Some Docs I've recently watched about film and art...
Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons (2019)
This wonderful Documentary is an hour and a half of starring at gorgeous
Frank Frazetta-esque artwork that adorned the various manuals in the early days of this franchise. I've never played D&D but I was into Games Workshop, reading the Fighting Fantasy books and played the Baldur's Gate PC games to death, so I felt at home with the kind of powerful fantasy art that is discussed. You also get an anecdote filled history of the company's evolution while soaking up the visuals.
Untouchable: The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein (2019)
A 94-minute BBC feature-length Documentary about the recent exposure of
Harvey Weinstein's abusive behaviour. He is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, however, the consistent testimony of countless beautiful and talented young debutante actresses who he admits to having sexual "encounters" with, when he is a powerful, unpleasant, grossly ugly, overweight, old man, does make it difficult to deny pressure was involved, to put it as favorably as one can. Weinstein's tyrannical bullying of powerful male Directors like
Martin Scorsese,
Guillermo del Toro and
Terry Gilliam was not a secret to movie fans, so if that was tolerated by the industry, what went on behind closed doors with the powerless was perhaps inevitable. Just listening to some of the harrowing stories from the women makes you want to have a bath in Dettox.
Alien Evolution (2001)
Film critic
Mark Kermode was reviewing
Alexandre O. Philippe's new Documentary
'Memory: The Origins of Alien' on the radio and he mentioned his own 2001 Doc
'Alien Evolution', so I thought it was time for a revisit. Mark has interviews with all the major players in the franchise, cast, crew, art department and writing. An hour is probably too short a window to delve into a whole franchise but it's very entertaining all the same.
50 Years of the Troubles: A Journey through Film (2019)
Film Documentarian
Mark Cousins takes a look back at movies about "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland and his own life growing up in those dark days in Belfast. He argues that for people of his generation, film (specifically VHS because the cinemas were closed due bomb threats) was a fantasy escape from the violent realities of the outside world. I would have liked more discussion of the films themselves but the personal history was fascinating too.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/50-years-of-the-troubles-a-journey/on-demand/69162-001