Superheroes

November 25th, 2008Blog0 comments

Okay, so Netflix to Xbox streaming is freakin awesome. It is the thing of the week. Having instant access to a fairly large library of titles is pretty darned great. There are a few hiccups — sometimes it’ll lowball the bandwidth for no apparent reason, delivering painfully compressed video. But you can often stop playback and restart it immediately, and it’ll give you maximum quality again.

So I’ve been surfing through the library of insta-play titles, specifically looking for great documentaries. I love a good doc, and I give big UPS to the people that make them. I’ve met a few of these documentary film makers, and they’re people that seriously go after the truth.

(ASIDE: I think all reality TV should be made by real documentarians. Not only would the quality jump up, but the subject matter would hopefully shift to something that isn’t garbage. Have you seen the difference between Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares and the BBC’s version? Fox adds goofy cartoon sound effects and dramatic “DOOSH” noises to magnify everything. The BBC just uses clever editing because it assumes that the viewer is a person with an adult level of intelligence. Example: Gordon Ramsay yelling at a chef for using moldy chicken — CUT TO: A customer chowing into a chicken wing. No sound effects required!)

Okay, so here’s a pretty great doc I saw: Confessions of a Superhero.

It’s about these people that dress up as costumed characters and hang out in front of Mann’s Chinese theater, taking pictures with tourists for “tips”. They’re all freelancers — they don’t work for a particular company. They’re out there doing what they do on their own. Some call them panhandlers, others call them a nuisance. Many of them are apparently struggling actors.

This documentary tracks four of them — Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and a guy that dresses up as the Incredible Hulk. One of these guys is a little crazy. Another is a LOT crazy. All of them are really interesting. The documentary itself is well made, catches some very interesting nuggets of truth, and is sad and weird and fun. I recommend it.

At this point I’d like to say a few things about acting as a craft, but I’m going to save that for another post. It deserves more than this. All I’ll say right now is that from what I understand, it’s tough.