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Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:02 am
by kranepool
An oral history of Hoop Dreams, 20 years after its premiere
In January 1994, a group of filmmakers from Chicago went to the Sundance Film Festival to accomplish the impossible, by selling a three-hour documentary about two inner-city teens hoping to get to the NBA. By the time they left, their lives had changed, and so had the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:37 pm
by Shirley
kranepool wrote:An oral history of Hoop Dreams, 20 years after its premiere
In January 1994, a group of filmmakers from Chicago went to the Sundance Film Festival to accomplish the impossible, by selling a three-hour documentary about two inner-city teens hoping to get to the NBA. By the time they left, their lives had changed, and so had the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.
That was a fun read. Great movie. If any Swampers haven't seen Hoop Dreams, they should immediately rectify that.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:53 pm
by Giff
As huge a basketball fan as I am, I can't believe I've never seen it.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:36 pm
by Scottie
Giff wrote:As huge a basketball fan as I am, I can't believe I've never seen it.
Oddly, neither have I.
[changed] the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.
It what?
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:39 pm
by brian
Scottie wrote:Giff wrote:As huge a basketball fan as I am, I can't believe I've never seen it.
Oddly, neither have I.
[changed] the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.
It what?
It did launch a renaissance for the feature-length documentary. It was arguably an almost dead art form at that point. Sure you had Errol Morris and a few other folks doing their thing, but it really came back gangbusters after Hoop Dreams.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:48 pm
by Scottie
No, I singled out that sentence because it is completely meaningless. Read it carefully; it's absurd.
Feature-length documentary filmmaking was never near death. It may have been suffering from a lack of well-made films in America, or more accurately "profitable" films in America, but it was doing just fine in the rest of the world, thankyouverymuch. "Dead art form"? Not remotely.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:55 pm
by brian
Scottie wrote:No, I singled out that sentence because it is completely meaningless. Read it carefully; it's absurd.
Feature-length documentary filmmaking was never near death. It may have been suffering from a lack of well-made films in America, or more accurately "profitable" films in America, but it was doing just fine in the rest of the world, thankyouverymuch. "Dead art form"? Not remotely.
I agree the sentence was poorly worded/inaccurate. And dead art form was strong, but it certainly engendered a resurgence in documentaries and that's hard to argue.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 1:00 pm
by Giff
brian wrote:Scottie wrote:No, I singled out that sentence because it is completely meaningless. Read it carefully; it's absurd.
Feature-length documentary filmmaking was never near death. It may have been suffering from a lack of well-made films in America, or more accurately "profitable" films in America, but it was doing just fine in the rest of the world, thankyouverymuch. "Dead art form"? Not remotely.
I agree the sentence was poorly worded/inaccurate. And dead art form was strong, but it certainly engendered a resurgence in documentaries and that's hard to argue.
It's Scottie...ain't nothing too hard to argue. Insert smiley.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 2:19 pm
by Sabo
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:02 pm
by brian
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:24 am
by sancarlos
That's really disturbing. But, not too surprising.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 11:02 am
by mister d
Seems generous to label them "errors".
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 4:37 pm
by Rush2112
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:33 am
by Pruitt
The so called White War was a series of hellish battles during World War One fought between Italians and Austro-Hungarians.
Five years ago, I hiked through some of the more accessible battle sites and visited the museum up in the hills.
It is really hard to imagine anything worse than what these soldiers went through.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ns-history
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 7:01 am
by A_B
Pruitt wrote:The so called White War was a series of hellish battles during World War One fought between Italians and Austro-Hungarians.
Five years ago, I hiked through some of the more accessible battle sites and visited the museum up in the hills.
It is really hard to imagine anything worse than what these soldiers went through.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ns-history
that's the inspiration for A Farewell to Arms.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue Oct 21, 2014 10:42 am
by govmentchedda
AB_skin_test wrote:Pruitt wrote:The so called White War was a series of hellish battles during World War One fought between Italians and Austro-Hungarians.
Five years ago, I hiked through some of the more accessible battle sites and visited the museum up in the hills.
It is really hard to imagine anything worse than what these soldiers went through.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ns-history
that's the inspiration for A Farewell to Arms.
I'm nearly halfway through the 8 hour, 4 part Hardcore History podcast titled, "Blueprint for Armageddon". No mention of the White War yet.
I highly recommend Hardcore History.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 8:23 am
by Johnnie
I'm going to have to saddle up for this:
The Tragedy of the American Military
From the Atlantic.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 1:20 pm
by howard
I like Fallows, but I have not been able to muscle up to read this. Let me know if he says anything drastic that we don't already know to be so.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 12:33 pm
by DSafetyGuy
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2015 1:38 pm
by Giff
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:53 pm
by P.D.X.
The Man Who Broke the Music Business
Fascinating read on probably the single biggest pirate/bootlegger.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 5:13 pm
by Gunpowder
Ahh, right down the street in ol' Braddock.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 2:49 pm
by Sabo
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 2:55 pm
by brian
I love me some Wright Thompson, but there's not really anything particularly revelatory that wasn't in Williams' biography (The Kid).
ETA: Though to be clear, I agree it's still worth a read.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 4:08 pm
by howard
Even though I never saw him play (I'm not that old) Williams was as big a hero to me as possible for a celebrity/someone I did not actually know in real life. Bigger than Willie Mays in my teenaged estimation. His standard, sanitized (pre-Ball Four) autobiography, My Turn at Bat I read a half dozen times; I memorized The Science of Hitting (and had my one truly successful season as a baseball player, maxed out at 15yo all stars.)
Over the years, and since his death, my childhood hero has been as thoroughly demolished as possible. Hard to imagine anything that could shock me now about Teddy Ballgame[*]. But, I'll give it a shot.
*I mean, how do you top that he was half-Mexican?
(I keed, I keed my Mexican hermanos on Cinco de Mayo.)
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue May 05, 2015 4:27 pm
by mister d
This was really, really good.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 10:21 am
by DSafetyGuy
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 12:01 pm
by Giff
This was great. Would make an awesome movie.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:59 pm
by DSafetyGuy
Giff wrote:
This was great.
Would make an awesome movie.
That was one of my first reactions, as well.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 8:14 pm
by DSafetyGuy
Since the term has returned to prominence lately, here is the article about policing neighborhoods,
"Broken Windows".
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2015 8:51 pm
by howard
That is a nice look back at a 1982 article, on a theory since completely discredited, yet still championed.
Taibbi has at the failed theory:
Why Baltimore Blew Up
Broken Windows policing, which gained renown in the Nineties thanks to politicians like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is the mutant offspring of our already infamous race history, a set of high-tech tricks to disguise old-school discriminatory policing as cheery-sounding, yuppie-approved, Malcolm Gladwell-endorsed pop sociology. The ideas grew out of a theory advanced in 1982 by a pair of academics, James Q. Wilson of Harvard and George Kelling of Rutgers. "If a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken," the pair wrote in The Atlantic, arguing in "Broken Windows" that disorder and crime were "inextricably linked" and that fixing the former would impact the latter.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 9:50 am
by brian
Feather bowling in Detroit.
trust me, the piece is a lot more interesting than you would think. I've been to the place in question many a time. It's one of the most interesting places I've ever been anywhere in the world.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 12:13 pm
by Pruitt
brian wrote:Feather bowling in Detroit.
trust me, the piece is a lot more interesting than you would think. I've been to the place in question many a time. It's one of the most interesting places I've ever been anywhere in the world.
A few years ago, Anthony Bourdain went there (probably in "No Reservations") and he got drink and tried the feather bowling. Looked like a riot.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 12:55 pm
by DSafetyGuy
The Chameleon.
The write-up that led me to click on it:
Frédéric Bourdin was an imposter. His "trail of cons," for which he used five languages and dozens of identities, extended for years across Europe and America.
But, there's more than that.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2015 8:54 pm
by DC47
brian wrote:Feather bowling in Detroit.
trust me, the piece is a lot more interesting than you would think. I've been to the place in question many a time. It's one of the most interesting places I've ever been anywhere in the world.
I went there first with a Belgian acquaintance in the early '80s. It's the real deal. This is a terrific depiction.
Brian, what interested you about this place?
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 1:49 pm
by Shirley
This is a fascinating read about a pair of identical twins who were accidentally raised as a pair of fraternal twins after a hospital mix-up.
The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 2:16 pm
by rass
Shirley wrote:This is a fascinating read about a pair of identical twins who were accidentally raised as a pair of fraternal twins after a hospital mix-up.
The Mixed-Up Brothers of Bogotá
Crazy.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:52 pm
by P.D.X.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:58 pm
by Johnny Carwash
I want to punch everybody in the opening segment of that article. Probably the rest too but I couldn't make it that far.
Re: Long Reads
Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:59 pm
by brian
Johnny Carwash wrote:I want to punch everybody in the opening segment of that article. Probably the rest too but I couldn't make it that far.
Yeah, I'd probably be interested in reading a story not about a bunch of douchy, entitled New York fratbros and their experiences with Tinder. I think there's a story there waiting to be told that would be interesting, but it wasn't this one.
