Ben’s Musings

I’ve just watched the documentary Hearts And Minds which is a look at the Vietnam War. I found it moving, shocking and profound and I highly recommend it, especially with us and America being in Iraq and the parallels with Vietnam.

Here is a good synopsis from www.critereon.com:

A courageous and startling film, Peter Davis’ landmark documentary Hearts and Minds unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources—from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad—Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the disastrous effects of war. Explosive, persuasive, and shocking, Hearts and Minds is an overwhelming emotional experience and the controversial winner of the 1974 Academy Award™ for Best Documentary.

I hired Hearts And Minds on DVD because I saw it mentioned as one of the best documentaries on The Documentary Blog. It lists it’s top 25 documentaries as a response to the top 25 documentaries from the International Documentary Association. I want to watch all of the documentaries on both lists this year, and I may even blog my thoughts about each one. Here’s the lists:

International Documentary Association Top 25 Documentaries
1. Hoop Dreams
2. The Thin Blue Line
3. Bowling for Columbine
4. Spellbound
5. Harlan County USA
6. An Inconvenient Truth
7. Crumb
8. Gimme Shelter
9. The Fog of War
10. Roger and Me
11. Super Size Me
12. Don’t Look Back
13. Salesman
14. Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
15. Sherman’s March
16. Grey Gardens
17. Capturing the Friedmans
18. Born into Brothels
19. Titticut Follies
20. Buena Vista Social Club
21. Fahrenheit 9/11
22. Winged Migration
23. Grizzly Man
24. Night and Fog
25. Woodstock

The Documentary Blog Top 25 Documentaries

1. Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1980)
2. Salesman (Maysles, 1968)
3. Vernon, Florida (Morris, 1982)
4. Paradise Lost 2: Revalations (Berlinger - Sinsofsky, 2000)
5. Land of Silence and Darkness (Herzog, 1971)
6. Burden of Dreams (Blank, 1982)
7. Thin Blue Line, The (Morris, 1988)
8. Grey Gardens (Maysles, 1975)
9. Hoop Dreams (S James, 1994)
10. American Movie (C. Smith, 1999)
11. Gimme Shelter (Maysles, 1970)
12. The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Feuerzeig, 2005)
13. The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004)
14. The Up Series (Almond/Apted, 1964 – 2005)
15. Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
16. Crumb (Zwigoff, 1994)
17. Harland County U.S.A. (Kopple, 1976)
18. For All Mankind (Reinert, 1989)
19. Hell House (Ratliff, 2001)
20. Project Grizzly (Lynch, 1996)
21. Trinity and Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie (Kuran, 1995)
22. Don’t Look Back (Pennebaker, 1967)
23. Hearts & Minds (Davis, 1974)
24. Capturing the Friedman’s (Jarecki, 2003)
25. Stevie (James, 2002)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 3:21 pm and is filed under America, Documentaries, Movie, War.