Life in a Day — Watch it Online One Day Only

Posted on January 26, 2011 at 8:00 am

Do you remember where you were on July 24, 2010?
I was at Comic-Con, and I was one of the thousands who sent in a video of what I was doing that day to directors Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald. I’m pretty sure it ended up on the cutting room floor, but I’ll bet you’ll get a glimpse of Comic-Con in there somewhere.
The film-makers have edited over 80,000 entries making up more than 4500 hours of footage to give the world a self-portrait of one day in our lives, the diversity and the similarity and the connections that link us all together. It will premiere at Sundance Thursday night and you can watch it live, along with the Q&A afterward, on YouTube.

Here’s a sample:

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Documentary Festivals

I’m in a Movie — And Going to Sundance!

Posted on January 18, 2011 at 8:00 am

This time, I’m not reviewing a film; I am appearing in one! And I am very excited. “The Flaw,” a documentary about the financial meltdown, includes me as one of its interview subjects. And it has been accepted at Sundance — and I will be there for a Q&A following one of the screenings! Stay tuned!

Eyes on the Prize (Part 1)

Posted on January 17, 2011 at 8:00 am

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	NR
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking, drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Historical violence
Diversity Issues:	The theme of the series

This is the story of the civil rights movement, from 1952-1965. Interviews and archival footage tell the story of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that declared school segregation unconstitutional and the Montgomery bus boycott that forced the South to begin to allow equal access in public accommodations. As momentous as those events were, they were even more significant in what came next — decades of social, legal, and cultural upheavals that would lead to the Civil Rights Act, the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia abolishing the laws that prohibited inter-marriage, and, a generation later, the country’s first African-American President. The bigotry is shocking to us today, which is all the more reason we need this documentation. And the heroes are here: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, and more.

The PBS series, its sequel, and the companion volumes by Juan Williams are an indispensable reminder of our past and inspiration for our future. The struggle continues.

I’m not where I want to be.
I’m not where I’m going to be.
But thank God, I’m not where I was.

Trailer: ‘Born to be Wild’

Posted on January 15, 2011 at 8:00 am

“Born to be Wild” is a new 3D IMAX documentary about orphaned orangutans and elephants and the extraordinary people who rescue and raise them – saving endangered species one life at a time. It opens April 8.

Roger Ebert’s List of the Best 2010 Documentaries

Posted on January 14, 2011 at 3:12 pm

For me, the big story of the movie of 2010 was the animated films and the documentaries — we had more great films in both categories than ever before. So I was delighted to see Roger Ebert’s list of the year’s best documentaries. The films he selected demonstrate the astonishing range of modes, moods, topics, and voices working in documentaries today. There is the devastating autopsy of the financial crisis (“Inside Job”) and the mind-bending examination of street art that explores art, commerce, and the gullibility of the celebrity culture in form and content. There is a movie about a serial killer and a movie about a literally colorful guy who waves his jacket at tourists on Chicago’s river boats (I loved that one). And I was delighted to see Roger’s comments on the new film from Errol Morris. It was the review of Errol Morris’ “Gates of Heaven” and “Vernon, Florida” on the Ebert and Siskel show that first got me interested in documentaries, and I have been very grateful to them ever since.

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Critics Documentary Lists