Searching for Sugar Man

(Movie Review)

Why I Saw This Movie:

         A friend of mine was very extremely enthusiastic about this movie, and it was strongly recommended to me.

The Review

          A fascinating little story.  Great documentary story telling. 

            However… a little bit of Internet sleuthing reveals that the film makers are not being entirely honest in this film.  Rodriguez did not completely disappear into obscurity, but enjoyed popularity in Australia, which he knew about, and he toured Australia in the 1970s.

            This little nugget undercuts the film's thesis somewhat, but it doesn’t destroy the entire film.  Still mostly enjoyable.

Other Things I Would Write About If I Wasn’t Limiting Myself to 100 Words

* I witnessed this phenomenon several times over while living in Japan—in both directions: some American media that was extremely popular in Japan was virtually unknown back in America, and in America a lot of the popular Japanese media was virtually unknown back in Japan.

* A discussion of whether, based on the clips we heard, Rodriguez’s music was really as great as everyone in the film kept saying it was.

Rating :

5 out of 10

Links

From Cracked.com: 6 Famous Documentaries That Were Shockingly Full of Crap (See #3 on their list.)

Link of the Day

Noam Chomsky vs. Richard Perle (1988 debate on U.S. Foreign Policy)

I've linked to this debate before, but that was when it was broken down into different videos.  Here it is in one easy video.  All you have to do is hit play.

This is my favorite debate.  Richard Perle, who served under Reagan and Bush (bio here) just gets absolutely creamed here.
On a completely different note, I was listening to the BBC World Service today whilst puttering around the apartment, and found this interview with Daniel Cohen absolutely fascinating.