Tarnation

[EC]

What a beautiful thing.

For anyone who doesn't know about it (I didn't), it's a documentary by Jonathan Caouette about his life.  He started filming stuff when he was pretty little, and pieced together a  bunch of different things (answering machine messages, photos) to make this movie about his family.

The soundtrack is insane.

It's tremendously sad.  You wonder how a person can go through such things.  It's also very honest.  There's footage in there that I can't imagine sharing.

And aside from the piecing together of information, the actual imagery and style is incredible.  Timely and well-crafted and put together.

And the DVD has some clips that are shown in the film in the extras section that take you through the entire bit.  Like, we were probably all goofy with tape recorders and cameras and possibly video cameras.  And it's so interesting to watch.  (I for one can hardly deal with the fact that there are ANY pictures of me from grade six, let alone video footage, and let alone allowing the world to see it.)

I'm just so impressed by it.

http://imdb.com/title/tt0390538/

[harristrensky]

Yeh I saw it when it came out and though it is very sad and very emotional I just got tired of the whole drama queen attitude.  Firstly, its so vain of him to think his story will attract veiwers(but it obviously has). Secondly, some of the clips were just outrageous(I did like when he was young and played the southern wife on the talk show). Over all I thought it was good for one viewing, nothing I could see again but very interesting in a voyeor type way.

p.s.- I liked how there wasnt a voice over but instead sort of a text story.

[EC]

Well, anybody who tells their story in any form must be thinking that people will be interested...  I don't think he's any different than that.

And yeah.  I didn't find him to be a drama queen.  At all.  My video store guy said something similar when I was renting it.  I think that's how he reacts to things.

If he got somebody else to make the movie instead of him, would you have thought it as vain?  The tone of that question is actually questioning (and not snarky, just to make sure you know how I'm asking it).  Because on the total opposite, I thought it was especially brave for him to make it himself, and also poignant in that he could manipulate the images like he did, so it's that much more personal.  Like, it really is his story.

Anyhow, interesting.  Thanks for sharing your opinion, Monsieur Trensky.  :)

p.s.- I liked how there wasnt a voice over but instead sort of a text story.

I really liked that, too.