Vanishing of the Bees (2009)

Vanishing of the Bees (2009)

Directed by: George Langworthy, Maryam Henein

Starring: Ellen Page, Emilia Fox, David Hackenberg

I never thought I’d be able to get angry at a documentary about bees, but that’s exactly what happened when I watched this yesterday. I just have really high standards for how documentaries should be constructed, I guess, and I’m not really sure how that developed.

Vanishing of the Bees is about Colony Collapse Disorder, a condition they’ve been finding more and more often in corporate American and European bee colonies over the last couple years. This is an issue because bees are mainly used to pollinate crops like fruit trees, not just for making honey. The thing is, nobody knows what’s causing CCD, or really even what it is that’s actually happening. This film claims that it’s all the fault of pesticides, despite giving no evidence besides the fact that they don’t really like pesticides, so it must be their fault.

I’m not on the side of the pesticide companies or Big Honey or whatever, I just hate when a documentary draws conclusions from out of their ass. The basic fact is that nobody even really knows what’s happening, they just see that bees have disappeared and they don’t know why. If you don’t even really know the problem, how can you possibly be as sure as this film is about the cause? Also, half the people they interview obviously only mentioned bees so they could get in the movie and promote their “holistic” concepts for saving the environment, which is more or less completely off-topic. There’s a lady in here who says that bees are proof of a feminine “goddess”, for fuck’s sake. I just wanted to learn about a crazy natural mystery, but I guess they wanted to rush out this movie while it was still on people’s minds and didn’t want to be hampered with FACTS. Also Ellen Page is a terrible narrator. This is a bad documentary.

Lemmy (2010)

Lemmy (2010)

Directed by: Greg Olliver, Wes Orshoski

Starring: Lemmy Kilmister, Dave Brock, Phil Campbell

Who wouldn’t want to learn more about Lemmy, frontman for Motörhead, one of the greatest hard rock bands in the world? I mean, all you really need to know is that his moustache gives him power, but it’s nice to have a little bit more info.

This documentary meanders around Lemmy’s life, from his previous association with the stoner-rock band Hawkwind to his collection of Nazi memorabilia, and even to his disgustingly filthy house full of little toys of himself people have given him over the years and gold and platinum albums.

As far as a documentary goes, Lemmy is all right. It doesn’t really get into the guy’s legendary usage of drugs and alcohol, nor his equally infamous sexual appetites. It’s a very softball piece, obviously because the guys who made it worship Lemmy as a god. Like most of us do. Still, there are a few funny anecdotes and interviews with other musicians that make it a decent watch. Definitely nothing groundbreaking here, though.

The Sweatbox (2002)

The Sweatbox (2002)

Directed by: Trudie Styler

Starring: Sting, Marc Shaiman, Eartha Kitt

So, there’s a little history behind this one. The Sweatbox is the name of a documentary made by Sting’s wife about the development of the Disney film that would eventually become The Emperor’s New Groove. It kinda casts Disney in a bad light, so The Mouse has never released it on home video. My film nerd friend found that someone had leaked it on YouTube the other day, so I watched it hoping for some juicy anti-Disney stuff.

Originally called Kingdom of the Sun, this Disney film went through a lot of work to get it to a state where the bigwigs liked it. Originally, it was more of a Prince and the Pauper sorta thing, and Sting wrote half a dozen songs for it. The executives thought it was boring, muddled, and too complicated for a child audience, and demanded major changes. We get to see the seeping depression in the artists working on the film, and we especially focus on Sting struggling to work with a much more demanding system than he’s used to.

This is a pretty interesting documentary if you’re interested in how the filmmaking creative process goes, and it’s almost twice as interesting to see that even a gigantic corporation like Disney can make exactly the same stupid mistakes that anyone else can. I mean, you’d think after like, a hundred years of doing this shit, they’d have it figured out a little better by now. Also, if you’re interested in checking this movie out, unfortunately it’s already been taken down from YouTube. Maybe if you’re really diligent, you’ll catch this Brigadoonian documentary in the future. Maybe you should invest in making some film nerd friends, those are always good.

Australia: Land of Parrots (2008)

Australia: Land of Parrots (2008)

Directed by: David Parer, Elizabeth Parer-Cook

Starring: Colin Friels

Normally I only watch nature documentaries when I’m in a… certain “state of mind.” When I’m “flying” on the couch, as it were. When I “smoke marijuana recreationally,” if you get my drift. But there’s really no reason to wait for such things, because nature is fucking awesome, and cool videos of cool shit are also always awesome.

This is a nature documentary about parrots in Australia. Turns out they have wild budgies and these crazy black cockatoos which have worked the English word “hello” into their actual parrot call language to mean “hello”. That’s INSANE, are you fucking kidding me?! If chimpanzees could do that, they would basically be citizens.

This is a very pretty batch of footage about neat birds. I don’t know what else I can really say about it.

Area 51: The Alien Interview (1997)

Area 51: The Alien Interview (1997)

Directed by: Jeff Broadstreet

Starring: Steven Williams, Bob Lazar, Sean David Morton

When I watched this “documentary” about aliens and Area 51, I felt something hidden stirring inside me, something I never knew existed. I really, really wanted to make my own alien interview movie. It’s a god damn work of comic genius to make a film exploring found footage about aliens when you don’t care about convincing anyone that it’s real, because it’s obviously not.

The first half of the film is the narrator explaining what UFO enthusiasts believe happened over the years at Roswell, New Mexico. Apparently it’s something about aliens or something. After that, we get to see the titular interview itself, where a man asks questions to a hand puppet with a flashlight for an arm, and pretends to hear answers. Then we get a bunch of UFO guys reacting to the footage, which is just so awesome.

There’s one guy in this movie who was apparently a puppeteer for Babylon 5 or something, who just piles praise on this video. “No, no, this is definitely not a puppet. Whoever made this was the best puppet guy ever. If it was a puppet.” IT’S YOU! YOU MADE IT! It’s so goddamn obvious and just sad and hilarious all at the same time. I highly recommend this movie, it’s a laff riot.