"The Truth Behind: The Nasca Lines" (2010)--revisited?

I think I've watched this before--I think--either that, or another documentary about this same subject.  It was interesting the first time.  Still so the 2nd, but it is distracting to have the narrator continually talking in sentence fragments.

I'm sorry.  Correction:


It is distracting.

To have the Narrator.

Of this documentary.

About the Nasca lines.

Continually.

Talking.

In sentence fragments.

As if.

Each clause.

Deserves.

It's very own.

Dramatic.

Pause.

In order.

To give.

The proper frame.

To talk about.

The Nasca lines.

"Patterns of Evidence: Exodus" (2014)

I was skeptical at first--not knowing what angle this documentary was going to take--but overall, was very pleased with it.  Because of the lateness of the hour during which I was watching this, I had to fast forward through parts.  For that, I apologize that I don't have an every minute view of this piece.  That being said, I was satisfied with the parts I saw, which was the larger part of this documentary.

This 2 hour documentary asks the question "Does archaeological evidence exist for the Exodus of the Bible?"  The content is framed with that of a filmmaker seeking answers, but that's all that it serves--as a frame to hold the content together.  I seeks to set up a dialogue between the various views of things; therefore, it doesn't seek to set forward a "Here's the conclusion" ending to the quest.  Nevertheless, the evidence presented favors in such a way that, a least for a Christian, this film can be seen as a "let's just hear about the cool stuff you've found" and take the rest with a grain of salt.  Again, because I am a biased audience and because of the lateness of the hour, I can't imagine how the skeptics would see this film, nor can I guess since that is part of what I missed in my fast forward bits.  The movie kept an ongoing graphic running to help the viewer keep track of where things stood in the course of the investigation--and it was a graphic I very much appreciated and liked.

The documentary didn't tackle "Where's Mt. Sinai?" or the crossing of the red sea.  But did cover as far back as Joseph's initial travels to Egypt all the way to the conquering of Canaan (notably the fall of Jericho).  What it did cover, it covered thoroughly enough--and recapped the evidence in support of its main points every so often--that I didn't feel anything was "missing."

I found this documentary interesting and recommend it for others' consideration.  Please note, this is a 2 hour film.

"Breaking the Maya Code" (2008)

This is one of those documentaries that could get political pretty quickly--which is something I'd rather avoid.  It's not that it is a political topic--it only touches on the cold war briefly--but in edging on it and in asking myself, "What do I think?", the topic can come up pretty quickly.

I enjoyed learning the history of this topic in this documentary.  And I'm always saddened when what isn't understood is destroyed just on the basis of ignorance of the person or group of people doing the destroying.
I know they worked to end on a positive note--and were successful, I think.

This is also probably the first academic topic that has made me question the healthiness (for lack of a better word) of academic debate.  I certainly think that there should be freedom of speech.  As with any freedom comes responsibility.  And with responsibility and freedom comes our natural penchant to sin and mess things up.  This includes disrespect for the other side of the debate.

I also found with this documentary that I had to think about, "What makes a top rated documentary (in my book)?"  I certainly have opinions on it, and it is a theme I seem to address in many of my documentary blogs.

This documentary has got me thinking about all sorts of topics that could be dived into by themselves.  The above just scrapes a little bit of each one.  Any documentary that can get a person to do that while only attempting to inform about a particular topic is saying something.  And the topic this time?  Reading classical (ancient) Mayan writing.

"National Geographic: Herod's Lost Tomb" (2008)

This one was good, a very nice mixture.  Just the right balance.  This is the Herod that tried to kill Jesus as an infant.  The show had "Where is his tomb?" as a very loose mystery framework to organize the show, but otherwise, it was mainly a history of Herod's architectural achievements--based on archaeology, of course, with some brief mentions of Josephus.  I liked the computer generated "picture this from the past" images superimposed on current existing landscape.  Finally, a documentary with all the right balance of pieces in place.

"Bermuda Triangle Exposed" (2010)

There's a certain amount of repetition--as in right before a commercial break and right after a commercial break--in this apparently made for television documentary.  The voiceover narrator seems to be trying to find a balance between stating the facts and making it sound dramatic, without going overboard.  It's a "nearly there" effort, but not quite there.

Think maybe I miss Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

I've heard worse (overly dramatic), and I've heard better.  This one isn't bad.  As for the information, it's interesting enough.  I just don't see what the dramatic tone and script writing adds to the show.  To me, it doesn't.  But the information was interesting enough to keep listening to and I don't think I'd ever heard any of it before.  If an investigation of the Bermuda Triangle sounds interesting to you, this would be a decent enough update on it for you.  It focuses mostly on the science--fact through most of the show with theory near the end--more than any catalog of lost vessel particulars.  They include only 3 or 4 vessel particulars--just enough to serve as examples for the science.  The rest focuses on the science--and attempts to dazzle you with computer graphic displays.  And I suppose you have to show the viewer something while you talk.

"The Real Story: Indiana Jones" (2009)

Let's get this out of the way:  Music is pretty non-descript.  "Let's think of Indiana Jones movies without really using that music and just kind of hover there in the background."  In other words, it works.

Settled.

Now...

You know that disclaimer at the end of movies about how any correlation between the movie and any real person, place, thing, historical event, or garden carrot is purely coincidental?  This episode pretty much said, "Yeah, let's ignore that and look anyway."  

It asks the question, "Was there a real life Indiana Jones?" and tries to tie the proposed historical figures into a "SEE!  SEE!  Here's the inspiration for the movie character. Uh-huh. Uh-huh," mystery speculation (which fails to feel like any kind of  'mysterious debate'  fuel to me--sorry).  Two propositions.  The first was interesting enough.  The second was depressing--which was why, I suppose, they started with the other one first, so you would keep watching.  Makes sense.

Then I was mulling over the theory of "There's only really one story," otherwise known as "There's nothing new under the sun."  This presents the question:  "Does it matter whether it is one story or two?"  And I don't mean that as in "Who cares?"  I mean that in, "What is the impact of that answer?"  

I think I may have just stubbed my toe on the corner of a literary debate/theory outcropping in my living room.

If you're looking for something short, just to fill the time, then this episode isn't too bad.  This documentary does cut out all of the false suspense building.  Thank you.  Yet at the same time it is unsatisfying.  

That's rather misleading.  That makes it sound like it's a bad thing, but I don't think it is.  It's unsatisfying because now I want to watch a biography documentary of the first person, one that does a more thorough job than this show did.  And I want to watch a team or group of people go back and do a more thorough exploration of that cave in the second story.  So, I think it's a good unsatisfying.  I just don't have the time to follow up either desire right now.  And highly doubt either exists.

So, much for satisfaction.

"Secrets: A Viking Map?" (2013)

The sound was a little better--still dramatic--but not as bad as some of the other documentaries.  This documentary is not questioning the arrival of the Vikings to America.  It is looking at the authenticity of an artifact known as the Vinland map.  A good introduction to this particular artifact.  This documentary is also a good introduction into looking at why anything is produced--Why is this document written?  Why is this essay written?  Why is this news article written?  Why is this product on the market?--Or in the case of this documentary, Why is this map produced?  Does a nice balanced job of presenting the ambiguousness of historical research.

"Secrets: The Sphinx" (2013)

This is what you get when you try to make archaeology as exciting as the Super Bowl.  Good Grief!  And the music has "got" to be straight out of an opera's mass choir "crowd goes to war" scenes.  

Wouldn't it be easier just to play an operatic quartet  number during each 4th down of a football game, and then during the final two minutes of the 4th quarter say "Yeah, we still don't really know anything about the Sphinx."?  The effect would be the same.  All that was missing was for one archaeologist to tackle another one.

Or we could just teach the whole stadium to sing, "O Fortuna".  That would work, too.

Perhaps if I took a class on the history of the documentary, maybe that would enlighten why these choices are made.  Otherwise:  For the "adrenaline junky", it's not going to cut it.  For the scholar, it seems to me more annoying than anything.  And as for pop-scholarism?  Let's commit and do it, instead just commercializing our egos.

I will say I recognize the mentioned "hey we found this tomb" tomb in this documentary as the tomb that held one of the "we're going to open this" spots from "Into the Great Pyramid" .  And the guy talking about that spot (Director of Giza.....) was also in the other one, too.

"Biography: Irving Berlin: An American Song" (2001)

I'm not super familiar with A&E Biography not subscribing to cable as I do, and the brief bursts of cable contact during hotel stays and such always seemed to lead to other choices.  Tonight seemed to be the night to actually get around to watching this particular episode, one I've had on the shelf for awhile.

Amazing.

I've had some negative after affects from some biographical productions--not for the quality of the production so much as sometimes what you get when you start digging into the behind the scenes information of people's lives yields information you didn't really want and results that you didn't expect to get.  And after a particularly negative experience that has long since "scarred" me, I've since been a little "gun shy" for watching them--which is why this particular one has been on my shelf for so long.  This biography, happily, did not have that effect.  Not only did enjoy learning new things (a consistent joy to me), but I was able to make some other connections, too.  There were the songs I'd come to know from my music days when music was so much more a part of my life--songs that had showed up in teaching jazz band, songs on my shelf to be played for pleasure on my clarinet and piano.  All these songs now had a context for a life, and in some instances a specific context.  Much of this, I guess, I expected and anticipated.  What I didn't anticipate was the movie connection.  A number of the movies that had Irving Berlin connections were ones that I was either quite familiar with or were ones that I've seen within the last few years.  "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938), "This Is the Army" (1943), "Easter Parade" (1948), "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950), and "Call Me Madam" (1953), as well as "Holiday Inn" were movies that when this biography referenced them, I could say not only "I've seen that!" and "I've seen that, too!", but I felt I knew exactly what they were talking about when they were musically chaptering them.  Other than name recognition of "Irving Berlin", I'd never really thought about how all of these strung together.  And when this biography did all of that, all I could do was say, "wow".

I mean, when the biography referenced the "This Is the Army" appearance of Irving Berlin himself, and the crowd's reception, and some of the other things said.  I could say, "I remember that moment!"  And remember being amazed myself when I originally saw that scene to go "That's Irving Berlin!" with my jaw dropping.   And then, to learn that he was very much quite alive during 18 years of my life, that he lived a full year plus past when my dad lived, I'm filled with thrilled amazement and dismay that such an "institution" to American culture would be out of my knowledge until now.  And his adaptive achievements--wow.

Amazing.

"Deadliest Volcanoes" (2012)

Nova episode.  Other than the unsurprising evolutionary years-figures (it's "post-Noah's flood" in my book) and the "If this erupts, there will be mass destruction and we'll all die", the science parts were pretty interesting.  It kept my interest enough to hear what different detection technologies have  been developed.

And it was pretty cool to watch erupting volcanoes while I'm sitting in the air conditioning deep in the Midwest.

"Secrets of the Viking Sword" (2012)

This documentary had less research mystery and more skill/process sharing.  There were a few hints about trading speculation, but most of the mystery involved how it was made.  And the documentary wasn't so much problem solving that process as much as showing the trial run of testing that process out.  Very interesting.

"Mystery of a Masterpiece" (2012)

Is it a newly discovered portrait by Leonardo DaVinci or isn't it?  :)  Nova does it again.

"Mystery of Easter Island" (2012)

Because this is a Nova episode from PBS (that is, no commercials), the build up and hype to keep the audience wasn't needed.  This particular episode also managed to avoid both evolutionary ideas and "primitive" vs. "modern" culture competition.  It kept a nice flow of "here is what our questions were at this point; here is what we tried", "that failed; here's what we tried next", and "here was our next set of questions".  It also seemed to attempt to fairly present various theories--theories that disagreed with others presented and theories that supplemented other views with variations and additions.  I like how they kept going back to one of the oral traditions that dealt with the matter; of course, it involved the subject matter of what the whole episode was about.  The episode focused on two questions:  "How did they move the statutes (moi)?" with the theory as touched on in oral traditions of "walking" and "What was the cause or causes that lead to the decline of the population of Easter Island?"  Under an hour and nicely interesting.

"Into the Great Pyramid" (2002)

A National Geographic documentary--seems to be built for a TV audience, meaning places for commercials to happen and a lot of hype to try to keep the audience watching past the commercial.  One of the documentary's assumptions is a typical train of thought; it's the thinking that human civilization has gone from simple, primitive thinking and slowly advanced to more complex thinking to our present age.  I tend to favor the reverse.  I think the past was more intelligent than we are and we tend to lose that knowledge the more time progresses on.  At very least, post-flood folks are going to be just as intelligent as we are, not less.  It's a common assumption in thinking, but one I find erroneous.  If a person can ignore the several erroneous assumptions that show up in documentaries, this being one of them, then the rest of the information they present can be quite interesting.  In this documentary, the show surrounded 3 aspects.  Two of this were hype "we are now going to open/look for the first time ever..." types of things.  I don't doubt they were exciting discoveries--quite agree in fact--but could've been done without the hype.  The third aspect of the show didn't involve this, and I found a little more tasteful.  It was a play by play report of discoveries made across the grounds.  I liked it because it included the questions being asked at each point before more discoveries were made, then shows the next set of discoveries made.  This process repeats itself up to the date of the documentary's filming.  It presents the questions along the way, but fast forwards through the archaeological process.  I know that process takes time--I don't pretend it doesn't--but it was more conversational to hear than the other 2 parts.  The other 2 parts were framed like someone getting ready to bang open a pinata which may or may not have anything in it, by a person who has never hit or seen a pinata before.  The 3rd part was like a chap sitting next to you around a fireplace talking about what he's thought and been up to for the last few years.  I much prefer the fireplace chap.  Documentary includes reenactments and computer models to help explain a few things.

"Man with a Movie Camera" (1929)

Soviet montage. Visually, I kind of liked watching this. Wouldn't mind watching the visual part again sometime--maybe not right away. (Though I wouldn't watch this with young kids, and maybe not even young teenagers, without previewing it first!). Audio-wise, I couldn't tell if the sound was original to the film or not--I could do without the sound track. Music minimalism. I thought about muting the sound half way through the movie, but I couldn't imagine the movie as silent either because the music was kind of integral to the feel of the thing. Part of the time it was minimalist music that reminded me of the honky jazz style that plays in the alto saxophone's altissimo register (can't remember which song and jazz musician does that that I'm thinking of), except it was more of a tenor saxophone playing in it's low register. All of the sound track was definitely 20th century art music. And while most of the movie is okay, yeah, no young kids for those couple scenes, unless you want to answer questions you weren't intending to answer for a least another decade or so.

"The Nazis Strike" (1943)

"Prelude to War" and "The Nazis Strike" are the first two films of a series by Frank Capra called "Why We Fight". "Prelude to War" was on my list. The second film was watched because it was on the same DVD. I think I've learned more about WWII from these two films than I did my previous history studies. I don't know that I'd completely fault my education as much this is a slowed down look at events. One school's curriculum took one event (they happened to pick the American Civil War) to show how any history event can be gone into so much more depth than what a survey course can do. The idea is that you survey everything, but show one event in-depth to show the immense possibilities. So, these films are a sneek peek at the in-depth possibilities of this part of history.

"Prelude to War" (1942)

American war propaganda film. I'm almost of the notion this should be required college viewing--and anyone who would think that the notions stated here are only applicable to the WWII time in history is kidding themselves. This film needs discussing--more in light of today than back then. I have more thoughts about this film, but that's all I'm saying here. Most of the music fit with what Capra was trying to do, with the exception of the piece of circus music that's used early on.

"Shakespeare Behind Bars" (2005)

a "my choice" film, documentary. FAScinating. I like Shakespeare, and I like hearing how it is used in different ways, beneficial ways. This was a 90 minute documentary. In that whole time, you only hear one question asked by the interviewer(s)--and that really was because the question was needed--the reaction wouldn't have made sense otherwise, and you needed to see the space of time between the question and the answer. Fascinating documentary.

"With Byrd at the South Pole" (1930)

It's a documentary that won a cinematography academy award. Picture-wise, I can see why. There's a brief shot from the top of a mast looking down at the boat. Then the shots from the plane itself as it headed to south pole. Plus all of the shots across snowscapes. My descriptions sound so dry; it really was a fascinating piece. I'd willingly watch it again. The music was...appropriate but cartoonish; definitely shows the attempt of music to influence mood. I have yet to read music film history--but sound to film was still pretty recent at this point.