Documentary
Sundance Review: Ramin Bahrani Tests the Conscience of the American Id in 2nd Chance
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: America is a land of mythmaking: if you’re savvy and lucky (and often, unscrupulous) enough, you can carve out a legend of your own design. That’s what happened to Richard Davis, the oddball inventor of the bulletproof vest, who spun a tall tale about self-defense in a Michigan alleyway into a million-dollar company selling protective body armor to America’s police and military forces. A blustering showman with no small sense of spectacle, Davis hawked his wares with, as one flyer declares in bold letters, “SEX & VIOLENCE”: amateur films that featured everything from comedy skits to bikini-clad women to schlocky fictional shootouts that make Samurai Cop look like Dirty Harry. Oh, and he shot hi...
Sundance Review: We Need to Talk About Cosby Unravels the Man and the Monster
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: For fifty years, Bill Cosby was America’s Dad, a trailblazer for Black culture on film and television, and comedy. I Spy, The Electric Company, The Cosby Show: All pioneering examples of Black excellence and a guiding light to generations of Black people who yearned to see themselves depicted on screen with grace and intelligence. And then, we learned about the man under those comfy sweaters: someone with credible accusations of sexual assault and rape of dozens of women. For standup comedian W. Kamau Bell, and many Black people across America who’d grown up revering Cosby, those accusations were a tough pill to swallow. What do you do when a man whom you’d idolized, someone who carries seismic importan...
![Forthcoming Doc ‘We Need To Talk About Cosby’ Unpacks Bill Cosby’s Legacy [Video]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/forthcoming-doc-we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-unpacks-bill-cosbys-legacy-video-1050x600.jpg)
![Forthcoming Doc ‘We Need To Talk About Cosby’ Unpacks Bill Cosby’s Legacy [Video]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/forthcoming-doc-we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-unpacks-bill-cosbys-legacy-video-80x80.jpg)
Forthcoming Doc ‘We Need To Talk About Cosby’ Unpacks Bill Cosby’s Legacy [Video]
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: W.Wade/WENN / WENN Bill Cosby is a free man but not free from public scrutiny. A forthcoming documentary will examine how he went from American’s favorite television dad to disgraced comedian. As spotted on Variety the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania native’s legacy will now be critically examined in a new movie project. Titled We Need To Talk About Cosby the four-part series will detail his life from his very formative stages as budding comedian to setting the standard for fatherhood in the 1980’s via his critically acclaimed The Cosby Show. Naturally the release will also put an added focus and lens on his alleged history of drugging women, sexual battery and being a famous creep. It is written and directed by W. Kamau Bell of United Shades of Amer...
Neil Young Unveils Documentary on Making of New Album BARN: Watch
Back in December, Neil Young and Crazy Horse released BARN, an album recorded in a restored 19th century farm shed. Now, they’ve released a documentary on the making of the album. Stream it for free via YouTube below. Recorded in the Summer of 2021, BARN (the album) marked Young’s 14th long player with Crazy Horse, and saw the folk veteran reunite with longtime bandmates Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, and Nils Lofgren. Directed by Young’s wife Daryl Hannah, BARN (the film) takes an organic approach to documenting the recording process. Single shots depict the band recording entire songs, which is Hannah’s attempt to show the group’s chemistry and prove that no studio tricks polished the album’s finished product. The documentary enjoyed a limited run in theaters last month to coincid...
A Sexual Predator Barely Bothered to Hide in Official Trailer for We Need to Talk About Cosby: Watch
At the time of his 2018 trial, many people were surprised to learn that Bill Cosby was an alleged sexual predator who had been accused of drugging, raping, or sexually assaulting more than 60 women. But as director W. Kamau Bell points out in the new official trailer for We Need to Talk About Cosby, the disgraced comedian barely bothered to hide what he was doing. The four-part documentary series premieres January 30th on Showtime. Bell dredges up footage of Cosby being interviewed on national television, joking about slipping someone a “Spanish Fly. The girl would drink it and — hello, America!” He also shows a now-infamous clip from the The Cosby Show, in which Cosby’s character Dr. Huxtable adds a drug into his barbecue sauce that makes people “get all huggy-buggy.” One i...
Kanye West Documentary jeen-yuhs to Debut in Theaters Ahead of Arrival on Netflix
Kanye West stans will have the opportunity to catch part of the documentary jeen-yuhs in theaters ahead of its arrival on Netflix. Today, the streamer revealed fans will be able to attend a nationwide preview of the project titled Act 1 (Vision) on February 10th for one day only. Netflix also shared a new teaser trailer that opens with Chicago rapper Rhymefest asking Kanye, “Who are you to call yourself a genius?” Watch it below. The three-part documentary is directed by Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah, who use behind-the-scenes footage of Kanye ranging from his early career as an in-demand producer, to forcing his way into becoming a solo rapper, to a level of stardom in pop culture as a whole that only Kanye himself could have imagined. Advertisement Related Video “It was like G...
‘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...
