« More LG15 Links | Main | Fayetteville Drinking Liberally »
September 10, 2006
Lazy Sunday Links
While digging around on the web tonight, I came across the news that Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's The Boys of Baraka will be airing on PBS on Tuesday night. Ewing and Grady more recently made the controversial documentary, Jesus Camp, which I had the good fortune of seeing earlier this summer at Silverdocs. Not sure I'll get a chance to watch it--I'm insanely busy right now--but wanted to give the doc a quick mention.
Lance Mannion has an interesting blog entry on the ABC docudrama, The Road to 9/11, in which he addresses the transparently partisan marketing of the series through screeners sent to right-wing bloggers. I've been too exhausted and saddened by the incessant discussions of the fifth anniversary of the attacks to want to spend four hours watching a miniseries of questionable veracity. I don't have any specific problems with the docudrama genre--I think it worked quite well in The Road to Guantanamo, but my sense is that Road to 9/11 is not only nakedly partisan but also poorly made, so I've decided not to watch it. In part, this probably stems from the fact that I find the relentless memorializing of 9/11 to be rather morbid, and Road to 9/11 is caught up in that for me. And while I realize that I can choose to avoid watching it, I also find CNN's decision to replay the coverage of the 9/11 attacks online to be similarly morbid.
I also wanted to mention another web TV series that has recently come to my attention. Based out of Pittsburgh (where I believe I have at least two regular readers), the series Something to be Desired focuses on a group of DJs who work at a Pittsburgh radio station. I'm just now checking out the series, which is in its third season, but given my recent obsessions with web TV series such as Young American Bodies (probably NSFW), the whole LonelyGirl15 phenomenon, and the "webisodes" promoting the new season of Battlestar Gallactica, I figured this series deserved a mention, too. I'll try to watch some episodes later this week and write a longer review.
Tuesday Update: Via Risky Biz, an interesting interview with Jesus Camp filmmakers Rachel Grady and Hedi Ewing, plus the news that Magnolia Pictures, the film's distributor, is platforming Jesus Camp throughout the midwest before playing the film in national spotlight cities such as New York and Los Angeles. I'm still getting tons of hits here from people looking for reviews of the film (it's currently one of my most visited reviews), which suggests that there's lots of interest in this doc.
Posted by chuck at September 10, 2006 11:50 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wordherders.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.fpl/5903
Comments
Well I just have to comment or write about this, don't I? Hopefully I can get to watching these this week, and tomorrow at Film Kitchen (a monthly screening of local film/video projects) I'll ask around about who's doing this and how...
Posted by: A. Horbal at September 11, 2006 11:04 AM
Hey, I hoped you'd take the bait! There's a pretty good discussion of the project on their about page (they shoot on miniDV and edit on Fional Cut Pro and Adobe), but if you can do some digging, that would be great.
Posted by: Chuck at September 11, 2006 11:57 AM
Battlestar Galactica breaks down like this: If you've never been a fan of written s.f., you'll probably think it's very good. And feel weird about watching a Sci-Fi channel show modeled on the super cheesy 1970s BSG.
If you've ever been a devote of smart, written science fiction, you'll flip for what is really and truly the best, smartest extended filmed science fiction ever (and a damn fine political show too, no matter what your political persuasion).
Posted by: Peter at September 11, 2006 11:37 PM
That's my take on BSG so far, too. I'm more interested in the promotion of the new season via the online "webisodes" for the specific focus of my article, which I'll discuss in more detail in a few weeks, once I've taken care of some other projects. The semester has just begun and I already feel like I'm six months behind.
Posted by: Chuck at September 12, 2006 11:39 AM