Though Kevin Macdonald’s documentary Whitney was commissioned and technically authorized by Whitney Houston’s estate (whose executor is the late singer’s sister-in-law, Pat Houston), the film is nonetheless the subject of a thorough and at times scathing statement released by Whitney’s mother, Cissy Houston.
“You want our blood, but you don’t want our pain,” is how Whitney Houston assessed the public’s interest in superstars in a 1991 interview with Ebony. This was years before her problems with drugs were common knowledge, and decades before her 2012 death from drowning (in which cocaine, per the Los Angeles County…
For such an affectionate, authorized portrait, Morgan Neville’s Fred Rogers bio-doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor contains enough revelations to make you see Rogers in a new light. While multiple sources maintain that the soft-spoken, kind persona Rogers inhabited on his long-running children’s show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood…
The 1975 documentary Grey Gardens turned eccentric mother-and-daughter recluses “Big” and “Little” Edie Beale into legends. But the story behind that story is a legend in its own right. It’s a tale of unseen film footage that was lost or buried for reasons that aren’t entirely clear and has, it seems, magically…
It’s easy to remember the late designer Alexander McQueen as a stunning visionary, a fashion designer who seemed to build entirely new worlds on his runway. They were collections inspired by violence and blood, surgery and mental hospitals, robots and aliens, and were an indelible influence on so many designers that…
It was the golden gown meme-d around the world: the gorgeously embroidered, yellow cape that Rihanna wore to the 2015 Met Ball, so heavy and delicate that it took several men to help her carry its train on the red carpet. The designer responsible for the look was Guo Pei, a Chinese fashion designer who specializes in…
“You don’t know her story until you hear the truth,” read title cards in the just-released trailer for the estate-approved Whitney Houston doc, Whitney, due out July 6. The warm and fuzzy preview touts “unprecedented access to her family and friends,” perhaps to contrast with last year’s Nick Broomfield/Rudi Dolezal…
Gloria Allred’s frequent use of her outside voice—in old footage, speeches, and at press conferences spanning decades—becomes a running theme in Seeing Allred, a documentary available on Netflix this Friday. Directed by Roberta Grossman and Sophia Sartain, the film charts Allred’s career as a civil rights attorney and…
PBS announced on Tuesday that it will air a five-part series about the #MeToo moment. The series, #MeToo, Now What?, is scheduled to debut on February 2.
Actress Rose McGowan has emerged as one of the fiercest fighters against sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood in the #MeToo era, and in response E!’s commissioned a five-part docuseries chronicling her life as she navigates a post-Harvey Weinstein world. The first trailer for the series, dubbed Citizen Rose,…
The UK’s Channel 4 has announced its plans air a documentary about the final days of Prince. According to the press release, Prince’s Last Year “will examine the last 365 days of his life, following him from a secret gig at the White House to his first ever solo concerts, called the Piano & a Microphone tour.” Cee-Lo…
George Michael: Freedom calls on so many talking-head rock-doc tropes, it’s as though it’s following an instruction manual. Earnest interview footage of its subject that seeks to deepen and humanize the common public perception of him? Check. Fawning interviews from his famous friends, collaborators, and admirers?…
There has never been a film like Dina. The documentary, which won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize prize at Sundance earlier this year and was released in New York on Friday with more locations in coming weeks, plays like a quirky indie rom-com. It’s a slice of working-class life just outside of Philadelphia that…
A new documentary about Andrew Wakefield, the former gastroenterologist and floppy-haired mascot of vaccine skepticism, draws its title from a phrase Wakefield used to describe himself. The film does not get much more critical from here.
There are artists and there are pop stars and rarely the twain shall meet. In a review of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent Comme des Garçons exhibit, artist/writer David Salle wrote a sentence that succinctly exposed just how different these professional species are: “The modern artist says, Love me for hating…
In 1990, George Michael risked throwing his immense fame away for the sake of his artistry. He was tired of being a commodity, and instead of merely complaining, he actually did something about it. Coming off the phenomenal global success of his solo debut Faith, he recorded a mostly downcast, singer-songwriter album …
Before YouTube tutorials and social media, there was Kevyn Aucoin—the first true celebrity makeup artist, whose life is celebrated in Kevyn Aucoin: Beauty & The Beast In Me, a documentary that aired Thursday night on Logo.
The new documentary Ex Libris - The New York Public Library works like a Russian nesting doll of information about information about information. In the signature style of master documentarian Frederick Wiseman, this sprawling, almost three-and-a-half-hour opus delivers a series of vignettes (many recurring) shot at…
Every new bit of information that’s released about Gaga: Five Foot Two inexplicably makes me more excited to see it—strange, for a movie about a pop star that I do not care that much about.
I’ve never clamored for a Lady Gaga tour documentary, but after seeing these brief clips of the one that is on its way, my body is now completely ready.
