Is This The Real Life? Documentaries You Love

[Ladybug]

My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. A burnt out guy goes swimming off the dangerous coast of South Africa in a kelp forest and becomes friends with an octopus. This was a most unusual nature documentary. I liked it, and all the underwater scenes are very relaxing and the octopus was amazing.

[famvir]

Oct 26, 2020 10:56:48 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. A burnt out guy goes swimming off the dangerous coast of South Africa in a kelp forest and becomes friends with an octopus. This was a most unusual nature documentary. I liked it, and all the underwater scenes are very relaxing and the octopus was amazing.

I just saw this, and the relationship between the guy and the octopus was delightful and amazing.

He ended up bonding with his son as well. But I wondered about his wife.

Here's a guy moving back to his childhood (vacation?) home on the shore of a kelp bed in S. Africa and chilling there for over a year, snorkeling every day. He ends up bonding with a she octopus, loving and caressing and caring more about the cephalopod than he did about his wife and child.

Can you have an emotional affair with an octopus? Why yes you can. The program was fascinating, but the guy is definitely broken. And the octopus didn't heal him any more than a human side piece would have.

I wish it was more about the octopus and less about this pos guy. There is another movie there. I want to see that one.

[Ladybug]

I did appreciate that he admitted he "fell in love" a little with the octopus. Ya think? He was going out there checking on her every day and wanting a cuddle! I just found the octopus to be a delightful character, and I was impressed with how the filmmakers presented her. The octopus is a solitary animal, but very strong, smart, and resilient, so she was a very relatable character. That's what I loved most about the movie. I also liked how the guy was obviously depressed and burnt out, but spending all this time in nature helped him.

[eclair]

We have a Roku channel called Kanopy which is a library channel. Not sure if it's only in Colorado or not. It has a lot of good movies. We watched The Booksellers a documentary about antiquarian book dealers, mostly in NYC. It's narrated by Parker Posy. We also watched Faces Places, another documentary. Agnes Varda, an 89 year old film maker, one of the French New Wave ones, travels around with a 33 year old artist who pastes large black and white photos on building, train cars, silos, etc. They meet some wonderful and unusual people and install some of the large photos. Very touching. Both of these were excellent. If you can find them through the library or in your cable packages I really recommend them. We've also been watching a PBS series with Henry Louis Gates, called African Civilizations. I know very little about the history of Africa, so I learn a lot. Not exactly documentaries, but good.

[zwinter]

A lot of libraries give access to streaming sites: Kanopy is one, also Hoopla. My library even lets us check out 7-day access to AcornTV! (and yes, you can check it out over and over and over...)

Definitely check your library to see if you have access!

[prisma]

I have been on a documentary/biopic kick and just finished a two-part documentary on George Harrison. He was always my favorite Beatle but I honestly don't know a lot about him beyond the highlights, which is why I decided to watch.

Right off the bat, the actual filmmaking of the documentary bugged me. It didn't follow a narrative thread very well and had very choppy editing and the images they showed really jumped around in time in a way that was inconsistent with the timeline they were following. And, especially in part 2, they threw out a couple of HUGE bombs and never followed up on them.* The roughness wasn't pronounced enough to come across as avante garde; it just struck me as bad documentary making. Unfocused. I still enjoyed learning more about George Harrison but it almost turned into a hate watch for me because it felt incoherent at times.

I got to the end of part 2 and saw it was directed and produced by Martin Scorsese . LOL.

* For instance, a HUGE thing they focus on in part 1 was how spiritual George was, almost in an otherworldly way, and how much it drove everything he did. Then in part 2, once of his close friends mentioned George had a drug problem later in life and his wife implied that he was a huge womanizer throughout their marriage. It would have been nice to have followed up just a bit on either one of those since they run counter to the saintly image they'd been crafting. Clearly he was a very complicated person, but they could have filled in the holes a little better.

[chiqui]

Yup, that was true about George! He was not a saint by any means. Very spiritual, but he did have a side that liked women and also the finer things in life.

I watched Challenger: The Final Flight on Netflix. Really heartbreaking. It brought back that time in a flash for me. Chernobyl happened a few months later, I recall, and the accident faded out of the news. It was a real black eye for NASA and I don't think the organization ever recovered regarding manned space flight. When the shuttles were retired, I recall reading an in-depth article in WIRED, or about the NYC, about how the whole program was misguided, the technology was just not there for the frequency and safety of the flights that they wanted.

These days, it looks like we're back to rockets with reusable capsules for the most part, with spaceplanes for tourists.

[Ginger]

Mar 17, 2005 17:22:43 GMT -4 chiqui said:

It brought back that time in a flash for me. Chernobyl happened a few months later, I recall, and the accident faded out of the news.

My nine-year-old's memory is a little different. I had to watch the evening news every night (we had to be in front of the TV promptly at 6:25 and weren't allowed to leave the room until 7:05) and I think it was well over a year that I watched Dr. Bob Arnot discuss solid rocket boosters, o-rings and Christa McAuliffe nearly every single night.

I think I always thought the media made too much out of Christa McAuliffe. In retrospect, there is something extra wrong about NASA selling the public on the story of this wholesome civilian going to space and making it seem so safe, while behind the scenes they were being so deeply reckless with that civilian's life.

[Ladybug]

Mar 17, 2005 17:22:43 GMT -4 chiqui said:

I watched Challenger: The Final Flight on Netflix. Really heartbreaking. It brought back that time in a flash for me.

I watched this recently and thought it was excellent. It brought back so many memories. I had no idea Peter Billingsley (the child actor from A Christmas Story) was tied to the shuttle program or that he was there that day. I also appreciated that they gave a lot of personal details about the other astronauts besides McAuliffe.

[memememe76]

Netflix released a 6 part documentary series called Amend: The Fight For America. Hosted by Will Smith, it focuses on the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, how and why it was created, how it has been used to protect marginalized groups, how it has been chipped and ignored by those who seek inequality, and how far the country is from the 14th Amendment’s ideals. Gripping and emotionally charged, it is also very accessible. Recommend it.