Bee
People (2014/Truemind
DVD)/Finding Vivian Maier
(2013/MPI/Sundance Selects DVD)/12
O'Clock Boys
(2014/Oscilloscope DVD)/Unacceptable
Levels
(2013/Disinformation DVD)
Picture:
C/C+/C+/C Sound: C/C+/C+/C+ Extras: C/C/C/C-
Documentaries: B-/B-/C+/B-
Here
are some new documentaries that deal with some interesting, even
vital, subjects...
Bee
People
(2014) sounds like a science fiction movie on some level, but it is
actually a look at beekeepers, their community and those who love
bees. It also asks why be colonies are having collapses that are an
average of 75%! One solution is to get more people interested and
another early on says if more people raised smaller colonies all
across urban areas, that would be one way to make up for the
disturbing phenomenon. Made to appeal to families and educators as
well as the rest of us, this work runs 102 very informative minutes
and is yet another examination of a disturbing situation. There is
little overlap with the solid documentary More
Than Honey
we reviewed at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12520/All+The+Labor+(2013/MVD+Visual+DVD
Both
works might just be the beginning of a cycle of such releases and if
the colony issue is not solved soon, this will only be (or bee) the
beginning.
Extras
include the 16-minutes bonus featurette Extracting
Honey
that is decent.
John
Maloof discovered the extensive works of a woman no one knew was
taking thousands of still photos, saving newspaper articles and even
shooting movie film, so he has co-directed Finding
Vivian Maier
(2013) with Charlie Siskel about how Maloof bought a chest at auction
blindly and found some amazing photographs. This has led him on a
course to uncover an amazing artist who had been a housekeeper/nanny
and the story unwinds as he does more research, gets more interviews,
meets more people who knew here and gets his hands on more of her
work.
Turns
out she secretly loved film and even filmmaking, but kept it a big
secret and as we also discover, had some personal problems and was
very much a loner. She also kept it that way so she could keep
taking photos, using variants of her name on store receipts, made it
hard to find her, learn anything about her family, about her past,
allowed people to make assumptions as fact about her and never
married or had children that anyone knows about at the time of this
release. But we still get a serious character study of her, her
friends, environment and the fact that her work, her art, was a
character study of the world at large. It is an amazing story that
has only begun about a woman who might be one of the most important
still photographers of all time.
UPDATE:
Since we covered
this, a lawyer named David C. Deal has sued to stop the sale of
Meier's work, claiming to have found a living heir named Francis
Baille who is closer in succession than the one John Maloof found:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/arts/design/a-legal-battle-over-vivian-maiers-work.html?emc=edit_th_20140906&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=30834072&_r=0
We'll
see how this plays out, but hopefully, it will not cause this
documentary to go out of print.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer, Photo Gallery, Audio
Recordings Maier made herself on old cassette tapes and a silent
color reel of Super 8mm Kodak film she shot that is very interesting.
There
is an odd, dangerous event going on in Baltimore of young African
American men taking dirt bikes and riding all over the city, no
matter the dangers to themselves or others. It is not legal, but is
so massively done that police actually have to not
pursue them or possibly cause more accidents. Director Lofty Nathan
saw a story here and for a few years taped the event and continuously
interviewed a few choice persons. 12
O'Clock Boys
(2014) is the result, named after what the dirt bikers have dubbed
themselves.
What
we get is a sad portrait of urban strife, young children not having
really had a childhood, feigning toughness to survive in fit into a
situation with little way out with a code that progress is bad and
anyone who wants to be more is ignorant, has a big head and is to be
loathed. Thus, the endless cycle of cycles and danger, mostly young
men riding all over the place, but ironically never getting anywhere.
Nathan did get a story, but one more disturbing than even he may
realize. This is not bad at a short 76 minutes, but is not long
enough to be better and lacks the ironic distance to really make a
statement and see the nightmare in total this represents.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer, Outtakes, a Music Video and
Video Commentary.
Finally
we have Ed Brown's Unacceptable
Levels
(2013) which tells us about the madness in secret of the various
toxins and mixes thereof that over the decades have been slipped into
our air, food and drinking water. Even the fluoride in water is now
in name only as the kind in toothpaste has been replaced with a
similarly named toxic substance in water all over the country. Yet,
that is the tip of the iceberg, as waste from sewers renamed as
bio-whatever is being sold to farmers when it should be incinerated.
And the ugly stories go on and on for a never-long-enough 80 minutes.
The
result is some amazing research that deserves a sequel and a reward
for journalistic merit and achievement. The doctors here are very
convincing, well spoken and make very precise points, but common
sense alone from the basic stupidities exposed here are more than
enough to make this another must-see documentary. Nice to see the
anti-environment crowd (sponsored by whom?) is getting tired,
played-out and weaker, but more efforts to oppose those
growth-stunting voices need to be ramped up.
The
only extra is an Original Theatrical Trailer.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on all four DVDs have rough
patches since they are documentaries, but Bee
and Levels
are a little softer throughout than I would have liked. All were
made under mixed circumstances and the makers did their best
considering. As for sound, Clock
and Maier
have lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but neither really use the extra
channels to any great effect, so the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
on Levels
can equal both easily, but the same 2.0 Stereo on Bee
is barely stereo at times so only expect so much there. Location
audio is often a culprit.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
