'Tokyo Olympiad'

It’s a bit of poetry that the two state-sanctioned documentary films about the Olympics came with Leni Riefensthal’s bombastic Olympia chronicling the 1936 Berlin games and Kon Ichikawa’s film about the 1964 Tokyo games.

The former showed power and force: Germany on the brink of turning the world on its head. It’s manipulative and in concert with the Nazis’ ideas about pomp, circumstance and a good show.

The later caught back up with the Axis powers. Decimated by years of war, the sons and fathers in graves and countries on the brink, Tokyo, by 1964, was on its own brink: From being a financial and cultural stalwart of the east and certainly a world power under very different circumstances.

Japan had pegged famed director Akira Kurosawa for the task. He proved unamenable to suggestion and – being that he was undoubtedly popular – was his own power. So Japan sacked him and hired Kon Ichikawa. He does a beautiful job of focusing less on the medal stands and tote boards, and more on the triumph of the will (so to speak) of the athletes and the stories behind the world’s best.

'The Mad Masters'

A very difficult documentary short about the Hauka movement in central and western Africa.

Hauka was a spiritual/ritual/farcical act that involved young African men dancing and mimicking administrators in the colonizing British army and bureaucracy.

I call it a spiritual/ritual/farcical because I can't make heads or tails of it. At times it appears to be just a bunch of deadbeat African guys wasting time. Then you see them frothing at the mouth, drinking the blood of a freshly slaughtered dog and digging their hands into a cauldron of boiling water to pick at pieces of the cooking dog.

Their eyes roll into the back of their head and their bodies take unnatural shapes that would be unreasonable should these men be conscious. They act in some sort of trance because even if they wanted to really fake what they were doing it'd be impossible for anyone with a clear mind.

Still, there's something stupid about the entire thing. The men consider it a protest of the colonizers. Others consider it a sort of tribute to the white conquerers as a means of becoming more like them.

I don't know if there's any more answers as there are questions once you finish.

'Shoah'

Aesthetically, Shoah is a bit of a misnomer. It seems like a peaceful, comforting Hebrew word. Like it would mean "blanket" or "soft."

Instead, it translates to "catastrophe" and is the word used for Holocaust.

Generally, people feel the Holocaust should never be forgotten. I remember a literature class in college and some nitwit girl said she didn't want to talk about the Holocaust because it "depressed" her. At that moment, I thought all I could possibly do is keep talking about it. Never letting the subject go.

The truth of the matter is that Schindler's List and The Pianist may be some of the least worthwhile films about Shoah in history. Especially compared to the sprawling epics of Claude Lanzmann, a French filmmaker and professor, who directed Shoah and who I thought directed The Sorrow and the Pity, but he didn't.

Lanzmann was a Jewish Frenchman and upon occupation went into hiding. At age 18, he joined the French Resistance.

Shoah is a nine-hour documentary, one of the foremost and comprehensive works documenting the Holocaust. He talked to survivors, Nazis and witnesses of the atrocities at Chelmo, the death camps at Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the Warsaw Ghetto.

The interviews are tremendous. The film itself needs chapters or some sort of organization. It seems to jump from one theme to another. There's no narrative direction or control. It's sort of thrown together. If there's nine hours of film, then there had to be 36 hours -- at least -- of footage.

Footage of SS officer Franz Suchomel -- I guess with hidden camera -- showing the details and intricacies of a gas chamber chills to the bone.

Interviews with "bystanders" tend to frustrate the most. At best, we knew Suchomel's intentions and prejudices. The witnesses carry on like nothing happen. At times, they seem aloof. They avoid questions, change the subject or answer one way and then contradict themselves in the next breath. Rarely do you get a straight answer and you are forced to assume that what they saw was stupefying and they did about it was equally disgusting.

It's a crazy watch and I highly encourage everyone to take on the film. Lanzmann asks the tough questions for all of us and tries to hold as many people as possible responsible for Shoah, the catastrophe.

'Fahrenheit 9/11'

I did not especially look forward to watching this film.

Mostly because it's a documentary about Michael Moore -- a guy that I kinda liked after watcher Roger & Me in college, but a guy I've learned is a bit hypocritical and self-serving.

There's a lot here. I do recommend watching it because as much as I dislike Moore as a person, as a documentarian, he knows how to "create" a pretty compelling and intersting narrative.

Is it all true, actual, factual and real in the context that we are seeing it? No. Is there information withheld to prove a point? Certainly.

I started reading some critiques of the film and one wrote that Fahrenheit 9/11 was a satire. That, frankly, is the best word to describe. It's satire. Satires typically have a lot more fact that you might actually think and that's why it works.

The reason I dislike Moore is because he works himself into his documentaries, one that is about the president of the United States, politicians, foreign affairs and war -- none of which Moore knows anything about or is involved in. Still, he's a celebrity. Or has made himself into one. He's on the cover of the DVD and on all of the film posters. In most of the posters, George W. Bush isn't included: It's Moore peeking over with his signature ball cap behind a vanilla envelope. By the end of the film, Moore is fed up with the lying liars on Capitol Hill and he's going to take action. With a former Marine, he approaches legislators to get them to sign their children up for the military.

I get it. The Congressmen who are more than willing to send other people's kids to war would be unwilling to send their own.

I don't know what reaction Moore expected. They either brush Moore off entirely, say they won't sign up their kid or attempt to sign up their kid. For one, what parent would actually sign their kid up to go to war based on a pretty compelling argument from a documentary filmmaker on the street while you're trying to go to work? You at least ask your kid first, right?

Mostly, Moore was brushed off. Or so it was shown. By all accounts, the entire film is filled with instances that seem stunted and lacking -- as if there is more. Who knows how those Congressmen really reacted.

On the other hand, what good did that do? What good did the film do?

I once got into a debate with a friend about Al Gore and the green movement. It was my argument that Gore's support of the fact of global warming and the progression of green technology actually hurt the movement because of Gore's political background and affiliation. My friend argued, as I remember (he'll actually probably remember this and correct me next time) that Gore's reputation made it high profile and even if a percentage blew off the idea of global warming, there were others that adopted it and maybe changed their behaviors or ideas. That two percent (or five or 20) was worth alienating another 30, 40 or 50 percent.

I see his point. I don't know if was the best tactic, but I get it. Months after the release of Fahrenheit 9/11, George W. Bush was re-elected as president of the United States. Some critics said Moore comes off as a bully and a smartass. It could be argued that Moore chased many folks away with his attitude and very satirical nature. Many conservatives saw it as an attack. Maybe others didn't take it seriously.

Probably what Moore argued and maintained could not be communicated any other way or any way that would make a difference in how we see the war, foreign affairs and our government. Maybe this was the best way.

The other reason I dislike Moore is that he's highly disingenuous. Fahrenheit 9/11 was the highest grossing documentary of all time making more than $222 million.

In February 2011, Moore sued Bob and Harvey Weinstein claiming that the producers owed him $2.7 million. The Weinsteins countered that Moore had made $20 million already, a claim he hasn't denied.

So, this film made $222 million (meaning the studio and financiers made their nut back) and Moore himself made $20 million and is suing to get $2.7 million more.

This is the same man that villifies Congressmen for not sending their kids to Iraq, Dick Cheney and Halliburton for profiting off the murder to Iraqi civilians and American soldiers, and he mourns the death of his hometown of Flint, Mich. while, himself, turning a nice profit during its death rattle. Watch Fahrenheit 9/11. A vast majority of it is stock footage and archives. The rest is Moore doing interviews in Washington, D.C. and Flint. He's not in Fallujah or Tikrit.

Listen, I don't begrudge Moore making money for what he does. However, you run the risk of becoming a giant hypocrite. I don't doubt that Moore's donated a lot of money to veterans' funds or even the Flint Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he has, maybe he hasn't.

Still, Moore is not hurting. Remember, a straight documentary doesn't make $222 million nor does it make Moore a 20-million-dollar-a-film-guy.

A lot of dough for simply critiquing Bush's response to Sept. 11, 2001 in a classroom full of kids.

'Hotel Terminus: The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie'

A fascinating four-hour documentary about Klaus Barbie, the SS captain in Nazi Germany, better known as the Butcher of Lyon due to his tactics in torture and death in Vichy France.

He was known to torture men, women and children using insanely sadistic methods including sexual abuse with a dog. I don't know how that worked.

After the war, he fled to South America where he lived with little disruption despite most people knowing who he was and where he was until he was arrested 40 years after the fact and sentenced to life in prison, what little life he has left.

He spent eight years in prison for an untold amount of murders and atrocities.

The interesting parts of the film are the actual filmmaker, Marcel Ophüls. His father was the famed director Max that has a number of films on the 1,001 list himself. Max and his family fled Germany (they were Jews) and went to France and then were forced to the United States.

His son is an angry man. Marcel also directed The Sorrow and the Pity, a long documentary about the French resistance during the Nazi regime.

He takes his frustrations out on his interview subjects. He talks to former, unrepentant Nazis, French resistance, CIA operatives and people of France that survived Barbie's barbarism.

Marcel is quick to take Nazis to task for their actions and opinions about what was going on. Filmed are moments of frustration as interviewees attempt to escape the glare of the camera.

In another instance, a Holocaust survivor visits the Lyon home where she and her family were arrested. A grey-haired old lady sticks her head out of the window. She is a former neighbor of the girl and they proceed to ask her if she remembers the day of the arrest.

The survivor later notes that the old woman did nothing to hide her or her family nor did she do anything to stop her family from being arrest and eventually sent to a concentration camp.

Ophüls' documentaries are not great stories, in a sense. At least they are not presented in a very good narrative. They jump from anecdote to anecdote. Presented in chronological order, it's hodgepodge and confusing at times.

Still, right when the film starts to drag, another character pops out of the story and drags you right back in.

The most memorable is Jacques Vergès, Barbie's attorney once he was caught and brought to trial.

Vergès is a guy I'd never heard of, yet there's no one more notorious. He's a Vietnamese-French defense lawyer and a rabid anticolonialist communist. He's represented Algerian militant Djamila Bouhired, who he married, Carlos the Jackal (he's featured in the miniseries Carlos), a member of the Khmer Rouge and Barbie.

Vergès, ironically, went to England as a youth to join the French resistance against the Nazis. Also as a youngster, he met and befriended Pol Pot. Of course, he saw French colonialism in Algeria as being the same thing as the Nazis in France. Why he didn't see what Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was doing in Cambodia as being the same of what the Nazis did in Europe is a mystery.

Also a mystery is what Vergès did between 1970-78. He left his wife and family. Disappeared. Nobody knows where he was at. Some say he was in Cambodia or in and around Europe and the Middle East among the Palestinian liberation movement groups.

Reportedly, he offered to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. Again, how he doesn't connect the dots between one genocide and another is a mystery. However he can stick it to the west is all that matters.

He's a real asshole.

'Fires Were Started'

Fires Were Started was released in 1943 under the title I Was a Fireman.

It is a documentary featuring reconstructions of what firefighters faced in England during the Nazi bombing during World War II. Yes, they reconstructed actual events.

Any argument that this isn't a "documentary" because it is essentially fake has some validity. Of course, we must first define "documentary." Is what Ken Burns does a documentary? Does he recreate the Civil War, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge or the history of baseball?

He uses archive footage, photos and interviews to tell his story not unlike Humphrey Jennings getting real firefighters to recreate real bombing scenarios.

Jennings, incidentally, was one of the original purveyors of the Mass Observation movement in England.

It was a social research organization created before the war. It basically chronicled everyday people's everyday lives. People kept diaries or they filled out questionnaires.

Other investigators were paid to anonymously account for people's behaviors at work, at parties, at religious and sporting events.

Mass Observation stemmed from King Edward VIII's abdication from the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson. The researchers -- including Jennings -- sought to capture the mood of the country as one king left under dubious circumstances and another king (the dude behind The King's Speech), George VI, took control. The mood of the country was captured by collecting anecdotes, man-on-the-street reaction and overhead commentary.

Jennings died at age 43 after falling off a Greek cliff. So it goes.

'Night And Fog' & 'Come And See'

Two films that project the darkest time in modern history in different ways.

Night and Fog is a French documentary. Released 10 years after the end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. It was written and scored by Holocaust survivors.

It's dark (as you can imagine) and it includes stock footage from the camps in addition to current day (1955) footage from the camps.

Come and See is a Russian film released 40 years after liberation, but 46 years after the event of the picture. It is the perfect film, if there is one. Let's just say if there were a tournament, my entry would be Come and See.

Set in Belarus during the 1941 Nazi blitzkrieg toward Moscow, the film shows two boys attempting to find a buried rifle in order to join the Russian partisans fighting the German invaders. Our protagonist finds the rifle. He later meets a young girl and the pair set off for his home. There he finds his family has been slaughtered. Later, when the Germans arrive in a neighboring village, he hides out and escapes death while watching an entire village perish in a church fire, trapt.

This is a heartbreaking film. We see our hero -- a young boy -- grow old and weary with age. He become an old man within hours as a lifetime of disaster and death passes before his bagged eyes.

Belarus had 209 of its 290 cities and villages wiped off the map. Between two to three million Belarusians perished, nearly a quarter of the overall population. The country's population numbers didn't recover until 1971. The Jewish population of the country never recovered.

'Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould'

This is a collection of 32 short films about the eccentric pianist Glenn Gould.

How eccentric?

1. He was ridiculously picky about the temperature. No matter what, he always wore coats and gloves. He was arrested for alleged vagrancy because he was sitting on a bench in Florida with a coat and gloves. During recording sessions, he typically forced the crew to have the temperature unbearably hot.

2. Gould demanded his piano be at a certain height and that he use this specific kitchen table chair constructed by his father.

3. Gould always hummed while playing. It caused havoc while trying to record.

4. He was a hypochondriac and was prone to missing concerts.

The film is a series of performances and interviews of these people interacting with Gould. I can't imagine actually having to have a relationship with the guy. Such a weirdo. They actually think he was an undiagnosed autistic patient.

'Roger & Me'

I first heard about Roger & Me in a college class. Again, up until three years ago, I didn't really give two whits about film nor did I have a lot of opinions about film, what was good or bad or what was important.

Also, up until several years ago, I had zero interest in documentaries. Therefore, I'd never seen Roger & Me and I doubt I'd even heard about it at that point.

Naturally, I saddled up and went to my local Hastings and rented a VHS copy and watched it. It blew my mind. It's the first documentary I'd ever seen and it just blew my mind about what was going on.

Since, I've seen countless documentaries and I understand that these filmmakers tend to exaggerate and alter our projected reality in order to prove a point or create a sense of drama.

And I understand that no one is better at this than Michael Moore. Now, he kind of drives me nuts and I kind of thing he does more damage in molding certain practices or policies in the United States, although his intentions are (probably) good.

Roger & Me chronicles the heyday of automaking in Flint, Mich. up until the 1980s when General Motors closed the plant in Flint resulting in a loss of 30,000 jobs and the aftermath of that move.

It's jaw-droppingly mesmerizing watching Moore meet and talk to the local yahoos in Flint and then trying to talk to Roger Smith, the CEO of General Motors about why he was closing the plants.

The problem, as I see it now, is that this was very personal for Moore. He'd grown up in Flint and his family worked in the automobile making plants. It was his family, friends and the town he loved and grew up in that was taking the brunt of a move in order to make cars and trucks more cheaply.

At times, Moore looks petty and just mean. I have no love lost for GM or Roger Smith or other big-shot CEOs. But it's the people that had nothing to do with GM closing a plant. Like Miss Michigan, who was just waiving and smiling at a dumb parade and Moore confronts her with this very heavy line of questioning regarding the closing of a plant.

What's Miss Michigan supposed to do? What can she do? Why talk down to her or make her out like she doesn't care?

Why didn't Moore corner senators and representatives at the national and state level? Why'd he play softball with Michigan's governor?

Why make the locals look like idiots? It's exactly what he does. After you watch the film, you realize that Flint needed the auto plant because those uneducated, directionless people had no other choice than to work mindlessly in a production line. They couldn't do anything else. They couldn't even make tacos. On a certain level, you don't even feel sorry for the people.

Back to the taco thing, in the film, Moore looks sarcastically at a story in the local paper about how Taco Bell was hiring former auto workers and training them to work in fast food. As it turns out, the auto workers couldn't handle it and were fired. In his own way, Moore looks down at the fast-food world as menial work. All the while, he's championing auto workers, who perform work that they were teaching robots to do. To my knowledge, no robot can make a bean burrito.

Had the floor fallen out of the faux-Mexican fast food world, and all Taco Buenos and Taco Bells closed in Flint or any other city, is Moore making a documentary about them?

Hell no. Moore's a snobbish ex-journalist, who got jaded and angry because GM had the audacity to close a plant in order to be more cost efficient in Mexico and didn't provide an explanation or apology. He's angry at the American government because they "allow" companies to move and devastate towns.

Everyone absolutely loves a free market as long as it benefits them. And, more importantly, doesn't hurt them. Jobs come and go in this country and people like their stocks to go up, up, up. GM has every right to put their plants in any country or state that will have them. They have every right to squeeze as much profit as they can within the laws and bylaws of the United States or the country they deal in.

Again, companies and business move, close, go bankrupt or fall into ruin all the time. Yet, Moore isn't championing them all because his family lives in Flint. Moore is no different than the politicians he roasts in his films.

'The Sorry And The Pity'

"Those guys in the French Resistance were really brave. To have to listen to Maurice Chevalier sing so much." -- Alvy Singer from Woody Allen's Annie Hall

In Allen's foremost film, Annie Hall, he and his girlfriend Allison go to the movies to see The Sorrow and the Pity. Must've been a pretty hot date.

It runs four hours, but it's probably the neatest four hours you'll spend watching a film. A much better investment than Das Boot.

It's a documentary with a ton of great interviews regarding the French Resistance, government, Nazi occupation, political dealings and attitudes during World War II.

France has always gotten a bad rap. Let's face it: If France was where Ghana, Sri Lanka or Jamaica are located, we'd think nothing of them except for some great art, fantastic books, groundbreaking cinema and the casino in Las Vegas.

Instead, by happenstance, they are located right next to stinkin' Germany. You don't see Sri Lanka, Ghana or Jamaica getting ridiculed because they're not having to deal with endless wars. France has been fighting a long time. From the Prussians, Russians, English, Spanish, Italians, Germans and themselves, it's been an endless ware after endless war.

The French have proven themselves on the battlefield and whatever lack of resistence they put up in 1939, it's tough for me to criticize or judge. They've seen more war in 100 years than the United States has in 250 and may ever see in the next 250 years.

Hell, maybe the French weren't so adverse to the Nazis. Since the French Revolution, the country hadn't been entirely that stable. From Napoleon through World War I, it was a country of upheaval. The Nazis probably represented quite a bit of stability. And if you're a country that is less than tolerable to the Jews, it probably didn't seem all bad.

I know I'm sounding like a Nazi sympathizer. I don't deny this. However, I'm trying to look at it through the eyes of the French, a country that's taken it in the shorts over and over since 1939 and nobody can truly judge them, especially Americans. Besides, where the English, Dutch, Polish, Swiss, Spanish, Scandanavians, Bulgarians or Belgians? Running and not fighting, too.

In The Sorrow and the Pity, things get real for the French people. It's part of the reason why it was never shown in France until the 1980s. It's the pockmark left over from the disfiguring time period through 1945. Through all the sorrow, I felt a little pity.

'Close-Up'

This is supposed to be genius. One of the best films of the 1990s. I think that's because it's Iranian. If this were Indian or English or American, it wouldn't be as cool, but because Iran is so mysterious and kind of creeps us out, we overvalue any art coming from that country.

It is an unusual set-up. It's part documentary, part drama.

It's a documentary by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami about a man named Hossain Sabzian, who had convinced some random family that he was Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and that he wante dto do a film about them.

Of course, Sabzian is not Makhmalbaf, the family discovers this, calls the police and Sabzian is put on trial for fraud. They think he was intending to burgle them. Judging from his responses, he's kind of a nut, obsessed with movies and living in some pretend world. More or less, he's delusional.

Kiarostami films Sabzian's trial. Meanwhile, he also directs this acted story of how the fraud went down. Acted by the guy that did the actual fraud. He's goodball/criminal/actor.

I don't know why it's appealing. It's boring to be perfectly honest. It's an interesting story, sure. But kind of in that wacky, "Listen to what I just read in the newspaper!" type of things. Something that Yahoo! would put on the front of their mainpage to pique the random Internet-goer's attention.

'Mondo Cane'

Humans are weird. It's the biggest difference between us and the animals. It's not invention, free thought, opposable thumbs, the ability to talk or play Wii bowling, it's oddity.

Dogs and monkeys aren't odd. Odd looking, yes. But not odd. They sleep, wake up, eat, shit, fight, eat, shit and sleep. That's not odd. That's a dream for human beings.

We work, have 401ks, purchase cars based on gas mileage, watch films with Kevin Costner, buy Thin Lizzy records, mow lawns, pick school districts, check out books at libraries, look at Internet porn, cheat on our wives, shoot heroin in our veins, get flu shots and hire personal trainers. That shit is fucked up.

Mondo Cane is a series of travelogues detailing the idiosyncratic and, often, retarded rituals, rites, cultural events, traditions and activities that human beings "enjoy" as we pass through this planet.

I don't need some Italian documentarians to tell me this. I know it. I live it. I think we underestimate the human being's ability to be relatively self aware. It doesn't take long to scroll through a newspaper to realize that things are quite right. Something's gone haywire in our brains and we can't stop murdering, stealing, raping and going to sporting events (how retarded are sports, big picture?).

I watched a show about "victims" of obsessive-compulsive disorder and these people have serious mental issues. Then again, so do all of us. I can't stand it when towels and blankets are left on the floor. It's a minor thing. It bugs me. But it doesn't control my behavior. It does for OCD patients.

We are all virtually just a step or two away from being one of the degenerates that are written up about in the newspaper. We all have odd interests and fetishes that could be considered borderline mischievious or "bad." The guy who likes weird porn and the guy that rapes women are seperated by a thin line.

It's what Mondo Cane tries to show us (we're cruel assholes), but it's no secret.

'Land Without Bread'

On the whole, Land Without Bread is the first ever documentary, directed by Luis Bunuel.

It depicts a very poor mountainous area in Spain called Las Hurdes.

As a fan of documentaries, I've always wondered how much license a documentarian takes with his subject matter. We know that in some -- like King of Kong -- that the filmmaker edited pieces to create a false tension.

Watching Land Without Bread, you assume there are probably many strains of the truth in order to make the area seem more desolate and desitute than it really was. According to most, it was an exaggeration.

Furthermore, we learn that the donkey was was allegedly killed due to being swarmed by bees after hives fell and smashed to the ground, was actually covered with honey to make the death take place.

Also, they talk about the mountain goats that frequently are eaten by the people after falling off a mountain. We then see what appears to be a goat carcass falling down a rocky mountain.

Bunuel actually had the goat killed and tossed down the mountain.

There more disturbing parts. The little girl in the street dying. The baby dying ... and Bunuel showing the lifeless body. There's also the footage of the so-called "idiots."

It's disturbing because you never get the idea that any of it is real. I'm not saying there weren't backwards places in the 1930s, but this was civilization Spain and a world on the very verge of modern machination. But we couldn't teach these people to hunt or garden?

'Triumph Of The Will'

Got to give it to the Nazis, they sure knew how to throw a party.

The pure mass and breadth of these rallies is rather jaw dropping. Don't want to sound like I'm a Nazi or anything, but they're gigantic.

The pure mass of people chanting and yelling. Rows and rows of arms straight in salute. The SS goosestepping down the avenue. It's riveting. The pure electricity of the rallies really come through the screen. I could only imagine what they were like in person.

I realize that this doesn't excuse anyone from what happened. But you must also consider that this was a country ripped apart by war and reparations. They were a hungry and tired mass left to sit in the corner. You poke a dog enough times with a sharp end of a stick, they'll eventually bite.

I did enjoy seeing the wide-eyed, hopeful Nazi Youth in celebration. I kept thinking, "Good luck freezing your faces off in Stalingrad in seven years!"

'Woodstock'

I've never, ever been a fan of the general ethos, attitude and art of the hippie era that exploded on the United States in the late 1960s.

I personally consider this odd. I do love art. I generally like the 1960s. And I love music from the 1960s.

But as an avid fan of the greatest band in the history of music, The Beatles, I know as well as anyone that the Fab Four were not particularly involved in the hippie scene despite the fact that they were vegan, drug users, highly spiritual, long-haired tastemakers in the late-1960s, who held bed-ins for peace and wrote "All You Need Is Love."

However, they were so divorced from the whole scene. When Woodstock was organized, they were offered a spot but turned it down.

In fact, a lot of bands turned it down. In fact, other than Sly and the Family Stone, I have zero interest in the bands that played Woodstock.

However, I do not think it's a total coincidence that the Beatles, Stones, Bob Dylan, most R&B groups of the era and other big band of the day didn't play.

I'd like to think those bands/artists felt the same way I do about the hippie scene: That it's a bunch of spoiled, white, suburban college kids, who would've embraced fascism if it was antiestablishmentarian and involved ingesting copious amounts of drugs.

The hippie scene was bankrupt and I can't enjoy a documentary celebrating the vacancy of these people.

'Olympia'

For those of you who've seen Quentin Tarantino's brilliant "Inglourious Basterds," the name "Leni Riefenstahl" is bandied about quite a bit.

I'd heard the name two dozen times, but I'd never connected to her true historical significance. Frankly, there may not be a more significant filmmaker in the 20th century and there certainly has never been a female that influenced film and directing as much as she did.

She was the Nazi behind "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia," the end product of shooting the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Of course, we know the story of Jesse Owens, the black track athlete who won four gold medals at Adolf Hitler's big Aryan shindig. Like the overly drunk, belligerent guy that shows up three hours late, Owens ruined Hitler's party.

I'd always been told that both films were Nazi propaganda in an attempt (in terms of "Olympia") to showcase the Aryan race's physical superiority over non-Aryans.

I do not think this was the case. Don't get me wrong, I think Riefenstahl made a big mistake getting mixed up with the Nazis. She claims she knew nothing of the Final Solution despite hiring concentration camp tenants as extras in films. Even if she did find out, Riefenstahl was not unlike millions of other Germans that simple did nothing and claimed ignorance.

"Olympia," I think, is a pretty straight forward film about the Olympics. No matter her political or biological leanings, she was simply in love with the athletic, human form. If nothing else, she was kind of a perv.

For one, there's very little attention paid to the German excellence in the Olympics. If anything it's overly American although there's plenty of footage of other countries competing and winning. There's more footage of Jesse Owens than Hitler.

If German athletes were given a bit more time than other countries, it's because the home nation won 89 medals outlasting second-place United States by 33 total medals. Germans were bound to be shown a lot because they won a lot.

Furthermore, not many non-European countries medaled. Only four nations from Asia, two from Africa and two from South America won a medal. Only a handful of others showed up to compete. The fact is, in 1936, the world was almost a totally different place. It's brought up that Owens could ride in whatever part of a bus in Berlin but at home he was relegated to the back.

Countries too were in turmoil with change and colonialism that didn't change until World War II 11 years later. India wouldn't see independence until several years after World War II. The Nazis were certainly assholes, but a bunch of other developed countries were sons of bitches.

The only part that I think could be deemed "propaganda" in terms of the Aryan superiority is the very beginning when Riefenstahl shows the white athletes (Germans, I can only assume) in slow motion performing Olympic exercises like the javelin, sprint and whatnot. However, again, I think this is purely incidental and proves only the point that Riefenstahl loved the human form more than anything.

I may be a Nazi apologist and I apologize for that. But I simply don't feel this film is anything other than a recording of the 1936 Olympics (note: it was commissioned by the IOC ... not Hitler).

'Crumb'

In the documentary, Robert Crumb talks about his father being disappointed that his three sons didn't turn out to be tough, manly Marines and were instead comic book and art geeks.

This is supposed to be some kind of criticism of his strict, former Marine father, who, according to the film and Crumb himself, worked with corporations on how to motivate salesmen.

I don't know why the Crumb father would be disappointed:

One son, Robert, is a sexist, racist comic book artist, who is an anti-social neurotic, who is self-admittedly unable to love.

The youngest, Maxon, is a neurotic artist, who lives in a San Francisco hotel.

The oldest son, Charles, committed suicide at age 50 after dealing with deep and scarring psychological problems and living with his mother in awful physical conditions.

I don't know why their father would be disappointed. Seems like they're upstanding citizens.

'Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer'

Documentarian Nick Broomfield had to negotiate a slippery slope with this film.

On one hand, you had a women who murdered a series of men. Aileen Wuornos killed those men. She admitted it and she, eventually, died for it.

However, Broomfield had to tell the true story without exonerating Wuornos for the true crime.

Yes, she killed those men, but the defense that they were going to or did rape or beat her is repeated although it is incredibly flimsy. You can't just going around shooting and killing people due to your repeated behavior.

The true story here is that Wuornos was completely taken advantage of by a born-again Christian observer and a crackpot lawyer. Despite Wuornos crime, this aspect of the story is tragic and sickening. What is interesting is that Broomfield repeatedly mentions the Son of Sam law, which prohibits criminals from profiting from their transgressions. He's told the Son of Sam law didn't apply anymore. This was never explained.

Broomfield, however, does a good job in balancing Wuornos' antics and any sympathy she may get due to these circumstances.

'Tongues Untied'

For some odd reason, I've always been interested in the sub-culture of the African American gay male.

I think there's a twofold reason: One, I've read about this sub-culture as being called on the "down low" and that random straight guys dabble in it far more than, say, a white straight male dabbles in homesexuality.

On the flip side, as it appears, there's a stringent attitude in the African American culture against homosexuality more so than in other demographics.

None of this may be true, but it's certainly not discussed in "Tongues Untied," which comes off as a community theatre's attempt at an art-house film while spending no money and borrowing somebody's mother's 8mm camera.

Nonetheless, some of the andecdotes and characters are entertaining. But never do they delve too deep into themselves or their culture. Which is all very easy to do: To show your cover, but to never reveal your true self.

'Cheap, Fast and Out of Control'

A very interesting concept for a documentary. Taking these very specialized individuals and talking about what they do and how they do it.

I think people with interesting jobs that they do well is extremely noble. I feel like we need more topiary artists out there in lieu of more accountants and lawyers. There's something about doing exactly what you like and doing it well.

But I think we can learn something from these people about production and how their world's function as mini-worlds in this gigantic big world. Almost cut off.