Day 76: Dear Zachary (2008)

June 27, 2012 

It’s another documentary day here on the 30flix on Netflix Canada blog! Today’s film is sad, heart-breaking, depressing, and heinous.

And we have fellow blogger, Terris Schneider, to blame for recommending this tear-filled true story. [Thanks Terris – for knocking me off my high horse and making me cry.]

Documentaries are made to tell stories – they educate, entertain, inform, and in this case, they give insight into unravelling a mystery of murder.

Dear Zachary follows the story told by filmmaker Kurt Kuenne about his childhood friend, Andrew Bagby, who was found murdered in a Pennsylvania state park in 2001; shot five times. The murder devastated Andrew’s parents, and came as a shock to his close friends and colleagues, but what unfolded after that is a tragic tale from start to bitter finish. Andrew was allegedly murdered by his ex-girlfriend Shirley – who, by all accounts, was a raging lunatic. She was eventually arrested in Newfoundland and released on $75,000 bail. A woman who was accused of a brutal crime was tethered to her small town in Newfoundland only by a once-per-week check-in at the local police station. The plot thickened when it came out that Shirley was four months pregnant with Andrew’s child. And this story was only just getting started…

What was originally intended to be a documentary memorializing Andrew for friends and family morphed into a tribute to him for the son he never had a chance to meet. Along the way is much discussion about Canadian law, bail procedures, custody laws, and what happens when everything goes wrong. For the most part, this isn’t a political film or a story that bogs you down with boring facts. Quite the opposite.

I want to tell you more about Dear Zachary, but if I did, it might spoil it for you – and I urge you to give this film a watch if you haven’t already. It won many film festival awards and even had a condensed version broadcast on CBC. It got people talking and laws got changed as a direct result of it.

After Dear Zachary was released in 2008, the filmmaker released this statement: “I wish that I had never had the opportunity to make this film. I wish that my friend Dr. Andrew Bagby was alive and well and that I was blissfully ignorant of the lessons I’ve learned along this journey. Alas, this is not the case. When bad things happen, good people have to take what they’ve learned and make the world a better place, and that is precisely what I hope this film will do – make the world a better place.”

This documentary left me angry, questioning our legal system, and it touched a nerve unlike any documentary I’ve ever seen. Most of all, it made me think – which is something all great documentaries should do.

Watch Dear Zachary, but do it with eyes wide open and tissues at arm’s reach.

– Blair

P.S. – After watching Dear Zachary, you can find out more information about Kurt, Andrew, Zachary, and donations in Andrew’s memory by visiting: dearzachary.com

Day 75: Water for Elephants

June 3, 2012 

After the first 5 minutes of Water for Elephants, I was hooked. These days, everyone is a critic – and so, as not to spoil my own viewing of this movie (which you may have already seen), I didn’t Google it to see what everyone else had to say about it. Five minutes is all it took for me to become emotionally invested in this 1930s tale of the circus life. And the longer I watched the more intrigued I became.

On the surface, this is a movie about a travelling circus going through The Great Depression. But as the layers reveal themselves, Water for Elephants is about love, lust, greed, redemption, and betrayal. Such a range of emotion, and the story is woven together beautifully.

So what’s it all about? Young veterinary student Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) leaves town after the bank repossesses his parents’ house and in the middle of the night hops aboard a moving train unaware that he’s jumping into the middle of a travelling circus. He spends a day shovelling manure to earn his keep, but when circus boss August takes exception to how Jacob boarded his train uninvited, he nearly throws Jacob off. But something stops him; an educated man – with veterinary experience, August assesses, could come in very handy with circus animals.

Jacob quickly becomes a part of August’s inner circle, but what he doesn’t count on is how deep his feelings for August’s beautiful wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) will run.

Watch Water for Elephants. It’s a brilliant story full of ups and downs – and it’s not a chick flick, despite what you may have heard.

– Blair

Day 74: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey

June 2, 2012 

By a show of hands: who thinks it’s weird that a guy can make a living sticking his hand up a puppet’s butt?

OK, hands down.

And now you can feel as shameful for raising your hand at that question as I do, because the story of Kevin Clash is absolutely remarkable.

As a kid growing up in the 60s, Clash loved watching Disney specials on television and yearned to make puppets. In high school while most boys were playing sports, Clash was learning to sew his own puppets and routinely put on puppet shows for neighbourhood kids. His shows became so popular that he was asked to be on then-CBS affiliate in Baltimore, WMAR, on a show called Caboose.

When Sesame Street debuted in 1969, Clash was glued to the set, once again marveling at the creations of Jim Henson. He finally got to meet his idol when he was asked to serve as a puppeteer on the Sesame Street float in the 1979 Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade; he got to animate Cookie Monster. He remembers studying the Cookie Monster puppet, turning it inside out to see how it was sewn and the stitching methods used.

Clash’s first movie was a Jim Henson production starring David Bowie called Labyrinth (available for streaming here on Netflix Canada).

By 1984 Clash was working as an official puppeteer for Sesame Street. And when a fellow puppeteer wasn’t getting what he could “being Elmo”, he passed the character on to Clash who made Elmo into the lovable character that the world embraced.

These days Clash is a producer for Sesame Street and is still bringing Elmo to life.

Watch Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey. If you’re like me, you grew up watching The Muppets and Sesame Street – this documentary will bring you back to your childhood in a way you won’t expect. I loved this documentary; I think you will too.

– Blair

Day 73: Unthinkable (2010)

June 1, 2012 

I can’t remember a movie with Samuel L. Jackson that I DIDN’T like – and that trend continues today with Unthinkable, an intense film overflowing with passion, desperation, and patriotism.

Steven Arthur Younger, a former U.S. explosives expert, has converted to Islam and turned his back on his country. In the process he has built three nuclear bombs and hidden them in three separate U.S. cities with only days before they’re set to go off. When Younger allows himself to be caught, it’s up to former Special Ops ‘consultant’ “H” (Jackson) and FBI agent Helen Brody to extract the truth about where he’s hidden the three bombs.”H” and Brody have very different ideas of how this information should be attained.

For as long as terrorist movies have been around, the use of torture has been hotly debated. How much force is acceptable? How far should “negotiators” be allowed to go before it’s deemed inhumane? A finger? Five fingers? How about a few teeth forceable removed in an effort to get a captive to reveal vital information… this is the question that Unthinkable seeks to answer. Before Unthinkable came 24, another show whose main character, Jack Bauer, often pushed the limits of civil rights vs. the right to use whatever means necessary when faced with the unthinkable (pun intended).

And just as I was about to repeat my famous phrase: “there aren’t any actors from LOST in today’s film”, I stand corrected. If you look carefully during the interrogation scenes with Steven Arthur Young, you’ll notice actor Dayo Ade as an army soldier standing guard with a really big gun. He appeared briefly in two episodes of Season 6 on LOST as an ‘Other’. He got the axe in his second episode – literally. You might also recognize a younger Ade as ‘BLT’ from Degrassi Junior  (and High).

Watch Unthinkable. It’s intensity with the volume turned way up. It’s rated ‘R’ for extreme and graphic violence.

– Blair