I’m hesitant to post this, since the title makes it sound like link bait. Similarly, I’m not really interested in the subject matter itself for exactly the same reason i.e. this is the TV equivalent of link bait. That said, on a meta level, its entertaining enough to blog about watching a documentary about blogging.
In other words, this is voyeurism – and not because of the sex.
47 min 45 sec Dec 20, 2007
If you want a more erudite look at the same topic as Fast Food Nation or Supersize me, look no further. And if you watch till the end you will get to see the legendary deep frying of a Mars Bar.
Another Jonathan Meades classic, whereupon he looks at fast food from its mid 19th Century origins when Sephardic Jews in the East End of London took the tradition of deep frying in olive oil to what became the first fried fast food: fish and chips.
The problem was that in the UK, only animal fats rather than high temperature olive oil were available, leading to the tradition of soggy, dangerous, Anglo Saxon food that now plagues the US. The combination of primogeniture (land ownership passed to the first born) and flattish landscape created conditions where farming was the dominion of the few and therefore there was no tradition of peasant food production or ultimately cooking and gastronomy through Protestant meanness. Again this is something which has come to a head in recent years in the US, where the farming population has reduced to an insignificant amount in the last few decades.
The food we eat today is the food of amusement parks, MSM (Mechanically Separated Meat) hot dogs and burgers cooked at high temperature to kill the bacteria from the excrement. Food is something we consume on our lap while watching celebrity pseudo chefs show how to do something most of us don’t intend to practice – cook.
The most telling point in this film is where he asks young children where meat comes from, and none of them know. This is documentary making at its best. A political subject is shown artistically and in historical context, with simultaneous passion, wit and logic rather than alienating rage.
Link
Don’t be put off by the title, this is not a conspiracy theory piece, but a very interesting (if rather pedestrian in format) re-examination of 5th Century BCE Athens ‘ democracy. This hundred year period two and a half millennia ago, is the model for all Western democracy, yet the reality of its mechanism and outcome is not what has become commonly accepted.
Its a great premise for learning from history, both literally and by analogy.
(These documentaries are wrongly labeled on Google – Part 2 is part one and part 2 is unlabeled)
48 min 4 sec Nov 30, 2007
A documentary about John Carpenter is the only setting where Kurt Russell’s appearance on screen doesn’t have me reaching for the off button.
Image Entertainment 59 min 58 sec Dec 11, 2007
BBC 1 43 min 31 sec Dec 11, 2007
This year’s prestigious BBC lecture is given by the entrepreneur that puts founders of web 2.0 companies to shame – Craig Venter.
BBC 2 58 min 14 sec Nov 25, 2007
Documentary about a career woman in Saudi. An interesting peek behind the Iron veil, as it were.
Link
The BBC 58 min 44 sec Nov 21, 2007
I doubt there are many people who need to be convinced that dog fighting is barbaric, however this film gives a rare glimpse into how people can convince themselves that something so obviously cruel is acceptable.
We see a man from Tucson carefully rearing a Pit Bull puppy, chained next to an infant seat (i.e. he has a family) for it to be built up into a good fighter, a noble warrior. In other words, it is much more complicated than saying that he hates dogs and wants to torture them. He does not perceive his persona to be much different from someone who would have any other member of their family deliberately raised as a fighter. I suspect he fancies himself as a gladiatorial trainer, rather than a someone with a deep inferiority complex. And I would argue that this is exactly how the chain of torture does extend to humans.
The second issue is what is to be done about Pit Bulls. There is a cultural difference between the UK and the US here. In the UK all Pit Bulls were killed (rightly so, in my opinion), and yet in the US it would seem that the public outcry would prevent it. Pit Bulls are often owned by the same types of people that nurse spent Greyhounds, other poor animals, but ones that haven’t been known to eat your children (that’s what eventually provoked their slaughter in the UK). The argument is that even if Pit Bulls have been bred (or nurtured) to be monsters, they had no choice in the matter and therefore we should let the innocent live until found guilty.
The logic of this seems strange. When we raise and breed animals such as dogs, which are carnivores, many more animals will die to feed the dog. We are therefore prioritizing the monster over the cute, whether we like it or not.
50 min 53 sec Nov 16, 2007
A friend who was familiar with the post apocalyptic urban areas of the US, such as downtown Detroit, could not believe how bad Manchester looked, when he visited (for a NASA conference, of all things). He also could not believe it when I told him that some of the richest areas in Britain surrounded it, that it had some of the best examples of uniquely British architecture and that it did not have the kind of reputation for decay, these days, that Detroit does. Manchester is a complicated and important place.
What he did buy, was the fact that Manchester, like Detroit, is one of the world’s most important cities, musically and therefore artistically. A documentary about Factory Records, in memory of the late, great Tony Wilson is therefore a must see.
BBC Television
1 hr 29 min 27 sec Oct 13, 2007