Documentary

• Title: Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
• IMDb: link

Werner Herzog‘s new documentary takes viewers on a journey through the Internet. With stops as its birthplace and interviews with creators and early users, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World also examines current uses for the tool in robotics and automobiles as well as the voyeuristic and bullying aspects fed by the anonymity of its users (in one of the documentary’s most emotional interviews).

The journey also makes a stop in Green Bank, West Virginia where all transmissions are restricted by the law and at a hospital for Internet addiction. Looking further the film also discusses solar flares, hackers and internet security, dreams, missions to Mars, and the possibility of artificial intelligence. While not as cohesive as I’d like at times, nonetheless Herzog delivers a fascinating historical journey on the Internet and how it has affected humanity, for both good and ill, since its creation. Like it or not, it’s firmly woven into our daily life, and Herzog pulls up the rug to show both its more troubling aspects as well as where it might lead us in the future.

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• Title: Danny Says
• IMDb: link

The documentary Danny Says takes a look at the life and work of music manager Danny Fields who discovered signed, and managed a variety of noteworthy bands in the 60s, 70s, & 80s including Iggy and the Stooges, MC5, and the Ramones, and also worked with Jim Morrison, the Velvet Underground and the Modern Lovers.

Spending as much time discussing Danny’s sex and drug use than the music, Brendan Toller‘s documentary includes several photographs and recordings Fields has kept over the years. It may not be the in-depth look at the music scene of that time period I expected, but it is an intriguing (if completely self-congratulatory) glance at one man’s impact on the music scene. Presented entirely from Fields’ point of view, some of his stories (such as how he hid Jim Morrison’s keys) are more entertaining than others (such as him struggling to justify his role in the storm up after the Beatles “more popular than Jesus” remark”). Music fans and historians should get a kick out of it.

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• Title: The First Monday in May
• IMDb: link

The subject of Andrew Rossi proves to be more fascinating the the movie itself. Following the near-year-long process of creating The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most attended fashion exhibition in history, “China: Through The Looking Glass,” the highlights of the documentary are the exhibits themselves while the behind-the-scenes of time and budget constraints, the jockeying of celebrity attendees (without ever naming names), battles with China of the historical (not modern) nature of the exhibit, the struggle to pay the headline act, and the actual design of the various pieces in the exhibits aren’t explored in much more than superficial detail. Like much of the fashion it highlights, it’s great to look at but doesn’t always have much to say.

As a snapshot into a world most won’t ever see personally, The First Monday in May is interesting (if never all that compelling) look at some of the work that went into The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most profitable exhibit. Available on DVD and On-Demand.

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