Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Alan Govenar
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     There is a very neat documentary coming out July 24^th from First Run Features about the Beat Hotel, a place in Paris where almost all the big-time artists of the Beat generation congregated over a number of years to hang out, get high and produce some of the great works of the 50s. William Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, pretty much everyone except Jack Kerouac was there at one time or another.

     It was at the rundown, dirty, dirt-cheap Beat Hotel where Burroughs finished Naked Lunch, where Ginsberg wrote arguably his masterpiece, Kaddish, and where Corso wrote his famous controversial poem Bomb. This story is told in the documentary, as well as neat little anecdotes about Burroughs rehearsing his storytelling in the hallway and his infamous dream machine, or about Ginsberg and Orlovsky and their weird love triangles.

     Now, I keep using the word “neat” because that’s what The Beat Hotel is. It’s a neat little film full of neat stories about neat people. But it’s not great, mostly because they’re all dead. And although there are a few people who make appearances, there is really only one narrator, a photographer whose picture permeate the film. There are a few re-enacted scenes, and a sort of reunion celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Naked Lunch. In the end, the movie made me want to visit the Beat Hotel, in the 50s, but never gave me much more than that. The whole thing feels like an 80-minute snapshot of that five or six years when the beat artists lived together. And that’s just…kinda neat.

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English, Chilean (with subtitles)
Directors:  Brian Lilla
Featuring:  Dam builders, dam opponents, and citizens of Chile
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     On July 24^th, First Run Features releases Patagonia Rising, a documentary about a proposed dam project on rivers in Chile. This project would create five hydroelectric dams on two rivers, generating an enormous amount of electricity for the region but at a very high price.

     The environmentalists in the film explain the impact of massive dams in a very patient manner. Then some local farmers put a face on the environmental consequences that would result from the building of the dams. Then, I guess just to appear a little more balanced, they talk to the guy overseeing the project, who explains that the dams would produce electricity for the region equivalent to five coal fired plants and are therefore more environmentally friendly. In the end though, the film makers come down decidedly on the side of the people in the region and against the dams.

     This is all OK, but a lot of it feels like filler. I liked being walked through the effects dams have on the environment and the local ecosystems. Before now, the only thing I knew about dams was that I once went to the Hoover Dam and thought, holy cow, that’s big! It’s just that with the interviews of Chilean people who don’t seem to know much about the situation, Patagonia Rising felt like a 30—minute documentary stretched out to 80.

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Alex Trudeau Viriato
Featuring:  Fixed-gear cyclists
Run time:  40 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I was surprised to find out that there was a documentary about fixed-gear bike riding. That’s the kind of biking where you have only the one gear, and you brake by pedaling backwards.  Is there really enough information about this kind of activity to warrant a full-length feature documentary?

     Well, it turns out no. As Fixation, out on DVD July 24^th from First Run Features, runs only about 40 minutes. We meet riders in San Francisco who like that city because of the difficulty of the hills and the bike-friendly motorists. Then we meet others from Los Angeles, who like that city because of the great distances they can cover in a single day. There are also interviews with Olympic racers, bike polo players, and bike messengers.  They all like the fixed gear bikes. Okay.

     Not being a big time biker myself, I had a passing interest at best in this stuff, which meant that the 40 minute or so run time was perfect. I actually really enjoyed the snapshot of the culture, which I think is probably more suited to those unfamiliar with fixed-gear riding, as those in the scene already would know all about it. Fixation is interesting, it’s short, and it’s worth a look.

     Also – there is a sort-of vague Ottawa connection, the same way we claim Matthew Perry and Tom Cruise because of their brief residence here – the director of Fixation, Alex Trudeau Viriato, was born and raised in Ottawa before moving to California. So, there’s that, also.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Documentary, TV series, History 
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Voices:  Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Oliver Platt, Adam Arkin,  Josh Lucas, Keith David
Director:  Ken Burns
Run time:  14 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     At the outset of The War, Ken Burns says that the story of America’s involvement in the second world war is way too big to tell in one documentary.  That kind of gave me pause.  This is Ken Burns talking here.  The same Ken Burns who went into staggering detail telling the entire story of the civil war over the course of more than ten hours.  Who spent more than eighteen hours poring over the minutiae of baseball in one of the greatest documentaries ever filmed.  And with fourteen hours of documentary filming, he can’t tell the entire story of America’s four-year involvement in the second world war?  C’mon Ken Burns, I expect better of you!

     Now, that being said, he IS probably right.  And there IS an awful lot of information crammed into The War.  America was fighting on MANY fronts in the second world war, against the Germans in Europe and Africa, and against the Japanese all over the Pacific.  Burns focuses on four small American towns in the film, following the soldiers who left from those towns to serve their countries in various battlefields.   It’s a fascinating look at life in America during war time, and it’s something I haven’t seen before in a World War II documentary.  After all, we know that the Americans got into the war with Pearl Harbour, and that they ended the war with the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, but it’s what happened in between that’s absolutely fascinating.  And there’s no one better to tell that story than Ken Burns.  The War is available on Blu-Ray May 15^th.  And like I have said about every other monumental documentary Ken Burns has ever done, go pick it up!

Year:  1996
Genre:  Documentary, Nature
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Bugs!
Directors:  Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     To celebrate Earth Day, coming up in a couple of weeks, Alliance Films released a few nature documentaries in environmentally friendly packaging (which really means cardboard) on April 10^th.  One of them is the Blu-Ray of a film called Microcosmos, a documentary about insects and plant life in extreme close-up.

     Well…actually, I don’t know if you could really call it a documentary, since it has precious little narration.  Almost none in fact.  It just lets the camera do most of the talking , zooming in super-close on the coolest beetles and worms and caterpillars and mosquitos and so forth, and just…watching them. 

     Without narration, my wife found the whole thing super-boring.  She wanted to know what every beetle was, and what they were doing.  For me, it was actually a really interesting idea, and I found the movie fascinating.  The world of Microcosmos is stunning up close, and the only real effects that seem to have been added are changes in camera speed when the snails aren’t moving fast enough or the spiders are moving too fast.  It creates an incredible scene that absolutely immersed me from the start.

     You remember when there was a strike at the CBC, and they started showing CFL games without commentators or play-by-play guys?  It was actually kinda nice to watch, it felt very different.  Microcosmos is the same.  It takes a second to get used to, then it is an absolute joy as it inspects the insect kingdom in magnificent Blu-Ray high definition.  It’s wonderful.

     It’s also possible that I just didn’t hit the right “audio” button on the TV.

Year:   2010  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Tim Wolff
Featuring:  New Orleans drag queens
Run time:  75 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

                Sons of Tennessee Williams, on DVD now from First Run Features, is a glittering documentary about glittering drag queens in glittering parades in glittering New Orleans.  It’s very shiny.  But it’s also quite deep, as interspersed with the joyous celebration of gay Mardi Gras is a considerable amount of sober reflection on civil rights. 

                The history of the gay Mardi Gras, the civil rights battles and the gay clubs in New Orleans is what really fascinated me about the documentary.  I mean, yes, the drag queens and their parade and their exuberance is fun, but when put in context it’s a far more interesting event.  The inclusion of archival footage goes a long way to putting today’s celebrations in context.  And the coolest characters in the movie are the old men – sometimes VERY old men – who were there when the whole thing started.

                Sons of Tennessee Williams is more than just a voyeuristic look into the world of drag queens and gay Mardi Gras.  Although it is that also.  It’s also a thought-provoking civil rights documentary that works on many levels.  I highly recommend it.

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Vanessa Roth, Brian McGinn
Featuring:  American teachers
Narrator:  Matt Damon
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

                American Teacher, on DVD now from First Run Features, is a documentary, narrated by Matt Damon, that looks at the teaching profession in America.  As its title would suggest.  And that’s about it.  There’s not much here that looks deeper at the education problems in the States, or presents solutions.  It just profiles a bunch of teachers.  For me, that’s more than enough.

                It’s amazing what it takes to be a teacher in the States.  Most of the teachers in the movie have second jobs.  We meet a football coach who works in a warehouse during his time away from school so he can provide for his family.  A woman who must work all the way through her pregnancy, and come back right after having her baby, because she gets so little maternity leave.  A great teacher who leaves teaching for a career in real estate because there’s just not enough money in the profession. 

                In the end, that’s the message we get from all the teachers in the movie.  There is NO money in it.  There’s a teacher in the film who, toward the end of the documentary, gets a job paying six figures in an experimental school.  The experiment is paying good teachers good money.  The point is made that almost none of the best graduates go into teaching, for the same reason.  Again, there’s no money in it.

                American Teacher is full of fascinating people and interesting stories.  And for that reason, I really enjoyed it.  But if you’re watching it more for a message, I can boil it down for you right here.  American teachers make no money.  That’s it.

Year:   2004
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Andrew Rossi, Kate Novack
Featuring:  Billy Phelps, John McCormick, Sirio Maccione, Daniel Boulud, Keith McNally, Danny Meyer
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features
Special features:  Hours of more interviews with the participants

     I love cooking.  I even consider myself to be a good cook.  Others, at times, have told me that I am, indeed, a good cook.  And often I have heard the phrase “you should open a restaurant”.  My response to that is always “haha. Yeah right.”

     No business venture is as apt to go under as a restaurant.  As the restaurateurs in Eat This New York explain, it takes a lot more than the ability to cook to make a restaurant work.  You must also have great people skills (I think I do), an extraordinary vision (I think I don’t), and terrific business acumen (I know I don’t).

     And so with Eat This New York, I knew what I was getting from the very beginning.  This is a documentary about two best friends, Billy and John, who are struggling to open a restaurant.  They get into fights.  There are construction delays.  And of course the inevitable money troubles involving loan applications, personal finances and a budget that keeps ballooning.

     I’ve seen all of this before.  And there was nothing particularly compelling for me in the story of Billy and John, who moved out to New York City from St. Paul Minnesota with this dream of opening a restaurant in a city that already has tens of thousands of them. 

     What WAS compelling was the involvement of the luminaries of the New York City restaurant world.  Sirio Maccione, star of another Rossi documentary called Le Cirque: A Table In Heaven.  Danny Meyer, subject of the documentary The Restaurateur.  And many, many others.  Their insight and their memories are wonderful, and keep the story moving when I felt that just watching two guys struggle was getting a little old.

     Eat This New York is on DVD right now, and can be picked up through First Run Featuers.

     There are five movies, comprising six discs, on the new Art of Filmmaking box set, out October 25th from First Run Features.  Think of a director, or a big-name actor, or a giant music producer, and chances are they appear in at least one, if not more of the five documentaries.  Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckhemier, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Susan Sarandon, the list goes on and on and then some.

     This is the ideal box set for the aspiring filmmaker – the best of the best talking about their craft in all sorts of different film genres.  Herzog, Morris, Kevin MacDonald, Scott Hicks and dozens of other documentary filmmakers talk about their craft in the 2008 movie Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary.  To hear an interview I did with the director of this film, Pepita Ferrari, click here.  The one complaint I have here is that the initial DVD release of Capturing Reality came with an excellent second disc of bonus features, and that disc is not included in this set.

     Spielberg, Eastwood, Scorcese, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, Terry Gilliam, Sydney Pollack, a ton of other directors and some huge-name actors (Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman) appear in the movie Directors: Life Behind the Camera.  Both discs of this film are included in this box set, and they’re a bit of an effort to get through – you’ve got to click through on a ton of different menus – but with this incredible list of participants, it’s totally worth it.

     John Carpenter, who wrote Hallowe’en, Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption), and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) are just three of the dozens of screenwriters who appear in Tales From The Script, a wonderful documentary about the art of screenwriting.  This is probably the most entertaining movie in the box set – the screenwriters are more engaging and funnier than many of the directors and actors in the other films.

     Light Keeps Me Company is more focused – a look at one man, Sven Nykvist.  Nykvist was the legendary cinematographer behind many of Ingmar Bergman’s most famous movies, and a two-time Oscar winner.  Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Susan Sarandon and Bergman himself show up in the movie to talk about Nykvist, and the clips of Nykvist’s celebrated cinematography are still magnificent – especially when described by fellow movie legends.

     The fifth movie in the set is 1997′s Lavender Limelight, which takes a look at lesbian indie filmmakers like Cheryl Dunye, Heather MacDonald and Jennie Livingston.  This is a much different film than the others in the set, if only because nobody being interviewed is a really big name, and most of us have never seen their movies, like Watermelon Woman or Paris Is Burning. 

     That’s the best thing about this box set – every documentary is different, interviewing big-time filmmakers, little indie filmmakers, documentarians, cinematographers and writers, all in one box.  An amazing box, that you can get here, from First Run Features.

Year:  2008  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Jennifer Brooke, Beatrice Alda
Run time:  64 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Out Late is a documentary from 2008, out on DVD now from First Run Features.  It’s an interesting look at a bunch of interesting people – gay and lesbian men and women who didn’t “come out” until much later in life.  Some participants in the documentary are in their 80s. 

     The thing is – there’s not much more to the documentary than that.  Interesting interviews with compelling people.  At times, the movie starts delving into social issues, like the couple who live next to a lesbian couple who are fundamentalist religious people and don’t believe in gay marriage.  A lot of the gay participants are religious, and there is a lot of footage in churches.

     But every time the movie starts heading in that direction, it pulls back.  So what we’re left with is a series of interviews with likeable people.  Which is fine, but there aren’t a lot of really amazing stories. 

     I found the most interesting story to be that of Elaine, who came out when she was about 80.  For her, the most difficult thing is finding someone with whom she can have a relationship.  Which is, of course, terribly difficult for someone who is that old, and who just now revealed that she is homosexual.  And of course, now that she has finally come out, she wants to go crazy and live it up and finally be herself.  But she’s waited so long that it’s nearly impossible, and she can be a little too aggressive for some people.

     But mostly we learn about the families, how they reacted, how long these people have known they were gay.  Which is okay, and it’s interesting enough, but when the movie was over I had more questions than answers, and I wanted a lot more out of it.  What makes someone stay closeted for so many years, then what makes them decide that NOW is the time to come out?  These are questions that are touched on, never fully explored.

     With the tragedy that took place here in Ottawa last week, the suicide  of councillor Allan Hubley’s teenage son, I was looking for something more here.  And maybe I was hoping for more for the wrong reasons.  15-year-old Jamie Hubley was the only openly gay student at A.Y. Jackson, where my stepson also goes to high school.  His suicide was a direct result of the bullying he endured at that school, bullying my stepson tells me is very commonplace. 

     The message a lot of us took from Jamie’s tragic death was that although yes, it does get better, asking a 15-year-old to wait three years until college, or maybe even seven years until school ends, can be way too much.  His story told us how difficult it is to come out when you’re so young – and how sad it is that this is so often the result.

     It seems as though this would have been much worse 60 years ago – I would have liked Out Late to talk a little more about that.  The movie makes it clear that the fear of revealing one’s true self is a lifelong trepidation – and the one thing that is consistent among these older people is that they almost all say they wish they had come out much, much sooner.  It’s a nice story, these are nice people, but there’s just not a whole lot of bite to it, and almost no connection to the larger issues affecting the gay community.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Documentary, TV series, History 
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Voices:  Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Waterston, Jeremy Irons, Oliver Platt, Adam Arkin, Patricia Clarkson, John Ligthgow, Blythe Danner, Paul Giamatti, Josh Lucas, Amy Madigan
Director:  Ken Burns
Run time:  6 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     If there is one DVD I can convince you to buy on October 4th, I fervently hope that it’s Prohibition, the Ken Burns PBS documentary that comes out today.  I truly, truly hope you’ll buy it, and watch it, and then watch it again.  Or, at least, watch it on PBS, as it’s running right now.  Tonight.  But you’ve already missed the first hour.

     The main reason I want you to watch Ken Burns’ Prohibition is, of course, that it is amazing.  Ken Burns always does amazing work, and this tale of politics, drunkenness, temperance and womens rights is as fascinating as anything he’s ever done.  The gangsters are interesting, and of course a lot of time is devoted to Al Capone and his Chicago mob, but there were so many other interesting bootleggers. 

     The lawyers who quit practising law to build vast empires through the sale of illegal booze.  The politicians who voted to outlaw alcohol while still indulging their own vices behind closed doors.  The incredibly powerful lobby groups, many of them led by women, and the connection between the right of women to vote and prohibition itself. 

     Oh, of course there’s more.  There’s a ton more, because it’s Ken Burns and he doesn’t do anything by half measures.  But in this case, Prohibition is (relatively) short!  Just three discs, rather than the imposing monster sets that make up his Baseball, Jazz and Civil War documentaries.  And that’s another reason I hope I can convince you to pick up Prohibition today.  It’s a gateway documentary. 

     Sure, you can sit down for six hours and watch something this awesome.  But it might be so amazing, and so fascinating, that you are THEN willing to sit down and watch TEN hours about the civil war.  Or TWENTY hours about baseball or jazz music.  And if you do THAT, then my job is done.  And I am happy.  Paramount Home Entertainment releases Prohibition on DVD today.  Please go buy it.

Year:  2010 
Genre:  Documentary, Sports
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Nina Gilden Seavey
Run time:  89 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I am a fanatic for NFL football.  I go down to the states every year for at least one game, I never miss a Sunday, I PVR all the games I might miss and I’m in about twelve pools every year.  My basement is decorated all in Packers green and gold, and my chili goes in the slow cooker every Saturday night to be ready for game time on Sunday.

     But I have nothing on millions of Americans.  For me, NFL football is just a time-consuming, much-loved hobby.  For others, it is a life-consuming religion.  And so it is for many kids who play the game.  The NFL is the ultimate dream, playing on Sunday in front of 80,000 people and millions more on television. 

     4th & Goal, out September 20th on DVD from First Run Features, follows six of these young men, all of them from the same elite school, as they try to make that dream come true.  As an NFL fanatic, I know that one of these kids DID make it.  If you’re a freak like me, you’ll know his name the second you hear it also.

     More interesting though, are the other five kids, all blessed with termendous talent of one kind or another, who don’t make it.  For one reason or another (they are mentally unprepared – they get injured – they’re just plain passed over), they are probably not going to get a real shot at the NFL.  And their coaches seem to spend a lot of time preparing them for that eventuality.

     The fact is, less than 2,000 people get to play in the NFL each year, while several million play the game at a lower level.  4th and Goal is a terrific look into this world, and fascinating to me as a football fan.  For every special teams player I see on a Sunday, there are thousands of one-time high school or college superstars who never made it. 

     One more note – my wife, who hates football and my obsession with it, loved this movie.  After watching The Blind Side, she started watching Ravens games for Michael Oher.  Now, she wants to watch the Bengals.  The Bengals!  (The one guy who made it from this film now plays for Cincy.)  This MUST be a good documentary if my football-hating WIFE is interested in the game.  If only for the next few weeks, until she discovers that Bengals games are not ever going to be shown on TV, because they’re the Bengals.

Year:  2010 
Genre:  Documentary
Countries:  United States, Mexico
Languages:  English, Spanish
Director:  Aaron Schock
Run time:  75 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Circo is a beautifully filmed, wonderfully scored documentary (music provided by Calexico).  It follows a traveling circus as they try to make a living and hold their family together.  It’s a sad story, a look into a really tragic sort of world, but it’s as compelling as it is visually stunning.

     The tragedy lies mostly with the children, I think.  They have been groomed from birth to be circus performers, no more and certainly no less.  They are mostly illiterate, they have zero skills outside the tightrope or contortionist arenas, and they know nothing else.  Watching a grandfather berate a toddler until she cries while attempting to do gymnastics moves is heartbreaking.

     I guess for these people, in this situation, it’s a lot like the overbearing hockey parents here in Canada.  Except that it’s a little more than that, because at least hockey parents have a bonkers, unrealistic goal of a child making millions of dollars and becoming famous.  These parents, on the other hand, have the goal of turning their kids into faceless, penniless circus performers with no other life skills at all.

     Watching Circo, in many ways, reminded me a lot of watching The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke.  Both are stories about people who know only one thing in their whole lives, and don’t know how, or want to learn how, to do anything else.  The only real difference is that one is fictional.  Circo is a documentary about real people, a real circus, and real family problems.

     Those family problems are at the heart of the story – the Ponce family has been doing this for years.  Packing up their acrobats and animals and moving from town to town.  Clearly a hardscrabble existence, with some shows making money and some not, the family begins to come apart at the seams.

     There’s a father who knows nothing but the circus, like his own father and his father before him.  There is his wife, who came from the city and is therefore not accepted by everyone in the traveling troupe.  And their kids, torn between mom’s desire for a stable life and financial security and dad’s single-minded determination to cling to a lifestyle that appears to be dying or, maybe, already dead.

     All of this is fascinating, but it’s the camera that is the real star of this movie.  Capturing the family’s difficult, hard-working existence in the middle of a wonderful Mexican countryside.  The beauty of the land between towns as they pass by contrasted with the dirty conditions and poverty they encounter in the towns themselves is stark.  It all works.

Year:  2011 
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Featuring:  Morgan Spurlock, Peter Berg, Quentin Tarantino, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, OK Go, Brett Ratner, Donald Trump
Director:  Morgan Spurlock
Run time:  90 minutes

     I once went to a museum – I think it was in Prescott.  2/3 of the museum was dedicated to displays that depicted…the building of that very museum.  I thought that was a really bizarre sort of layered…historic anomaly?  I don’t even know how one would describe that.  Much as Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold defies description for me.  The biggest difference between the two is that unlike the museum, Spurlock’s film really entertained me.

     Now, the film is easy to describe.  Spurlock is making a movie about product placement in movies, and wants to fund his product-placement movie entirely by means of selling product placements IN that movie.  The movie consists almost entirely of him pitching various companies, hoping that they will be willing to cut a check and take the plunge, sponsoring the movie.  Got it?

     Okay.  That means that everything that follows is advertising.  Everyone who watches it, talks about it, tweets about it, passes a billboard for it.  This is a review I am writing because I receieved a free copy of the DVD.  The review in itself adds to the “impressions” the movie receives online.  (Spurlock had to get 600,000,000 “impressions” to fulfill his contract with the title sponsor, Pom Wonderful, which he achieved in the first two weeks.)  If I recommend the film (and I do) then it might make you, the reader, go out and purchase it.

     Once you DO purchase the movie, you will be assailed by advertising beginning to end.  Pom Wonderful presents…The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.  Brought to you by Ban deoderant, Mane & Tail shampoo, the Hyatt, Jet Blue, some American gas station chain, some shoe company, some clothing companies, and so on and so forth.

     While being assailed by these commercials, the process by which they got into the film in the first place will be laid out for you.  The concept here is a little mind bending, so I’m not going to try to describe it any further.  I’ll just say it really is a fascinating look at the advertising industry, specifically the product-placement side of it, but also raises serious ethical questions about, among other things, advertising in schools.  If a school board is so cash-strapped that they can no longer offer adequate programs for their students, is it OK for them to sell ad space in the school, and take five minutes out of every school day so the kids can be advertised AT, in order to fund a lunch program?

     There are those who believe that all advertising, no matter what context, is insidious and by nature untruthful.  (Ralph Nader makes an appearance in the film.)  Others think that any place that can squeeze ads in, anywhere, should do so (many references are made to NASCAR, and Donald Trump makes an appearance as well).

     Then there is the ethical question surrounding the movie itself.  By selling out to all these companies, is Spurlock compromising his artistic vision – even IF that artistic vision IS to sell out to as many companies as possible?

     Spurlock provides no answers to these questions, but then there ARE no easy answers to any of them.  The only thing that he DOES provide is an entertaining movie  and a few fascinating discussion topics.  And it’s enough.  Seeing the inner workings of the product placement industry is interesting.  But seeing a movie based entirely on advertising, comprised almost entirely of advertising, and watching commercials as we’re being told that they are commercials is mind-bending.  And far more honest than I could have imagined it would be.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Featuring:   Justin Bieber, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Jaden Smith, Miley Cyrus   
Director:  John M. Chu
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I know what’s coming.  And I’m fully prepared to take the flak that I am sure I will take for actually recommending the Justin Bieber documentary Never Say Never.  The Ultimate Collector’s Edition of the Director’s Fan Cut of the Justin Bieber Film (a run-on-title if there ever was one) comes out August 23rd from Paramount Home Entertainment.  and it’s interesting.

     Now, I first of all want to state that in no way is this an endorsement of Justin Bieber’s music.  Were this a concert film, I would be rating it on a more Jersey Shore-ish level.  But it is NOT a concert film.  It’s a documentary about a subject that I actually find fascinating – how, exactly, did Justin Bieber – Justin Bieber! become one of the biggest superstars in the world?  Straight from youtube to Superstar without the machinery of Nickelodeon or Disney guiding the rise to fame?  How is this possible?  And WHY do little girls LIKE this?

     I didn’t get answers to all of this.  I still don’t know why little girls like this, only that they do.  And I truly still don’t understand the appeal of the music itself.  But I do understand the skyrocketing fame, at least a little more than before.  Three things – one, he had a team of people who believed strongly in him and forced the issue (Usher was one of them).  And two, he worked really really hard.  And three, he is the ultimate Social Media Entity.  It was perfectly normal and reasonable for him to put everything he did on youtube.  He’s been tweeting (presumably) since he could type.

     That, I think, is the real story here.  The triumph of social networking and social media over the conventional methods of becoming a musical star.  (Or even the less-conventional, more recent methods, which involve getting a TV show where you sing, then becoming a singer with a TV show.)

     That journey is what I find amazing.  And that’s what this movie provides.  There are other interesting moments – I was, actually, moved a couple of times.  Sometimes even positively.  When you see a young girl get invited up on stage to be serenaded and presented with flowers by Justin Bieber, it’s tempting to roll your eyes.  And I did.  I wouldn’t be crying, shaking, whatever.  I wouldn’t even be interested.

     But think about this in a different way, for a second.  My favourite band is The Who.  If I were at a Who concert, and Pete Townshend called me up on stage to sing with him on “My Generation”, I might go a little weak at the knees as well.  And whether you understand it viscerally or not, watching these girls tremble and weep over such a contrived, lame set-piece is still somehow very affecting.

     One thing I learned about Justin Bieber is that he can actually play music.  He’s a pretty darn good drummer, and plays guitar as well.  Another interesting thing about this documentary is how that ability is used by the Bieber camp.  It’s a novelty.  He gets behind the drum kit, because it’s just another cool, novel thing they can throw into his live show – check it out, he can play music too!

     Now, you think about that for a moment, and it’s infuriating.  The ability to play music is just a gimmick for people who perform music for a living?  But you think about it, and you realize that for little girls today, it IS.  Imagine if you found out that Britney Spears was an accomplished oboe player.  Or that the chick from Pussycat Dolls grew up studying the works of Chopin at the dining room piano.  Would you be shocked?  Actually, you would.  I think.  I would be.

     Now I realize, as I said earlier, that I’m going to take flak.  I will be mocked and receive snarky emails from people who have never seen this film.  Not that I recommend you run out and watch it.  It’s interesting from a music-insider perspective, and not much more.  That just happens to be something in which I am interested.

     The Ultimate blah blah blah Edition blah blah of the Director’s blah blah Justin Bieber comes with a little heart-shaped Justin Bieber pendant, a soft velvetty box, and a second disc of bonus features that are more directly targeted at little girls than is the movie itself.  And all I’m saying is this – if you have to buy it for your daughter (and you may well have to do that) you could do worse than sitting down to watch it with her.