Dreams with Sharp Teeth, a twenty-six-years-in-the-making bio-doc on the life, times, rants, and raves of science fiction writer/raconteur Harlan Ellison directed by Erik Nelson, is a perfect primer for anyone unfamiliar with Ellison’s contributions to the written word, television, and film. Be forewarned, though, Nelson gives Ellison free reign to express his dissatisfaction about anything and everything, from television as opiate (an old argument, that) to creator rights in a tangled, media-saturated world. As fascinating as Dreams with Sharp Teeth is, it’s also frustrating for the questions Nelson doesn’t ask (probably to avoid a patented Ellison rant or rave about whatever subject crosses his path).

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, a heart-wrenching, thought-provoking documentary edited and directed by Kurt Kuenne explores, in often excruciating detail, the death of his best friend, Andrew Bagby, a twenty-eight year old doctor completing his residency in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. On the morning of November 5, 2001, Bagby’s bullet-riddled body was found in a public park. Suspicion almost immediately turned to Bagby’s ex-girlfriend, Dr. Shirley Turner, a Canadian woman who studied with Bagby at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She moved to the United States to be closer to Bagby. As Turner’s arrest seemed imminent, she fled back to St. John’s, a small city in Newfoundland, Canada.
Kuenne [...]

Written and directed by Ethan Higbee and Adam Bhala Lough, The Upsetter promises, with more than a bit of hyperbole, to document Jamaican music pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry’s life and times (definitively at that). Perry, a songwriter, singer, and producer, helped to define reggae in the late 1960s and early 1970s, working with Bob Marley and the Wailers, and later dub, the predecessor to electronic music. In one, five-year period during the 1970s, Perry produced an average of 20 songs a week for artists in Jamaica and Britain. The later 70s’ saw Perry collaborating with The Clash. One of their early hits, “Police and Thieves,” was actually a cover of [...]

A documentary directed by Rene Pinnell and Claire Huie about Pinnell’s uncle, Texas filmmaker Eagle Pennell (Last Night at the Alamo, The Whole Shootin’ Match), The King of Texas, is both an affectionate tribute to Pennell and his brand of regional-based, DIY filmmaking and a cautionary tale about substance and alcohol abuse and the premature end of a once promising filmmaking career. Over less than three decades, Pennell made four feature films, one short, and contributed to a documentary (Good Life). Pennel was forced to work with meager resources and no distribution outside of local film festivals.

Some documentaries enlighten. The best documentaries do both. Case Directed by Ellen Spiro, a professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin, and Phil Donahue, the former television host whose last television program was cancelled by MSNBC (ostensibly for low ratings, but probably for his liberal-progressive views), Body of War, a deeply moving, ultimately heart-wrenching documentary, follows Tomas Young, an Iraq War veteran injured in 2005 during an assault on convoy, his arduous rehab, physical setbacks, his marriage, and his political activism as a member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Bright, articulate, and passionate, Young found purpose and meaning by becoming a [...]

Bananaz, Ceri Levy’s behind-the-scenes/tour documentary centered on Gorillaz, the virtual band created by Damon Albarn, lead singer and songwriter for the Brit-pop band, Blur, and Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of Tank Girl, is, alas, the kind of insular, for-fans-only documentary that means a limited theatrical run, if any, and a somewhat appreciative audience on DVD for completists of Gorillaz-centered merchandise or material. Even Gorillaz fans, though, might find themselves bored or otherwise disengaged from Levy’s loose, unstructured, and ultimately self-indulgent approach to the Gorillaz phenomenon.
Bananaz follows Albarn and Hewlett as they formulate the concept behind the Gorillaz and the four amine-influenced band members, 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel, that exist [...]

What would happen to your brain and body if you smoked good weed for 30 days straight? That is the premise of comedian Doug Benson’s Morgan Spurlock-one-upping documentary Super High Me. The film is currently showing at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, and while Peter hasn’t seen it, reviews thus far have been favorable, with many expressing respect for the extensive tests Benson puts himself through. He even, uh, went weed-sober for 30 days before the wake-and-bake trials started.

If, like the vast majority of music listeners, you’re unfamiliar with the term “nerdcore,” then you’re in luck. Nerdcore Rising, an engrossing documentary directed by Negin Farsad, will answer any and all questions you may have about nerdcore, a relatively new hip-hop genre made by and for nerds (e.g., computer nerds, gaming nerds, and pop culture nerds). Farsad tackles nerdcore from various vantage points, interviewing hip-hop names like Prince Paul and J. Live, outside-the-hip-hop-box names like comedian Brian Posehn, singer/comedian ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and Jello Biafra, the former lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, a post-punk rock band that had its heyday in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s, [...]

Every year, 25,000 students apply to New York City’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. Out of those 25,000 students, only 750 get in. A meritocracy in the best sense of the word, Stuyvesant pulls in the best and the brightest, regardless of wealth, class, race, or gender. Most of the students are the children of first- or second-generation immigrants, with close to fifty percent identified as Asian. The top percentile of each graduating class goes on to Ivy League or other well-respected universities and colleges. Not surprisingly, the yearly elections for president of the student body are famed for their hyper-competitiveness. If that sounds like a subject that’d make [...]

As you may know, American Teen is my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s the first documentary that has true mainstream appeal. And by that I mean beyond political bounds, and able to tap the minds of the post-MTV / American Idol generation.
I was just able to catch the film for a second time at SXSW, and the audience ate up every minute, and even applauded during some key moments of the story. Our friends at Collider have a photo of the theatrical American Teen poster. I have cleaned the image up a little for your viewing pleasure. I love the minimalistic clean design, but Im not sure [...]

SXSW is a film festival that celebrates the long tail of indie films. The first two documentaries I’ve seen at SXSW have in one way or another focused on the idea of pop-culture escapism. Second Skin took a look at the addicted video gamers that inhabit the online virtual worlds, and now We Are Wizards takes a look at a niche within a niche, Wizard Rock, a musical genre which was born out of the Harry Potter novels.
Harry and the Potters had their first public show in a Boston area library. The geeky duo now tour the country with hundreds of fans attending each show. Wizard Rock was born, and [...]

Last night I was able to catch a great movie called Second Skin (bad title), about the culture behind the gamers who inhabit the virtual online worlds of World or Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life. Over 50 million people around the world live in these online worlds, and Second Skin takes a look at a few of the characters in this space, running the gambit from a couple who met online in WOW and will be meeting for the first time ever in the real world, to a young man who’s addiction to WOW drove him to move into a boarding house as part of a 12-step online gamers self [...]

On Wednesday we told you that Steve Wiebe, noted Donkey Kong competitor and star of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong, was going to attempt to set the Donkey Kong World Record at Microsoft’s MIX08 event tonight in Las Vegas, with referee Walter Day in attendance. Many readers have commented and e-mailed me asking if Wiebe was able to defeat champion Billy Mitchell’s score of 1,050,200 points. A few minutes ago we received the following unsolicited e-mail:
“Steve scored approx. 929,000 and reached the kill screen I believe… Great effort… Thanks, Billy Mitchell”
That’s right, THAT Billy Mitchell e-mailed us to brag that he is still the record holder. I’m [...]

Update: Did Steve Wiebe Reclaim His Title as The King of Kong?
/Film reader Joseph D sent word that Steve Wiebe, noted Donkey Kong competitor and star of the 2007 documentary The King of Kong, will attempt to set the Donkey Kong World Record later today at Microsoft’s MIX08 event tonight in Las Vegas, with referee Walter Day in attendance.
Video game champion Billy Mitchell beat Wiebe’s record in June of 2007, and currently is ranked #1 with 1,050,200 points to Steve’s 1,049,100 points (only 1,100 points separating them). The event takes place during Microsoft’s TAO NIGHTCLUB PARTY from 6:00pm to10:00pm in The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino.
/Film wishes Steve Wiebe good [...]

Do we really need more coke overdoses in Hollywood? According to Page Six, Leonardo DiCaprio is in talks to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in a live-action remake of the quite awesome documentary Cocaine Cowboys. DiCaprio would star as Mickey Munday, a hick-type airplane pilot with an attitude and an insatiable appetite for the drug trade.
I was just talking to a friend about this flick while listening to Toto’s “Africa,” and the role of Mickey Munday came up. We felt he was getting shorthanded by the main “star” (former soldier/cocaine dealer Jon Roberts, whom Wahlberg is set to play) and we joked that Munday would pitch Hollywood his own idea. If [...]