hear a heavy critique on one of those conspiracy films —they have almost as many propaganda tricks as logical fallacies.

PS. Hi to everyone BTW. This is my first proper post, apart from the one in the introduction thread

Great to have you back, guys!

Also, it appeared on iTunes on the old stream, so that's good.