Documentary
‘Dawn Raid’: Film On New Zealand Hip-Hop Pioneers Gets U.S. Digital Premiere
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Universal Pictures / Universal Hip-Hop culture is immensely global, and a new documentary that highlights the first-ever Hip-Hop label in New Zealand will make its U.S. debut online next week. Source: Universal Pictures / Universal Dawn Raid is the remarkable story of the duo of Andy Murnane and Tanielu Leaosavai’i aka Brotha D, who were students at the Manukau Polytechnic school who started out selling t-shirts together in the streets of South Auckland in addition to running a Hip-Hop night at a local bar. From that origin point, they built the Dawn Raid Entertainment record label, the name coming from the police raids conducted by New Zealand’s government in the 1970s & 1980s that zeroed in on Pacific Islanders who were overstayers, deporting them s...
Betty White’s 100th Birthday Film to Screen as Planned
A film commemorating Betty White’s 100th birthday will screen in theaters as planned — albeit under a slightly different title. Originally titled Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration, the film has been rebranded as Betty White: A Celebration following the legendary actress’ passing on Friday. Directed by Steve Boettcher and Mike Trinklein, the film serves as a retrospective of White’s eight-decade career and includes tributes from Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Valerie Bertinelli, James Corden, Wendie Malick, and Jennifer Love Hewitt. Advertisement Related Video The film also features what is now White’s final on-screen interview. Betty White: A Celebration&...
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts Is More About the Memories Than the Magic: Review
The Pitch: You’ll spend a lot of time thinking about chairs, while watching Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts. Not just who’s sitting in them, and where, and with who, but the chairs themselves: plush vintage armchairs, high-backed wooden thrones, and the wide spectrum of options in between. The anniversary special dropping on New Year’s Day is a loving look back at the global phenomenon, as told by the stars and directors involved with the journey along the way. It also, despite best efforts made to add some visual flair in the form of wandering about archived film sets, is about 80 percent just footage of people sitting and talking. While tracking the chairs people are sitting in is oftentimes necessary to understand the context of the soundbite you’re hearing, overall th...
Betty White Celebrates 100th Birthday in Trailer for Special Documentary: Watch
Betty White is turning 100 years old next month, and to celebrate she’s headed to movie theaters around the country. For one day only, Betty White: 100 Years Young — A Birthday Celebration will screen in 900 US theaters on January 17th — the same day the beloved screen legend hits the century mark. Check out the trailer below. The film is directed by Steve Boettcher and Mike Trinklein, and will document the icon’s real-life 100th birthday party, attended by a guest list including Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, Carol Burnett, Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Clint Eastwood, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, and more. It will also give fans a peek at White’s personal life off camera and look back on her more than 80-year career. “Who doesn’t love a party?!? This one is gon...
The Wire Star Sonja Sohn on Wanting to Give Back to Baltimore With Her New HBO Documentary The Slow Hustle
The Slow Hustle is a story about corruption and a story about persistence. The HBO documentary, directed by Sonja Sohn, is technically focused on the unsolved murder of Baltimore police detective Sean Suiter. But the story that emerges is a portrait of a police force so weighed down by corruption and other issues that it’s incapable of finding the truth behind what happened to one of its own — raising the question of what function the police serves in our society. The project is Sohn’s second documentary, following the 2017 film Baltimore Rising, which she directed after spending time in Baltimore after the uprising that occurred after Freddie Gray’s death — though it hadn’t originally been her idea to direct that film. Instead, after getting to know some of the activists involved in the u...
Early Years of Sesame Street Chronicled in New HBO Doc Street Gang
HBO has unveiled a first look at its upcoming Sesame Street documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street. Watch it below. The film, which is set to premiere December 13th, takes a look at the earliest days of the beloved, long-running children’s television show — from its conception and development to its takeoff as a national treasure — all told through interviews with the artists, educators, and cast members who helped create the magic. “This was an experiment. Children were watching a tremendous amount of television. So why not see if it could educate them?” a number of interviewees explain via confessional. “Our target audience were inner city children. We had struggled with the idea of the setting for the show. I wanted to capture that New York energy because, to the thre...
Fascinating Roots of Electric Forest Revealed In New Documentary, “A Million Shining Lights”
The fascinating origin story behind one of the world’s most beloved music festivals, Electric Forest, will soon be revealed. A forthcoming documentary titled A Million Shining Lights – 10 Years Of Electric Forest will recap some of the countless fan and artist experiences that have made this legendary, Rothbury-based electronic music fest the phenomenon it is today. The documentary’s trailer scratches the surface level details of how exactly one of EDM’S most highly regarded festival experiences came to find a home at the Double JJ Resort. The plot of land that organizers were pitched was spacious, but densely populated with trees and foliage, which was initially seen as a drawback to the viewing experience. However, Electric Forest proprietors saw the potential in ...
Oasis Offer Fans a Free Month of Paramount+ to Watch Their Documentary
Who has the money to subscribe to each of the myriad streaming platforms that exist today? Oasis understand the struggle, and as Rolling Stone notes, they’re offering fans a month long free trial to Paramount+ to encourage them to watch their new documentary. Oasis Knebworth 1996, the new documentary immortalizing Oasis’ historic two-night residency at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England in 1996, hit Paramount+ today after premiering in theaters in September. Directed by Jake Scott, the film retells the story of the gigs: At the height of their fame following the release of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory, Oasis played to a crowd of 250,000 — at the time, the biggest in England’s history. From now until November 30th, new subscribers can use the code OASIS and access ...
New Doc Reveals Les Moonves Demanded Janet Jackson Apologize to Him in Person After the 2004 Super Bowl
For 70 minutes, the new New York Times Presents documentary Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson digs deep into one of the 21st century’s most controversial moments: the 9/16th of a second reveal of Janet Jackson’s nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl. One big detail delivered by the doc’s new reporting on the incident and its aftermath may explain in part the major discrepancy between how Jackson and Justin Timberlake were treated at the time: Les Moonves’ ego. That year, both the Super Bowl and the 46th annual Grammy Awards aired on CBS, and in the week between the two events, Jackson issued multiple apologies for the Super Bowl show. But Moonves, as the chairman and CEO of CBS at the time, wasn’t satisfied and initially banned both Jackson and Timberlake from attending the Gramm...
Tom Petty Doc, Somewhere You Feel Free, Premieres on YouTube: Watch
A new documentary about one of the key eras in the life and career of Tom Petty is streaming for free on YouTube. Stream it below. Largely based around a collection of 16mm archives that weren’t discovered until 2020, Tom Petty: Somewhere You Feel Free – The Making of Wildflowers follows the rock icon from 1993 to 1995 through the making of his now-classic sophomore solo album Wildflowers. Featured throughout the 89-minute documentary are new interviews with the likes of Heartbreakers guitarist (and Wildflowers co-producer) Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, and more. “I spent almost 20 years with the Heartbreakers,” Petty says in the doc. “And if I only made records with the same people all the time, I’d never learn, I’d never grow. Rick Rubin kind of guided me back into a musical ...
Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson Documentary Coming to Hulu This Month
Now that Britney has effectively been freed, FX and Hulu are following up their New York Times Presents documentary Framing Britney Spears with a deep dive into Janet Jackson’s ill-fated performance at the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. Entitled Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson, the documentary will explore the events that went down that evening and the pop culture shift that followed. In the off chance that you need a recap, Jackson found herself at the crux of a professional and personal crisis when she took the stage with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl in 2004. Near the end of the halftime show, Timberlake briefly exposed Jackson’s breast to millions of viewers. The move left Timberlake’s legacy intact, but unfairly tarnished Jackson’s for years to com...
Kid Cudi Shares Trailer for Amazon Documentary A Man Named Scott: Watch
Next month, Kid Cudi will let fans behind the scenes of his successes and stresses with the new documentary A Man Named Scott: The Kid Cudi Story. Today, he’s shared a first-look at the Amazon Prime film by releasing its first trailer. Coming from director Robert Alexander, A Man Named Scott traces the Cleveland-born rapper’s career from his 2009 Man on the Moon: The End of the Day debut through “over a decade of creative choices, struggles and breakthroughs.” (The doc’s title is actually taken from an unrealized mixtape Cudi announced way back in 2011.) “I sacrificed the privacy of my life and put my story out there to help others,” Kid Cudi says in the documentary’s trailer. “That’s always been my mission. I’m not done yet.” Advertisement Related Video Check out the traile...
