Delightful Documentaries

Sometimes, flipping through the channels, it seems like there’s nothing on worth watching. While, the quantity of our television programing is ever expanding, the quality usually isn’t. However, there is still hope! Occasionally, someone puts out a good documentary. Here’s some of the better ones I’ve seen in the last year or so:

1. Planet Earth (2006)
This whole series is spectacular (especially the caves episode). Absolutely jam-packed with eye-candy and plenty of information to boot. This is what nature documentaries should be if they could all manage to have huge budgets and Sigourney Weaver.

2. The Yes Men (2003)
This amusing little film, which lampoons of the World Trade Organization, is somewhat amateurishly done (I don’t need to see every single time the one guy cuts his hair,) but the personalities of the two fellows it follows helps carry it. The gigantic, golden inflatable phallus doesn’t hurt either.

3. Wordplay (2006)
What do Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, Ken Burns, Mike Mussina, and the Indigo Girls all have in common? Crosswords, that’s what. This is a wonderfully quirky documentary about crosswords, their history, their culture, and the people who love them, centering around the New York Times crossword, its editor Will Shortz, and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

4. Out of Balance (2007)
Here we have another low-budget political documentary. This one details Exxon Mobil’s significant contributions to global warming (and you thought the Valdez oil spill was bad) and the obscene amount of money they spend to confuse the facts on climate change. The graph showing the correlation between the world’s CO2 emissions and Exxon Mobil’s profits is priceless, and horrifying.

5. Helvetica (2007)
A surprisingly interesting look at a notably boring font. Through the use of some highly opinionated typographers and graphic designers, this documentary traces the rise of helvetica, the rebellion against it¹, and its ultimate triumph as the most ubiquitous font on earth.

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1. Yes, apparently there have been some fairly serious culture wars in the world of typography.