Documentaries

[herbs]

Recently I've started watching quite a few documentaries.

Just in the middle of A History of Britain, that is reallllly good (a crash course in all the stuff I didn't pay attention to in Humanities classes haha).


I've also been watching lots of Horizons and Panorama's that I've missed and can track down...

So, boundaries off....what are some really good documentaries that people have watched?

Links preferable, but not essential.

[Forum]

Im not normally into that kind of thing but i watched the guy from d reams documentary (forget his name) on bbc4

[herbs]

haha Brian Cox. Yeah I've seen those. He's like Science for dummies...but most of it still oges over my head

[Forum]

Just something about his voice makes it easier to listen to the heavy stuff than most of those science guys

[wilson]

I watched this recently.



A really fucked up situation and conclusion, all in all.

[wub]

Bruce Parry : Amazon - mentioned it before, man travels from the start of the Amazon to the end. Awesome.


Tribes - Same man, travels around staying with different tribes and living as they do. Inevitable ends up taking local hallucinagenic drugs to 'fit in'


Wild China - look at flora & fauna around China, beautifully filmed, lots of lush music, monkeys in jacuzzis, lots of pandas, crocodiles, and train cormorants.


Bombay Railway - strangely interesting look at the Indian railway system, and the people who live/work on it. Caught it randomly one time I was working from home.

[Forum]

Im too scared to watch bruce parry after what i saw on one episode, you know the one..

[SCope13]

Forks Over Knives. Great argument for a plant-base diet.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1567233/

[wilson]

This was cool, kind of a quirky look at human beings from the perspective of overeducated parking lot attendants.

[particle-jim]

haha Brian Cox. Yeah I've seen those. He's like Science for dummies...but most of it still oges over my head

Just something about his voice makes it easier to listen to the heavy stuff than most of those science guys

Brian Cox is just a poor man's Carl Sagan, go and watch Cosmos, it's fucking brilliant

[oddy]

BRUCE IS THE DON

[particle-jim]

Anything on BBC4 that has a really boring looking title will probably be surprisingly entertaining and informative, recently watched "the golden age of coach travel" which sounds dry as fuck but BBC4 documentaries have a habit of tieing in the social/economic/political history of the time, for example in the coach travel doc there was a quite a bit on 'new-age traveller' families in the 80s having a massive run in with the law where all their coaches got smashed up and the police generally acted like complete bastards, was genuinely interesting and i'd have never know about it if i hadn't have watched what at face value seemed like a really boring documentary

[wilson]

The Secret History of Our Streets series on the BBC was fascinating I thought.

[teamhobson]

Brian Cox is enjoyable to watch and listen to because he fucking wanks for physics and cosmology. Its always interesting to hear someone chat about something they love.

Absolutely LOVE a documentary.

Watched a John Peel documentary based around this special box of 7"s that his family found after he died. Was quality, I'll get the name of it when I get home from work.

[Laszlo]

Anything by Adam Curtis
Food inc is fairly basic but, imo, an important watch
Capturing the Friedmans - a rare look at the other side of child sex abuse. Also an important watch, imo
Planet Earth - snow leopard episode makes me tingle
Nuff Horizons (but they've been a bit dumbed down in recent years)
The Root of all evil?, and The Enemies of Reason - More of a short series, I suppose. Avoid if you can't stand Dawkins.
BBC Natural World: The Secret Leopard (I have a thing for Leopards. WHAT!)
The Human Animal - again, a series, but Desmond Morris on a bossman flex
The World at War - WW2 narrated by Laurence Olivier. This one's special.
Days that shook the world (BBC) - series of documentaries on, well, days that shook the world.

Others that I want to see but haven't yet

A Grin Without a Cat (1977)
The Battle of Chile (1975–79)
The Fog of War (2003)
The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Grey Gardens (1975)
In the Year of the Pig (1968)
Gimmie Shelter (1970)
Lake of Fire (2006)
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)
Titicut Follies (1967)
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Triumph of the Will (1935)
Salesman (1968)
Sans Soleil (1983)
Becoming Human
97% Owned
Reality and the Extended Mind
Everest: The Death Zone

Anyone seen any of these?

[dickman69]

I love watching most nature/history documentaries but anything political/religious is just garbage b/c most of them are so biased its sickening

[particle-jim]

Human Planet

[__________]

I've got about 300 documentaries, but a shit memory. Here's a few from one of me folders that I remember enjoying:
(all from the internetz, so should be easily findable if you wanna watch)

Muhammad Ali The Greatest - Loads of old footage of Ali. Dude was mental.
The Podfather - BBC doc about microprocessors, transistors, etc.
Big River Man - Crazy dude decides to swim all the way down the Amazon.
Man on Wire - feature length documentary about a French bloke who tight-roped between the twin towers. Dude's passion is next level.
Conspiracies: Titanic: The Ship That Never Sank - Presents the possibility the Titanic was switched with its sister ship last-minute. Interesting.
Fat Belly: Chopper Unchopped - Documentary about Mark Chopper Read and his fucked up life and life decisions.
GasLand - One dude investigates all the hydrofracking going on in America by Halliburton et al. Not uplifting.
My Monkey Baby - completely fucked up documentary about completely fucked up Americans with monkeys for 'children'.
Teenage Japanese Killers - Exactly what it says. Investigates the Japanese teens' tendencies for murder.
The King of Kong - Man with no life wants to be the best in the world at Donkey Kong.
America's Deadliest Prison Gang - Bunch of racist Aryan nutcases.
Beef - Amusing hip hop documentary about beef.

[Forum]

The King of Kong - Man with no life wants to be the best in the world at Donkey Kong.

That sounds like the one

[idontreallygiveashit]

Hehehe, i've seen almost all of the non-bbc ones mentioned here and can predict all the obvious ones that people are going to suggest, so i'll just say that Micheal Palin's travel docs are the warmest and most charming docs of all time.