News

Longtime broadcast journalist and author Jane Pauley and documentarian/director Alex Gibney have been tapped to receive lifetime achievement awards at the 45th annual News & Documentary Emmys. The honors were revealed Wednesday by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Pauley, currently the host of “CBS News Sunday Morning,” will receive her award during the news ceremony portion of the awards on Wed., September 25, while Gibney will be honored during the Documentary ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 26. Both ceremonies will take place at New York’s Palladium Times Square, and be streamed on NATAS’ viewing app.

Adam Sharp, President and CEO of NATAS, said: “We are honored to pay tribute to these two revered icons of our industry. Jane Pauley and Alex Gibney continue to reach viewers while at the same time opening doors for those coming behind them,” said NATAS president/CEO Adam Sharp in a statement. “This honor...

Anchor Jane Pauley and director-producer Alex Gibney will receive Lifetime Achievement awards at the 45th News & Documentary Emmys.

Pauley will be honored for her career in broadcasting at the news ceremony on Sept. 25. Gibney will be feted for his contributions in documentary filmmaking at the doc ceremony on Sept. 26. Both events will take place live at the Palladium Times Square in New York City.

“We are honored to pay tribute to these two revered icons of our industry. Jane Pauley and Alex Gibney continue to reach viewers while at the same time opening doors for those coming behind them,” said NATAS CEO and President Adam Sharp. “This honor is not only about impressive longevity in a competitive space, but also the broad and sweeping impact each has had on the business, their audiences, and the greater community. NATAS is proud to celebrate their enduring dedication to television excellence.”

Related: 2024-...

Amazon Prime Video is the place to go for movies this month, with a plethora of original films as well as new library additions for just about every movie fan. The Emma Roberts-led original Space Cadet hits the streaming service aptly on the Fourth of July, for anyone looking for a fish-out-of-water style comedy. My Spy the Eternal City, the newest film in the Dave Bautista-led family action series also drops on July 18.

Action film fans are also in for a treat with recent films The Beekeeper and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning coming to Prime Video in July.

As far as TV shows go, the most notable addition this month is the adult animated series Sausage Party: Foodtopia, a continuation of the 2016 film Sausage Party.

Here’s everything coming to Prime Video and Freevee in July – Amazon originals are designated with an asterisk.

New on Amazon Prime Video...

The movie year has already unleashed a lot of memorable work, from Sundance breakouts to “M3GAN.” But things are about to get a lot more global. Even as a new Marvel movie opens in theaters worldwide, the Berlin International Film Festival begins on Wednesday to offer a whole lot more. Nestled in between Sundance and SXSW, Berlin is like a firehose of international cinema.

More than 200 films from around the world will premiere at the festival this week, many of which are potential discoveries. Berlin premieres sometimes creep into awards consider (this year’s Oscar nominee “The Quiet Girl” premiered there last year) but can also deliver major new works from rising filmmaker talent. Some of the more promising titles from this year’s lineup speak to its versatility. It’s also a valuable European launchpad for Sundance highlights: The festival’s hit “Past Lives” plays in competition.

From its...

Exclusive: Sony Pictures Classics has taken all global rights to the documentary Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story co-directed by five-time Oscar nominee Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern (Finding Oscar). Marshall recently directed the HBO documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart which is in consideration for this Emmy season.

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival presented by Shell, aka “Jazz Fest,” is the signature annual music and cultural event of the Louisiana city and has been called America’s greatest festival. Celebrating the music, food, and arts and crafts of all of Louisiana since 1970, Jazz Fest is an essential showcase of the rich heritage of the region, and hundreds of thousands attend the event each year. Local music heroes are joined on 14 stages by some of the most important figures in entertainment, highlighting the connections between Louisiana culture and the world.

The docu weaves together...

“I was always interested in the family dynamic because I come from a musical family,” blockbuster producer Frank Marshall tells us on what drew him to direct the HBO documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.

“I was always interested in what made them tick. Until I examined their career and journey, I had no idea what an incredible story it was,” says Marshall, “They transcended five decades, and somehow they stayed together over these five decades and kept reinventing themselves.”

“People think about them as kind of lightweights and they’re really heavyweights,” adds Marshall who has executive produced such docus as 2018’s What Haunts Us and produced Alex Gibney’s 2013 nonfiction feature The Armstrong Lie.

Of the myriad moments which Marshall explores in How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is the success behind Saturday Night Fever, both the 1977 film, which went on to...

Lance Armstrong prepares to tell his truth in the new trailer for Marina Zenovich’s upcoming documentary, Lance, which will air in two parts, May 24th and May 31st, at 9 p.m. Et on ESPN.

The film is centered around an extensive set of interviews Zenovich conducted with Armstrong and the new trailer opens with a particularly compelling question: “What’s the worst thing that you did?” Armstrong mulls the question for a second and eventually replies, “Everybody in the world needs to get this question.”

From there, the trailer...

“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” declares acclaimed documentarian Alex Gibney about his latest in a long line of films about controversial subjects, the Emmy-nominated HBO film “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.” “I guess I am becoming a little bit more comfortable in the kitchen, but it comes with the territory,” he says. Watch our exclusive video interview with Gibney above.

“The Inventor” explores the scandal surrounding the rise and fall of the blood-testing start-up Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes. A self-proclaimed visionary and “disruptor,” Holmes claimed to have found a way to revolutionize the healthcare industry by avoiding the time consuming and expensive process of taking blood and instead taking and testing a pin-prick of blood out of a patient’s finger using her technology. She became an overnight billionaire, following in the footsteps of idols like Steve Jobs,...

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced Silicon Valley entrepreneur once touted as the next Steve Jobs, will be portrayed in two upcoming fictionalized projects, one starring Jennifer Lawrence and the other with Kate McKinnon.

Lawrence’s big screen dramatization and McKinnon’s Hulu miniseries won’t be out for a while, but no waiting is required to see a nonfiction treatment of the Holmes story—The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley is available right now on HBO on demand. It’s in contention for multiple Emmy nominations.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney directed the documentary, about the Stanford University dropout who launched blood-testing company Theranos and became the youngest self-made female billionaire ever before the enterprise collapsed in a blizzard of fraud allegations. Gibney says he didn’t anticipate how much The Inventor would resonate with viewers.

“The way it broke through kind of surprised me in the sense that now...

John Battsek of Passion Pictures producing doc.

Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Taxi To The Dark Side and Going Clear: Scientology & The Prison Of Belief, is making a documentary about former tennis star Boris Becker.

Lorton Entertainment, the London-based company which financed 2019 Cannes title Diego Maradona, is executive producing and fully-financing Becker (working title). The company also holds the project’s global rights and will be introducing it to potential partners in Cannes.

John Battsek of Passion Pictures is producing the documentary with Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions.

The film will explore the life of Becker, who became a...

Hulu has confirmed that several of its original series will be debuting new episodes on the streaming service in October, including the first installment of the horror anthology “Into the Dark” as well as more of season 1 of the Sean Penn drama “The First.” And there will also be new to Hulu seasons of some of your favorites reality shows from other networks, including various editions of “Little Women” and “The Real Housewives.”

Likewise, there will be plenty of movies making their first Hulu appearances including the Oscar-winning “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and “Raging Bull.”

See Netflix schedule: Here’s what is coming and leaving in October

Available October 1

Television

60 Days In – Complete Season 4

America’s Book of Secrets – Complete Season 1 & 2

American Pickers – Complete Season 18

Ancient Aliens – Complete Season 4

Bob’s Burgers – Season 9 Premiere

El Clon – Complete Season 1

Escaping Polygamy – Complete Season 3

Family Guy – Season 16 Premiere

Hoarders – Complete...

This documentary about the return of road-racing champ David Millar, who was banned for doping, has an air of tight-lipped misery

There’s a painful, pentup anger and hurt at the heart of this documentary portrait of David Millar, the Scottish road-race cyclist and former Tour de France champ who was banned for doping in 2004 and, then became known as an anti-doping campaigner. follows Millar as he prepares to take one last crack at the Tour de France, this time as a “clean” rider, thus preparing us for a Hollywoodised story of redemption. But it ends in his dreams being brutally and anticlimactically crushed; his team-leader drops him because he is not performing well enough – an awful implied comment on his entire past record, and just the kind of career gravestone inscription he was hoping to avoid.

The film immerses us in the (to my amateur eye) rather joyless business...

MaryAnn’s quick take… Perfectly illustrative of the serendipitous nature of documentary filmmaking as it pivots from a personal investigation of doping in sports into a thriller with global geopolitical ramifications. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto) women’s participation in this film

(learn more about this)

Has there ever been a documentary filmmaker as fortuitous as Bryan Fogel? I don’t mean to denigrate his work by suggesting it was all just dumb luck that resulted in his debut documentary, Icarus, ending up as explosive as it does: he definitely picked a topic with lots of potential for unearthing explosive things. But he cannot possibly have anticipated what would actually happen… and, indeed, the film itself depicts this when we watch him onscreen, dumbfounded, watching news events unfold that not only directly impact the...

The documentary-maker on his new Netflix series, Trump’s ‘trail of slime’ and how tennis keeps him sane

Alex Gibney was born in New York City in 1953 and educated at Yale and UCLA film school. He was 52 when he scored his first major success as a documentary film-maker with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Three years later, he won a best documentary Oscar with Taxi to the Dark Side. Since then, he has been hugely productive, turning out films about political sex scandals (Client 9), WikiLeaks (We Steal Secrets), doped-up cyclists (The Armstrong Lie) and Scientology (Going Clear). The theme of high-level corruption, which runs throughout his work, lies at the heart of Dirty Money, a six-part series he has produced for Netflix.

What drew you to these particular stories?

We were looking for stories in which the characters seemed larger than life and in those stories you find the larger themes.

Beth Howard, a producer of documentaries, Imax films, Olympic telecasts and Emmy-winning programs, has died. She was 52.

Howard died Aug. 8 in Stockton, N.J., after a battle with breast cancer, her husband, Bruce, reported.

Howard partnered with The Kennedy/Marshall Co., The Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, CBS Sports, the NHL, the NBA, the U.S. Tennis Association, the Ioc and USA Network during her career.

She served as a co-producer on The Armstrong Lie, Alex Gibney's 2013 documentary about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, and on the 2003 feature The Young Black Stallion, both from Kennedy/Marshall.

Howard was "one of...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

“Icarus” starts out as one kind of movie, and then becomes a much better one. At first, director Bryan Fogel seems intent on making the sporting world’s answer to “Super Size Me,” by subjecting himself to performance-enhancing drugs to see if he can avoid detection. But then he stumbles into shocking revelations about Russia’s massive doping conspiracy and the scenario gets dark, gripping, and altogether more important.

The jarring shift doesn’t quite rescue the movie from uneven storytelling and murky research, but “Icarus” undoubtedly succeeds at emphasizing the shocking nature of Russia’s cover-up — and the dangerous reverberations it has for a key whistleblower.

That would be Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the antidoping laboratory chief who eventually fled to the United States and leaked information about Russia’s tactics for burying its athletes’ use of performance-enhancing drugs to a group of New York Times reporters in early 2016. Fogel...

MaryAnn’s quick take… Fascinating and horrifying. A gripping detective story and an impassioned call for public debate over terrifying weapons that have already been loosed. I’m “biast” (pro): love Alex Gibney films

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Cyber warfare is here. And I’m not referring to the Russian hacking of DNC servers during the recent Us presidential election. The cyber equivalent of Hiroshima happened several years ago, and it wasn’t the Russians who dropped the bomb. It was the Us and Israel, and it’s what outgoing president Barack Obama was referring to when he said, in his farewell speech the other day, that he had “shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program without firing a shot.” He was talking about Stuxnet, the malware that sneakily threw Iran’s delicate nuclear-fuel-refining centrifuges out of whack...

Author: Stefan Pape

To call documentarian Alex Gibney prolific would be something of an understatement, as a director who works on several projects at any given time. The latest to secure distribution is Zero Days, an unnerving, investigative piece into cyber weapons, and in particular, the malicious computer worm Stuxnet.

We spoke to Gibney at the Berlin film festival – where this film was screened in competition – about the level of secrecy attached to Stuxnet, and his run-ins with the Nsa. He also explains how he had to change direction during the making of the film, following on somewhat from the last time we spoke to him, for The Armstrong Lie.

You often make politically inclined documentaries, but do you think you’ve ever made one quite as investigative as Zero Days?

I’ve done a number of films that have been investigative, but I’ve never done one about something...

Alex Gibney’s latest documentary “Zero Days” tells the story of Stuxnet, a dangerous piece of malware that threatens to destabilize the entire globe. In 2010, Stuxnet was discovered by Sergey Ulasen who found that it targeted industrial control systems. Security experts said that they had never discovered such an elaborate, untraceable malware such as Stuxnet, and concluded that a country’s government was responsible given the immense technological and financial resources required for its creation. It’s soon uncovered that the United States and Israel initially developed Stuxnet to compromise Iranian nuclear facilities, and now it has gone far past its intended target and has put the world in jeopardy.

“Zero Days” comprehensively examines the web of intrigue surrounding Stuxnet, how it has aided global espionage and covert assassinations, and how it has redefined weapons for the 21st century. Watch a promo for the film below.

Read More: Berlin Review:...

The Oscar-winning documentarian is to helm the political thriller Action, about antiwar activists who attacked J Edgar Hoover’s FBI in the early 1970s

Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentarian behind Taxi to the Dark Side, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and The Armstrong Lie, will make his narrative feature directing debut with Action, a political thriller set in the 1970s.

According to Deadline, Gibney’s film will centre on eight antiwar activists intent on exposing the systematic surveillance and blackmail of those who crossed J Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI.

Continue reading...

Den Of Geek Staff Sep 21, 2018

We have a list of the new Hulu movies and shows arriving in October 2018.

Happy Huluween!

Hulu is blessed to have a name that sounds roughly enough like "Hallow." That means it's basically honor-bound to bring the heat for Halloween. Thankfully for the October 2018 new releases, Hulu is bringing us the spookies that we need. The Blair Witch Project, The Others, and Child's Play all arrive this month. And if you're looking for some more wholesome creepies, The Nightmare Before Christmas should do. And if that weren't enough, Hulu is debuting its own horror show - anthology series Into the Dark.

For those shamefully unable to get into the Halloween spirit, Hulu is bringing in some other fun film options. Galaxy Quest, Music and Lyrics, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective should help out with that.

Then of course, are the usual and typically deep TV offerings.

Creed continues to be a box office success and a favorite with audiences and critics. Globally Ryan Coogler’s film has passed the $100 million mark since its initial opening this fall.

The film reunites Coogler with his Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan as the son of Apollo Creed, and explores a new chapter in the Rocky story, starring Academy Award nominee Sylvester Stallone in his iconic role.

For the director, there was no question that Creed would be set in Philadelphia, where it all began. And for the filmmakers, there was no doubt that principal photography would be accomplished there as well. In order to bridge the two films artistically, Coogler brought together the talented creative team of costume designers Emma Potter (“Song One”) and Antoinette Messam (“Orphan”) and his “Fruitvale Station” team: editors Michael P. Shawver and Claudia Castello; production designer Hannah Beachler; and composer Ludwig Goransson.

To...

Michael Grandage’s Genius, starring Colin Firth, Jude Law and Nicole Kidman; Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special; new Alex Gibney doc to world premiere at festival.

The first nine films for the 66th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 11-21) Competition and Berlinale Special programme have been revealed.

The Competition titles - all world premieres - include Genius, the debut feature of celebrated British theatre director Michael Grandage, which stars Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Laura Linney, Guy Pearce and Dominic West.

Adapted by playwright and screenwriter John Logan (Skyfall) from A. Scott Berg’s book, Genius tells the true story of the complex relationship between literary giant Thomas Wolfe (Law) and Scribner’s iconic editor Max Perkins (Firth).

Also in Competition is Midnight Special, the anticipated new feature from Jeff Nichols, director of Mud and Take Shelter. The film centres on a father and son who go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses...

A compassionate, intimate unpacking of the legend of Janis Joplin that reveals the troubled influences on the force-of-nature singer she willed into being. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Janis Joplin! She was the Amy Winehouse of her day… except without all the vampiric media attention and the constant stalking by paparazzi. Joplin was at least able to die of her substance abuse in peace and privacy. We’re used to thinking that women have it so much better today, but before Joplin died in 1970 — at age 27, the same age at which Winehouse died in 2011 — the focus of the press coverage of her had been on her work: “Janis should dump her band, they’re not as good as she is and they’re dragging her down”; “Janis shouldn’t have dumped her band, these...

Stephen Frears’s feature pedals hard enough but comes second to Alex Gibney’s 2013 documentary on the subject

The BBFC description says “strong language, use of performance enhancing drugs” – a description that could apply both to the film and its real-life subject. Ben Foster is scarily convincing as Lance Armstrong, the cancer survivor who became a record-breaking Tour de France winner thanks to a unique blend of charismatic determination and biochemical enhancement. Like Stephen Frears’s award-winning Philomena, this casts a comedian in a straight role as the journalist who leads us through the story, and upon whose writings the script is based. Chris O’Dowd is Sunday Times reporter David Walsh, whose exposé of Armstrong’s systematic doping provoked an aggressive lawsuit. Seasoned pros Frears and screenwriter John Hodge handle the sharp corners of the story with aplomb, although there’s little here that wasn’t covered in Alex Gibney...

Ben Foster looks and sounds a lot like Lance Armstrong in The Program, but director Stephen Frears fails to get under the skin of a drugs cheat stripped of his seven consecutive Tour de France titles.

Frears doesn't hang about when it comes to the doping scandal, cutting straight to Armstrong's confession on Oprah in January 2013 before tracking back to chronicle his habitual drug-taking, of which there was plenty. These early scenes create instant shock value before the film settles into a groove, following Armstrong's descent without ever going too deep. Lone Survivor's Foster plays the part, warts n'all, arguably veering too far towards the uglier side of Armstrong's character.

His arrogance is fuel to get him from the day-racing circuit in America to leading the pack in the gruelling European road races which Fears shoots in atypically dynamic style. Beneath that, there are hints of Armstrong's victim complex.

Pretty much strictly for fans of Ben Foster and Chris O’Dowd, who are both superb here. Probably not for fans of Lance Armstrong (if he still has any left). I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

If you’ve seen the far superior documentary on the same subject, The Armstrong Lie, you can probably safely skip The Program, unless you’re a huge fan of either Ben Foster (Lone Survivor) — who here nails cyclist Lance Armstrong’s now notoriously well-known sociopathic narcissism — or Chris O’Dowd (Cuban Fury), as David Walsh, the sports journalist for the Times of London who doggedly investigated the athlete, whom he (correctly, as it turned out) suspected of doping, over the course of Armstrong’s unprecedented seven-year winning streak at the Tour de France,...

Ben Foster conjures up the disgraced Tour de France cycling champ’s pop-eyed fanaticism in this watchable offering from Stephen Frears

This workmanlike biopic of disgraced doper and Tour de France cycling champ Lance Armstrong features a very good lead performance from Ben Foster. He conjures up Armstrong’s pop-eyed fanaticism in the cause of winning, and his knack of never giving a straight answer. It’s an interesting film to set alongside Alex Gibney’s 2013 documentary The Armstrong Lie, which was compromised by a certain complicity with its subject, though Gibney just about extricated himself midway through filming when the truth about Armstrong became known.

Continue reading...

Momentum Pictures

Rating: ★★

There hasn’t been a movie that more needed to be a documentary than The Program. For all its outward sheen, Stephen Fears’ Lance Armstrong biopic is just so full of nonfictional tropes – freeze frame character intros with fly-in name effects, incessant archive footage, flashbacks as people describe what we’re seeing – that he could drop the actors, chuck in a few talking heads and it’d lose none of its narrative impact.

We have, of course, already had a documentary on the cycling doping scandal – 2013’s The Armstrong Lie – but this isn’t a situation a la The Walk and Man On Wire. That’s partially because The Armstrong Lie isn’t anywhere near the quality of Man On Wire, but mainly because there is a distinct difference between The Program and Alex Gibney’s retroactive tell-all; the aim of this film isn’t to show what actually happened,...

Alex Gibney’s much lauded documentary The Armstrong Lie is a saddening and maddening look at disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong’s massive web of ego, deceit and betrayal; Gibney’s film was made even more compelling by the fact that the film began as a look at a heroic athlete’s comeback, but was transformed by events that occurred

The post Tiff 2015: The Program Review appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Ben Foster makes a gripping monster in this biopic of the cyclist stripped of his wins – but Frears’s film finally lays blame at all our doors

Two years ago, Alex Gibney premiered The Armstrong Lie in Toronto. It was a documentary about Lance Armstrong’s fall from grace, itself precipitated by his cuckoo comeback Tour in 2009, aged 37. The film invited anyone who’d invested in Armstrong’s fiction to look into his eyes and try to assess his level of sociopathy. Off the chain? Or more of a four?

Related: The Armstrong Lie: Toronto 2013 – first look review

Continue reading...

Described as "a renegade, but legit," "a study in contrasts," "a monk among priests," "maniacal" and "a rebel," Steve Jobs is sketched in contradictory terms by human documentary factory Alex Gibney ("Enron," "We Steal Secrets," "The Armstrong Lie," "Finding Fela") in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine." This bracing film at first seduces you with the charms of the man, and then guts you with what a tricky riddle he was, an at-times sociopathic mogul who flew close to the Sun, touched it and never quite fell as the laws of physics dictate he should have. Jobs, upon whose shoulders the entire Apple empire grew and rested, inspired a nation's worth of outpouring and grief when he died in 2011 of complications of pancreatic cancer. While "The Man in the Machine" does admire the man's genius, the film does not shy away from peeling back the layers. Careful editing by.

StudioCanal

StudioCanal and Working Title have dropped a new poster for Lance Armstrong biopic-of-sorts The Program. It’s a pretty restrained one-sheet, with Ben Foster’s Armstrong turning to look over his shoulder. A metaphor for his duel roles as champion cyclist and paranoid cheat? How clever!

The Program follows Armstrong through the eyes of journalist David Walsh (Chris O’Dowd) as he begins to piece together the extent of Armstrong’s steroidal deception. It’s got a big cast, with Foster and O’Dowd joined by Guillaume Canet and Jesse Plemons, whilst Stephen Frears (The Queen) calls the shots. Frears has a habit of making Academy troubling films, and it seems The Program is intent on upholding that tradition.

This story already received pretty comprehensive treatment in the 2013 documentary The Armstrong Lie, so there’s definitely a need for The Program to bring something else to the table. Focusing...

Over the past few years, documentarian Alex Gibney has risen to prominence for his willingness to tackle a number of controversial subjects, directing The Armstrong Lie about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, and We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, about the controversial website and its founder Julian Assange, among others. With his last documentary, released earlier this year, looking at Scientology, Gibney is poised to turn his focus next to the late Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. The documentary will be titled Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, and the synopsis is as follows.

A look at the personal and private life of the late Apple CEO, Steve Jobs.

The documentary made its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival earlier this year, and is poised to be released to On-Demand platforms in the Us on September 4th, following a Canadian release on August 21st. The first trailer...

The Program The story of Lance Armstrong's prolific campaign to hide his use of performance enhancing drugs has already been explored in movies (The Armstrong Lie), but if documentaries aren't your thing, there's a dramatized version on the way. Directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, High Fidelity) and starring Ben Foster as the cyclist, The Program looks like it tries to get inside the mind of the man who lied to the world for years. The Program does not have a Us release date yet, but it will hit theaters in Europe this September.   The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Henry Cavill (best known as the man from Krypton) and Armie Hammer (best known as the two men from The Social Network) star in Guy Ritchie's big-screen reboot of the '60s spy...

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Lance Armstrong went from an American hero to the most hated man in America when it was revealed that he had blood doped and cheated in order to win his record seven Tour de France titles, but had also lied to everyone while off the bike that he was clean. It culminated in a revealing interview between Lance and Oprah and a documentary film called The Armstrong Lie by Alex Gibney.

Now for the first time Lance’s story is being told in a dramatic fiction form, exposing his lie and all that led up to it. Will Stephen Frears’s movie help the cyclist earn some of his credibility back, or will it make him even more of the villain?

Ben Foster portrays Lance in The Program, Armstrong’s story after recovering from cancer up through his Tour victories and till his lie was revealed, all filtered through a...

Cycling fans loved his story of the comeback and his victory over cancer. After 7 Tour de France wins, Lance Armstrong thought he’d never get caught.

Studiocanal and Working Title Films have released the first trailer for Academy Award nominated director Stephen Frears’ (Philomena, The Queen) film, The Program.

The film stars Ben Foster, Chris O’Dowd, Lee Pace, Guillaume Canet, Jesse Plemons and Dustin Hoffman.

The film charts the thrilling rise of pro-cyclist Lance Armstrong through the 90s and early 2000s, battling cancer, as he and his fellow American teammates dominate and change the quintessentially European sport of cycling. Winning the Tour de France an unprecedented seven times, Lance retires as one of the great sporting heroes of our time, and worth millions of dollars.

David Walsh, sports writer, is at first charmed by Lance’s charisma and talent. Seven Tours later, and ostracised by the cycling community for speaking out,...

The distributor has acquired North American rights from Yari Film Group to Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police, which screens in the Cannes market today.

The documentary, based on guitarist Andy Summers’ memoir One Train Later, recounts the story of the UK band’s rise to fame, their break-up and 2007 reunion tour.

Andy Grieve directed and recently served as editor on The Armstrong Lie and We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks.

Norman Golightly, Nicolas Cage and Bob Yari produced and William J Immerman served as executive producer. Summers composed the score.

Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police screens at 8.30pm at the Palais – Bory.

You can add another comic-book-to-tv project to your watch list – dystopian sci-fi Lazarus from Greg Rucka and Michael Lark...

Legendary Television has picked up the TV rights to the still-ongoing comic book series Lazarus, it was announced yesterday, after an apparently competitive war of bidding.

The comic – created by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark – is a dystopian science-fiction tale. It’s set in a world where 16 wealthy families rule over all of society. There’s a bit of superpower-esque twist, too – each family has an immortal ‘Lazarus’ on their side.

These Lazarus characters (Lazari?) are genetically engineered to be un-killable in order to protect their families. Forever Carlyle, the series protagonist, is one of these characters.

However, there’s a little more to the comic than that short summary can do justice to, it’s a cunning deconstruction of the class system which provides food for thought as well as fights and stuff,...

The CNN Films and Jigsaw production was well-received at SXSW, just as Gibney's Sundance entry "Going Clear: Scientology, The Prison of Belief" hits theaters in advance of HBO (March 29). Magnolia has acquired the theatrical, VOD and home entertainment rights to "Steve Jobs," while CNN Films has the television broadcast distribution rights. This is the seventh film directed by Gibney to be distributed by Magnolia. Described as "a renegade, but legit," "a study in contrasts," "a monk among priests," "maniacal" and "a rebel," Jobs is sketched in contradictory terms in in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine" by Oscar-winner Gibney ("Taxi to the Dark Side," "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "We Steal Secrets," "The Armstrong Lie," "Finding Fela"). "This bracing film at first seduces you with the charms of the...

Plot: An in-depth expose of Scientology, from its founding by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, through its relentless rise in popularity throughout the eighties and nineties. Review: Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief is absolutely incendiary entertainment. The latest doc from Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie, We Steal Secrets and many more) this expose aims to once and for all blow the lid off one of the most controversial organizations of the last half century ....

An intriguing tale about alternative history, a twisted story of friendship put to the ultimate test, a docu-series based on America’s most award-winning magazine, a kids series based on magic and another about being stinky and dirty—all are coming exclusively to Prime Instant Video later this year and in 2016.

Amazon today announced it has greenlit five new Amazon Original Series, including The Man in the High Castle, which is based on the Philip K. Dick alternative history novel; an hour-long dark comedy Mad Dogs; docu-series The New Yorker Presents; along with kids shows Just Add Magic, and The Stinky & Dirty Show.

The new Amazon Original Series come from an acclaimed creative roster including Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), Cris Cole (The Good Times Are Killing Me), Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie), Joe Nussbaum (George Lucas in Love, Awkward), and Kate & Jim McMullan (I’m Dirty!

Judging by the Park City crowds that attempted to elbow their way into the world premiere of Going Clear: Scientology And The Prison Of Belief one might say this is Alex Gibney’s most talked-about film to date.

And that is saying a lot for the veteran documentarian who has made a career out of pushing boundaries.

The film adopts a similar structure to Lawrence Wright’s 2013 bestseller of the same name, focusing on eight people who broke away from the grip of the Scientology community and their difficult, often troubling, stories that resulted.

As the title of both film and book suggests, ‘The Prison Of Belief’ is what Gibney and Wright refer to as the boxed-in walls that confine a person into believing what they are told. It is, as Gibney puts it, “that ‘terrifying certainty of faith’ that gives comfort in not having to ask the tough questions everyday.”

We meet at...

Get ready to watch, rate and review Amazon’s just-released pilots – a slate of 13 original comedy, drama, docuseries and kids offerings now available on Amazon Instant Video.

The pilots come from a talented creative roster that includes both newcomers discovered through Amazon Studios as well as highly-acclaimed veterans such as Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files), Carlton Cuse (Lost), Randall Wallace (Braveheart), Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Brad Silberling (Jane the Virgin, Lemony Snickets…), Mark Waters (Mean Girls), Academy and Emmy Award winning director Alex Gibney (The Armstrong Lie), Angela Santomero (Blue’s Clues), and Carol Greenwald (Arthur).

Over the course of the next four weeks, viewer feedback will ultimately help to decide which of them get picked up to full series. So your opinions matter! You could help choose the next Golden Globe-winning series, after all.

Check out the synopsis of each of them below, and start watching them here today.

A close-up look at a family torn apart by the start of the Civil War. An adaptation of Phillip K. Dick’s alternate history of the United States post-World War II. A satire of new age yoga culture in west Los Angeles. And a docu-series based on America’s most award-winning magazine.

Get ready for our first pilot season of 2015, when seven new series will debut their first episodes in January on Amazon Instant Video in the U.S. and U.K.. As with previous pilot seasons, you’ll be invited to watch each of them and provide feedback on the ones you’d like to see become full series.

The seven new pilots come from both highly-acclaimed and newly-discovered creators, and an impressive roster of talented actors have signed on to bring each pilot to life. Here’s a brief summary of each:

Cocked — A big city corporate lapdog...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Where feature filmmakers head into a project with a script and a plan, the path for documentarians is unpredictable. They follow real subjects and real issues often in real time — and sometimes for years at a time — and piece everything together as the footage comes along. Sometimes, things fall apart or the subject has to change, such as it with Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie (2013). Though different skill sets go into the distinct film forms, some documentary filmmakers choose to transition to narrative features and vice versa, such as Spike Lee, whose next release will be a documentary titled Go Brasil Go!.

Rob Epstein and Jeff Friedman have made the jump from documentaries to feature films and have said that they intend on continuing to make both types of film. Epstein and Friedman won an Oscar for their first co-directed documentary, Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt...

The world’s biggest film festival for children and young people will include preview screenings of The Imitation Game and Disney doc Bears [pictured]; Q&A’s with Harry Potter’s David Yates, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter and Selfish Giant director Clio Bernard.

Into Film Festival (Nov 4-21), the world’s biggest such event for children and young people, is preparing to launch its 2014 edition with a raft of previews, filmmaker Q&As and workshops on how to break into the industry.

Formerly known as the National Youth Film Festival, the programme anticipates 300,000 attendees aged 5-19 - up from 200,000 last year - at screenings and events across the UK and is funded by Cinema First and supported by the BFI through National Lottery money.

The programme will roll out across more than 520 cinemas across all the major chains and in a range of venues across the UK. Autism friendly screenings and, for sensory-impaired...

★★★★☆The pursuit of freedom is a learned rite of passage handed down to youthful exuberance. These freedoms often take the shape of kinetic apparatus given to children, whether they be skateboards or bicycles. In The Armstrong Lie (2013), Lance Armstrong talks about a bike being a child's first grasp on the idea of independence. The skateboard takes that and moves it within a different paradigm. Outside the culture while evolving it's own organically grown counter-culture, skateboarding is now part of the mainstream. All This Mayhem (2014) examines at pair of young Australian 'bogans' from a poor suburb of Melbourne who completely shook up the hegemony of the American-dominated boarding culture.