Shoe shiners: at the airport, a busy subway station, a kiosk in your local mall, even on the street corner. There they are, every day, providing a service to the people walking by. Yet this humble profession is often overlooked. Who goes into shoe shining, and why? Director Stacey Tenenbaum gives us a documentary that gives us the answers by putting us in the shoes of shiners around the world.
Filming in cities as diverse as New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sarajevo, La Paz, and more, 
Shiners gives a good sense of the universality of pride in one’s work. However, it is also clear that the profession is not viewed the same from one country to the next. In America it is being reclaimed by hipsters who deride the neglect of older crafts. In Japan we see a lot of honour in the skill, in making something old new again. But in other places, it’s seen as degrading work, and the shiners work on the street, earning little money and even less respect.
In that way, Tenebaum quietly addresses poverty and social justice without quite mentioning it directly. Shiners is a character-driven documentary, the shiners speaking for themselves. A mother of young children barely earns enough to feed her family; she refuses to be shamed for her position but insists that her children will be ‘professionals.’
Don, a.k.a. the shoe dude, working a street corner in Manhattan, has a vibrant personality. A former accountant and pastry chef, he’s chosen shoe shining for the sense of freedom it gives him. He talks candidly about the racist connotations of shoe shining, and the satisfaction he’s derived from telling “uppity people” their shoes are dirty.
Shiners excels at providing an insider’s view. It cracks the humanity wide open, and guarantees that you’ll never walk by these people without seeing them again.
This review first appeared at Cinema Axis.
How do donkeys cry? Do they tremble inside? Do they dream? These are the types of insights and reflexive cues provided by poetic narration provided by Willem Dafoe. We might spend several minutes just gazing upon a bunch of donkeys eating communally from a trough. We may consider the different utterances we hear and attempt to interpret each one. The donkeys are communicating – are you listening?
He had an unconventional childhood and perhaps not a happy one, travelling extensively with his parents who exposed him to culture and glamour while largely forgetting he existed. Food became his friend and companion, and he’d gluttonously study the menus of all the great restaurants he visited, making friends with the kitchen staff in all the best dining establishments in the very best of hotels.
This documentary places the bombing in Oklahoma City within the context not just of Waco, but of a growing movement within white “christian” “patriots” – white supremacists who distrusted government and valued guns, apparently above all else. The aryan nations held their head quarters of hatred in northern Idaho and things went bed. Of course they did: that many guns in the hands of that many idiots always does.
shortage, they explore urban agriculture, microfarming, and permaculture. As to our reliance on fossil fuels, they visit places that are moving successfully toward renewable resources, cities declaring themselves carbon neutral. They also tackle some of the big things holding us back: economy and government. Since democracy runs on the steam of big business, how can we ever move away from consumerism?
The documentary Tower tells of the people there that day – the students, the injured, the reporters, the cops, the citizens. Those listening on the radio knew that the local police didn’t have weapons that could reach the clock tower, so lay people took up their rifles and rushed to the scene. When a couple of cops finally did breach the clock tower, they had to duck not only the shooter’s bullets, but those of all the well-meaning “helpers.”
Seed follows three teams in particular: one, a couple of high school kids with a bright idea involving sneakers; another, a group from Nairobi who’ve developed a garbage-reporting ap; and the third a couple of guys from Palestine who are using the uber model to provide a parcel delivery service for small businesses.
I love documentaries because they let me understand a slice of the world that was previously closed to me. And when I tell you that I literally had to Google how to get a tab in Chrome to pop out into a new window while watching this movie, you’ll understand how removed I am from this world of hackers who live mysteriously inside my phone (do they?).
Dave Goelz is perhaps best known for puppeteering\voicing Gonzo. He also does Bunsen Honeydew and Zoot from The Muppet Show, Boober Fraggle and Uncle Travelling Matt from Fraggle Rock, and the puppetry for Sir Didymus in Labyrinth, and dozens more.
had good instincts and recruited her for his workshop. It paid off: she won an Emmy for her work on
Bill Barretta got his start puppeteering on Dinosaurs, and later developed characters for Muppets Tonight including Pepe the King Praw, Johnny Fiama, and Bobo the Bear. He also took over some of Jim Henson’s characters after his death, including Dr. Teeth, Rowlf, Mahna Mahna, and Swedish Chef.
also the original puppeteer for Snuffleupagus. On The Muppet Show he did Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Dr. Julius Strangepork (from Pigs in Space), Kermit’s nephew Robin the Frog, and Gonzo’s girlfriend, Camilla the Chicken, among many, many others, and he often did the show’s announcing as well. On Fraggle Rock he did the lead character, Gobo Fraggle, Pa Gorg, and Marjory the Trash Heap.
Frank Oz is of course the man behind Miss Piggy, plus Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam Eagle from The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover from Sesame Street, and even did the puppeteering and voice work for a minor character in Star Wars – Yoda. Besides this documentary, he’s the director of films such as Little Shop of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob, In & Out, and Death at a Funeral.
The good thing about this documentary is that so many people line up to talk about Frisell: director Emma Franz assembles the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Paul Simon, and more, and the amazing thing is that all of the people have nothing but glowing things to say about the man. The GREAT thing about this documentary, though, is that it contains plenty of live music to love and appreciate, and gosh he’s got a lot.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 