Movie Recommendations, Rants and Ruminations
Tonight, the excellent documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project will air on PBS Independent Lens. It will be available to stream for free from PBS through July 14 here. I also recommend this PBS interview with Director Matt Wolf.
If you miss it on PBS, you can pay to stream it on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Here are more Shelter In Place movie recommendations – you can watch them all at home.
ON VIDEO
More of an art movie than a neo-noir crime thriller, The Wild Goose Lake is a beautifully shot fable from China’s underworld. You can support San Francisco’s Roxie Theater by buying a ticket to stream The Wild Goose Lake from the Roxie Virtual Cinema.
The intriguing documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project tells how and why a woman’s obsession turned into an essential and irreplaceable video archive of 30 years worth of American broadcasting and society. Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project is streamable on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Buck is a documentary about real-life horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, an exceedingly grounded and gentle man who knows everything about horse behavior. But the movie is more about human behavior, about the disturbing crucible that formed Buck, and about what we can learn about people from their handling of horses. You can rent Buck from Amazon, YouTube and Google Play or buy it from iTunes.
Other recent streaming recommendations:
ON TV
On April 7, Turner Classic Movies airs the innovative film noir He Walked By Night, completed by an uncredited Anthony Mann. Inspired by a true life story, the LAPD goes on a man hunt for a highly skilled wacko played by Richard Basehart, with his bland good looks (but maniacal eyes). It’s a police procedural elevated by the great cinematography of John Alton, especially the sewer escape chase (right up there with the one in The Third Man). Look for film noir veteran Whit Bissell is perhaps his shadiest role. As a bonus, Jack Webb of Dragnet fame plays a CSI with a decidedly unsafe but cool way to confirm that a substance is really nitroglycerine.
The excellent documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, is about an eccentric woman who did something that seemed crazy, but turned out to be be important. For over 30 years, 24 hours per day, on multiple channels, Marion Stokes everything that was on TV – local news, commercials, network shows – the whole enchilada. She left a collection of 70,000 videotapes, Recorder explains the How and the Why.
It turns out that, before digital technology, TV stations did not preserve what they broadcast. So, what Stokes compiled is essential and irreplaceable – a unique archive of broadcasting and of American culture as it has been reflected by television.
Now, this was – and had to be – the project of an obsessive. Stokes’ son sagely observes that the difference between collecting and hoarding is the perceived value of the objects.
Stokes was one of those people whose cause was so important to them that it is prioritized above, for example, family relationships. I found the testimony from Stokes’ household staff – essentially her chosen family – most insightful and touching.
It’s a fascinating story. Stokes was that rare radical activist who both understood the power of media and had the financial means of recording and storing all of these broadcasts. She was an early adopter (her first tapings were on Betamax!), and became an Apple enthusiast.
Director Matt Wolf unspools this story perfectly. He is the son of Cinequest documentary screener Sandy Wolf; in this recent profile of Sandy, I also highlight Matt Wolf’s career (scroll down).
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project is streamable on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.