Booze, Broads and Bowling

Meet Rocky Salemmo. He’s a ramblin’ gamblin’ man. A short documentary by Sean Dunne.

The Bowler from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Arena: The Confessions of Robert Crumb

The whole documentary.

Neil Young - Don't Be Denied

Just so that 'Pish has a post for March. Here's a wee clip from the Neil Young documentary 'Don't Be Denied'.

The Wild Whites of West Virginia

This is worth a watch. Richard Metzger interviews Julien Nitzberg, director of the documentary film, The Wild Whites of West Virginia. The film follows a wild out of control hillbilly family living on the edge of the law in Boone County, West Virginia.

It runs for 20 minutes, but watch it for the film trailer at the beginning at least.

DANGEROUS MINDS 003: metzger/nitzberg from Richard Metzger on Vimeo.

Joy Division

Yesterday I went to see the Joy Division documentary, cryptically entitled 'Joy Division'. Directed by Grant Gee the film uses a lot of archive footage to recount the story of the Manchester band.

It talks to all the main players still around including the late Tony Wilson and the ever entertaining Peter Saville. The film suffers a little from attempting to be a wee bit too arty, using a lot of cutting and chunks of text. On the whole though it's a good film that adds to the story of the band that's already out there.

One thing I really enjoyed in it was hearing John Peel's voice again. Funny, his was a voice that was always around, if not on the radio then on countless TV commercials and it was nice to hear him again in an archive recording of him introducing some Joy Division records on his programme.

It also never fails to amaze me when I hear Joy Division on film just how otherworldly their sound was. Some of the TV footage from 1979 shows just how much a band ahead of their time they really were.

Here they are in September 1979 on Something Else performing 'Transmission' and 'She's Lost Control'.

Where in the World?

Since I saw Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, I have literally never set foot inside a McDonald's restaurant. I haven't visited a Burger King, KFC or any other fast food restaurant for that matter.

Spurlock's new film is called Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? Here he talks to The Guardian about it.

"After Super Size Me, I remember sitting down in 2005 and thinking about what to do next," says Spurlock, in his sing-song timbre. Then he noticed a resurgence of media interest in Bin Laden. "People were asking why we couldn't find him," he says. An idea was planted. When Spurlock ran into a like-minded venture capitalist called Adam Dell, who became executive producer on the film, the adventure began, with $3m in backing from French financiers.

Down below Spurlock speaks to the Wall Street Journal at Sundance.

In Search of Steve Ditko

WARNING: It's another post about comics from the guy on here, who's not into comics.

Last night I watched In Search of Steve Ditko on BBC4.

It was a fascinating documentary wherby Jonathan Ross looked at the career of, and attempted to track down artist Steve Ditko. If you missed it and don't know who Ditko is, then he co-created Spiderman. Or he was the artist who worked with Stan Lee on Spiderman. Depending on whose version you want to believe.

The fact that he's not univerally credited as being the co-creator of Spiderman was a big feature of the film.

I was a big Spiderman fan when I was young and what I noticed from the panels they showed in the doc, was that Ditko's artwork was what I most associated with Spiderman. I had these early stories in paperback book form, a long time before the term 'graphic novel' was widely known, and I read them cover to cover numerous times.

Ross talked to a lot of big names in comics including Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore and Mark Millar. They discussed the reasons why Ditko suddenly, amid rumours of acrimony with Stan Lee, got up and left Marvel Comics.

There was also an interview with Stan Lee, who was put on the spot as to whether he believed Ditko was the co-creator. Lee was very diplomatic and suggested Ditko could have co-creator status if he wished, but when asked if he believed that he was, just couldn't bring himself to say so.

An excellent documentary the only disappointing thing about it for me was that a couple of newspaper previews said that there would be an on-camera interview with Ditko. In fact one preview I read said that it was 'moving'. Unfortunately Ross can't quite convince Ditko to appear on camera.

Jonathan Ross writes about it here in Friday's Guardian.

So, for more about the man himself, Canadian writer Blake Bell provides some stories of Ditko from the 1960s. Here he discusses his own visit with Ditko in 2001.

Bell also has his own Steve Ditko website.

From one of the best sources of information on comics on the net, Mark Evanier's News From Me comes these two pieces on Ditko relating to the documentary. In the first he discusses Ditko's alleged recluse status. In the second he provides a link to a 1968 interview and writes about Ditko's departure from Marvel. Here's Mark Millar on his own forum talking about the doc after he had watched it in June.

Finally Ditko's Wikipedia page.

If you missed it, it’s repeated at 12.30am on Wednesday night on BBC4.

UPDATE: Here it is on YouTube. This is the first of seven parts.

The Bridge

Over the weekend I saw The Bridge, a documentary about The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. More accurately it’s a documentary about the suicides that occur on the bridge.

There was some controversy about how the film was made. The filmmakers set up numerous cameras at various points across the bridge and recorded all the activity there for a year. They told the authorities that they were making a film about a year in the life of the bridge, but didn't tell them they would be focusing solely on those people who chose to jump from there.

It captures many people jumping to their death and it’s quite a haunting and affecting film. It’s such a picturesque scene it can’t help but look great visually.

There are interviews with friends and family of those who jumped. There’s footage of someone who was rescued by a passer-by and there’s an interview with Kevin Hines. Kevin jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, but survived.

It offers no solutions for the people in the film wondering why their loved one chose to kill themselves. It also provides no suggestions for how San Francisco can stop the bridge staying the World’s no. 1 suicide hotspot.

Early on there’s a fascinating contrast that the location provides. One of the jumpers was found by two guys who were on the water water kiting. They commented on the fact that they used the water as a celebration of life doing something they loved on it, while someone else used it to end their life.

It’s certainly not the easiest film to watch but it’s powerful, moving and totally compelling.

Here's a review of the film from Paste magazine.