Januray 2023 Documentary Round Up

 I think this might be a nicer way to keep track of my documentary watches this year. I mean the flipside is I could just keep writing them in my favourite notebook and be fine with that, But I do really enjoy the conversations this has brought my way, so we'll continue for  now.

9/11: A Day In America (2021) - After watching The Anthrax Attacks documentary my daughter and I had a long discussion about 9/11 and what it was like to watch all of this unfold which then led to this docuseries. It's obviously a very heavy watch and we shed more than a few tears as it follows the days events in up close detail. It was equal parts heart wrenching and inspiring to hear these stories of immense courage and empathy, it really showed the best of humans in the absolute worst circumstance. This series was painstakingly put together in partnership with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and it provides a thorough examination of the day. It was extremely eye opening to us both. We watched this on Disney+

 

The Volcano: Rescue From Whakaari (2022) - This one was recommended to us over the holiday season as one to watch. It's an examination of the volcanic eruption on White Island in 2019 told by survivors and bystanders and the footage they were able to record that day. This doc is very much focused on the actual eruption and what was happening to the people involved both before and immediately after. It's quite trauma heavy and a bit too light on insights into warning signs, responsibility and the eco-tourism business, in my personal opinion, but I also recognize the value in simply hearing the stories of the survivors. We watched this on Netflix

The Days Sports Stood Still (2021) - This one had caught my interest a while ago. Being a little removed now from the early days of the pandemic it is interesting to look back (with the benefit of hindsight) at how things were handled. This actually did not end of being the documentary I thought it was. It is very basketball heavy, but the also touch on other sports. It takes a bit of a left turn as social justice becomes a bigger part of the conversation, but it seems like you completely abandon the stories of some of the people interviewed earlier in the doc. Honestly after watching this I would have been interested in seeing a Chris Paul documentary, another one about sports and social justice and another about sports during the pandemic. We watched this on Crave.

Spielberg (2017) - Fair warning, this is a long one at almost 2 1/2 hours devoted to the life and work of Steven Spielberg. I actually wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as I did for some strange reason. I really appreciated the extensive interviews with Spielberg himself. If you're a fan of him or his movies, it's a solid watch..... full disclosure I watched this one in three sittings. I watched in on Crave.

That's a wrap for January friends!

What I read in 2022

 For the past couple of years my daughter and I have been keeping what we call our Book of Books. For years I have written down each book I read in one the millions notebooks I have purchased for something special. Turns out I actually did manage to use one of them for something. So my daughter loved the idea of a physical list, but she took her Book of Books one better than mine and she lists title, author, genre and a favourite quote. I loved this idea, but I'm getting better at judging my limits, so I went a bit easier and I now list; title, author and the first line from each book I read. 

 We really round out this experience by exchanging our Book of Books on New Year's Eve/Day, however it plays out, and read them over. We mark which ones were our favourite reads for the year and discuss why we loved them. We talk about the lines we've listed and which ones sound intriguing or speak to us or makes us want to read the book. We recommend books for the other to read and just generally have the best time talking about books for a couple of hours. It's honestly one of our favourite things. I recommend this as a thing to do with your friends or your book club. So much fun.

And without further ado my list for 2022. I'll give you the first line from my favourite reads this year.

1. That Summer by Jennifer Weiner

2. Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

3. The Proposal by Jasmine Guillory

4. Home For Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibbler

5. No One Ever Asked by Kate Ganshert

6. Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen

      "Marsh is not swamp."

7. The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

8. Welcome to Dunder Mifflin by Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman

9. Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

10. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

      "When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

11. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simison

12. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

       "When people ask me what I do - taxi drivers, hairdressers - I tell them I work in an office."

13. The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo

14. The Paris Apartment by Kelly Bowen

15. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

      "Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: How Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down."

16. The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

17. Golden Girl by Elin Hilderbrand

18. Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

      "They used to be called the Firefly Lane girls."

Have you read any of these?

2022 Documentary Project Recap

 First things first, I did not hit my target this year. I, actually, didn't even make it half way. My biggest stumbling block to making my goal this year was cov*d. I had it in the summer, I was quite sick and I have been dealing with issues related to it ever since. Which means I have spent a lot of time asleep the last half of this year. I was just checking my Netflix account to make sure I hadn't missed recording any docs on my list and I had watched only 4 things on my account from July 1st until late November. Now obviously I didn't get to writing up reviews of all the ones I did manage to watch and it seems daunting to go back and do them now, so I'm going to settle on a list for y'all this year.

1. Bad Sport - Limited Series about some not so great moments in sport. I appreciated the episodes dedicated to different sports like cricket and horse racing. Of course I was really in it for the Canadian Olympic Figure Skating scandal episode. Netflix

2. This is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist - Limited Series about the 1990 art heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. True crime, without the murder. Netflix

3. Dave Not Coming Back - Depth divers plan a dive to retrieve a body of a fellow diver. I think about this one often. It has definitely stayed with me. Amazon

4. The Beatles: Get Back - A must watch for a Beatles fan. Loved watching Paul just write an iconic song, also the rooftop concert was a treat. Disney+

5. Finding Vivian Maier - Maier, a career nanny, who's 100,000 photographs discovered after her death earned her the reputation as one of the most accomplished and insightful street photographers. Amazon

6. Alpinist - Marc Andre Leclerc, 23 year old free climber who has made some of the boldest solo climbs in history. This one also stayed with me. Amazon

7. Race: Bubba Wallace - Limited series about Bubba Wallace's experience as a NASCAR Cup driver. Netflix

8. Street Gang: How we Got to Sesame Street - How Sesame Street came to be in our living rooms growing up. Crave

9. The Invisible Pilot - Limited Series about a man who jumped off a bridge in 1977 and years later it's found he was living a dangerous double life. Crave

10. We Need To Talk About Cosby - Limited Series, W. Kamau Bell's documentary about Bill Cosby's fall from America's Dad to convicted sexual predator. I appreciated Bell's approach to this, to me it never felt sensationalized, but rather thoughtful, thorough and ultimately, eye opening. Crave

11. The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - The life and career of The Bee Gees and the complexities that come along with fame and working with family. I honestly had no idea what the scope of their career was. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. Crave

12. Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off - A deep look at Tony Hawk's life and career. I do like Tony Hawk, so I enjoyed this. Crave

13. Curse of The Chippendales - Limited Series about the founding of the Chippendales. It's a wild ride, friends. Amazon

14. 30 for 30: The Birth of Big Air - I love a 30 for 30 documentary. This one is about the career of BMX rider Matt Hoffman and his birth of "Big Air". A good watch for the extreme sport fan. Disney+

15. Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 - Limited Series about the absolute disaster that Woodstock 99 was. It was eye opening and appalling. Netflix

16. The Princess - Princess Diana's story told through archive footage. Watched with my daughter, who expressed an interest in this. It's a sad tale all around. Crave

17. Untold: The Girlfriend That Didn't Exist - Football player Manti Te'o finds himself wrapped up in a catfishing situation that sends his professional career into a spiral. Netflix

18. Facing Nolan - Documentary about pitching great Nolan Ryan. Great watch for a baseball fan. Netflix

19. Harry & Meghan - Limited Series about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their exit from life as working Senior Royals as well as the British media. Netflix.

20. Pepsi, Where's my Jet? - Limited Series about John Leonard's attempt to trade his Pepsi points for the fighter jet Pepsi depicted in their commercials.

21. The Anthrax Attacks - The anthrax attacks on America following 9/11 and the FBI's investigation of them. It was a wild ride friends. Netflix

22. Prince Andrew: Banished - We were on a real Royal kick this year. This was just gross. He's just gross. Crave

That's it, I got 22 documentaries in this year and I am not disappointed at all. I actually enjoyed this type of format, I might post these in small batches. I don't think I do review posts well, but I like offering up the opportunity to discuss them if others have also seen them.

Favourites for the year: Dave Not Coming Back, Finding Vivien Maier, Alpinist and Street Gang: How we Got To Sesame Street. My metric for picking favourites is, what stays with me the longest after watching. Which ones to I keep turning over in my brain.

4/52/2022 - The Beatles: Get Back

 

The Beatles: Get Back (2021) - This documentary series covers the making of Let It Be, The Beatles' album from 1970. This series features unused footage and audio that was originally going to be used in a 1970 documentary of the same name. This series was co-produced by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison as well as Peter Jackson, who labeled it a "documentary about a documentary".

The plan to watch all 8 hours of this series was a no-brainer. Our youngest daughter has recently developed an appreciation for The Beatles by way of the Barenaked Ladies and so a plan was hatched to watch this along with her Grandmother, who was fortunate enough to see them perform in concert as a teenager. 

I will admit I was never much of a Beatles fan before large quantities of their music started appearing on the family playlist and their later stuff is my favourite stuff. You all know how I feel about watching people at their highest level, so being able to these guys create these songs out of thin air was a real treat. I also appreciated a peek into how they operated together as a group as things began their wind down. I think the idea has always been that it was far more dramatic then it actually seemed to be, at least from watching this. That's not to say there wasn't struggles, but their seemed to be an acceptance that this ride was approaching a natural end. Of course, that is just my take on it. I really did enjoy this and I would recommend watching it to any Beatles fan. Even if you just watch the rooftop concert at the end, it was a delight.

We watched this on Disney+

3/52/2022 - Dave Not Coming Back

 

Dave Not Coming Back (2020) - On a world record breaking dive for depth, two high level scuba divers, Don and Dave, find a body. They plan to retrieve it on a subsequent dive so they inform the parents and enlist the help of 8 other divers, as well, they hire a camera man to document the dive.

From the title you can probably suss out what happens next, but don't let that dissuade you from watching this one. There is a lot of layers here. I don't want to go too much into the whats and hows of this one, because I really appreciated the experience of knowing very little before watching this, outside of what I could glean from the synopsis and title. I watched this one with my husband and it gave you lots to think about/discuss/debate. Things like ego, self-promotion, altruism, the choices we make and for what reason? As I have mentioned many times, I really enjoy learning about people who are operating at the top of their game, so while scuba diving is mostly decidedly not my thing, I was very interested to learn what goes into planning a dive such a this. Not necessarily the purpose, but the mechanics of a deep dive and how one would perform one as safely as one can manage, which brings up another talking point.... taking risks, different folks have different tolerance levels, clearly. I watched this one earlier in the year, obviously, and I still think about it every now and then.

We watched this on Amazon Prime Video.

2/52/2022- This is a Robbery; The World's Biggest Art Heist

 

This is a Robbery (2021) - My husband suggested this docu-series for us to watch, he's almost always up for a true crime documentary, so we watched all four episodes fairly quickly. I had no prior knowledge of this story before we watched this series. In 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Two men, who identified themselves as police responding to a disturbance call, we granted access to the museum by the over night security guards. Once in side they tied up the guards and looted the place. 

The series, of course, tries to work out the who, how and why, but also where. Where did these paintings go? All these years later they still have not re-surfaced despite a $10 million reward. This docu-series is kind of all over the place as it attempts to touch on all the possible theories of what actually happened that night. In the end the empty frames still hang in the museum still hopeful the lost art work will be found.  This is a great series if you are a fan of true crime without the murder and a lot of theories of whodunnit.

We watched this on Netflix.

1/52/2022 - Bad Sport

 

Bad Sport (2021) - This documentary series that focuses on the dark side of sport. I picked it because the series had a 30 for 39 feel to it that I knew would appeal to my husband and I really wanted to see the episode about the Canadian figure skating Olympic Scandal. In the end, the whole series did not disappoint. 

There was some wild underground stories in the world of cricket and horses to name a couple. I found the interviews in each episode to be great, the subjects seemed open to talk. Interestingly enough I found the episode involving the Canadian Olympians to be the weakest of the series. I enjoyed it, I mean I remember watching that whole story unfold in real time watching the Olympics that year, but compared to the drug smuggling race car driver and the guy who was killing show horses so their owners could collect the insurance money.... I mean, there's really no comparison. I even enjoyed the episode about cricket match fixing and I don't know a thing about cricket. It was a great series if you are a fan of sports and true crime documentaries.

We watched this on Netflix.