errol morris & kermit the frog, here

I watched Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control this morning, and I am reconvinced of what a genius Errol Morris is. If you don't know who he is, IMDB him (is IMDB a verb yet? can we speed that process along?) and rent all those movies--although I can make no claims for the thin, blue line or a brief history of time.

Why he's a genius:

A constructivist documentarian! I don't know of any others, really. Or it's not so clear to me. Without voiceover the viewer is forced to construct the theme/argument/message/point of the whole shebang. With such amazing subjects as a lion tamer, topiary gardener, naked mole-rat expert, and roboticist, there's a lot of thinking to be done about theme/argument/message/point.

And, he's got an amazing knack for when he does dissociate audio from video, pairing that audio with subtly relevant imagery.

It's the subtlety really. The subtlety of a constructivist approach, the subtlety of his editing choices. So great.

Another movie I rewatched for the squillionth time this weekend was Labyrinth, which I've previously blogged about in relation to my amazing crush on David Bowie early in life. If you rent/own the DVD of this film, the documentary on the making of the film is so worth watching. You'll gain a whole new love for puppets if you don't love them already. You may miss the craft involved in moviemaking pre-CGI. You also may not be able to get over the fact that when Jim Henson talks, all you'll be able to hear is Kermit.