Documentary
Spike Lee Captures a Celebration and Calls for Action With David Byrne’s American Utopia: TIFF Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival . The Pitch: With American Utopia, director Spike Lee brings his eye to David Byrne’s critically-acclaimed Broadway show. Part concert documentary, part contemporary dance performance, and part social commentary, Lee’s latest feature is a call to action about embracing human connections, social responsibilities, and change across the world. Uniform-ity: Unlike conventional concert documentaries — and not too dissimilar from Jonathan Demme’s iconic Talking Heads feature Stop Making Sense — the stage of the Hudson Theatre is kept almost completely bare. Byrne remains under the spotlights for nearly the whole runtime, decked out in a visually bland grey suit and bare feet. Over the course of the first few song...
Flying V Guitar Documentary Features Members of Metallica, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Slayer, and More
The Flying V guitar is one of the most iconic instruments in heavy metal history. It’s silhouette alone is enough to warm the blood of headbangers. The guitar will be the subject of a new documentary, Flying V, out on DVD on September 11th. The 67-minute film was directed by Peter Hansen and features interviews with most of the major metal acts that popularized the Flying V over the years, including members of Metallica, Judas Priest, Slayer, Megadeth, and many more. As the cast of the documentary indicates, the guitar, introduced by Gibson in 1958, became a staple of ’80s thrash metal. Slayer’s Kerry King was never without one; it remains the choice axe of Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine; and Metallica’s James Hetfield is appropriately front-and-center on the movie poster, having wielded th...
Dan Deacon Releases Original Score for HBO’s Well Groomed: Stream
This past January saw Dan Deacon drop his first album in four years, Mystic Familiar. The Baltimore-based musician is back now with his second project of 2020: his original score for HBO’s Well Groomed. Well Groomed is a documentary about the colorful and wonderfully absurd subculture of competitive dog grooming. The film premiered on HBO in late 2019, but today marks the official release of Deacon’s accompanying soundtrack. Much like the doc, the music is playful and fun in nature. Its 14 arrangements also find the electronic music producer Deacon expanding his sound palette by dabbling with more earthy and organic instrumentation. Previous collaborators like pianist M.C. Schmidt of Matmos, vibraphonist Rich O’Meara, and guitarist Steve Strohmeier assisted Deacon in creating the soni...
Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne to Premiere on A&E in September
A&E has set a September 7th premiere for Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne, a new documentary chronicling the metal icon’s life and career. The documentary, which was first announced in January, was slated to premiere at SXSW in March prior to the festival being canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 86-minute feature combines archival footage with new interviews, including sit-downs with Ozzy and his family (Sharon, Jack, and Kelly), Marilyn Manson, Rick Rubin, Post Malone, Rob Zombie, Jonathan Davis, Ice-T, and more. As a press release states, “Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne traces Ozzy’s life from his childhood in poverty and time in prison, to fronting the iconic Black Sabbath and a successful solo career, to one of rock’s elder statesman and a lovable 21st...
Boat From Jaws Being Rebuilt to Study Sharks
We’re gonna need another boat! The original creators behind the iconic Orca from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws are rebuilding the boat from scratch. What’s more, it’s all being captured in a new documentary that’s aptly titled, Return of the Orca. Along for the ride is Academy Award nominee and Jaws production designer Joe Alves, Martha’s Vineyard local Chris Crawford who worked on the OG Orca, and Jaws author Peter Benchley’s widow/Beneath the Waves director Wendy. According to the project’s press release: “Rather than hunting the great white shark, as in the film, part of the Orca’s new mission will be researching marine life and helping people better understand the varieties of shark species in the area around Martha’s Vineyard including great white sharks.” Editors’ Picks It’s a projec...
Makaya McCraven Announces New Album Universal Beings E&F Sides, Shares “Mak Attack”: Stream
Makaya McCraven released one of the 2018’s most acclaimed jazz albums in Universal Beings. Now, the Chicago-based drummer and producer is prepping to drop a companion piece called Universal Beings E&F Sides, in addition to a documentary series about the record. E&F Sides promises 14 “new pieces of organic beat music” that were cut from the original sessions for Universal Beings proper. One of those “Mak Attack”, which finds McCraven fiercely “attacking” his kit like the percussion beast that he is. As for the corresponding documentary, the visual will be soundtracked by the music found on E&F Sides. Its footage chronicles the making of breakthrough album Universal Beings, following McCraven in the studio and on the road as he traveled to California, New York, and...
House of Reps quizzes NDDC over N70.495 billion awarded contracts
The House of Representatives at the weekend flagged off its investigation into the N70.495 billion allegedly paid by Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to 1,773 contractors as mobilization fees without resorting to site, between 2008 and 2012. Chairman, House Committee on Public Accounts, Hon. Wole Oke who presided over the investigative hearing into the audit queries from the Auditor General for the Federation (AuGF) for the period under review, underscored the need for the NDDC acting Managing Director, Prof. Pondei Kemerbrandikumo to provide details of the projects and list of all defaulting contractors along with a statement of accounts showing the recovered funds as alluded to by the NDDC acting Director of Internal Audit, Mr Itu Eno Ubi who argued that only the sum of N19 bill...
Alejandro Jodorowsky Announces New Film Psychomagic, a Healing Art
Icon of surreal cinema Alejandro Jodorowsky will premiere his new film Psychomagic, a Healing Art exclusively through Alamo on Demand. The new documentary, out August 7th, will be preceded by a five-film retrospective, which will stream beginning on August 1st. As if that weren’t enough, a deluxe box set called The Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection will be available for purchase on August 21st. The Chilean director rose to fame in the 1970s with a pair of cult classics, El Topo and The Holy Mountain. Jodorowsky mixed Catholic imagery, mysticism, and surreal violence in a way that incensed religious leaders in Mexico and South America while gaining the admiration of John Lennon. Later in life, he became obsessed with tarot cards, as well as alternative...
RZA Shares New Bruce Lee-Inspired Song “Be Like Water”: Stream
RZA has released “Be Like Water”, a new song dedicated to Bruce Lee soundtracking ESPN’s forthcoming “30 for 30” documentary on the iconic martial arts expert and actor. “Bruce Lee’s teachings extended beyond physical martial arts. He was full of philosophy and mindfulness,” RZA said of Lee’s legacy in a statement. “His quote ‘Be Water my friend’ is profound and multi-tiered in definition,” the founding member of Wu-Tang Clan continued. “It inspires the idea that in adapting to life situations, sometimes we have to flow smoothly as a stream, while other times we have to crash like a Tsunami.” On his new track, RZA can be heard instructing, “Be like water/ Water crosses over every border/ From the mud of the Yangtze River to the sand beaches of Florida.” He later praises Lee’s films, s...
Raymond Dokpesi Jnr asks NCDC to provide his coronavirus test results
Chairman of DAAR Communications Plc, Raymond Dokpesi Jnr, has recovered from coronavirus. Newsmen report that the founder of DAAR Communications Plc, Raymond Dokpesi, and two of his grandchildren also recovered from coronavirus on Thursday and were discharged from the University of Abuja Treatment Centre. Announcing the improvement in his health in an appreciation letter published on ait.live on Friday, the young Dokpesi said officials of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control called him on Thursday night to inform him that he tested negative for coronavirus, adding that two other family members have also recovered from the infection. He noted that while receiving treatment at the Abuja isolation facility, he started feeling well when the combination of azithromycin, chloroquine and zinc w...
Kamasi Washington Scored the Michelle Obama Documentary Becoming
Multi-instrumentalist and jazz composer Kamasi Washington has written the score for the new Michelle Obama documentary Becoming. The Netflix film drops today, while the score will be released on May 15th. Based on the former First Lady’s memoir of the same name, Becoming picks up where the 2018 book left off, following Obama on a 34-city promotional tour while revisiting some of the memoir’s most striking moments. It was directed by Nadia Hallgren, who knew she wanted to work with Kamasi Washington before she put the book down. She said in a statement, “Mrs. Obama loves music, and when I read the line in her book ‘And heaven, as I envisioned it, had to be a place full of jazz,’ I knew immediately Kamasi was the artist that could interpret her experience musically.” In a press rel...
A$AP Rocky, Sting, and More Share Wild Tripping Stories In New Netflix Psychedelics Documentary
Netflix recently unveiled the trailer for a new documentary film called Have A Good Trip: Adventures In Psychedelics, which features A$AP Rocky, Sting, and many more. The project will share true stories about tripping on psychedelics, offering up “star-studded reenactments and surreal animations [to] bring their comedic hallucinations to life.” According to a synopsis from Netflix, Have A Good Trip: Adventures In Psychedelics “explores the pros, cons, history, future, science, pop-cultural impact, and cosmic possibilities of hallucinogens” and “acts as an unofficial user’s guide for these consciousness-altering compounds, and helps dispel the scare myths of the After School Special era.” If any quote from the trailer will galvanize you into watching the documentar...
