fireballs & tsunami

Quick reviews of some notable documentaries:

The Turtles: Happy Together. Slightly-dated, very charming nonetheless, doc chronicles the Turtles’ rise and fall in the 1960s rock scene. Hilarious highlights: Turtles members Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, in a heartbreaking but laugh-out-loud routine, draw a chart mapping the various lawyers, managers, and institutions who have sued them over the past forty years; the band recounts their visit to the White House, involving a faulty metronome that had Nixon’s Secret Service men hitting the decks; band members look back on meeting a drugged Bob Dylan and Beatles members; Kaylan and Volman explain how the self-mocking, snarky lyric you’re my pride and joy et cetera unintentionally became an important part of a hit song.

The Future of Food. Examines suspicious tactics employed by Monsanto and other corporations to taint the products that ultimately end up on supermarket shelves. The segments focusing on genetically modified seeds and their potential to annihilate the world’s crops are particularly disturbing.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Explores shady attempts of car manufacturers to destroy the energy-efficient, user-friendly electric car. The structure is clean and linear and the interviews well-shot; I would have liked to see a bit more counterargument from the automobile manufacturers to round out the story.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. One of the many anti-Wal-Mart docs released in recent years, this film focuses primarily on Wal-Mart’s effects on small communities. A few of the talking heads segments are tacky and contrived, but the statistics revealing how much Wal-Mart takes advantage of small towns (underpaying and overworking employees, skimping on health insurance, discouraging unions, cornering the market) are particularly fascinating.

The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll (PBS). Five-disc series focuses on the birth of country and rock music and how subsequent musical genres (classic rock, Motown, disco, punk, New Wave, alternative, etc.) were conceived. Regurgitation of a lot of well-known music facts, but the talking heads and archival concert clips are great.

In other news:

I saw Broadway’s High Fidelity (in December, I forgot to post sooner; NOT a reflection of the musical) and, unlike the NY Times’ Ben Brantley, really enjoyed it. The lead actor’s understudy actually performed in the production I saw, and he was very good, but I have to hand it to the supporting cast, who managed to sing surprisingly charming showtunes about The Clash without skipping a, uh, beat. Nick Hornby might be proud.

In disappointing theater news, Legally Blonde is headed to Broadway. GAG.

I reviewed several restaurants, bars, and music venues on Yelp. I joined the site last year, but didn’t get around to posting anything until this week, after realizing the site’s usefulness. It’s a friendlier, hipper, more pleasant version of CitySearch. Dig.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2007 at 1:15 am and is filed under Music, Film, Television, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.