JulesMaximus
No Lifer
- Jul 3, 2003
- 74,586
- 986
- 126
Dankk
Diamond Member
- Jul 7, 2008
- 5,558
- 25
- 91
Religulous is a pretty good one. It doesn't try to be very serious or hard-hitting, but it's very entertaining watching Bill Maher talk to religious people and poke holes in their beliefs.
KeithP
Diamond Member
- Jun 15, 2000
- 5,664
- 202
- 106
Yup, their GMC (genetically modified corn) is so low on minerals and is pure crap but hey, big Co's throw big $$ at politicians so the USDA rubber-stamps this shit as safe to eat and feed to livestock. Same deal with ethanol, touted as the "home-grown energy of the future, is utter crap, it takes as much (or more) energy to make ethanol as you wind up with in burnable fuel but since big business invested hundreds of millions in processing plants a lot of$$ got thrown in the right pockets to make sure it's mandated that it has to be added to our gasoline even though it reduces mileage and causes all hell with small engines that are not designed to handle this crap, welcome to 'merica the land of the corrupt and all mighty dollar.
That's excessive paranoia. Take a documentary about the holocaust - ohmigosh it's an agenda for the Jews to make them look good and Nazis look bad!
Documentaries SHOULD point out a lot of things that are 'good and bad' when that's the topic, and it's accurate. They SHOULD have the agenda to tell you the truth.
The bigger problem would be some overly 'neutral' agenda that has to make both sides look equally good no matter the truth. Why, Nixon's critics were just as flawed!
I do really dislike when documentaries do anything dishonest. Sometimes they do it to 'tell a larger truth' and I have some sympathy but generally do not like it.
One of the famous documentaries is 'The Thin Blue Line'. And that one did turn out to get an innocent man freed from prison. Not familiar with much false in it.
Another, I can't remember the name, but was about the hysteria of public suspicion of mass deveil worshipping child abusers among child care providers, telling the horrific story of what one family went through - including both some terrible abuses by prosecutors as well as leaving some gray area where people might have done wrong.
Or Spinal Tap. A very fair 'Rocumentary'. OK, nevermind that one.
Apparently virtually all 'nature documentaries' stage things rather than show you the lack of things they could film normally. I'm not sure about the granddaddy of them - Planet Earth (the granddaddy because Americans are allergic to supporting public television like the English do with the BBC), but that could still be good documentary, unless it's something like the Disney 'lemmings' disaster.
Ken Burns' documentaries seem to hold up pretty well as far as I know, but aren't much about political or controversial topics.
Some people here also seem to pretend that even a documentary with a lot of errors can't also have a lot of good and valid info.
As a rule, some tv documentaries seem to get a lot right. 60 Minutes has had a couple of bad incidents but generally is great in 99% of the cases. Frontline and Vanguard are good.
Dan Rather has a show on axs.tv, which isn't exactly a documentary series but pretty close, and also seems to be really good, I'd recommend checking it on itunes.
It's possible to agree with the 'point' of a documentary, but find that the documentary has flaws. People are often tempted to overlood the flaws to support the message.
Mogran Spurlock's documentary might fall into that category, based on the link here. I'm a bit suspicious of him - he seems to have a lot of 'showman' for a documentarian. It wouldn't be hard for me to believe that he falsifies things to make 'for a good show'. He had a series, '30 days', putting people of opposite views in the same home for a month; no doubt much of what happened was real, but could some have been staged or encouraged? Who knows, but I wouldn't be shocked, to 'provide a good show'.
I don't think it's fair to lump documentaries together for some documentaries' flaws.
Documentaries are a very important product for society, and we should demand accuracy, but appreciate the good ones, which get all too few viewers, leaving people ignorant.
We see the polls of how large percentages of people are very misinformed - documentaries could help with that.
And we've seen some documentaries of injustices that are very valuable.
If people arent going to simply be ignorant and acccept the messages of those with money whatever the harm, documentaries are a big part of how to inform people.
We need a lot more of them. Good ones. Not just educational like Planet Earty, but with issues especially.
There's one about the Koch brothers that has a kickstarter, if anyone cares to donate.
They're two of the most powerful men in American politics, and the documentary was approved by PBS for funding and airing until the president of the PBS station, knowing one of the brothers was then on the board and that millions of dollars in their donations - the Kochs have fought for decades for shifting PBS funding away from the public and to donors like themselves - were threatened, he reversed the approval to make the Kochs happy.
This is a time when ironically, for most Americans information is actually descreasing. The internet and tv news rely largely on newspapers' investigations at a time when newspapers' investigative staffs are being guttted if not eliminated. 90% of media is owned by 4 or 5 companies. News and information is an entertainment for-profit product and advertisers don't want to sponsor 'controversial' shows.
There never has been a great age for these things, from 'yellow journalism' manipulating opinion a century ago to Edward Murrow getting drummed out for telling the truth about Joe McCarthy; today I think we have the best information available perhaps but a less than 2% audience for it. So this day many Americans think Saddam was involed in 9/11. Worse, probably far more Americans don't care if he was or not while supporting war. What happened when the 'WMD' issue was found to be lies? Nothing but a re-election.
Has there ever been a great documentary about, say, the issue of the country being lied into war in Iraq? Not really. Most would agree Farenheit 9/11 wasn't that great documentary. I like Rachel Maddow, and she made the most-watched ever documentary on the topic on MSNBC, but I wasn't that impressed (it was just too limited, not false).
We can't even get public agreement on an issue like climate change - despite the efforts of Al Gore in the documentary 'An Inconveneint Truth' which did get the issue much more attention from the public. But far more money is spent to disinform the public than to inform it - just as with healthcare, where half a billion has been spent to propandize the public against the Affordable Care Act.
Where's the good documentary about the ACA, including the positives and what I think would be the much smaller negatives?
And isn't it sad how many Americans are propagandized that if a documentary told the truth and was mostly positive about it, they'd simply ignorantly attack it?
This is one more area where we can't let money control the issue, where he who spends the most has his positions accepted, while honest documentaries are wrongly attacked.
That would cause more issues like 'we're not sure if tobacco is bad for you', an issue the tobacco already delayed public acceptance of by decades while they profited, by funding 'scientists don't agree' type propaganda - until infamously in the 1990's you had that Congressional hearing where tobacco CEO's lied that nicotine isn't addicting.
But the film of that row of CEO's lying that way was helpful in turning public opinion against them - an example of where 'documentary' is important for public opinion.
Save234
shortylickens
No Lifer
- Jul 15, 2003
- 80,287
- 17,082
- 136
yeah but they back up their attitude with research, which is more than I can so for anybody on a forum and about 90 percent of political pundits.
88keys
Golden Member
- Aug 24, 2012
- 1,854
- 12
- 81
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
How is An Inconvenient Truth not on this list? According to Al Gore’s scary estimates in the early 2000s, big chunks of the Eastern seaboard should be underwater by now.
The amount of crap Christianity "resurrected" from previous philosophies has been documented many times over. The guy who made this list get's hung up on one simple issue.
Christmas is a pagan holiday, for Christ sake.
Christmas is a pagan holiday, for Christ sake.
The date of Christmas is really a totally separate issue, having to do with using an acceptable holiday for their purposes when the authorities made them illegal.
But I agree the list exaggerates some things. Their 'expose' of Winged Migration using birds trained from birth was documented in their own 'making of' documentary on the DVD.
My reaction to it was 'wow,that's how they got the shots', not 'that was faked!'
My point was that he's apparently trying to discredit the entire documentary on one single issue.
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
I'm talking about evidence for your claim about his film. I don't recall the claim you make in it.
JulesMaximus
No Lifer
- Jul 3, 2003
- 74,586
- 986
- 126
John Connor
Lifer
- Nov 30, 2012
- 22,757
- 619
- 121
So in your Libtard head you actually believe that a guy had gas coming out of his water? Truth be told he hooked up gas to his hose and burned it claiming that fracking was the cause.
Boulder and San Fran, to city's they should just nuke!
Posts like this explain why there is actually an audience for these bullshit documentaries.
Right wingers/religious zealots in your mind are far more likely to actually spend time and read with their children. They must be the 20-35% that can actually read.
John Connor
Lifer
- Nov 30, 2012
- 22,757
- 619
- 121
You're an idiot, for the last comment. As for the rest, you call yourself a conservative, you can't spell "two cities", and you fail to understand he was critizing the 'gasland' film.
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