I am a semi-documentary feature junkie. OK, maybe that's an overstatement. A selective junkie, anything with animals put me to sleep. But I'm always happy to debate all night about the merits of features like Bowling for Columbine, Super Size Me, My Architect, Shut Up and Sing, Hoop Dreams, Spellbound, or my recent favorite, An Inconvenient Truth, which I saw with my father.
I also spent many hours watching Zahi Hawass' Pyramid specials on Discovery and NatGeo, and mesmerized by the Megastructures series of NatGeo.
The first documentary feature that I saw was called "Times of Harvey Milk" (1984) back in 1996. I was working at the Reserves desk of Bard library during summer, and I came across the videotape of this oscar winning film about San Francisco District Supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was shot to death in 1978 by Dan White, another supervisor because of Milk's sexual orientation. This moving documentary explores the nature hate and fear that led to such a random act of violence.
Just read that Gus Van Sant is directing a feature film titled Milk, with Sean Penn playing the title character, and Josh Brolin playing Dan White. This photo shows San Francisco's Castro district made to look like the 1970s for this film.I'm not sure how the feature film can be more moving than the documentary itself or bring new insight, Gus Van Sant movies often leave me cold. But I'm excited that it's getting such a star treatment, attracting others like James Franco of Spider-man, Diego Luna of Y Tu Mama Tambien.
Fingers crossed.
