Documentary

If you're looking for something to watch besides the Greek finale tonight, you might want to head over to HBO, where the very buzzworthy — and very controversial — documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired premieres at 9 p.m.

The film revisits the events of 1977, when Polanski forever tainted his reputation by becoming embroiled in a sex scandal with a 13-year-old girl. Polanski pleaded guilty to a felony charge but then fled to France to avoid serving time in prison; he's never returned to the United States, including when his film The Pianist won him a Best Director Oscar in 2003. The documentary, which HBO bought after it screened at Sundance earlier this year, goes beyond issues of guilt and innocence and looks at the media circus that broke out around the trial, placing much of the blame for what happened on the judge who presided over the proceedings.

Years after fleeing the country, Polanski continues to be a controversial figure, and the film seems to be bringing much of that controversy back into the open: HBO even changed the ending of the film after the Los Angeles County Superior Court issued a stern rebuttal to one of the charges made against it in the movie. It seems like there's no doubt this film will have people talking.

To check out a trailer and a short clip from the film, just read more

Nope, not a joke (at least, I don't think it is!): Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth will be made into an opera by Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli. The production will debut in Milan in 2011. As The Independent explains it, "It began life as a slide show before mutating into a prize-winning documentary and a book, but now An Inconvenient Truth, the work for which the former US vice-president Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, is to become an opera."

This is kinda weird, right? What, exactly, will this look like? Also, hang onto those PowerPoint presentations, folks. They could be operatic masterpieces someday.

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Remember the badass bunny who kicks arse in online stare down contests? Methinks he should go pro and take his game to professional staring tournaments. The only problem is, there are no pro tournaments — yet. This forward-looking mockumentary follows the soon-to-be "sport" of stare down, where athletes won't go for the gold, they'll look it straight in the eyes and, well . . . that's about it.

I was compelled to see the documentary Lioness at the Tribeca Film Festival because the basis is so intriguing. In the press notes for the film, this is the description: "Despite written policy banning women from direct ground combat, military commanders have been using women in direct ground warfare as an essential part of their operations since 2003. Though official policy forbids this operation and publicly denies its existence, this initiative and company of women have a name: they are called Team Lioness. Lioness. . .tells the story of the first group of Lionesses who went to Iraq as clerks, mechanics and engineers but returned a year later as America's first female combat veterans."

Much of the film deals with that last detail — that these women went abroad with the military, possessing expertise in certain fields but not having much training in direct combat. Mainly, it appears from the film, they were brought into hostile areas to help calm and placate the Iraqi women during raids, but when violence erupted, they were often forced to engage in direct combat, something official policy blatantly forbids. From here, the issues become not that women can't handle violence, but rather that these women simply weren't trained for that kind of action and that they innately handle the experience differently than men. For more about this complicated issue, read more

There are tons of amazing-looking documentaries screening at Tribeca this year, but I can only get to see so many! Of the docs listed, the following ones most catch my fancy. Fingers crossed I have the time to see each of these.

Gotta Dance
It's like Young@Heart but with dancing! You know stories like these make me weepy so I'll be seeing this one for sure, probably cushioned by wads of Kleenex. The documentary follows the first-ever, senior citizen hip-hop dance team for the New Jersey Nets Basketball team "from auditions through to center court stardom."

Several more docs if you read more

Man, people love to push the whole "this generation's Breakfast Club" angle with the documentary American Teen (though the poster for it, ah, doesn't help). I suppose this makes sense, but only in that The Breakfast Club featured timeless high school themes and characters. Yet, The Breakfast Club was still fiction, and a documentary is always going to be more complex and more nuanced than the stereotypes in a scripted film.

The movie follows four Indiana teenagers — introduced in the trailer as The Jock, The Princess, The Rebel and The Geek — as they go through their senior year of high school. It's both a familiar chronicling of the ups and downs of high school as well as a revealing look at how teens today are quite different from those of other generations. This was one of my favorite movies at Sundance a few months ago, and I plan on seeing it again when it opens July 25. To check out the trailer, read more

Going into the screening for Young@Heart, I knew I was doomed. I have a soft spot for stories about elderly folks, so I knew it would make me cry. Coldplay songs also make me cry ("Fix You"? Come on!). And oddly enough, standing ovations and enthusiastic applause sometimes make me cry. The Young@Heart documentary has all of this — and more. It had my number from the start, and I went through many tissues. But I also smiled a lot, and felt the joy that radiates off these inspiring people, leaping through the screen and into the hearts of the audience. Young at heart, indeed.

The movie opens on an auditorium full of people wildly cheering, standing, beaming (Buzz's Weepy Face, Take One). Soon we discover that they're at a kind of rock concert, and we hear the first wail of "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash. But it's not a group of stringy haired punk kids onstage — it's a collection of earnest, wrinkled faces and heads with gray-white hair. It's the Young@Heart senior citizen choir of Northampton, Massachusetts. And that's just the first few minutes, so read more

I missed this documentary at Sundance this year, so I'm thrilled that it's coming out this Friday in limited release. The trailer alone for Young @ Heart brings tears to my eyes — but not sad tears. The film follows the Young@Heart Chorus of Northampton, Massachusetts which consists of about two dozen senior citizens who sing covers of rock, punk and R&B classics with the help of their choir director Bob Cilman. They perform for everyone from inmates at a nearby prison to sold-out crowds at the local concert hall.

I'll post my review of the movie later this week, but just the trailer is totally inspiring so read more

Nine children. Two parents. One 24-foot camper. Sounds like some kind of reality show challenge, doesn't it? For the Paskowitz kids in the 1960s, it was just called "childhood," and the upcoming documentary Surfwise follows up with the kids — now adults — and their innovative parents. Their father is Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz who raised his nine children in a camper, traveling from one beautiful surfing locale to another. According to the description in the press email, the kids "surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle of animals in the wild, by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father."

The movie, opening May 9, looks like a fascinating peek into the unusual way these children were raised. To check out the trailer, read more

This clip from a 1972 documentary on Mary Kay cosmetics will blow your mind. The coiffures, the clothes, the corniness! And then there's Mary Kay, resplendent in a pink dress and feather boa while tottering on heels. Wowza. (Believe it or not, despite the controversy over Mary Kay —some say it's just a pyramid scheme—the brand is still kicking!)