Watching

Video Digest: September 8, 2006

Heart tugs and up-chucks: 49Up; KFed rips your heart out; Britney aids in a fugue; Mozart played on Rollerblades; Battlestar Galactica mounts a web invasion; the best fantasy/adventure ever.

My favorite documentary—one of my favorite movies, actually—is the British Seven Up! series. Started in 1964, the project interviews a group of English schoolchildren every seven years as they grow into adults, have children, lose their parents, and face their own mortality. YouTube loves this kind of time-lapse conceit, but it has never delivered anything near this profound. Seven Up! started as an indictment of the static British class system (the title refers to the maxim, “Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man”), but some subjects have taken wild detours: One promising young boy had a mental breakdown and was found wandering the countryside, homeless. In October, we’ll finally get to see 49Up, the trailer for which was released this week. It’s not a hyperbole to call it one of the most amazing film projects ever made. As one subject, an East End taxi driver named Tony, recently said, “It rips the inside out of my heart sometimes.”

» See the 49UP trailer

Not even his wife on an ice cream bender would lavish such praise on K-Fed’s new video “Lose Control.” It rips your heart out, but not in the good way.




On a somewhat related note, here’s an explanation of how to write a fugue using Britney Spears’s “Oops, I Did It Again.” Hang in for the performance at the end.




Mozart rocked a few fugues in his time, but he rarely did so rollerblading and playing glass bottles as he passed. Well, at least not according to Falco’s “Rock Me Amadeus,” which taught me everything I know about Mozart. And love.




People sure do love that Battlestar Galactica. I have yet to see the show. To be honest, I have yet to find the SciFi channel. Maybe that will change after watching the 10 original webisodes, posted every Tuesday and Thursday until the October 6 premiere. Who will join the Resistance? What is a Cylon? And when does Lorne Greene show up?

» See the Battlestar Galactica webisodes

Not bad. But could any fantasy/adventure be better than this?




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