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Joe Berlinger, who has directed true-crime documentaries about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer, has helped get six innocent people out of prison including the West Memphis Three and has aided the families of countless victims of serial killers.

But Berlinger, whose latest series Conversations with a Killer: The Son of Sam Tapes comes out tomorrow on Netflix, does not love everything the incredibly popular genre has become. He tells Deadline that things have changed since he directed his first film, Brother’s Keeper, about an alleged murder in Munnsville, New York, in the early 1990s.

“If you Google me now, it often says he’s a true-crime pioneer or whatever and even today, after four seasons of Conversations with a Killer and Crime Scene and all of the other shows I’ve done, the phrase true-crime associated with my work gives me the willies. I like the...

When Imagine Documentaries president Sara Bernstein pitched New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams on making a film about her career, even the veteran journalist didn’t understand why Bernstein was interested. “What do you want to make a doc about me for?” Adams asked the “Jim Henson: Idea Man” producer. “Everybody has a documentary. My dentist has a documentary!”

Good line — and she must have a great dentist.

An incomplete list of this year’s celebrity docs includes Simone Biles, Celine Dion, Steve Martin, Roger Federer, Stevie van Zandt, Brian Eno, Frida Kahlo, Devo, Christopher Reeve, Sue Bird, Andrea Bocelli, Elton John, Martha Stewart, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Paul Anka, Pharrell Williams, and Bruce Springsteen.

The appetite seems nearly endless, but producers say it’s increasingly difficult to find famous people whose lives haven’t flashed before our eyes. Said Bernstein, “The challenge today is, who hasn’t had a documentary?...

While many retrospective looks at cinematic years past find plenty dividing the current state of movies from all that came before, 2004, in many ways, still feels representative of our idea of the modern film industry. Superheroes, sequels, and superhero sequels dominated the box office, while the award shows favored an...

Shelby Oaks is the highly anticipated debut film from Chris Stuckmann, the film critic and YouTube sensation who has parlayed his love of genre film into bringing this story of revenge and redemption to the big screen. Promising to tap the font of found footage films from the ‘90s and 2000s,...

Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial delves into the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazis with unseen footage and expert analysis. The docuseries sheds light on crucial figures like von Papen, failed assassination attempts, and the tragic fate of Jews during WWII. Through reenactments and historical accounts, Hitler and the Nazis warns against complacency towards extremist ideologies and the importance of justice.

Hitler and the Nazis: Evil On Trial is a 6-episode documentary series exploring the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party between his birth in 1889 and the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46 after the Second World War. Beginning with the trials themselves, the Netflix docuseries keeps cutting back and forth in time. It draws on 35 hours of previously unseen film footage of the trials and 1200 hours of audio. Netflix's Hitler and the Nazis tells this story through the perspective of American journalist William L.

The American Cinematheque is kicking off a robust new Los Angeles nonfiction film festival dubbed This Is Not a Fiction, running from April 10-18. The festival opens with docuseries “Thank You, Good Night: The Bon Jovi Story,” with Jon Bon Jovi in-person at the Aero Theatre for the L.A. premiere screening.

The event will include in-person tributes to distinguished documentary filmmakers including Barbara Kopple, Joe Berlinger, Brett Morgen, Bill Morrison, Kirsten Johnson, Terry Zwigoff, Jeff Tremaine and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, as well as a virtual Q&a with Frederick Wiseman.

Other premieres will include “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” “Power,” “Strong Island,” “Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg,” a restoration of “Lumumba: Death of a Prophet” and “Incident,” plus special presentations of Morgan Neville’s “Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces” and “Girls State.” A celebration of the 15th anniversary of “30 for 30” will feature a panel...

Sheila Nevins has produced documentaries for most of her professional life. But at 84, she’s still notching career firsts.

Last month, Nevins added “Oscar-nominated director” to her résumé, having landed her first nod for co-directing the short “The ABCs of Book Banning” with Trish Adlesic and Nazenet Habtezghi.

Nevins’ first Oscars as a nominee take place at the same time she is wrapping up her run as the head of MTV Documentary Films. Nevins joined the company in 2019 after 38 years at HBO.

“I went there to raise the bar for the intellectual quotient of what MTV could produce in the documentary arena,” Nevins says. “I did highbrow and lowbrow at HBO, but when I got to MTV, I just did highbrow.”

On Nevins’ watch, MTV produced 40 docs and landed five Oscar nominations, including a feature doc bid this year for “The Eternal Memory.”

“Sheila Nevins is an extraordinary storyteller,...

Before Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos took the world by storm with their Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, and even longer before Tiger King became a title synonymous with the first days of the Covid-19 lockdown, another film series left its stamp on the true crime genre. The year was 1996 and filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky perhaps had only a shadow of an idea of how groundbreaking their sophomore project, Paradise Lost, would be. Previously pairing for a story close to their own lives with 1992’s Brother’s Keeper, the duo had their eyes set on yet another horrific tale from a rural town.

Gruesome tales of grisly murder. Horror stories of kids in cults. False confessions and authentic admissions.

True crime has taken over the documentary space, proving a reliable audience attractor for streaming platforms, network and cable channels. While it’s the most popular genre within nonfiction programming broadly speaking, whether that will translate to success with Emmy voters remains an open question. One thing’s for certain: there’s no lack of contenders — twisted tales dripping with blood.

Netflix leads the way with multiple suitors, among them Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, the grim story of one of America’s most notorious serial killers, built largely around recorded interviews between Dahmer and one of his young defense attorneys in the early 1990s. It’s directed and executive produced by Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Joe Berlinger, one of the leading figures in documentary.

“As a storyteller, I thought the...

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While politicians debate the rise of crime, there’s no debate that there’s been an explosion of true-crime documentary series on cable TV and the streamers. Interviews with serial killers, re-creations of bloody murders, combative-courtroom footage and carefully orchestrated eleventh-hour revelations have almost become cliché — even as viewers eagerly tune in for more.

But that was not always the case. Thirty years ago, documentarian Joe Berlinger, 61, and his longtime collaborator and co-director, the late Bruce Sinofsky, broke new ground with their feature, Brother’s Keeper. That film centered on the arrest and trial of a rural upstate New York man named Delbert Ward, who was accused of killing his brother William, and it became a blueprint for Berlinger’s unfiltered examinations of American tragedies with all the drama of fictional narratives.

Joe Berlinger

Brother’s Keeper won the audience award at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival,...

I literally stared into the abyss of evil and saw things most people shouldn’t see.” So Joe Berlinger, the director behind Netflix’s new Jeffrey Dahmer documentary, tells me over Zoom one sunny autumn afternoon. He is bespectacled with a grey beard and an avuncular whiff of Mandy Patinkin about him.

Through those glasses, Berlinger has seen more than his fair share of things most people shouldn’t. Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, is out this Friday. It comes, very intentionally, two weeks after Ryan Murphy’s controversial dramatisation of events – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, starring Evan Peters – hit the streaming platform. The Dahmer Tapes rounds off a trilogy of serial killer documentaries Berlinger has released over the past three years. His first subject was the most famous – the “charming” murderer, Ted Bundy. Then came John Wayne Gacy, another nightmarish American killer who sometimes dressed...

The documentaries and nonfiction programs that are nominated at this year’s Emmy Awards chronicle a diverse range of stories that continue to show why these genres are an essential part of the new Golden Age of Television we are currently living in. The creatives behind five of this year’s Emmy contenders for documentary/nonfiction programming joined our recent Meet the Experts panel. The subjects tackled include how a financial arrangement controlled a worldwide pop star, the career of one of America’s greatest stand-up comedians, the relationship of television’s first power couple, big-wave surfers looking to catch the ultimate experience in Portugal and a world famous chef seeking to rethink how we supply food to people in need of relief.

In our panel discussion, we hear what these directors and producers have to say about finding out about their Emmy nomination this year, what it was like...

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Brother’s Keeper,” which, as Berlinger says, is “one of the granddaddies of the true-crime docu movement.”

It’s true that the 1992 film about the bizarre murder trial of Delbert Ward, who was accused of the “mercy killing” of his brother in rural upstate New York, was an early entrant in our collective societal obsession with the unscripted true-crime format, which in recent years has crossed over to the scripted side.

As one of the founding fathers of the format that has piqued our interest in true crime to the point where limited series including “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” “The Staircase,” “The Dropout,” “Inventing Anna,” “Dr. Death,” “A Very British Scandal,” and several more are all competing in the same Emmys’ cycle, Berlinger has some unique insight into the nonfiction-to-dramatized evolution.

“I can think of no other...

The second season of Joe Berlinger’s “Crime Scene” docuseries for Netflix, premiering Dec. 29, centers on the so-called Times Square Torso Ripper.

“Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer” will focus on how the danger and depravity of New York’s Times Square in the late 1970s and early 1980s allowed serial killer Richard Cottingham to commit heinous acts of murder for 13 years. Cottingham, along with Times Square and New York’s self-proclaimed porno king, Martin “Marty” Hodas, are all key characters in Season 2, which is split into three parts.

The first season of Berlinger’s series, “The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” launched in February and explored the real-life mysterious disappearance, subsequent death and conspiracy theories surrounding tourist Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. Netflix says 45 million households checked out Season 1 in the first four weeks of its debut. The streamer subsequently renewed the docuseries for three more seasons.

With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.

Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.

See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020

5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952

After Migration: Calabria,...

Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” and Mohammad Rasoulof’s “There Is No Evil” have won the top feature awards at the ninth annual Montclair Film Festival.

The awards were announced Monday following the festival’s 10-day run, which launched with Nomadland.” The film is set after the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, with Frances McDormand’s character Fern exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 11 and won the Golden Lion.

“Nomadland” won the audience award for fiction feature. Frank Oz’s “Derek DelGaudio’s In & of Itself” won the Audience Award for non-fiction feature. “Two of Us,” directed by Filippo Meneghetti, won the audience for world cinema. Mackenzie Robertson’s “Life Without Parole: The Sammy Gladden Story,” won the short film category.

“There Is No Evil” won the jury award for nonfiction feature. The...

As her instantly acclaimed new album (and first in eight years) Fetch the Bolt Cutters arrives today, we’re digging into the Fiona Apple archives. Of course there is much cinema-related goodness to be had, but there’s one substantial item of note that especially deserves a look. A 2006 episode of the Sundance Channel TV series Iconoclasts featured the musician alongside Quentin Tarantino; one is deep into Grindhouse pre-production, the other is coming off of her third album Extraordinary Machine.

The Bruce Sinofsky-directed episode finds them reuniting in Austin after five years of not seeing each other, and while the days of Apple surveying Qt and Paul Thomas Anderson on film-watching coke binges is hinted at but not discussed, there are plenty of memorable interactions. They talk about why they can need to take an extended time between projects and the pressure from outside forces that entails, as well...

Heaven and Earth: Meyers Tackles Organized Religion with Droll Thriller

Director Marc Meyers returns to the isolating terrors of the rural Midwest in a different kind of period piece one might likely expect from him with We Summon the Darkness, a late-80s subversive genre film which some could mistake as a comedy-hybrid—but despite the hysterical zaniness of some of its characters, this is merely a superficial veneer of something much darker. A trio of starlets headline this jaunty return to the prevalent fears of the late 80s and early 90s, when satanic cults inspired collective mob mentalities into culturally ordained witch hunts (think the Paradise Lost documentary trilogy from Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky detailing the Robin Hood Hills murders).…...

The 2010s was the decade that our collective interest in true crime boiled over into a full-on obsession. From the wrongly accused to sympathetic killers we want to be wrongly accused, we’ve been enthralled with any documentary, podcast, or book that treads the dark side of human nature. But over the past decade, there have been several turning points in the way we understand crime narratives — and the way people from those narratives understand themselves. Below, we outline five of the landmarks of the true crime oeuvre from the last 10 years.

A man walks into a bar. He’s handsome enough to attract the attention of the ladies in this tavern, including Liz Kloepfer, a single mother who’s been dragged to the tavern by her best friend for a night out. He notices her, too. They meet-cute at the jukebox, talk, flirt. He takes her home. She invites him in. They spend a chaste night together. When she wakes up, Liz finds him in the kitchen, fixing breakfast for her toddler. You can see her thinking: Who is this guy?...

Netflix is to add to its stable of informative content with a series looking at the most haunted locations in America.

Currently without a title, the series is described as “a gritty and meticulous study of some of America’s most notorious haunted locations,” promising episodes that won’t shy away from the grisly details of the tales featured, and that lovers of the dark and macabre will have plenty to keep them engaged.

The Us is awash with buildings and areas that have bloody and gruesome histories, meaning the show will have little trouble in finding inspiration. Possibilities of focus points include 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, New York (the location for the events that inspired The Amityville Horror) and the Winchester Mystery House, a labyrinthine mansion constructed with a deliberately confusing layout designed to trap spirits.

New Photos Show Off The Haunted Real-Life House From The Conjuring 1 of 7

Click to...

Serial killer Ted Bundy continues to fascinate the American public even decades after his execution. The latest demonstration of that comes with the popular success of the Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger. The four-part series is now contending for Emmy nominations.

It’s by no means the first documentary examination of Bundy’s string of brutal sex crimes in the 1970s, a fact not lost on Berlinger.

“The bar is awfully high to do something on Bundy, because it’s a well-worn tire,” the director recalls thinking when he was first approached with the documentary idea. The pitch came from Stephen Michaud, co-author of the book Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer, who had recorded hours of interviews with Bundy in the 1980s while the convicted murderer sat on Florida’s death row. Hearing the audio convinced Berlinger to move forward.

Netflix has become one of the internet’s biggest hubs for true crime documentaries. Later this month, the streaming service will debut a project on perhaps its most high-profile criminal figure yet.

Joe Berlinger’s “Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes” is a look into the acts and prosecution of the infamous serial killer, responsible for the deaths of over 30 women before being sentenced to death in 1979. As the series’ trailer shows, “Conversations with a Killer” features previously unheard audio interviews with Bundy during the time he was awaiting his execution.

As an overview of how Bundy got to that place in 1980, the series also looks to examine the way that his public trial turned the serial killer into an unexpected heartthrob of sorts among observers in person and in news reports. (The brutal evidence of photos of partially destroyed skulls serve as a jarring counterpoint to the...

Way before the modern craze of the true crime documentary, filmmaker Joe Berlinger had already released three of the best entries in the genre with his “Paradise Lost” trilogy of HBO films. Back when Steven Avery wasn’t on anyone’s radar, Berlinger and his filmmaking partner Bruce Sinofsky brought true crime to the mainstream with the docs about the West Memphis 3. And now, Berlinger is hoping to do the same again with a new docu-series about the notorious killer Ted Bundy.

Continue reading ‘Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes’ Trailer: ‘Paradise Lost’ Director Returns With New True Crime Series at The Playlist.

Tony Sokol Jan 14, 2019

While nothing has been established, bike stealing teens on True Detective season 3 might be a nod to the West Memphis Three.

True Detective Season 3 has only just begun and the suspects in the Purcell missing children case are piling up. Series creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto has been known to dig deep into the criminal underground for inspiration, and the state of Arkansas has more than a few skeletons buried in its mountainous woods. The kids who disappeared at the beginning of True Detective were spotted by quite a few of their neighbors on the afternoon they were last seen and we don't know who are witnesses and who might be the abductor. We see a scrapper, several people on the block and a gang of teenagers in a purple Volkswagen Beetle. If the kids look guilty perhaps it’s because they might be a nod to the West Memphis Three.

In today’s film news roundup, Billie Lourd joins high school drama “Booksmart,” Steve James gets an AFI honor, and the Yosemite climbing documentary “The Dawn Wall” gets distribution.

Casting

Billie Lourd has been cast opposite Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein in the high school drama “Booksmart,” directed by Olivia Wilde in her feature directorial debut.

The story follows Dever and Feldstein’s characters, who are academic superstars and best friends. The duo realizes that they should have worked less and played more and set out on a mission to cram four years of fun into one night.

Producers are Chelsea Barnard, David Distenfeld, and Megan Ellison for Annapurna and Jessica Elbaum, Will Ferrell, and Adam McKay for Gloria Sanchez. Filming is currently underway in Los Angeles.

Lourd is also returning for the eighth season of “American Horror Story” along with cast members Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Kathy Bates.

Watch out New York. According to New Jersey’s newly elected Gov. Phil Murphy, the Garden State’s film and television production tax credit will be returning soon.

The Governor made a surprise appearance Saturday night at the seventh annual Montclair Film Festival’s closing night festivities and announced that he will re-establish the state’s long defunct film production incentive.

“This is a great state not just to watch films,” Murphy said. “We have got to get back to doing what we used to do really well and make them in New Jersey. We have the artists. And by the way – I’m going to sign a law in the next few weeks that will give the financial incentives back.”

It’s been more than eight years since former Gov. Chris Christie suspended the state’s film tax program.

In 2005 a New Jersey production incentive was created to boost...

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is bringing in a legend. For the first time ever, Metallica frontman James Hetfield is going to act in a live-action movie. He is playing a cop in old friend Joe Berlinger's Ted Bundy biopic, which is headlined by Zac Efron in the lead role. The official Metallica Instagram page announced the news. They offered this about James' role in the movie.

"No rest for the wicked here as James spent a few of his days between tour dates in front of the camera once again for Academy-award nominated director @joeberlingerfilms as he filmed scenes for Joe's upcoming film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile. The movie follows the relationship between notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, played by Zac Efron, and his longtime girlfriend, played by Lily Collins, who at the time, had no knowledge of the crimes."

The post went onto reveal...

The Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards returned to Brooklyn’s Bric on Nov. 2 and anointed Brett Morgen’s “Jane” the Oscar frontrunner for Best Documentary Feature. That bodes well for the Jane Goodall profile as it continues its awards season run. Presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, the inaugural ceremony last year correctly augured that “O.J.: Made in America” and “13th” would win that season’s top documentary film and television prizes.

When the 2017 nominees were unveiled this October, so was a rule change that merged the Best Documentary categories for films released in theaters versus via television or a streaming platform. This meant that the latest field was extremely stacked — 16 titles — making the win for a feature on the Tanzania expeditions of beloved, now-octogenarian primatologist Dame Jane Goodall extra fortuitous. “Jane” premiered this fall at the Toronto Film Festival, earning an A- from IndieWire.

Tony Sokol May 16, 2017

Zac Efron signs up for the film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile, playing Ted Bundy...

Zac Efron will throw off any preconceived notions of what roles he’ll attack in the upcoming Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile. In the film, he's going to play serial killer Ted Bundy, working off a script by Michael Werwie.

Directed by Joe Berlinger, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile will tell the story of Bundy, who killed more than 30 people in the 1970s, through the eyes of his longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer. She defended Bundy for a long time, until she turned him in.

The film will be produced by Nicolas Chartier and Ara Keshishian. Efron’s Ninjas Runnin’ Wild banner will produce alongside Michael Simkin and Jason Barrett. Werwie and Jonathan Deckter will be executive producing.

“I have been trying to work with Zac Efron for a long time,...

Tony Sokol Apr 2, 2019

Zac Efron takes a turn as serial killer Ted Bundy in Netflix movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

It's Ted Bundy's turn in the pop culture true crime spotlight.

Bundy, the unusually charismatic serial killer who terrorized the Pacific Northwest for years, is the subject of the upcoming biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. Zac Efron is set to star as the monster, himself.

The film is directed by Joe Berlinger, who co-directed the Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills documentaries with the late Bruce Sinofsky, and Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, Brother's Keeper and Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger. He recently directed the recent documentary Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru.

Berlinger also had a hand in the recent Ted Bundy documentary for Netflix, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Here is everything we...

Zac Efron’s long since graduated from High School Musicals; lately, he’s been seen leading off-campus ragers in the two Neighbors movies, and landing a role in the upcoming The Greatest Showman On Earth. But his latest project will see him venture into psychological thriller territory with one of the Paradise Lost documentary makers. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Efron has nabbed the lead role in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile. Joe Berlinger, who’s co-helmed the Paradise Lost movies about the West Memphis Three with Bruce Sinofsky, is directing the film, which has a Black List-approved script from Michael Werwie.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile will see Efron embodying the qualities in its Oxford comma-free title as real-life serial killer Ted Bundy. The story will be told from the perspective of Bundy’s longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Kloepfer, who only faced the truth about her murderous boyfriend...

The 2017 Montclair Film Festival came to an end over the weekend, revealing the winners in its four competitions. Five efforts competed in each category: fiction, documentary, future/now and New Jersey films.

The fiction feature prize went to William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth, with Florence Pugh receiving a special jury prize for her performance.

The documentary feature competition's Bruce Sinofsky Award was given to Yance Ford's Strong Island, with a special jury prize for direction given to Matthew Heineman for City of Ghosts.

Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats won the future/now prize, honoring...

Catherine Pearson Feb 22, 2017

Documentary fans are well served by these 11 great documentary series and features, currently available on Netflix UK...

In recent years, even months, Netflix has upped its game. No longer just a site to instantly stream an old title you might have once picked up in Blockbuster, it's become a hub of quality new and original film and television and this is by no means limited to its vast selection of fiction.

See related The world of the Peaky Blinders

With the scope of possibility in visual effects and the boundlessness of imagination there are very few places we cannot explore in fiction nowadays… that is unless we explore stories that are stranger than fiction. There is a tangible thirst for the real; the overwhelming response to recent Netflix documentary Making A Murderer in the news and social media, as just one example, exposes the desire for and...

When filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky arrived in West Memphis, Arkansas in June 1993, they came with an agenda: to document what looked like a new wave of alienated youth-turned-murderers. A few months earlier, two 10-year-olds in the U.K. had made headlines when they abducted, tortured and murdered a two-year-old, and now the filmmakers had read about the brutal murders of three eight-year-old boys ostensibly committed by teenage Satanists. It seemed like a trend. "We went down to make a film about guilty teenagers, like a real Rivers Edge,...

Even in the aftermath of an acrimonious breakup, the biggest British rock band since the Beatles check yet another box off in the legendary band to-do list with Oasis: Supersonic. The new documentary, now playing in a limited run in U.S. theaters, is every bit as worthy as some of the greatest rock docs of all time, from Julien Temple's Sex Pistols chronicle The Filth and the Fury to Joe Berlinger and the late Bruce Sinofsky's epic Metallica examination, Some Kind of Monster.

Focused solely on the meteoric rise that saw the scrappy Manchester disciples of Lennon-McCartney, Stone Roses, and the Smiths go from pubs to a pair of historic concerts at Knebworth that saw one in twenty (!) British citizens apply for tickets, Supersonic is as kinetic, transcendental and combustive as the two brothers at the band's center.

The charm and bravado of impossibly charismatic frontman Liam...

HBO has acquired U.S. rights to Leah Wolchok’s documentary Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait Of New Yorker Cartoonists, with the pic premiering on the network December 7 following an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run starting November 20 in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The pic, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, offers a window into single-panel cartoon king The New Yorker, offering up a glimpse into the process behind their creation. The pic follows cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as he sifts through hundreds of submissions and pitches every week.

Wolchok also produced her feature debut alongside Davina Pardo. Regina K. Scully, Deborah Shaffer and the late Bruce Sinofsky are executive producers and Joanna Sokolowski co-produced. Cinetic Media repped the the deal on behalf of the filmmakers.

The Power/Rangers fan film and The Grey producer Adi Shankar is set to make his directorial debut alongside...

Asif Kapadia's breathtaking documentary Amy is already wowing critics and fans, so its official release this week makes it a good a time to be reminded of some other great music documentaries.

There's David Byrne's giant suit and Bob Dylan's oversize shades. Two films from Martin Scorsese but just one from Julien Temple. Punk rockers and pop superstars. We count through ten leading music documentaries below.

10. The Filth and The Fury (2000)

Julien Temple's first Sex Pistols film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was Malcolm McLaren's make-it-up-as-you-go-along take on things. Twenty years on the same director gave the group the right to reply, including Sid Vicious with some beyond-the-grave archive footage.

9. In Bed with Madonna (1991)

Known as Madonna: Truth or Dare in the Us, this absurdly naughty chronicle of the Queen of Pop's infamous 'Blond Ambition' tour is arguably her greatest on-screen moment. Bitchiness, bottle-fellating...

Brett Morgen has been called the Mad Scientist of the documentary world with his latest film, the long-awaited Kurt Cobain biography “Montage of Heck.” Morgen certainly lives up to that billing, creating an explosive and totally unique visual and cinematic experiences out of the fallen rock god’s various creations. I have known Brett since we were both 14 years old, having gone to high school and then college together, where we were in roommates. Since the first days of our acquaintance, I have never known anyone with such a firm sense of who he was and what he wanted to do, and that has only strengthened over the years. However, what astonished me seeing “Montage” for the first time was how much his creative skills have grown as a director, so that wild, unstoppable sense of Brettism is now married to awe-inspiring technical superpowers, that have enabled him to produce what in my very-biased mind,...

Read More: Stephen Colbert, Richard Gere and More Announced for Montclair Film Festival Conversation Series This year's Montclair Film Festival (Mff) has announced its full lineup, and it features a slew of acclaimed titles currently making the festival circuit. Mff, which features Stephen Colbert on its advisory board and takes place in Montclair, New Jersey, is headed into its fourth year, and will be handing out jury prizes in major categories for the first time.  In addition, two special awards will be presented. The David Carr Award for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking will honor a filmmaker, selected by the festival, who utilizes journalistic techniques to explore important contemporary subjects. Established by the festival in memory of late New York Times journalist David Carr, this award will be presented by his friend and colleague Brian Stelter ("Reliable Sources").  The Bruce Sinofsky Prize, in honor of the eponymous documentarian, will...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will honor the memory of Oscar-nominee and Emmy-award winning director Bruce Sinofsky with a memorial service, his longtime filming partner Joe Berlinger announced on Friday. Sinofsky, a celebrated documentarian and director, passed away in February from complications brought on by diabetes. He first came to prominence in 1996 when he co-directed “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills” with Berlinger. The film told the story of the West Memphis Three, teenage boys who were convicted in the brutal murders of three younger boys. See Photos: Hollywood’s Notable Deaths of 2015 The film was followed by two.

A memorable 87th annual Academy Awards for Fox Searchlight saw Birdman claim best film, director and two other statuettes to tie with The Grand Budapest Hotel’s four-strong haul.Oscars 2015Full list of winnersREACTION: What the winners saidCOMMENT: Birdman claws victory from BoyhoodBLOG: As it happened

Boyhood, which entered the evening on six nominations and had been expected to push Birdman in several of the senior categories on Sunday night, won a sole best supporting actress award for Patricia Arquette.

The film’s time in the Oscar ceremony spotlight will not be forgotten, however, as Arquette paid tribute to her “Boyhood family” and made an impassioned plea for wage equality that spread like wildfire across social media.

Eddie Redmayne from The Theory Of Everything prevailed in a tight best actor contest to deny Michael Keaton another success for Birdman. The popular victory had the British actor jumping with excitement on stage at the Dolby Theatre.

Julianne Moore finally...

A memorable 87th annual Academy Awards for Fox Searchlight saw Birdman claim best film, director and two other statuettes to tie with The Grand Budapest Hotel’s four-strong haul.

Boyhood, which entered the evening on six nominations and had been expected to push Birdman in several of the senior categories on Sunday night, won a sole best supporting actress for Patricia Arquette.

The film’s time in the Oscar ceremony spotlight will not be forgotten, however, as Arquette paid tribute to her “Boyhood family” and made an impassioned plea for wage equality that spread like wildfire across social media.

Eddie Redmayne from The Theory Of Everything prevailed in a tight best actor contest to deny Michael Keaton another success for Birdman. The popular victory had the British actor jumping with excitement on stage at the Dolby Theatre.

Julianne Moore finally converted her fifth Academy Award nomination into a win for her performance in Still Alice in what...

Every year, the Oscars' In Memoriam segment proves to be one of the most poignant and emotional moments of the entire year. At this year’s ceremony, the Academy added a nice, simple touch of animating the late stars’ names and pictures with a beautiful watercolor effect.

Of course, this doesn’t matter much for Joan Rivers who was completely forgotten in the segment this year.

Photos: Stars We've Lost In Recent Years

That's right, the comedian and actress whose career spanned half of a century couldn’t be honored with a three-second photo. To be fair, the GRAMMYs didn’t include her in their In Memoriam either, despite actually winning a Grammy award this year.

Sure, most of her work has been on television, but she has scores of film credits under her belt, and she even directed the feature film Rabbit Test in 1978, not to mention the massive number of writing credits.

Photos: Oscars...

All the winners from Sunday’s 87th Academy Awards.

Show host Harris signs off with a chirpy, “Buenos noches!”

Sean Penn walks on. It’s time for the big one. Best film. Will it be Birdman or Boyhood? It’s Birdman! The movie ends the night tied with The Grand Budapest Hotel on four Oscars. Inarritu, referring to his pal Alfonso Cuaron who enjoyed success with Gravity at last year’s show, says, “Two Mexicans in a row. That’s suspicious, I guess.” Slightly more seriously, Agi also calls on his fellow Mexicans to help build a strong future for his beloved country. Wow, a good night for Birdman and a surprisingly barren one for Boyhood. Pirates indeed, Ethan Hawke, but glorious pirates.

And now Matthew McConaughey saunters on stage to announce best actress. Julianne Moore, five times a nominee at the Oscars is the favourite. Will she get it this time for Still Alice? Yes she’s got...

Filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky has died aged 58.

The Oscar-nominated documentary maker behind the Paradise Lost trilogy died on Saturday (February 21) through complications related to diabetes.

"Bruce encouraged both of us to throw caution into the wind to start capturing what would become Brother's Keeper in 1991 with no money in our pockets, in the pre-video 16mm age of documentary-making, when making a no-budget film took a little more ingenuity to get in the can," Sinofsky's best friend and regular collaborator Joe Berlinger said in a statement.

"His unique combination of courage and empathy made that possible, as well as everything that came after for us.

"The extraordinary adventures we had on the road and the deeply stimulating experiences we had in the editing room were life-changing for all of us who knew him thanks to his wisdom and fervor to change the world."

Having spent 30 years producing documentaries, Sinofsky was behind the...

February 21, 2015 American Documentary Filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky Dies at 58

Bruce Sinofsky, who with Joe Berlinger made the celebrated Paradise Lost trilogy along with Metallica: Some Kind of Monster and Brother's Keeper, passed away this morning after a longtime struggle with diabetes. He was 58 years old. 

Joe Berlinger contacted us with the news via email, and offered the following tribute:

Read more...

Documentary director Bruce Sinofsky, whose Paradise Lost Trilogy collaborations with Joe Berlinger caused the release of the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three, died this morning of complications from diabetes. Sinofsky’s passing was reported by Berlinger on Twitter. Sinofsky and Berlinger were nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 for the final film in the Paradise Lost trilogy, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory — the culmination of a filmic and legal odyssey that began in 1996 with Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. In a 2011 Filmmaker interview, Sinofsky remembers the series beginning: When we went down to Arkansas, for […]...

Documentary director Bruce Sinofsky, whose Paradise Lost Trilogy collaborations with Joe Berlinger caused the release of the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three, died this morning of complications from diabetes. Sinofsky’s passing was reported by Berlinger on Twitter. Sinofsky and Berlinger were nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 for the final film in the Paradise Lost trilogy, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory — the culmination of a filmic and legal odyssey that began in 1996 with Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. In a 2011 Filmmaker interview, Sinofsky remembers the series beginning: When we went down to Arkansas, for […]...

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky passed away at the age of 58 on Saturday morning. The news was confirmed by longtime collaborator Joe Berlinger. Bruce Sinofsky reportedly died from complications of diabetes, but there are no further details at this time.

Bruce Sinofsky spent the past thirty years as a documentary director, helping to create some of the most important true-life films of the past three decades. He is best known for co-directing Metallica: Some Kind of Monster with Joe Berlinger, which looks at the band as they go through relationship counseling while trying to create a new album. Both Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky are also created with helping to free the West Memphis Three with their Paradise Lost documentary trilogy, which helped uncover evidence in the case against three wrongly convicted men accused of child murder. The final chapter in this harrowing saga, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, earned both Joe Berlinger...