three documentaries
Jan. 8th, 2006 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacOnce you've seen March of the Penguins, what else is there?
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, that's what. For me the funny thing is that, though I know the neighborhoods in the film well, I've never seen the parrots, nor indeed had heard of them until the news stories a few years ago attendant on an event central to the film, the departure of the local resident who'd been feeding them. But I gather the parrot flock hasn't really been around for much more than a decade or so, and most of my wanderings around the east side of Telegraph, the central location, predate that.
However, I need not feel that I've missed much, for the close-ups of cute parrot antics featured in this splendidly-shot documentary will satisfy the soul of anyone who likes birds. Cuter even than baby penguins, I swear.
The other two documentaries I've seen lately concern eccentric geniuses:
Game Over: Kasparov Vs. The Machine concerns an event I didn't pay much attention to at the time. I was therefore surprised to learn that Kasparov suspects that Deep Blue cheated, by having a grandmaster operator in the back room (which IBM wouldn't let anyone see) capable of over-riding the machine when it made bad moves. He also claims his eventual loss was due more to gamesmanship by IBM than to better chess-playing. This threw him off-balance, for he'd signed up for a scientific experiment, not a cut-throat grand-master tournament against an opponent he couldn't get a psychological handle on. The film is mostly from Kasparov's perspective; interviews with the IBM team show them as smug and arrogant. It's a weird film, too, full of whispered narration. It compares Deep Blue to The Turk, the original marvelous brass chess-playing automaton, coyly implying but never stating outright that The Turk was secretly human-operated.
My Architect is an "in search of my father" by the illegitimate son of the late Louis Kahn. Kahn has always been high up on my list of detestable modern architects, but I thought a sympathetic look at his work would be edifying. It was: I can see a certain rugged grandeur and proportion to some of his buildings, like the Salk Center, if one stands far enough back from them. The personal side was gently handled: the awkward scene where the son and his previously-unmet half-sisters meet and gingerly discuss whether they're a family; the son's determination not to disabuse his mother of her faith that Louis was about to leave his wife for her at the time of his death.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, that's what. For me the funny thing is that, though I know the neighborhoods in the film well, I've never seen the parrots, nor indeed had heard of them until the news stories a few years ago attendant on an event central to the film, the departure of the local resident who'd been feeding them. But I gather the parrot flock hasn't really been around for much more than a decade or so, and most of my wanderings around the east side of Telegraph, the central location, predate that.
However, I need not feel that I've missed much, for the close-ups of cute parrot antics featured in this splendidly-shot documentary will satisfy the soul of anyone who likes birds. Cuter even than baby penguins, I swear.
The other two documentaries I've seen lately concern eccentric geniuses:
Game Over: Kasparov Vs. The Machine concerns an event I didn't pay much attention to at the time. I was therefore surprised to learn that Kasparov suspects that Deep Blue cheated, by having a grandmaster operator in the back room (which IBM wouldn't let anyone see) capable of over-riding the machine when it made bad moves. He also claims his eventual loss was due more to gamesmanship by IBM than to better chess-playing. This threw him off-balance, for he'd signed up for a scientific experiment, not a cut-throat grand-master tournament against an opponent he couldn't get a psychological handle on. The film is mostly from Kasparov's perspective; interviews with the IBM team show them as smug and arrogant. It's a weird film, too, full of whispered narration. It compares Deep Blue to The Turk, the original marvelous brass chess-playing automaton, coyly implying but never stating outright that The Turk was secretly human-operated.
My Architect is an "in search of my father" by the illegitimate son of the late Louis Kahn. Kahn has always been high up on my list of detestable modern architects, but I thought a sympathetic look at his work would be edifying. It was: I can see a certain rugged grandeur and proportion to some of his buildings, like the Salk Center, if one stands far enough back from them. The personal side was gently handled: the awkward scene where the son and his previously-unmet half-sisters meet and gingerly discuss whether they're a family; the son's determination not to disabuse his mother of her faith that Louis was about to leave his wife for her at the time of his death.
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Date: 2006-01-08 08:16 pm (UTC)The parrots on our particular street are spillover from the extensive parrot colony in the Gothic entrance arch to Green-Wood Cemetery up the street, a structure I tend to refer to as the Willow Rosenberg Memorial Satanic Temple. Parrots evidently love architectural curlicues.