Many people are familiar with the story of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt's life. His book Angela's Ashes was a New York Times best-seller and garnered international attention and acclaim. The McCourts of Limerick is a documentary film produced and directed by Frank's brother, Conor McCourt. Using family photos and family home video, ...
As part of his promotional campaign for the album Dangerous, Michael Jackson helped create a series of elaborate and lavishly produced music videos for songs from the set, and this video brings together the nine short films created to accompany songs from the disc. Videos featured include: "Black and White," the little-seen full-length version; ...
Martin Scorsese's documentary of the 1976 final performance of the legendary Sixties rock group The Band is at once a show featuring some of the greatest rock performers of their generation and a bittersweet look back at an era that was just beginning to fade. As Scorsese guides the group through interview segments discussing their 15 years ...
Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara is the sole focus of documentarian Errol Morris's The Fog of War, a film that not only analyzes McNamara's controversial decisions during the first half of the Vietnam War, but also his childhood upbringing, his education at Berkley and Harvard, his involvement in World War II, and his later years as ...
In 1804, two American military officers, Merriweather Lewis and William Clark, were given an assignment by President Thomas Jefferson -- to explore the uncharted areas of the land known as "the Louisiana Purchase," a massive stretch of 8,000 miles from St. Louis to the Western Coastline. Lewis and Clark hoped to find a Northwest Passage, which ...
Former vice president Al Gore shares his concerns on the pressing issue of global warming in this documentary. A long-time environmental activist, Gore first became aware of evidence on global warming in the 1970s, and since leaving public office he has become a passionate advocate for large- and small-scale changes in our laws and lifestyles that ...
In 1846, a group of over eighty Westward-bound pioneers were headed to the coast of California from Illinois, which had itself only recently been brought up to "civilized" status. They made it to a pass high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California when they were halted by a truly monstrous blizzard, followed by the snows of one of the worst ...
Alex Gibney, who wrote and produced Eugene Jarecki's The Trials of Henry Kissinger, examines the rise and fall of an infamous corporate juggernaut in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which he wrote and directed. The film, based on the book by Fortune Magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, opens with a reenactment of the suicide ...
The Carol Burnett Show was one of the most popular and best loved comedy-variety series to grave American television in the 1970's. In 2001, Carol Burnett and fellow cast members Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, and Vicki Lawrence reunited for this comedy special, in which they take a look back at some of the most memorable moments from the show's run, ...
Albert and David Maysles, pioneers in the cinéma vérité movement of documentary filmmaking, chose for their subjects of this film a mother and daughter with celebrity connections. Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie (or, as they are called by the brothers, Big Edie and Little Edie), are aunt and cousin to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In ...
This Ken Burns documentary, narrated by Hal Holbrook, chronologically traces the well-documented 1804-06 military expedition of Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and Lt. William Clark (1770-1838) to survey newly acquired lands and seek a Northwest Passage. Ordered by Thomas Jefferson (who labeled it the Corps of Discovery), the expedition was approved ...
Ken Burns, America's most popular and successful documentarian of history, has called Thomas Jefferson "the most important human being born in the last 500 years." It is with this passionate admiration, tempered as always by a blunt acknowledgement of Jefferson's flaws, that Burns approaches his subject. Following the brilliant, fiery young ...
Documentarian Thomas Riedelsheimer shows us Andy Goldsworthy as he creates art in natural settings using natural materials such as driftwood, ice, mud, leaves, and stones. Goldsworthy comments on his "earthworks" and occasionally responds to offscreen questions from Riedelsheimer while he painstakingly builds his outdoors sculptures. With some ...
For their classic, 1976 documentary Grey Gardens, Albert and David Maysles shot hours-upon-hours of footage exploring the lives of their subjects Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie (who were affectionately referred to by their brothers as Big Edie and Little Edie), whose quiet lives on the grounds of a dilapidated estate stood in remarkable ...
In the early '80s, a new business emerged in Miami, FL, that changed the face of the city forever. That business was cocaine smuggling; as America developed a growing appetite for the drug, Colombian suppliers found that Miami was a good place to bring it into the United States, and a new breed of outlaws were more than happy to face the risks of ...
Arnold Schwarzenegger gained his first real notoriety outside body-building circles with this documentary about a group of men training for the Mr. Olympia contest. Arnold had already won the title six times before, and was training for his seventh victory before retiring to fully pursue his acting career (which began to catch fire with his ...
In August of 1914, dogged Australian photographer Frank Hurley joined Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Trans-Antarctic expedition. Shackleton had hoped to make an historic first crossing of the icy continent while recording valuable scientific data, but when the men reached the bottom of the world, things didn't go exactly according to plan. The ship ...
The Canadian documentary Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media presents a lengthy, detailed look at the political beliefs of celebrated intellectual Noam Chomsky. Casting only passing glances at Chomsky's groundbreaking work in the field of linguistics and his eventful life, filmmakers Mark Achbar and Peter Witonick instead focus on ...
Home movies with a political edge are the focus of this documentary that chronicles the childhood of director Nikita Mikhailkov's daughter Anna. He began this film in 1980 when his daughter was only 6-years old. At that time it was illegal to make home movies in Russia so he and his friends were very careful. Each year he would film her and ask ...
It's ironic that MGM, in such dire financial straits in 1974 that it was selling its fabled back lot and auctioning off artifacts from past movie triumphs, enjoyed one of its biggest box-office hits with That's Entertainment, a compilation of musical highlights from the studio's golden days. Onscreen hosts Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, ...
Cinematographer-turned-documentary filmmaker Patrick Creadon takes a compelling look at the brainy world of crossword puzzles, the masterminds that conceive them, and the folks who struggle to solve them in a film that offers a close look at one of America's most popular pastimes. For 12 years, the name Will Shortz has been indelibly linked to the ...
One of several elaborate music videos created by the hard rock band Guns N' Roses for their wildly ambitious two-part album Use Your Illusion, "Estranged" was a ten-minute video that combined striking sets, a number of location shoots, live footage of the band, and a subplot involving dolphins into something very different from what many fans ...
This documentary offers a look at Elvis Presley on and off-stage as he embarks upon a cross-country concert tour in the early '70s. Most of the focus is on the actual performances; those wanting to know about the man inside the spangled suit should see Elvis: That's The Way It Is. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
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