Today while working on homework I spent some time watching documentaries from my netflix account. I watched Outfoxed, Modified, the King of Kong, and Fall From Grace. I’ll write a little about each of them here.
-Outfoxed: Murdoch’s War on Journalism – This documentary deals with the media empire owned by Murdoch, specifically the Fox News Channel. In the ninety minutes of the program interviews with on and off air personalities associated with FNC, To back up the interviews there are copies of inner office memos and footage of on air personalities compared to events. Throughout the program representatives from media watch organizations are included, specifically FAIR. It’s not hard to slam an organization that has always functioned as a conservative media arm. Overall I give the program 3/5 stars, good program with some compelling information but nothing really groundbreaking to those that pay attention to tv news.
-Modify – Deals with the body modification culture, interviews and discussion of the Body Modification community. Somewhat simple in nature and seemed designed to offer some shock value to those not familiar with the nature of body modification today and the modern primitive movement. The program did however put a face to the body mod community, and hopefully dispelled some myths about those of us that modify our bodies. 3/5 stars.
-King of Kongs – Interesting story about competitive gaming, specifically one man’s pursuit to set the all time high score on Donkey Kong. 4/5 stars, good story, well produced.
-Fall From Grace – This documentary follows the Phelps family of Westboro Baptist Church fame. This includes many interviews with Phelps himself, his children and grandchildren. In opposition of them are two of the children that no longer assosciate themselves with the family, other ministers, professors of theology, the mayor of Westboro, and other people that have had their lives impacted by the family. I give the program 4/5 stars for a good view of the family from the inside and interviews from many people.
All of the documentaries were interesting to see and this goal will be very interesting to complete. Next on my list is to work through some American Experience programs.
