AlphaGo (2017) - A small British AI company designs a computer program to play Go, a board game thousands of years old that has a near-astronomical number of variations. They take their creation to South Korea to compete against the world champion Go player, with unexpectedly moving results.
Jasper Mall on Amazon. It follows the goings-on in a dying Alabama mall over a year. Kind of hard to watch in places for me, especially since I grew up in the heyday of malls and also worked in one for a few years.
Watched this last night, Amazon Prime. Really good if you like sailing and a genuinely strong woman, as opposed who one who just claims to be.
The fascinating Mr. Soul on HBOMax about Ellis Haizlip and his groundbreaking PBS show Soul. Haizlip's show was an uncompromising reflection/exploration of Black culture - ideas, art, poetry, music - in the late 60's, early 70's. Equally uncompromising was Haizlip himself - a soft-spoken, openly gay theater nerd who by default, stepped out from behind the scenes to serve as the show's host. ...and this was some show, too. The bands and artists who appeared on Soul performed live, and the doc is stacked full of vintage clips of Earth, Wind and Fire, the electric Last Poets and Stevie Wonder (Wonder, as the film notes, enjoyed himself so much he kept playing long after the show finished taping.) There was more to Soul - and to Black culture - than music and Haizlip's guests included James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, and Muhammad Ali. If you left Summer of Soul needing more soul, Mr. Soul could be the fix you're looking for.
I watched the lost interview with Carroll Shelby on the Ford vs. Ferrari race. Loved it. The man of a thousand stories. It was on Youtube.
Quiet Storm, The Ron Artest Story (saw Malice At The Palace the night before). A little more favourable treatment of Artest's life than the portion that was portrayed in Malice At The Palace. Both recommended
That sounds fascinating! I'm a huge fan of the Rialto Report podcast, and would pay money to see video versions of their stories. The production quality is at least as good as anything by NPR or the BBC, and the stories they find are absolutely fascinating. The most recent one is a three-part special about Dolly Sharp, Linda Lovelace's friend "Helen" in the film Deep Throat. Seconded! Also worth watching is the documentary called Produced by George Martin, which was done while he was still alive. We just got out of a documentary called The Last Leonardo, about a da Vinci painting of suspect authenticity, that wound up selling for $450 million. To paraphrase Mark Twain, truth is stranger than fiction because truth doesn't have to make sense.
I'm also a big fan of the Rialto Report. They tell stories no one else would have told and they do it beautifully.
I've been binging on Defuntcland, a YouTube web series. Created by Kevin Perjurer. It is pretty amazing. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVo63lbKHjC04KqYhwSZ_Pg Defunctland - Wikipedia I watched a really great one on the now notorious Action Park. (Yes, I have been there, LOL) The now closed Vernon, NJ water park, also known as "Class Action Park" in a similar but different, and not quite as good, HBO doc. But some of the other Defuntland episodes are even better. The one about the 1964 NYC World's Fair was one of the best web docs I have ever seen, anywhere.
Inventing David Geffen -- really interesting, and amazing how many big-name stars they got to participate in it. Count Me In -- about drummers, also very interesting and entertaining I thought.
NYC Epicenters 9/11 through 2021 and a Half (episode 3): Directed by Spike Lee on HBO Episode 4 airing now Very moving, very sad!
Thank you, the NYC World's Fair Defunctland show was great to see. My parents took my brother and me to that fair when I was 5 or 6 (don't remember which year we went to it.) I do remember being exhausted a lot with all the walking and standing required, but it was an amazing time and event to experience.
The two hour 2021 show on the History channel last night about the construction and design of the WTC, it's pluses and negatives. That slurry wall in the foundation performed beyond expectation!
Nico, Icon. Docu about the 60s model/singer/actress' life. Tragic, depressing, essential but, kinda wished I'd passed.
Watching the drumming documentary, ‘Count Me In’ on Netflix. If you’re a musician, you should check this one out.
Yes, that's excellent, but I remember it first airing one or two years ago. However, Saturday night the History Channel had two NEW docs, and the one called "Four Flights" was excellent. It was the first in depth doc I recall which was about the passengers of the planes, which seem to often get overlooked. Simply horrible to know what they went through and their final moments. At the time of the crashes, I was horrified to learn that Barbara Olson was on the plane that hit the Pentagon. She was one of my favorite commentators on Fox news at the time, and her husband, Ted Olson, was the U.S. solicitor general at the time. And his statements during the interview about their last cell phone conversation while her plane was nearing the Pentagon, and then it was cut off when her plane hit, was chilling.
