The Carter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDo92CxqxlU&feature=player_embedded

So last Tuesday one of my friends posted a link on my wall to a trailer of a documentary done on my favorite rapper… Lil Wayne. The doc premiered at Sundance and was received pretty well. So after the trailer ended it was advertised that you could preorder the DVD before it was released the next day. Sitting in class I immediately ordered it.

Today I watched it and I thought it was great. The trailer claims the doc to be very cinema verite and it definitely is. The documentary aspect of the film allows it to feel personal. A hand held camera is often used and in some of the shots you can see other camera operators and boom polls. Still, heavily incorporated into the doc are very artistically composed and constructed shots. A lot of the scenes are lit intensely and very colorful. It was beautiful. The documentary also played had a music video component to it. At times his lyrics would appear on screen over images of him walking around or performing. It was unique and I think it worked well with the film.

There is a disclaimer at the beginning of the film which states that during the middle of shooting Lil Wayne refused to continue with the making of the documentary. You would not be able to tell watching the film. Despite the adversity, the documentary was still well put together. It was just a funny example to me because we all faced different difficulties in putting together our docs and it’s not different from what occurs in the real world. The director explicitly stated that he had difficulty in putting the film together. This probably had a large influence on the unconventional verite style of the doc and forced the filmmakers to be creative. I would recommend this to Chelsea. It might give you some ideas on your doc and your rapper. The lyrics and the music played a large part in the narrative of the documentary and I don’t remember it being as heavily incorporated in the samples you showed in class. I think it worked well in this and might be something you want to check out.

 

La Buena Vista Social Club

This documentary was an interesting portrait of the lives of musicians in Cuba. I refer to it as a portrait because the story line seemed to be less important than the aesthetics of the film. Beautifully composed shots of the town, cities, and ocean were accentuated with the vivacious and melodious sounds of the Cuban symphony. There were several interviews of the men and women that composed the group. The thing that connected them all was this Buena Vista social club – a music hall were they used to play many years ago but now no longer exists as a venue.

It was a typical doc in the sense that it presented the basic story line for the individual artists. Where they’re from, what they’re upbringing was like, when did they first learn to play an instrument, etc.. I didn’t find the documentary particularly compelling because I couldn’t figure out why it was important to me. I did not connect with the characters. Possibly because there was too little time spent on several artists, or maybe because the stories from the main guy they were following/interviewing weren’t linear or connected in any way easily apparent to me.

I really enyed the music in the film. The artists were talented. They had charisma. It was entertaining to see men and women eighty plus years old with such beautiful voices and still strongly engaged in and passionate for music. Time has not negatively affected their talents.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldmv2Ad3SeU

So the last screening we had a showed up a little late for and then fell asleep on. That being said, I don’t have too much to say about the Mississippi Chicken. So, instead I am posting a music video that I directed at the end of my sophomore year while I was at Notre Dame.

I stayed on campus over the summer for competition and a random guy that lived in the town who was an artist sent an email out to campus asking for someone to direct his video for him for free. Not knowing what I was getting into, I enthusiastically volunteered. He was a little difficult and switched songs on me at the last minute after I had already developed an idea and shots for the original song he selected. While I was away at competition he and his best friend decided they wanted a different song done and had their own concept for the video. I just wanted the experience so I didn’t care… He had an idea for a house party which didn’t relate to the song at all and everyone on set was wasted. I recorded the video anyways with him and his friends wasted and he was falling all over the place, some of which we incorporated into the video.

I’m not particularly proud of it, but it was fun.

Enjoy… Haha

A very touching film

So Ellen suggested that I checkout The Boys of Baraka. At first, it didn’t really sound that appealing but to preserve the sanctity of her library checkout I made myself watch it. It was probably the most amazing documentary I have ever seen; amazing in the sense that it was the most touching, inspiring, and personal doc I’ve witnessed. There were several times during the film when I caught myself wanting to cry. In the end, a few tears escaped despite my best effort to hold them in.
The doc does an incredible job of taking you into the world of the poor black youth in Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve often heard about the injustices and disparity of the educational system in poor urban communities, but never have I seen it first-hand like this. In the documentary, I felt like I was in these child’s lives, living in their world. I saw their struggles, heard their hopes and dreams, felt their sorrows, and experienced their pain.
For those of you who have never heard of it, in Kenya there is a school called Baraka which has a program that pulls talented but struggling kids out of poor urban communities and educates them in Africa. It gives them an opportunity to just be kids and to get of the drug and violent filled environments they are forced to call home. It is a two year program and in the doc the kids complete a year before something tragic happens (I don’t want to spoil it for those who intend to see it).
It was so moving for me because the filmmaker did a great job interviewing and connecting with the kids and families. The children seemed unaffected by the camera and the families were very open. I was attached. As a spectator I was able to witness the hope of the children in conflict with the hopelessness of their situations; they still had aspirations to be different than the rest of the kids on the block, or their imprisoned fathers and drug addicted mothers. The characters sold the film. There was great footage but the personality of these children was adorable and admirable. It was hard to watch them struggling in these situation. The film did a wonderful job, if you can call it wonderful, of conveying the feeling of hopelessness that these children dwell in.

Harvard Beats Yale 29 – 29

Nobody came to see this entertaining documentary except Chithra and myself. Briefly, the documentary was about the classic Harvard vs Yale football game in either 1963 or 64. During this game both teams were undefeated and playing each other the last game of the season. Yale was favored to win and took a significant lead, heading into the fourth quarter up by two or three touchdowns. Needless to say Harvard came back miraculously and tied the game up on the last play at the last second. Live footage from the game was intertwined with interviews from these players 40 plus years later… It was funny to hear their false exaggerations and listen to them re-tell the stories of their glory days. Every body perceived the situation different, had differing perspectives… Some guys reassured themselves that something happened one way and gauranteed it, then the documentary would follow with game footage of what actually happened. It was funny to see how sure these guys were of themselves when indeed, what they believe to be true did not happen.
It was basically a bunch of old, egotistical, affluent, ivy league grads reminiscing on the good old days. It was funny because we got interviews from Harvard and Yale players who told the same game in many different ways.

Tupac Doc

I love the Tupac documentary. Growing up, my parents tried to shelter me from hardcore rap or things with explicit content so I was never able to really get into it. He was not a part of my music experience as a young teen. Coming to college, I was really out of touch with a lot of people whenever they would mention all these great Tupac songs they love or how big of fans they were and I could not relate… I could never really understand why.
This is my second time to see the doc. After the first time I saw I became really motivated to listen to him and I started downloading all his songs. Who are we to know what the “real” Tupac is like… I think the documentary does a convincing job of portraying him as truthfully as possible. It revealed his conflictions, his strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears, etc. I liked the look we got to have at all the dimensions of his character.
Listening to his music, you can sense the passion that he spoke about in the documentary. He tells that he is rapping from the heart and I can feel that energy through the speakers as I listen. I liked that he had an explanation for his explicit content. I feel like so many times rappers get shot down for being vulgar and degrading, but those critical listeners are only listening to it on the surface. These artists are speaking of life as they’ve come to know it. They aren’t privileged with our education and diction. On average their encounters with the world have not been all that positive, so neither is the sound of their music. Some rappers do have shallow content and are completely degrading without their being any deeper message or meaning, but not all.
I liked his explanation of how/why he calls women bitches in some songs. He acknowledges that not all women are bitches, but some are, and those are the ones he is talking about. It is a degrading and vulgar term but again that is just a correspondence to the environment he grew up in.
I think he is one of the most influential and greatest rappers of all time and every time I see this documentary I get inspired. At times it is almost discouraging because I have not encountered the struggles and difficulties in life that he has, and I lack that same drive/motivation.

Overall, great doc.

Really?!?

After the class discussion of the screening on Tuesday, I became a little worried. How desensitized have I become to violence? Everyone in class seemed to share a low tolerance and disgust for the images on screen. Sadly, I was unaffected. I never felt uneasy during any point of the documentary. Feeling guilty, I started to reflect over the reasons why I might have been able to sit through that and not have the same responses that everyone else in the class seemed to share.

Personally, I believe interrogation tactics and “torturing” have come a long way, and are a lot more humane than they used to be. None of the conditions the detainees suffered did I consider desirable, or even that I would be able to withstand, but I felt they were more humane and less barbaric than hanging someone upside down and beating them with a bat, or stripping their clothes off of them and electrocuting them. I don’t know that all the torturing and interrogation tactics that were shown in the film was the extent of what took place there, but from what I saw, the situation could have been a lot worse. More than physical abuse, it seemed like mental abuse towards the prisoners.

Furthermore, I feel practices such as these are necessary in order to obtain useful information in the protection of our country’s safety. I don’t know what people expect of the government. I think it’s unrealistic to believe we could politely ask potential terrorists and detainees are they affiliated with the Taliban, do they know of Osama’s location, etc and expect an honest response. Then, if told no we are to just let them go without further questioning? Taliban members are as faithful to their organization as Americans are to the US. It is going to take some persuasion in order to get the truth out of them – truthful information that could directly result in the protection of our country. The practices in place are brutal but necessary in obtaining this information. We can’t give them comfortable containment because that standard of living might be better than where they came from so they would feel no need to comply and tell the truth.

As far as being desensitized, I think after being exposed to numerous movies such as Saw and Hostel or videogames like Grand Theft Auto, it was easier for me to watch this. For a long time I have seen people on the movie screen get their heads chopped off, cut into bits and pieces, ripped apart, eaten alive, etc – so when watching a reenactment take place of guys who are forced to sit continuously in silence under extreme weather conditions, I am sorry to say I was emotionally unaffected.

I know I’m going against the grain here and I probably set myself up to get shot down… but that is how I feel about the subject.