Not sure where to post this so since I'm mostly on the Film forum I thought it'll do.

Did anyone see this last night? What did you think? Was the No 1 (7 to 49 Up) a justified winner?

The ones that stood out for me, that I remember years after they first aired were (in no particular order:

14 Days in May - The last two weeks of death-row inmate, Edward Earl Johnson's life.

The Leader, his driver and his driver's wife - About Terre'blanche and the AWB

Aileen - About Aileen Wuornos

Life on Earth - Attenborough's triumph, the standard for almost all subsequent wildlfe/nature documentaries.

A History of Britain - Nothing in particular to say, I just loved the series.

Around the World in 80 Days - Palin at his best I think.

The Nazis, A Warning from History - Self explanatory.

The World at War - As above

What did you think should've been in there?

I was surprised by the omissions of The Ascent of Man (Jacob Bronowski), The Body in Question (Jonathan Miller), The Great War (60's classic series), In Search of the Trojan Wars (Michael Wood, surely the original 'roving' historian series).

the list was a load of sh!te!!
i still kind of enjoyed watching the show because it brought back a few memories(forgot about hoop dreams and was glad to see what they're up to now!) - but overall it was simply an advert for channel 4.
i mean wife swap??? and faking it?? two of the best doco's ever???
what a laugh.
we thought of loads of really obvious one's that we were expecting in the top ten last night but can't think of many right now:
bus 174
etre et avoir
baraka(if wife swap fits the genre then this can surely squeeze in haha)

loads more - obviously channel four hasn't bought the rights to these one's though...

oh and as for number one:
in some ways i can see it could be questioned as in a way it's merely a set of questions put to a group of people about their ordinary lives
BUT lets face it, it's fascinating - and the reason it is rated so highly is because of the time scale and nothing else exists to match it.
it's definitely in my top ten...

I watched this despite my aversion to list programmes. I don't consider Wife Swap or Faking It as documentaries and to include those at the expense of Shoah and Nuit et Brouillard is a nonsense. A glaring omission I feel was Lene Liefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will, probably the most famous(and notorious)documentary ever made. Dubious politics aside it really is an incredible piece of film, and should have been on the list. The 7 Up thing does little for me.

quote:

Originally posted by johnny99:
I watched this despite my aversion to list programmes. I don't consider Wife Swap or Faking It as documentaries and to include those at the expense of Shoah and Nuit et Brouillard is a nonsense. A glaring omission I feel was Lene Liefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will, probably the most famous(and notorious)documentary ever made. Dubious politics aside it really is an incredible piece of film, and should have been on the list. The 7 Up thing does little for me.

I agree about Faking It and Wife Swap. I can't understand how they're there.
I'd forgotten about Shoah and Triumph of the Will, surely as monumental as anything. As for 7 to 49 Up, although I always watch them, I think the earlier ones were much better. They were far more interesting as kids and teenagers than they are now.

There was a glaring lack of arts and music with only Woodstock, Cracked Actor, Hearts of Darkness and Civilisation represented as far as I can recall. What about Ken Burns' Jazz or The Private Life of a Masterpiece series?

The problem with most of these 'list' programmes is that recent things win out over older, possibly better programmes. Understandable I suppose as we tend to remember things that are more recent. Shame nonetheless. Maybe they should have done 100 instead of 50.

I dare say the BBC will do their own list show to compete with this. I was glad to see The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off up there. Very moving documentary, but Faking It and Wife Swap really are just fodder for the masses. Hardly brain engaging topical and benaficial. They might as well included Big Brother (though mercifully they didn't).

I did enjoy the show though, and it does relate to Film because Documentaries are films too, just documentary films.

I love documentaries, but have no interest in the lazy list format show on Channel 4, or putting the ones I like in numbered order...

It's depressing that 'Shoah', 'The Triumph of the Will' and 'Night & Fog' weren't in there - these three key documentaries deal with the horrors of the 20th Century. Plus if going for a populist angle (which Ch4 do), 'Shoah' was quoted in 'Schindler's List', 'The Triumph of the Will' was quoted in 'Star Wars IV: A New Hope' and 'The Exorcist' used the chiaroscuro/light-dark juxtaposition from 'Night & Fog'. Any list that didn't include these is basically a joke...

Ones I'd have nominated:

*The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon
*Nazis: A Warning from History
*The World at War
*Roger and Me
*Control Room
*the Fox-TV docu a year or so ago
*Commandante (Oliver Stone's Castro film)
*Atlantis (Luc Besson's companion to The Big Blue)
*Little Dieter Wants to Fly (Werner Herzog)
*Scorsese's Italian Cinema series 'My Voyage to Italy'
*The Filth & the Fury
*The Great War (though didn't see it all as the BBC kept moving it around)
*The Sorrow & the Pity
*In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great
*Koyaanisqatsi
*Don't Look Back
*101
*StartUp.Com
*Hearts of Darkness
*My Best Fiend
*No Direction Home
*The Decline of Western Civilisation (both parts)
*Wisconcin Death Trip
*The West (Ken Burns)
*The Thin Blue Line
*The Fog of War
*People's Century (a bit forgotten I think!)
*----sucker Blues (The Rolling Stones)
*Gimme Shelter
*Cracked Actor (BBC's Arena)
*Whoever Tells the Truth Shall Die (Pasolini documentary)
*When We Were Kings
*The Last Waltz
and no doubt many more titles Ch4 passed over in their lazy inane schedule. Hours of list-programme with one example of the genre, L-A-Z-Y!!!

I've had a chance to search through and "do a wiseblood".

Here's the full list:

1. - 7 to 49 Up series
2. - Touching the Void
3. - Bowling For Columbine
4. - The World At War
5. - Capturing the Friedmans
6. - The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off
7. - Life On Earth
8. - Fahrenheit 9/11
9. - When We Were Kings
10. - Faking It
11. - Hoop Dreams
12. - This Week: Death on the Rock
13. - The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife
14. - One Day in September
15. - 14 Days in May
16. - The Family
17. - Night Mail
18. - The Nazis: A Warning From History
19. - Supersize Me
20. - Th Death of Yugoslavia
21. - Walking With Dinosaurs
22. - Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
23. - Beyond the Clouds
24. - Omnibus: Cracked Actor: A Film About David Bowie
25. - The Secret Policeman
26. - John's Not Mad
27. - Around the World in 80 Days
28. - The Thin Blue Line
29. - Wife Swap
30. - Simon Schama's A History of Britain
31. - The Power of Nightmares
32. - Spellbound
33. - The War Game
34. - Signs of the Times (About taste, ie style not food. Don't remember this one.)
35. - An Impossible Job (Graham Taylor, England manager)
36. - Woodstock
37. - People's Century
38. - Beneath the Veil
39. - Feltham Sings
40. - The Human Body
41. - World in Action: In the Interests of Justice (about the Birmingham 6)
42. - Driving School
43. - Hearts of Darkness
44. - Nanook of the North
45. - Home From the Hill
46 - Civilisation
47. - Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack
48. - Malcolm and Barbara: A Love Story
49. - The Fog of War
50. - When Louis Met Jimmy – Theroux meets Saville

So only 7 from your list in there wiseblood.

Not saying I agree with all of these btw. There are glaring ommissions some of which I've posted at the start and I agree with a lot of yours wiseblood as well as other people's suggestions.

Hoop Dreams was absolutely appalling!!!! thumbs down

quote:

Hoop Dreams was absolutely appalling!!!! thumbs down

noooooooooooo - it was brilliant! so engaging...i think wiseblood has no heart.

Stuckinpommyland, what you playing at??! This is a great opportunity to post details about the doc on the West Memphis 3! Take it!

quote:

Stuckinpommyland, what you playing at??! This is a great opportunity to post details about the doc on the West Memphis 3! Take it!

haha - i kept getting nerd frowned at for going on about it...
actually watching that cr@ppy list show the other night gave me hope - reminded me of: the birmingham six, the guildford four, thin blue line etc - took decades for all of them but eventually the outside pressure worked and they were released!
the west memphis kiddies have been in 12 years now, you start to lose heart. but i'm sure they'll be free'd and hopefully get paid a bloody huge compo payout to at least try to get their lives back on track.
long time!! but it can happen...
erm, paradise lost 1 and 2 should be number 1 and 2 in the list...is that better?

Umm...better, but I just wasn't convinced. Once more, with FEELING!

quote:

Originally posted by stuckinpommyland:

quote:

Hoop Dreams was absolutely appalling!!!! thumbs down

noooooooooooo - it was brilliant! so engaging...i think wiseblood has no heart.

It's possible, though more likely that certain sports absolutely turn me off and this was one of them...