BuzzSugar

TV Tonight: 30 Days

BuzzSugar — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:30:55 -0700

Whether you love him or hate him, you have to admit that Morgan Spurlock knows how to provoke - on screens both big and small. The third season of the Super Size Me director's TV show, 30 Days, premieres tonight on FX, full of new perspective-changing assignments for people who want to spend a month seeing how someone else lives.

Spurlock's first guinea pig is himself: In tonight's episode, he returns to his West Virgina hometown to work for 30 days in a coal mine - a job back in the news recently after several tragic accidents over the past few years. Spurlock assumes the duties of a rookie miner (mostly grunt work including shoveling coal and hauling equipment) while living with his supervisor and using his days off to talk with industry executives, environmentalists, and family members of workers who died in mine explosions. Later episodes this season will find a former NFL player spending 30 days in a wheelchair, an anti-gun activist moving in with a family of sharpshooters, and a hunter spending a month among a group of vegan PETA employees.

I've been impressed with this show in seasons past, and I find it fascinating to see what lessons the participants learn - or don't - by the time their month is up. Will you be tuning in to the show (10 p.m. EDT and PDT)? To check out a preview for the season, just read more.

Photo courtesy of FX

Sundance Review: Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

BuzzSugar — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:32:19 -0800

Morgan Spurlock may be a documentary-maker searching for truth in this crazy mixed-up world, but he’s also largely an entertainer. His work, especially his latest doc Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, falls into the category of "infotainment" - with an emphasis on the "tainment."

The movie starts with Spurlock describing his awakening from a blissful life to the reality that his wife is pregnant. Suddenly he's tortured by all the horrors in the world that his unborn child might face - including the still-at-large Osama Bin Laden. During a hokey animated intro, he explores these awful things and decides to go on a personal manhunt for Osama Bin Laden - during his wife's pregnacy - because he wants to make the world safer for his baby. The movie then follows this timeline of nine months or so: He has to find Bin Laden and make it back to the U.S. in time for the baby’s delivery. This timing strikes me as ridiculously foolish, and it makes every scene in which Spurlock bemoans the fact that he’s missing his wife’s pregnancy ring empty and false, as this timing was completely his choice.

The timing thing aside, he does go on an exhausting journey to find Bin Laden. He explores the places and institutions that shaped Bin Laden and talks to people who knew him. He also spends a lot of time polling Middle Eastern people on what they think of America, which, you may imagine, is not often favorable. Spurlock actually takes this part somewhat seriously, and it becomes a focus of the film, proving that Bin Laden is from a particular culture that contributed to his perception of America. As one interviewee says to Spurlock, Bin Laden is part of a much larger problem; finding this one man will do nothing to eradicate the root issues.

More of my thoughts on Spurlock's doc if you read more.

The general tone of the movie is one of humor and frivolity. Spurlock tries to make the content more palatable by presenting his quest for Bin Laden as a video game. He also utilizes cartoons and goofy music to fill us in on some of the history that influenced these modern-day opinions of American foreign policy. Even when he’s chatting with real people who are making impassioned statements about politics and religion, truly matters of life and death in many of these societies, Spurlock makes jokes, edits the film to make it funnier, and seems to be smirking. I'm all for comedies, and certainly for humorous documentaries because life is often funny. But there is something about Spurlock’s frequent "wink" in this particular film that makes me uneasy.

In the Q&A session with Spurlock following the Sundance premiere, one person said she thought the cartoons and graphics were a bit too much, that more information races by during these segments than we can possibly digest. Spurlock responded that his goal was just to get information out there to people who might not ordinarily hear any of it. He wanted to open up a discussion amongst ordinary theatergoers, and simply presenting a bunch of talking heads isn’t going to do it. I agree with this, but what if we can’t see the info for the tainment? What if, as happened with me, people watch the movie and enjoy it enough but two days later forget entirely what the point was?

Bottom line: The movie is certainly funny, and never boring. I applaud Spurlock’s effort, and I think he’s an inventive filmmaker who gets stuff seen that probably wouldn't have been explored otherwise.

Source

Buzz News Roundup, 6/6

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:34:50 -0700

Die-hard "The Price Is Right" fans camped out last night to be able to attend Bob Barker's last taping of the show before he starts his retirement tomorrow, the AP states.
The creator of the fast food documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock is making another documentary, this time about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, Variety reports.
R. Kelly defies controversy to score his sixth No. 1 album, reports MTV News.
Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld will headline HBO and AEG Live's the Comedy Festival in Las Vegas come November, says Reuters.
Variety has details on New Line's recently bought documentary King of Kong, all about fierce Donkey Kong competitions.
Taking a break from film, Mandy Moore tells Billboard she hopes to tour this Fall.
Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson will team up to star in romantic drama Last Chance Harvey, Reuters reports.
Reuters has news about a Canadian journalist who is suing Judd Apatow for allegedly stealing her story and using it for Knocked Up.
Meanwhile, Variety reports that Seth Rogen's Apatow-produced comedy, Pineapple Express, will be released next August.

Photos courtesy of CBS