News

Prime Video has acquired worldwide rights to Oscar-nominated filmmaker Irene Taylor’s Celine Dion documentary I Am: Celine Dion.

Filmed across the course of just over a year, the documentary offers a snapshot of a pivotal time in the pop icon’s life and career as she reveals her battle with Stiff Person Syndrome (Sps) and the lengths she has gone to continue performing for her beloved and loyal fans.

“This last couple of years has been such a challenge for me, the journey from discovering my condition to learning how to live with and manage it, but not to let it define me,” Dion said of the film.

“As the road to resuming my performing career continues, I have realised how much I have missed it, of being able to see my fans. During this absence, I decided I wanted to document this part of my life, to try...

A documentary about Celine Dion has been acquired by Amazon MGM.

The film, titled “I Am: Celine Dion,” will be available to stream on Prime Video at a yet-to-be-determined date. It’s not an expansive look at the life and times of the iconic pop singer, instead capturing a snapshot of a pivotal time in her career. The documentary spans about a year and chronicles Dion’s battle with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that affects the brain and the spinal cord. In the case of Dion, the illness halted her livelihood and ability to perform.

Dion didn’t officially share her diagnosis until December 2022, as she announced she was postponing her world tour due to spasms that impacted the way she walked and sang. “While we’re still learning about this rare condition, we now know this is what’s been causing all of the spasms that I’ve been having,...

A24 are delivering a special gift to Max this December, as Leo Reich’s acclaimed stand-up show Literally Who Cares?! hits the streamer. The comedian has already won over the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Off-Broadway with runs of the show, but this performance was taped at EartH in London. Consider checking it out – if A24 got involved in the project, you know you’ll definitely see something weird and special.

But if you’re looking for something more serious, add the new three-part documentary series Murder In Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning to your watch list this month. The upcoming series delves into the fallout from the investigation into Charles “Chuck” Stuart’s 911 call reporting that he and his pregnant wife, had been shot in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood in 1989.

Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) HBO and Max this month…

HBO and Max New Releases – December 2023

December...

"It builds on itself with time to become this. That's a story. That's a life well lived." HBO has revealed an official trailer for a breathtaking documentary film about trees, yes indeed about the magnificence of trees, with the title Trees and Other Entanglements. Filmmaker Irene Taylor crafts a poetic meditation on nature, mortality, and the passage of time in her exploration of our symbiotic nexus with trees.

In the last two years the documentary landscape has shifted from the golden age of docus to the corporate age of docus, making it increasingly difficult for nonfiction filmmakers with projects that aren’t about celebrities or true crimes to find distribution. But HBO Documentary Films is proving that despite being part of a corporate conglomerate, it still wants content that doesn’t necessarily pertain to bold faced names, salacious murders or cults.

Proof is Irene Taylor’s “Trees and Other Entanglements,” a feature doc that uses trees as the main throughline to tell various subject’s personal stories. Ahead of the film’s Dec. 12 world premiere on Max, HBO has released a trailer.

Taylor uses imagery, photography, and animation to introduce a diverse group of individuals entangled with the trees they love. Subjects include Bonsai master Ryan Neil, photographer Beth Moon, forest restorer Dirk Brinkman, recollector Carolyn Finney, and lumber heir George Weyerhaeuser Sr.