Documentary

Sure, he won the first season of Project Runway, but that doesn't mean Jay McCarroll has had it easy. As one of the first reality TV winners to be catapulted to fame, McCarroll's faced a lot of criticism about why he hasn't done more. He was a subject of a story about Bravo's struggling reality stars back in 2007, a cautionary tale about the price of sudden stardom.

A couple of years ago, Jay's post-show plight was the subject of a Bravo special, and now those same filmmakers have turned his story into a feature-length documentary, Eleven Minutes. The film is set to hit theaters Feb. 20 and traces Jay's journey to create a collection, show it at New York Fashion Week, and market it to stores.

Jay's always been better at the art side of fashion than at the business aspects (or at sucking up to people, for that matter), and so I'm curious to see how he navigates the high-end fashion world. Even if he's not your favorite Runway winner, would you check out this movie about "the constant balancing of commerce with art, fame with talent and reality TV with actual reality"? To watch the trailer, just read more

Remember when the documentary about the two friends who decide to travel from Seattle to Boston at 10 MPH by using a segway? Well fast forward a year and a half later, and the movie 10 mph is not only complete, but it's available for your viewing pleasure, for free, on YouTube. Not only is it entertaining to watch a guy with a stand-up scooter go across the country, but the best part is watching the craziness that ensues along the way.

Do you ever wonder what politicians — especially presidential candidates — were like as kids? I do. So I'm fascinated by this trailer for the documentary Frontrunners, which follows the student election at a prestigious New York public high school (a place where kids have to apply to get in and of those that apply only three percent are accepted).

Is it a thirst for power? A natural gift for leadership? A real desire to make a difference in the world? For some of them it's all these things, and for others it just seems like a random decision. All I know is that watching these young'uns strategize (how to get the word out that they're running?) and spin (one candidate describes his ticket thusly: "Basically, us together creates a synergical force of amiability which is far beyond the normal reaches of human comprehension") is at once entertaining and eerily similar to the grown-up world. From the preview alone you can see hints of the adult power-players these ambitious teens might very well become.

The film opens in New York Oct. 15 but I'm crossing my fingers it will make its way to my town sooner rather than later. To check out the preview for yourself, read more

With words filled with sentiment and pride, Valentino stated, “Unfortunately, I’m very emotional and sensitive. I’m a human being and I’ve always loved my work."
After filming for two years, Valentino revealed his 90-minute documentary, Valentino: The Last Emperor, at the Venice Film Festival. The movie follows the designer's intimate life with fashion and Giancarlo Giammettii, seen below. “We had the cameras following us to the bathroom,” said Valentino. “It was a bit nerve-racking at times.”

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but look forward to behind-the-scenes fashion frenzies and witnessing Valentino’s six pugs — Milton, Monty, Maude, Margot, Maggie, and Molly (Pet, are you hearing this?) — receiving lush treatments. These pups are sprayed with cologne and decked out with diamanté chandelier earrings!

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Back at Sundance, the documentary The Black List, Vol. 1 was getting glowing praise from all those who were lucky enough to make it into a screening. HBO had already nabbed the rights to show the film, and tonight, it makes its broadcast premiere.

The film is a series of 22 short portraits of renowned figures from sports, politics, business, government, and the arts talking about race and the role it has played in their lives and work. Among the interviewees: Keenen Ivory Wayans, Toni Morrison, Chris Rock, Serena Williams, National Urban League President Marc Morial, and many more. NPR host and journalist Elvis Mitchell conducted the interviews, but he's never seen or heard in the film; instead, the camera stays trained on the subjects as they speak their stories one by one.

The best way to get a feel for the film before its 9 p.m. premiere is to watch a few clips from the portraits, so to see a making-of promo and excerpts from the interviews with Chris Rock and Serena Williams, just read more

The documentary Trouble the Water was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and the buzz around this movie has continued to build from there. The film centers around Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her boyfriend who were trapped in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. Roberts videotaped the the entire ordeal, which was, as you might imagine, horrifying.

The extraordinary footage of the catastrophe aside, what appears to be at the heart of the movie is the additional devastation caused by the government's apparent indifference toward the city's most vulnerable citizens.

It seems like it would be a heart-wrenching film, but I've heard just the opposite. Even the trailer suggests there's something of a life-affirming vibe underneath the telling of this terrible chapter in our recent history.

The movie opens August 22 in L.A. and New York and will have a wider release later. To check out the trailer for yourself, read more

Did you grow up in a place with a Showbiz Pizza? I missed this phenomenon (mine was a Chuck-E-Cheese's kind of town), but my boyfriend was raised on Showbiz and its animatronic band, the Rock-afire Explosion. Made up of a singing gorilla, a bass-playing bear, and many other lovable if slightly creepy characters, the band would sing rock and country hits of the '80s and earlier (plus, of course, "Happy Birthday" to the many kids who celebrated there).

The restaurants have since closed, but the Rock-afire Explosion lives on — most notably on YouTube, where the band has been reprogrammed to sing such modern hits as Usher's "Love in this Club." And the phenomenon isn't going unnoticed: There's a Rock-afire documentary in the works, slated to be released this Fall.

The trailer for this movie just has to be seen to be believed; even at that, I'd think it was a mockumentary if I didn't know better (the guy who says, "It was like being in rock-and-roll. It was exactly like being in rock-and-roll" just seems so earnest!). To relive the magic if you were a Showbiz kid — or if you want to understand your Showbiz friends when they reminisce about Billy Bob the bear — just read more

When I saw the documentary American Teen at Sundance this year, I was totally wowed, and I knew I was watching something special. It's truly one of the most insightful documentaries on American life to come out in years. The film is in select theaters now, and I highly recommend you check it out.

As you can imagine, it was a delight to sit down with the director of American Teen, Nanette Burstein, and pick her brain about the making of the film, what it means in the grander scope of current teen culture, and what it's like to be a lady director in a field that is still staggeringly dominated by men.

Buzz: When you were first filming at the high school in Warsaw (Indiana), how did you know you found the "right" kids with Colin and Hannah and Jake and Megan, etc.?

Nannette Burstein: Well, I didn't know for a while. I'm used to looking for not only the people but also a story that's already in process. And it's really funny because I found the best stories all in this one town — but that was in the summer. And then I got there like a month later and every one of their stories had changed, and I was so upset! I was like, "Oh my God, I've raised all this money and this film is going to be a disaster." (laughs) But they're teenagers! And their lives change like that.

The interview continues if you read more

Hunter S. Thompson isn't always associated with terms like "brilliant writer" or "inventor of gonzo journalism" or even "patriot." By the time his famous work Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was adapted for film in 1998, he was becoming a caricature and a symbol of a bygone era. Just as there is irony in one of history's most complicated revolutionaries, Che Guevara, being boiled down to an Urban Outfitters t-shirt, it is equally reductive to oversimplify Thompson as some kind of drug-addled delinquent without a cause.

Now that I've seen what will likely be referred to as the definitive documentary about Thompson's life by the Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, it's clear that reducing him to a kind of hipster icon who lived only to push the boundaries of consciousness with extreme substance abuse is terribly simplistic and inaccurate. Through the folks who knew him well (Jimmy Carter, publisher of Rolling Stone Jann Wenner, George McGovern, his first wife, etc.) the picture that emerges from this movie is of a man who was a walking, talking challenge to the status quo.

To read what surprised me about the good doctor's life and why this is an entertaining jaunt through recent history, read more