Saturday, October 17, 2009

Goal #101 - The James Bond Story

The second documentary I watched for Goal #101 was The James Bond Story. I'm a huge fan of spy movies in general. I used to think I was a big Bond fan, but it turns out I'm more of a Pierce Brosnan fan. Bond's okay, but parts of it are a bit cheesy and too sexist for me. I love the gadgets though.

The documentary was okay, but I don't feel I really learned anything from it. Yes, there were some new random facts regarding the actors and who they were chosen. But on the whole, I feel like it didn't give me any really insights or interesting perspectives. They did talk about the characteristics different actors brought to the role andwhile I found intriguing, it was a small piece of the over all story.

Not really a documentary I would recommend. Non-Bond fans likely won't find it interesting and Bond fans likely aren't likely to learn anything.

Goal #101 - The Aristocrats

Goals #101 is to watch 5 documentaries. The first of these was The Aristocrats.

Why did I choose this? Well I didn't. The Brother-in-Law (BIL) was talking to Ted about how he couldn't watch it. They got up and left the theater after 10 minutes or so. Ted and BIL ended up betting $20 that Ted couldn't watch the whole thing. And thus the movie got put at the top of our Netfilx queue.

Well, we watched the whole thing without any problems. Ted found a lot of it to be funny. I didn't find it funny, but neither did I find it offensive or gross. It was an interesting movie from a psychological perspective -- what does the content of the joke say about the person telling. How closely do they identify with it? (i.e. is it told about themselves, a friend, or as an abstract joke.)

The one part of the movie that did make me laugh was the Smoother's Brothers part. One of them didn't find the joke funny and said so. The other pointed out that it was because he's the straight man. Since I tend to be the straight man in the humor part of our relationship, I totally related to this.

So, one documentary down.

Monday, October 5, 2009

#41 Ig Noble Awards

Last Thursday we went to the Ig Nobel awards at Harvard. We had a good time, though I probably won't attend again since we can watch it on the web. Saw the bra to gas mask demo live though.