Seaspiracy is absolutely shocking. It’s a damning and illuminating documentary that lifts the shiny veil clinging to our oceans to expose a rotten and corrupt core. Behind the sustainable promises from big corporations and plastic straw campaigns worldwide, the real truth is left hidden. Under this plastic layer of deception though is an industry that’s literally killing our oceans.
This 90 minute documentary is an unflinching look at the damage done to our blue planet. Well-researched and hard-hitting, what begins as an examination into whaling soon spirals into so much worse. Pest control, deceptively coloured salmon and sea piracy are but a few topics discussed here, and the longer the film goes on the more horrifying the truths are.
A lot of the time buzz words like “must-see” and “shocking” are thrown around the entertainment industry and lose their credibility. Honestly though, this film deserves both those labels. Every part of this industry is mired in corruption and greed, right the way through to the non-profit organizations that serve as wolves in sheep’s clothing.
What’s particularly interesting here though is just how much the buck is passed around. No one seems able to answer simple questions and as the film progresses, this becomes more and more apparent.
This globe-trotting documentary examines all forms of ocean corruption, from salmon farms in Scotland across to Shark Fin markets in China. A lot of these scenes are shot with either shaky handheld or spy cameras, backing up the threat these filmmakers face in doing this. In fact, one scene shows the camera crew forced to scramble out a building mid-interview thanks to a police tip off.
Alongside this fly-on-the-wall approach are a lot of facts that use great comparisons to show the devastation of the damage done to our oceans. Understanding the sheer scale of this through diagrams or expository text laid over establishing shots works really well to hammer home the message.
Sure, some people will go into this and write it off as sensationalist or conspiratorial but to be honest, the fact Ali Tabrizi and his team had so many issues interviewing higher-ups to explain themselves is pretty telling.
The final 15 minutes of this documentary changes tone slightly, with a poignant, sombre reminder of what’s happening to our oceans. With the water bleached a sickly shade of red, these scenes depict a form of whaling called Grind. The sound design here in particular is harrowing, and coupled with the images themselves, make for an incredibly difficult watch.
https://odysee.com/@Documentary-Archive:0/Seaspiracy-2021:5
This documentary about Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band picks up where Ron Howard left off – without any of the band’s music or even images
It’s not easy to make a documentary about the greatest album in history when you don’t have access to a single note of the music, but this documentary forges on and cashes in regardless, perhaps assuming its target audience already knows the band’s back catalogue (or won’t realise there’s no Beatles music in it). It cannily picks up the story where last year’s “official” doc – Ron Howard’s Eight Days a Week – left off: the pivotal year of 1967, when the band gave up touring, recorded Sgt Pepper and met the Maharishi.
This history is raked over by greying, second-tier talking heads in granular detail, right down to the design of the “get well soon” card John Lennon drew for George Harrison’s sister-in-law. But without the supporting music, or even images, there’s a dancing-about-architecture feel to the whole exercise....
The Hollywood Vampires take their name from an all-star social club that drank itself to oblivion during the mid 1970s at the Rainbow Bar and Grill on The Sunset Strip. The 2019 documentary The Rainbow chronicles the restaurant’s place in the Los Angeles music scene and is an engaging profile of the family that’s run it for three generations (that is, when it’s not indulging in lazy nostalgia). Directed by Zak Knutson, it is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
Since opening in 1972, the Rainbow has offered food and drinks to successive generations of rockers. Located in West Hollywood, betwixt a cluster of music venues, it was popular with bands visiting Los Angeles as well as those living and trying to make it in the City of Angels. Besides the Hollywood Vampires – which included Alice Cooper, a couple Beatles and riotous Who drummer Keith Moon, Led Zeppelin picked up groupies there, The Runaways ate there and a teenage Slash snuck in dressed as a woman. Motörhead’s Lemmy ...
The 1991 documentary of the making of Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' album that undoubtedly broke them through to the mainstream proper with the crossover hit, "Under the Bridge."
When I originally saw the film in the mid-90s, I was astounded at the recording process — with a much younger Rick Rubin and engineer Brendan O'Brien (before he became a household name producer himself with Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, etc.), and made in a house, the supposedly haunted The Mansion (which Rubin now owns).
It shows a much younger band — there's a lot of serious talk mixed in with their own brand of sexual juvenility.
What's interesting is seeing the brief moments of interplay amongst the Peppers. John Frusciante before his descent into his hell of drugs and madness and his subsequent return to the fold. Kiedis mixing his own sense of the world from the brotherhood he feels with the ...
