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Documentary Recommendations?

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hannaugh

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I watch documentaries and nature shows all the time.  I find them far more interesting than most of the shows on tv nowadays.  I have recently watched Sound & Fury (about coclear implants for the deaf), Ken Burns' Jazz and Mark Twain, In Search of Beethoven, Super High Me, Microcosmos, Amazing Caves, Alexander the Great (Nat Geo), The Greeks miniseries, Medieval Lives, Who is Harry Nilsson?, King of Kong (amazing movie!  Highly recommended!), Cracking the Maya Code (very interesting one!), and one about the fall of Rome that I can't remember the name of. 

Does anyone else eat this stuff up, and if so, do you have any good recommendations (especially ones I can watch instantly on Netflix!)?  I like history and nature the best.  I'm getting ready to watch Ken Burns' Lewis & Clark. 
 
Sound and Fury would have been my first suggestion, I went to a special showing of that one! Cracking the Maya Code is so-so. If you're into that stuff get ahold first of a translated (obviously) copy of the Popol Vuh, then read Mirror of Lida Sal. the Vuh will give you a REAL taste of what their stuff was like back then, very fun to read (I think.) Its and ancient religious text/folk stories, which for their civilization was intimately linked with every aspect of daily life.
 
I'm the same, we don't get netflix here in the UK, but if it's documentaries you want I'll refer you to the 4od site. You can download all of Channel 4's old documentaries. The catch is you need to be in the UK to watch them... but with the help of Mr. Youkay proxy server, you should have no problem streaming any of the fabulous documentaries. :)

Fist go here...
http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
In the box where it says "Enter URL:" Copy and paste these link into there to access all of the documentaries.
http://www.youtube.com/4oDDocumentaries
 
elfro89 said:
I'm the same, we don't get netflix here in the UK, but if it's documentaries you want I'll refer you to the 4od site. You can download all of Channel 4's old documentaries. The catch is you need to be in the UK to watch them... but with the help of Mr. Youkay proxy server, you should have no problem streaming any of the fabulous documentaries. :)

Fist go here...
http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
In the box where it says "Enter URL:" Copy and paste these link into there to access all of the documentaries.
http://www.youtube.com/4oDDocumentaries
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Awesome!  I watch BBC documentaries via youtube at work sometimes if it is slow and I'm making bags and boards by myself for hours.  Sometimes there will be a chapter missing though, and that can get annoying. 

I ended up watching The Human Experience last night instead of Lewis & Clark (when I realized I didn't have time for 3 hours of Lewis & Clark).  It was okay, but I thought it was a little too dramaticized and flashy for my tastes.  I like my documentaries a little more straightforward and matter-of-fact.  The leper colony was interesting though.
 
Did any of you ever watch the documentary on Scientology the BBC did? Thought it was a brilliant piece of journalism. John Sweeney is a brilliant journalist full stop, his resume is quite impressive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sweeney_(journalist)
 
L&C is a great one, as is Shackelton!

I have a real soft spot for Ken Burns' Civil war film. Plus it has my favorite music in it: Ashokan Farewell [youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCr5ZrLq6KI[/youtube]
 
One of the reasons my TV has been living in the bottom of the closet for the last few years is because in the wisdom of American documentary makers, they decided that in order to compete with "Married With Children" and "Beavis and Butthead" and the like, they needed to dumb down their documentaries dramatically. They speak r-e-a-l- s-l-o-w, they repeat all the important points three times, and they never use words with more than two sylla... well, words that are like, too long, you know? And, they repeat the important points t-h-r-e-e t-i-m-e-s.... They crowd about a half-chapter in a kiddie book's worth of material into a two hour show! I'll be happy to look and see if the brain death hasn't crept across the pond. I repeat...
 
B3Guy said:
yeah the american stuff is pretty bad, now that you mention it.
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We've been conditioned by the societal expectations and the mainstream media to have an attention span so short that it makes butterflies look thoughtful and introspective. Everything is headlines and sound bites designed so as to be outrageous enough to grab attention just long enough to flash an advertisement or a commercial. When they do spend a little more time on a subject, it's usually so heavily biased that it's reduced to agitprop. Witness Michael Moore's and Al Gore's attempts to educate and illuminate. They'd be hilarious if they weren't so sad. Actually, they're still hilarious.

In any event, all that makes it tough to do a real documentary.
 
Cagey said:
B3Guy said:
yeah the american stuff is pretty bad, now that you mention it.
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We've been conditioned by the societal expectations and the mainstream media to have an attention span so short that it makes butterflies look thoughtful and introspective. Everything is headlines and sound bites designed so as to be outrageous enough to grab attention just long enough to flash an advertisement or a commercial.

In any event, all that makes it tough to do a real documentary.
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Hold on, what were we talking about again? 

Obligatory  :icon_jokercolor:
 
I really enjoy the National Geographic documentaries on stuff like Alaska, Yellowstone, Redwood Trees, Big Cats, etc. 

For some reason, I also like watching those "destruction" documentaries like drug addiction, forensics, and all those crazy "prison" shows like Lockup, Lockup Extended Stay, etc.  Not sure why I find them interesting, but I do.  :icon_scratch:
 
I love stuff like that too!  For a while I watched Intervention all the time.  I don't know why, but for some reason I couldn't turn away.  I love watching stuff about big DEA busts and drug cartels in South America and overseas.  One time I was watching one about how a cartel had bought a submarine and was using it to transport cocaine to the US.  So crazy!  Shows about prison and gang wars are sometimes pretty interesting too. 
 
hannaugh said:
I love stuff like that too!  For a while I watched Intervention all the time.  I don't know why, but for some reason I couldn't turn away.  I love watching stuff about big DEA busts and drug cartels in South America and overseas.  One time I was watching one about how a cartel had bought a submarine and was using it to transport cocaine to the US.  So crazy!  Shows about prison and gang wars are sometimes pretty interesting too.  
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I don't get into Intervention.  The only time I really took interest in "Crackervention," as my wife and I so fondly put it, was when Travis Meeks from "Days of the New" was on it.

I really got into that show, "Gangland," for a while.  I guess I just found it interesting to see what was out there.  :icon_scratch:

My wife and I don't have Cable, so we rely on whatever's on Netflix.  We find a season of a particular show, and we just watch it until it's up.  If we like the show, we'll watch the next season, and next season, etc.  Right now, we're in the middle of watching "Jacked," which is about hijacking cars, stealing cars, and leaving "bait cars" to be stolen.  It's very entertaining, especially some of the stories the criminals come up with.

"Dallas S.W.A.T." is cool.  We really liked that show.  In my Que, I have some show called "The Universe," and it looks like it's about a season long.  It should be interesting.
 
Cracking the Mayan code was great, for no other reason than to show how their written language is translated.  Too many characters to be letters like English.  Not enough characters to be words like Chinese.  I don't buy into all the 2012 hype, but we'll see soon enough.

The Pyramid code was pretty good.  It's a 5 part series, although the 1st episode is the best and can stand alone.  It asks more questions than it answers.  It shows the Egyptian Dept. Of Antiquities as having it's own agenda as well as stifling and quashing many theories about ancient Egypt.  Many accepted theories by Egyptologists are the ones with the least amount of proof.  Case in point, the Giza Pyramids being tombs built by slaves.

Anything on the Great Wall is pretty good.  It's not one wall, but several built over 2000 years.  Unlike a lot of ancient structures.  They know who, why, when, and how they were built.  Until the West's infatuation with it.  The Chinese viewed it as a symbol of repression and military failure.
 
Super Turbo Jack Ace Deluxe Custom said:
The Pyramid code was pretty good.  It's a 5 part series, although the 1st episode is the best and can stand alone.  It asks more questions than it answers.  It shows the Egyptian Dept. Of Antiquities as having it's own agenda as well as stifling and quashing many theories about ancient Egypt.  Many accepted theories by Egyptologists are the ones with the least amount of proof.  Case in point, the Giza Pyramids being tombs built by slaves.
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Sounds AWESOME!  I will have to check that one out.  I remember seeing one all about who built the pyramids, and how shockingly little evidence there is that it was built by slaves and how it seems much more likely that citizens were "drafted" into helping for a year or two at a time by lottery.  It was almost like a source of national pride for Egyptians to help with the building.  Very interesting stuff! 

It's funny, the whole Mayan apocalypse thing... is NEVER mentioned in any of the Mayan texts.  The calendar ends, but they never say it ends because the world is going to end.  In fact, there is never any mention of the end of the world at any point in history in those texts.  There was even an episode of Penn & Teller BS about it where they asked an honest to god Mayan princess if she thought the world was going to end in 2012, and she said "No."

Torment Leaves Scars said:
That's also in my queue.  I'm waiting for a time when my husband has a little time off to watch it though because he loves astronomy. 
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hannaugh said:
Super Turbo Jack Ace Deluxe Custom said:
The Pyramid code was pretty good.  It's a 5 part series, although the 1st episode is the best and can stand alone.  It asks more questions than it answers.  It shows the Egyptian Dept. Of Antiquities as having it's own agenda as well as stifling and quashing many theories about ancient Egypt.  Many accepted theories by Egyptologists are the ones with the least amount of proof.  Case in point, the Giza Pyramids being tombs built by slaves.
Click to expand...

Sounds AWESOME!  I will have to check that one out.  I remember seeing one all about who built the pyramids, and how shockingly little evidence there is that it was built by slaves and how it seems much more likely that citizens were "drafted" into helping for a year or two at a time by lottery.  It was almost like a source of national pride for Egyptians to help with the building.  Very interesting stuff! 

It's funny, the whole Mayan apocalypse thing... is NEVER mentioned in any of the Mayan texts.  The calendar ends, but they never say it ends because the world is going to end.  In fact, there is never any mention of the end of the world at any point in history in those texts.   There was even an episode of Penn & Teller BS about it where they asked an honest to god Mayan princess if she thought the world was going to end in 2012, and she said "No."

Torment Leaves Scars said:
That's also in my queue.  I'm waiting for a time when my husband has a little time off to watch it though because he loves astronomy. 
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I think it'll be good..."The Universe" series. 

I really liked the documentaries on Alaska, Yellowstone, and the Redwood Forest.  I dunno, not only do I find that stuff interesting, but I just find it to be real relaxing.  :occasion14:
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I would say it's probably a safe bet that you've read a book or two. You might even have found the works of Harlan Ellison. There is a documentary about that angry old genius called "Dreams with Sharp Teeth."  It's in my top 5 documentaries. I watch it over and over. He's not always a pleasant person, but I understand why.
 
Don't even get me started on the bovine excrement 2012 Mayan Calendar theories. The people who put those together are not real scholars at all. Let's all just get one simple fact into our thick modern skulls:

The Mayan Calendar is a freaking CIRCLE.

Now let's talk about circles, shall we? Ever walk around a circle, hmm? Yes? and did you ever find an end to your walk? No? So what's so different about the Mayan's circles, then? Oh, you don't know? Maybe that's because there's NOTHING DIFFERENT!!! Woah. I guess we just blew that theory right out of the water with a couple friends I like to call "Logic" and "Common-sense".
 
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