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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Crumb (1994)

A documentary directed and produced by Terry Zwigoff.
Artist Robert Crumb takes part in interviews involving his 2 brothers and some ex-wives.
This was an amazing film. Besides liking the artwork and how the film was made, I found out that Robert Crumb's personality is in some ways similar to mine. He's just a dorky dude who wants to be working on his creative projects all the time like me. When Crumb visits his brothers, one is a shut-in who lives with their mother and is on prescription drugs. The other brother is an artist as well and has some strange "health procedures". While sitting in the interviews with this insanity, Robert responds to everything with a good natured laugh and keeps the interview moving along. Instead of finding verbose ways to praise the film, I will just recommend it and rate it awesome. I watched it on Crackle.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Out of the Woods: Life and Death In Dirty Dave's Homeless Camp (2012)

A documentary by Michael E. Arth.
A documentary filmmaker is led to interview the leader of a homeless camp by one of the residents there. After the initial interview, there are 2 follow-up visits.
This was a very well-made documentary and showed what I assume to be an accurate depiction of homeless people living in the woods. The dialogue was very revealing and the sound was actually good. I could hear what everyone was saying! The drama in the lives of the film subjects was punctuated with what Wikipedia calls "dark humor". All of the inhabitants of Dirty Dave's camp were alcoholics and probably drunk while filming was taking place. The shot of "recycling beer cans" showed the types of beer that I would buy even if my pockets were loaded with money. To quote a customer at my convenience store job, "Cheap beer gets you fucked up faster". The woman, Allyson, former beauty queen, had obviously seen better days and looked like a crack whore to me. The other men in the camp seemed like older versions of people who I've had the pleasure of drinking with in the past. There was a shoddy rendition of a classic rock song, sung by the homeless people, which I found more annoying than heartbreaking. I found the film to be captivating and am rating it best.