Joan Rivers A Piece of Work

Dated released : JUNE 11, 2010

Quality : DVDRip-XviD

Info : IMDbPro

Genre : DOCUMENTARY

Cast : Joan Rivers ,Melissa Rivers ,Kathy Griffin ,Don Rickles ,Florian Klein .

Great Directors: Stanley Kubrick

Jan Harlan, 2001 (9*)
TCM recently showed this documentary on master director Stanley Kubrick which was appropriately released in 2001, by his brother-in-law Jan Harlan. It's also available on dvd.

Using home movies, interviews with his ex-wife, other relatives, film stars, other directors, collaborators, writers, composers, and clips from his movies, we get a look at one of the few directors that could equally be labeled genius and artist. For me, this was a real treat, as I’ve always thought Kubrick was among the absolute best of directors, at least his best five films anyway, all legitimate all-time top 100 contenders:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), ranked #2 on the all-time top ranked 1000 list; about the next step in evolution from a material to a spiritual being, illustrated by one astronaut but in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, it happens to an entire generation at once


• Dr. Strangelove (1964) bw (#17), perhaps the best comedy ever; brilliant satire, perfect acting from Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens


• A Clockwork Orange (1971) (#63), a spellbinding trip into a violent future; Malcolm McDowell was never again to approach such greatness; from Anthony Burgess' brilliant autobiographical novel (he was the author, victim of the home invasion)


• Paths of Glory (#83), a powerful anti-war film shot in black and white, Kirk Douglas’ best role, as a heroic officer fighting for the underdogs


• Spartacus (#177), an underrated epic and homage to freedom, Kirk Douglas again

Other Kubrick films also make the all-time polls:

• Barry Lyndon (#101), shot in natural candlelight on old cameras fitted with Leica lenses made for the low light of space by NASA; perhaps a better choice than American Ryan O'Neal would have made this British novel more authentic


• The Shining (#109), a lengthy excursion into the madness of the Stephen King horror novel and the over-acting of Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall


• Full Metal Jacket (#206), a war film in two parts, one half covers boot camp, the other the same infantry squad now fighting in Vietnam, with some great war action in a city


• The Killing (#324), his first serious feature, his only film noir/pulp fiction film


• Lolita (#652), an early bw filming of the controversial Nabakov novel, with James Mason


• Eyes Wide Shut (#806 on the critics poll only, 1058th on ours), his final film which took years to film. This last film was a slow and disappointing excursion into infidelity to most, but Kubrick thought it his finest film. Its star Tom Cruise narrates this documentary, and Nicole Kidman is also interviewed. Some say the lengthy filming broke apart their marriage.

This is really all of Kubrick's major features. He only made one before The Killing, Killer's Kiss in 1955, and he himself bought and destroyed all the prints of that one, so his filmography begins in 1956 with The Killing. No other director has all his feature films ranked, at least none with this many. (Charles Laughton's only film is of course an exception)

My favorite interviews, besides my favorite author Arthur C. Clarke, (2001 novel and screenplay, about 50 other books), are the other directors, who include Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen. This is a very rewarding look at a director who made far too few films, but had such standards of perfection that he often made totally original classics. The look of science fiction films were changed forever thanks to 2001, they now have to look realistic at a minimum, and all fans of this genre owe Kubrick a big thank you. Has anyone else since Stanley made us laugh at nuclear annihilation?

Stanley Kubrick at IMDB

The Alzheimer's Project: The Memory Loss Tapes on HBO

[I've yet to see this four-part documentary series on HBO, but I feel strongly enough about this subject that I wanted to post this in advance of the series beginning, and the advanced reviews have been excellent, as well as previous documentary films by these filmmakers - El]

HBO is going to unscramble its premium signal Sunday, though it may not be done in all areas, thus allowing non-subscribers to see "The Alzheimer's Project" part one, at 9-10:30pm Sunday night.

HBO says of the series "A new way of looking at the disease". Click here for the HBO Link, and all four episodes can be streamed from here as well.

My lifetime friend, Charlton McMillan, and his wife Shari Cookson were instrumental in creating The Memory Loss Tapes, the first episode of this four-part HBO series. Shari, who is a multiple Emmy nominee for Living Dolls and All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise, shares director-producer credit with Nick Doob. Charlton, an Emmy winner for Living Dolls, shares editing credit with Nick. Charlton also did some editing work on the second part of the series, Grandpa, Do You Know Who I Am?

Here are two print reviews for the series:
New York Times
L.A. Times
A blog review from critic James Bawden

Please either watch or record this and let people know about it. We never know when we will have to deal with this disease either within our families, friends, or within our own minds. Rather than giving money to corporate gamblers, we should be funding cures and care for humanitarian efforts and documentaries such as these.


The Alzheimer's Organization is at http://www.alz.org/

Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong

John Pirozzi, 2009 (8.6*)
Mostly in English, with some subtitles. Available this April.

There’s a very unique L.A. band called Dengue (‘din-gay’) Fever, whom you might have heard on NPR. They play a unique sixties-based 'L.A. filtered' Cambodian rock, which they say was derived from surf music, but you couldn’t tell from what Dengue Fever puts out, it sounds closer to psychedelic rock to me, with some almost Garcia-like guitar. The Holtzman brothers who formed the band hired a strong-voiced Cambodian singer, Chhom Nimol, who was famous there before immigrating to the U.S. Their music is actually covers of famous Cambodian rock singers, who, due to the massacres committed by the Kymer Rouge regime, sadly did not survive that turbulent era. Along with Nimol, they are keeping this music alive in the world, and in this film, they take the music back to its people.

Director Pirozzi has filmed an engrossing documentary of Dengue Fever as they travel to Cambodia for the first time to perform what is essentially that culture’s modern music, and for singer Nimol, it’s a homecoming after five years absence. Pirozzi often shows the band’s performances from a close and wide-angle view (see photo), making the viewer feel that they are seeing the music live themselves, sometimes from onstage, sometimes as part of the crowd.

Rather than concentrate on just the band, Pirozzi also shows many wonderful images of Cambodia and its people, successfully using a montage effect at times, like traveling is shown in old b&w classic films. Since the entire country seems to travel on motor scooters, a hand-held camera is often used from a scooter in the middle of the traffic so we get a feeling of how chaotic the streets are there, yet everyone seems safe enough that no one wears helmets, not even entire families of 4-5 people on one scooter. The band was lucky enough to be there during the Water Festival, celebrating the end of monsoon season when the Mekong River actually changes direction, so we get to see what looks like their Mardi Gras, as thousands pour into Phnom Penh from the countryside for a festival of fireworks, music, water sports, and food.

Pirozzi includes encounters with local Cambodian music masters, and we see some of the effort being made with young people to keep this culture alive, which barely survived the war years and in some cases has a lone surviving instrumentalist. The Cambodian people appear very outgoing and friendly, a friend of mine who lived in Thailand said as much. Director Pirozzi has created a wonderful film of cross-cultural meetings that created immediate friendships and lasting impressions.

My only complaint with this film is that at 65 minutes, it’s about half an hour too short, so it feels 'tv length'. Thankfully, Pirozzi added about another 45 minutes of short films to the dvd so viewers won’t be disappointed. In fact, one song, “1000 Tears of a Tarantula”, is a wonderful jazz excursion that blends the best of both American and Cambodian music into one ethereal musical journey – this is the best music on the dvd, and should have been included in the film. If you like the music, there’s an excellent soundtrack to the film on CD released as part of the dvd package. We need more music films this rare, stories that show good music, a joyous cultural exchange, and a window into a society that’s been overlooked far too long by the rest of the world.

Here’s the website for the film: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong
For artwork: Dengue Fever Promo Art