News

Quick Links Kurt Russell's Career Started Off Earlier Than Most People Realize Who Did Kurt Russell Play in Gunsmoke? Since His Start on Gunsmoke, Kurt Russell Has Became Something of a Western Icon

Kurt Russell has had quite a remarkable film career, having played numerous iconic and memorable characters while tackling a wide variety of genres. Over sixty years, he's been directed by legendary directors such as Quentin Tarantino and John Carpenter, joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and despite the surprisingly minimal amount of work he has done within the genre, he has also become something of an icon when it comes to westerns. When people think of Russell, it's more than likely that his role as Wyatt Earp in the 1993 classic, Tombstone, comes to mind. Many may not even be aware, however, that Russell had initially begun his career as a child actor. Starting in the mid-60s,...

Younger audiences might know him as the dude who played Ego in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2," but for everyone else, Kurt Russell is a Hollywood legend. That reputation was cemented in the 1980s, during which time Russell landed starring roles in such classics as "Escape From New York" (1981), "The Thing" (1982), and "Big Trouble in Little China." (1986). But he managed just as illustrious a run in the '90s — even if you only count his role in George P. Cosmatos' seminal 1993 Western "Tombstone."

While "Tombstone" isn't quite Kurt Russell's best film — it is surely among the finest entries in the man's filmography. Telling the story of Wyatt Earp (Russell) and the legendary gunfight at the O.K. Corral, "Tombstone" became an instant classic of the modern Western when it debuted, with Val Kilmer stealing the entire show as Doc Holliday. But Russell certainly delivered as the legendary lawman, and in the process,...

Remember that time Mark Wahlberg said he could've stopped 9/11? He later apologized, but it seems the world-famous hamburger salesman likes to fantasize about being present for ripped-from-recent-headlines tragedies as a way of "honoring" the real people involved. In fact, he did this on no less than three occasions in the 2010s with director Peter Berg; first on the film "Lone Survivor" in 2013, and then twice in a single year with "Deepwater Horizon" and "Patriots Day" in 2016.

Of these three, "Deepwater Horizon" is probably the best, if only because it's devoid of the suspect political overtones of the other two. The film dramatizes the 2010 Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit explosion and oil spill, pointing the finger of blame squarely at the corner-cutting Bp middle managers who ignored safety concerns raised by the rig's workers. With Wahlberg off playing action hero for most of the movie as Chief Electronics Technician Michael "Mike" Williams,...

Everyone knows and loves Kurt Russell. The Escape From New York star's acting career has spanned seven decades and more than 100 roles, including fan favorites in John Carpenter's The Thing, Tombstone, Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight, and most recently, Apple TV+'s Godzilla series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. However, in his long and storied Hollywood career, the only one of his films to achieve a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes is The Battered Bastards of Baseball, a heartwarming 2014 documentary that serves as a love letter not only to his father but also the sport of baseball.

Is there any actor who casually oozes coolness like Kurt Russell? 

As with anyone in Hollywood, the young Russell had to earn his stripes. Upon signing a contract with the Mouse House, he started out anchoring a collection of zany Disney comedies in the '60s and '70s, including "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes," "The Strongest Man in the World," and "The Barefoot Executive," a movie that paired him opposite a chimpanzee. Beginning with their 1979 made-for-tv "Elvis" biopic, however, Russell and director John Carpenter collaborated on a series of highly efficient yet firmly modest genre films, many of which became cult hits and cemented their too-cool-for-school reputation.

Russell has only continued to evolve his legacy in the 21st century, starring in everything from cult favorites as worlds apart as "Sky High" and "Bone Tomahawk" to Quentin Tarantino joints and blockbuster franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Fast...

Brothers Chapman and Maclain Way, the sons of screenwriter Rick Way, grandsons of actor Bing Russell, and nephews to Kurt Russell (that one you know), have some obvious Hollywood pedigree. They also have a Primetime Emmy for 2018’s “Wild Wild Country” and Sundance status for 2014’s “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” both of which were distributed by Netflix.

With the Tuesday return of their best-in-genre sports-documentary series “Untold,” the guys also have a legitimate claim for Top Netflix brothers. Sorry, Duffers; and Joe and Anthony Russo, you had better make something really good out of that “Gray Man” universe.

“Untold: Volume 3” debuts with a doc about the rise of yet another pair of bothers, Jake Paul and Logan Paul. “The Problem Child,” directed by Andrew Renzi is Jake’s (pictured above) story. And though Chapman, 36, and Maclain, 32, didn’t direct any of this season’s four “Untold” installments, their style...

Watch as many documentaries as I do, and you’re bound to see the Chicago White Sox’s notorious Disco Demolition Night come up in a wide variety of contexts. Sometimes the 1979 fiasco is used as a case study in racism and the marginalization of Black voices in music. Sometimes it’s used as a case study in homophobia.

In Morgan Neville and Jeff Malmberg’s new documentary The Saints of Second Chances, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Disco Demolition Night is reduced to an origin story. Yes, Mike Veeck is remorseful that anybody has read negative subtext into the ill-fated promotion, but he makes it clear that he just wanted to impress his father and pack a stadium. Like several dark things in The Saint of Second Chances, any other insinuations get lost in a sea of stylistic flourishes and heart-tugging button pushing.

Don’t get me wrong,...

Focus Features has released the latest trailer for Cate Blanchett’s latest, TÁR, directed by the great–and infrequent director–Todd Field.

TÁR “examines the changing nature of power, its impact and durability in our modern world.” Well, that’s awfully vague…In TÁR, Cate Blanchett stars as a renowned composer on the verge of completing what could be her masterpiece. As suggested in the trailer, her struggle with time as both a conductor and an aging woman prove to take a physical and psychological toll.

Cate Blanchett’s performance in Todd Field’s TÁR seems prime for an Oscar nomination. This wouldn’t be much of a surprise, considering Blanchett has seven nods and two wins already (for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator and Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine). Director Todd Field, too, has a history of leading his performers to Oscar nominations.

That history, granted, is brief. Todd...

MTV’s “Catfish” never had an episode with the drama that surrounded former Notre Dame football standout Manti Te’o, the Hawaiian-born linebacker infamously duped into believing his longtime girlfriend, whom he never met in person, died just ahead of the 2013 Bcs National Championship Game. It was a tabloid story that left many wanting the real truth, but it took Chapman and Maclain Way’s Netflix documentary series “Untold” to reveal it.

“It’s obviously been a white whale in the sports world,” Chapman told IndieWire of the Manti episode, “The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.” The Ways, with directors Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, captured a many-hours-long interview with the former linebacker (and many more hours with his catfisher). “He’s always been a hard ‘No, no, no, no, no, no.'”

Until now, now, now, now, now, now. What changed?

“I think [it was] the release of Volume 1 and seeing the...

1. “The Sandman” Season 1 (available August 5)

Developed by: Neil Gaiman & David S. Goyer & Allan Heinberg

Cast: Tom Sturridge, Boyd Holbrook, Patton Oswalt, Vivienne Acheampong, Gwendoline Christie, Charles Dance, Jenna Coleman, David Thewlis, Stephen Fry, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Mason Alexander Park

Format: Series

Length: Season 1: 10 hourlong episodes

Best Reason to Watch: Prior to today, Neil Gaiman, the outspoken author behind previous book-to-screen adaptations of “Coraline,” “Stardust,” “American Gods,” and “Good Omens,” has said that his main responsibility to his award-winning 1989 comic book series was “to try and stop bad [adaptations] from happening.” Insofar as this is the first “Sandman” to be seen on screen, he succeeded. And to match his faith in the Netflix series, he’s not just attached as a producer, but a writer and co-developer, as well. Audiences will be able to determine if his devotion and protection pay off when the 10-episode first season debuts this August, and the...

Netflix is preparing to tell the untold stories in the world of sports with their upcoming docuseries, titled appropriately enough, “Untold.” The trailer below gives a sneak peek at the five feature-length episodes, two of which are helmed by “Wild Wild Country” directors Chapman and Maclein Way (who also executive produce the full series).

The synopsis, per Netflix:

Premiering weekly, each film kicks off at a pivotal moment — the big fight, the Olympics, the playoffs — and then delves deep into what happened beyond the headlines, as told by those who lived it, to reveal the grit, resilience, heartbreak, triumph, violence, comedy, and pathos beneath the sweat.

Whether it’s the famous “Malice at the Palace” Pacers-Pistons brawl finally being unraveled by those who were on the inside, Olympian Caitlyn Jenner reflecting on her journey to winning gold, boxer Christy Martin in the fight of her life outside the ring, professional...

In the counterculture haven of the Santa Monica Mountains’ Topanga Canyon, three sets of brothers celebrated their surprise Netflix Emmy contender “Wild Wild Country:” Directors Chapman Way, 31, and his 27-year-old brother Maclain; twin New Yorkers Josh and Dan Braun, whose rising production and sales company Submarine Entertainment shepherded the documentary; and executive producers Mark Duplass and his brother Jay, who served as the Ways’ mentors.

“Wild Wild Country” is the Ways’ second Netflix documentary after 2014’s “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” another Submarine title, about their grandfather Bing Russell’s Portland, Ore. baseball team. Former Portland Mavericks player Uncle Kurt and Aunt Goldie Hawn were on hand to toast their success.

The Ways told the Brauns about their discovery of controversial ’80s cult figure Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his fierce lieutenant Ma Anand Sheela, and their run-ins with the tiny town of Antelope, Ore. The colorful and often unbelievable escalating...

In the counterculture haven of the Santa Monica Mountains’ Topanga Canyon, three sets of brothers celebrated their surprise Netflix Emmy contender “Wild Wild Country:” Directors Chapman Way, 31, and his 27-year-old brother Maclain; twin New Yorkers Josh and Dan Braun, whose rising production and sales company Submarine Entertainment shepherded the documentary; and executive producers Mark Duplass and his brother Jay, who served as the Ways’ mentors.

“Wild Wild Country” is the Ways’ second Netflix documentary after 2014’s “The Battered Bastards of Baseball,” another Submarine title, about their grandfather Bing Russell’s Portland, Ore. baseball team. Former Portland Mavericks player Uncle Kurt and Aunt Goldie Hawn were on hand to toast their success.

The Ways told the Brauns about their discovery of controversial ’80s cult figure Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his fierce lieutenant Ma Anand Sheela, and their run-ins with the tiny town of Antelope, Ore. The colorful and often unbelievable escalating...

Since Wild Wild Country's March debut, the gripping documentary series has become the latest unscripted phenomenon from Netflix. Executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass, the series is the work of another set of filmmaking brothers, Chapman and Maclain Way, who made the 2014 documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball for the platform. Over the course of six episodes, Wild Wild Country follows controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), his onetime personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela and the "free love" cult they led in 1980s Oregon.

The Way brothers spoke with THR about the genesis of the series, the one ...

One of Netflix’s biggest success stories this year is unquestionably directors Chapman and Maclain Way’s “Wild Wild Country” docuseries. Now, an official soundtrack is set to be released this fall on Western Vinyl Records, home to Dirty Projectors, Caroline Says and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, among other indie darlings, Variety has confirmed. The compilation includes most of the songs heard on the six-part epic, including standouts from such artists as Bill Callahan and Damien Jurado. Variety caught up with Wwc music supervisor Chris Swanson to find out more about the music selection process behind the hit series.

How did you first get approached for the project? Did you pitch for it, or did the directors come to you?

I didn’t pitch for it, I was a big fan of the directors’ last movie [‘The Battered Bastards of Baseball’], which was also on Netflix. Great storytelling and I loved the score,...

A meditation expert, “Osho,” and sex guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s presence radiates in “Wild Wild Country.”

Sex parties, wild dancing, red-clad followers, and a questionable salmonella outbreak are just scratching the surface of Netflix’s latest docuseries. To explain what to expect before diving into the show, we have prepared the following guide on its enigmatic subject.

So what is “Wild Wild Country”?

The story focuses on the controversial uprising of the Rajneeshpuram community in Antelope, Oregon and the man who inspired it all: Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. You may know him better as Osho, Bhagwan, or simply Rajneesh.

The series is helmed by Chapman and Maclain Way (directors of another acclaimed Netflix original doc, “The Battered Bastards of Baseball”) and executive-produced by Mark and Jay Duplass.

Well, who is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh?

The guru, whose birth name was Chandra Mohan Jain, was the spiritual leader of the Rajneesh movement,...

Exclusive: Documentary filmmaking brothers Chapman Way and Maclain Way, who most recently produced and directed the six-part, Netflix docu-series Wild Wild Country, has signed with UTA in all areas.

The brothers’ Wild Wild Country took place in the 1980s and followed Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his spiritual religious cult as they inhabited a conservative community in central Oregon. The series premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and officially launched on March 16, drawing unanimous acclaim.

It was produced under the Way Brothers’ Stardust Frames Productions banner together with Duplass Brothers Productions. The Way brothers (through Stardust) are currently in production on a feature length documentary filming out of Knoxville, Tennessee set for release in early 2019 and are in pre-production on two documentary series set to go into production in Summer 2018.

Their company Stardust Frames Productions is a collective of filmmakers, editors, composers and producers based in Los Angeles that specialize in non-fiction content,...

For as tidily as “Wild Wild Country” can be summed up — “It’s the docuseries about an Indian cult leader!” — the show overall is an incredibly dense examination of religion, immigrants, and Americans’ perception of both. As intense as it is illuminating, the six-episode Netflix series deconstructs misconceptions about cults while exposing incredibly dark secrets at the same time — and that’s where the doc finds its power: Just when you think you know what it’s about, there’s quite a surprise around the next corner.

Directed by Chapman and Maclain Way (“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”), “Wild Wild Country” focuses on what at first seems like a relatively simple conflict. Followers of an Indian spiritual guru decided to build a commune in Oregon, and their neighbors were none too pleased about it. But what started as an uncomfortable wariness of the unknown soon turned nasty, then openly hostile,...

The new Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country from Chapman Way and Maclain Way will begin sttreaming on March 16. This six-part series, which premiered at Sundance 2018, explores one of most infamous series of cult-inspired crimes in modern U.S. history. Here is the synopsis from Netflix. When the world's most controversial guru builds a utopian city in the Oregon desert, a massive conflict with local ranchers ensues; producing the first bioterror attack in Us history, the largest case of illegal wiretapping ever recorded, and the world's biggest collection of Rolls-Royce automobiles. Over six episodes, Directors Chapman Way and Maclain Way (The Battered Bastards of Baseball) and executive producers Mark and Jay Duplass (Duplass Brothers Productions) take viewers back to this pivotal, yet largely forgotten...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Winter Olympics is over, film awards season is drawing to a close, and it’s time to focus once again on TV premieres. March is a busy month for Netflix, and here are seven new and returning shows to keep an eye out for.

1. “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” Season 2 (available March 8)

Why Should I Watch It? In Season 1, “Marvel’s Jessica Jones” stood out from the comic book company-turned-entertainment behemoth’s other Netflix shows. Krysten Ritter gave a charismatic, smoky turn in a noir story with shades of superhero stuff. Jones’ P.I. made things fun with her zero-shits attitude, and the dark central story drew audiences into the private life our hero wanted to keep that way. Frankly, I don’t know much about Season 2: By knocking Ritter down from the lead to a co-star, “The Defenders” proved insufferable — get rid of Danny Rand already — so if...

One of the many documentaries to world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was the six-part Netflix series Wild Wild Country, which was helmed by directors by Chapman and Maclain Way (The Battered Bastards of Baseball). While most of you reading this may not know the name Bhagwan Rajneesh, those who were around to watch the news in the early 1980s can tell you that he was a massive story around the country. That’s because Rajneesh and his followers spent $125 million back in 1981 to build Rajneeshpuram in in the Oregon desert, a 64,000-…...

Three directors who have had a film surpass $340 million at the worldwide box office revisited how Sundance launched their careers. On January 26, “Power of Story: Indies Go Hollywood,” brought together Taika Waititi (“Thor: Ragnarock”), Justin Lin (“Star Trek: Beyond”), and Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”) to discuss the challenges of adjusting to the studio system, their desire for the industry to be more inclusive, and how to keep their stories personal when they’re part of a juggernaut franchise.

Read More:Sundance 2018 Deals: The Complete List of Festival Purchases So Far

Waititi, a New Zealander, has premiered four pictures in Park City: “Eagle vs Shark” (2007), “Boy” (2010), “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”(2016), and “What We Do in the Shadows” (2014), which is now being adapted for television. Taiwan-born Lin — a veteran of four “The Fast and the Furious” sequels (with more to come) — has attended the festival as a buyer and seller: his features “Better Luck Tomorrow...

Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.

Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.

In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.

Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)

Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.

"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."

Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .

Let's try to cover new territory here.

First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?

Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.

Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?

Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.

Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?

Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .

Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?

Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.

World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.

Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?

Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.

Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.

The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.

Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?

Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.

It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.

So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.

Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.

There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.

And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.

Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?

Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.

Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.

Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.

Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.

She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.

Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.

Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.

The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.

A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.

Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?

Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...

She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.

She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.

Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?

Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.

Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?

Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.

We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.

It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.

Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?

Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.

Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.

Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?

Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.

About the Filmmakers

Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.

David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.

David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".

Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.

He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.

He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.

John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).

Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.

Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.

Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".

Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".

Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?

Credits

Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland

Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)

Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)

Josh Braun (executive producer)

Bob Benton (executive producer)

John Northrup (co-producer)

Bernadine Colish (editor)

Jed Parker (editor)

Peter Trilling (director of photography)

Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)

Music by J. Ralph

Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph

Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White

Running time: 97 minutes

U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe

International sales by Hanway...

No film buff wants to see a promising, or prominent filmmaker pull a disappearing act a la Terrence Malick, (though it seems he isn’t keen to repeat another lapse like the one between Days of Heaven to The Thin Red Line), but whether they’re dealing with unforeseeable professional (endless pre-production woes, writer’s block) or personal issues, sometimes there is a considerable time between projects.

With John Cameron Mitchell, Charlie Kaufman, Rebecca Miller, Patty Jenkins, Kenneth Lonergan and more recently, Barry Jenkins recently moving out of the so called “inactive” period, we decided to compile a list of the top ten American filmmakers who, for the most part, we’ve lost sight of and would like to see get back in the director’s chair again. Most of the filmmakers listed below have gone well over half a decade without a substantial movement in this category. Here is...

A look at the list of my favorite movies from 2014 reveals the presence of six extraordinary nonfiction films, and that’s just a taste of the seeming hundreds of docs released last year-- not all of them extraordinary, of course, but all of them indicative of a trend toward the making of the availability of more nonfiction filmmaking than it seems we’ve likely ever seen in this country. And speaking of availability, the six I listed—Ron Mann’s Altman, Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson’s Milius, Orlando von Einsidel’s Virunga, Chaplain and Maclain Way’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Stephanie Spray and Pancho Velez’s Manakamana and Errol Morris’s The Unknown Known— were all pictures I caught courtesy of Netflix Streaming. (Virunga was actually produced under the company’s auspices.)

I have a special place in my cinematic heart for nonfiction, both bound between covers and on the screen,...

It seems like documentaries are reaching a wider audience than ever before, and part of that has to be because of Netflix. The streaming-video giant has placed an emphasis on acquiring high-profile non-fiction movies like the Oscar-nominated “The Square” and “Virunga,” and twenty documentaries, including “The Battered Bastards Of Baseball” and “Hot Girls Wanted,” have premiered as such. The next, and one of the most notable to date, is “Keith Richards: Under The Influence.” The doc from Morgan Neville, the Oscar-winning director of “20 Feet From Stardom” and “Best Of Enemies” is a portrait of the legendarily hellraising Rolling Stones guitarist as he records his first solo record in nearly 25 years and looks back on his love of music and, as the title might suggest, his strong blues orientation. Read More: Review: The Rolling Stones Under Review 1975-1983, A Compelling Examination Of An Overlooked Era Netflix have just debuted a trailer for the new movie,...

"Our motivation was simple: revenge. We loved womping fuzzy-cheeked college-bonus-babies owned by the Dodgers, or Phillies." We're well into the New Year which means it's time for another Monthly Must See feature highlighting a great film to watch this month (or instead of/while waiting for the Golden Globes on Sunday). It's the perfect time of year for documentaries, so this month's pick is The Battered Bastards of Baseball from directors Chapman Way & Maclain Way, a Netflix documentary that runs a brisk 79 minutes telling the story of the Portland Mavericks, an independent baseball team started in the 1970s. This light-hearted, highly entertaining film is easily available on Netflix for your enjoyment anytime. It's good. As we continue this series of Monthly Must See films, I'm admittedly quite excited to highlight some of the best undiscovered/hidden gems waiting out there. While there are always old, classic films to watch, there...

Whether you want to immerse yourself in the world of birds, bees, baseball or backup singers, Netflix has a documentary for you. Missed "Man on Wire"? It's on there.

Here are films that changed the world, righted wrongs, pinpointed a moment in history, or simply shone a light on a previously unknown subset of society. (Availability subject to change. Films are unrated, except as noted.)

1. "20 Feet from Stardom" (2013) PG-13

This Oscar-winning doc shines a spotlight on the relatively unknown backup singers behind such superstars as Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder.

2. "The Act of Killing" (2012)

The director invited killers -- men who took part in the horrific purge that left more than 500,000 dead in Indonesia in the 1960s -- to reenact their crimes on film, resulting in a bizarre look inside the mind of men capable of mass murder.

3. "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" (2014)

Two filmmakers pay homage to their grandfather,...

If there is a little Listen Up Philip in the cocktail that will be known as 7 Chinese Brothers, it may have been due to cosmic fate, a lark, creative confidence, or a little of everything. Stars aligned for this trio in a rather convenient way; unbeknownst to Bob Byington, his sixth feature managed to lasso Jason Schwartzman prior to Alex Ross Perry grabbing the Rushmore star for his definitive breakout moment in Park City this past January. It is after those playdates, when production began in February in Austin, and if it has legs like Somebody Up There Likes Me did back in 2012 with a showing at SXSW and at Locarno (was a winner of the Special Jury Prize), then there might be a collective sense of deja vu for Park City patrons. Look for Schwartzman to play off thesps such as Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis and Tunde Adebimpe, with Perry making another Byington-film appearance.

Whoopsy. I forgot to share this list... Herewith the films that could be up for Best Documentary Feature this year. We'll get a finalist of 15 at some point next month followed by 5 nominees in January "until we crown A Winnah!" If we've reviewed the titles, you'll notice their pretty color which you can then click on to read about them. The magic of the internet. You can also see the animated and documentary Oscar charts here.

The 134 Semi-Finalists

A-c

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, Algorithms, Alive Inside, All You Need Is Love, Altina, America: Imagine the World without Her, American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, Anita, Antarctica: A Year on Ice, Art and Craft, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, The Barefoot Artist, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, Before You Know It, Bitter Honey, Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity, Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi,...

One hundred thirty-four features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 87th Academy Awards. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December.

The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:

“Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq”

“Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case”

“Algorithms”

“Alive Inside”

“All You Need Is Love”

“Altina”

“America: Imagine the World without Her”

“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”

“Anita”

“Antarctica: A Year on Ice”

“Art and Craft”

“Awake: The Life of Yogananda”

“The Barefoot Artist”

“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”

“Before You Know It”

“Bitter Honey”

“Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity”

“Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi”

“Captivated The Trials of Pamela Smart”

“The Case against 8”

“Cesar’s Last Fast”

“Citizen Koch”

“CitizenFour”

“Code Black”

“Concerning Violence”

“The Culture High”

“Cyber-Seniors”

“DamNation”

“Dancing in Jaffa”

“Death Metal Angola”

“The Decent One”

“Dinosaur 13”

“Do You Know What My Name Is?...

Citizenfour, Life Itself, Red Army, Warsaw Uprising among long-list contenters for the 87th Academy Awards.

The Salt Of The Earth, Happy Valley, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Food Chains and Point And Shoot are also named.

The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:

20,000 Days On Earth

Afternoon Of A Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case

Algorithms

Alive Inside

All You Need Is Love

Altina

America: Imagine The World Without Her

American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs

Anita

Antarctica: A Year On Ice

Art And Craft

Awake: The Life Of Yogananda

The Barefoot Artist

The Battered Bastards Of Baseball

Before You Know It

Bitter Honey

Born To Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity

Botso The Teacher From Tbilisi

Captivated The Trials Of Pamela Smart

The Case Against 8

Cesar’s Last Fast

Citizen Koch

Citizenfour

Code Black

Concerning Violence

The Culture High

Cyber-Seniors

Damnation

Dancing In Jaffa

Death Metal Angola

The...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released its list of 134 film vying for the Best Feature Documentary Oscar at the 87th Annual Academy Awards in February. A number of the nonfic hopefuls have yet to get their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases. Those that don’t will be cut from the contention. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December. Oscar noms will be revealed January 15, and ABC will broadcast Hollywood’s Big Night live on February 22 from the Dolby Theatre.

Here are the docu feature submissions:

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq

Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case

Algorithms

Alive Inside

All You Need Is Love

Altina

America: Imagine the World without Her

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

Anita

Antarctica: A Year on Ice

Art and Craft

Awake: The Life of Yogananda

The Barefoot Artist

The Battered Bastards of Baseball...

One hundred thirty-four features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 87th Academy Awards®. Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles and New York qualifying releases. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category's other qualifying rules in order to advance in the voting process. A shortlist of 15 films will be announced in December. Films submitted in the Documentary Feature category also may qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories. The 87th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Thursday, January 15, 2015, at 5:30 a.m. Pt in the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The Oscars® will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre® at Hollywood & Highland Center® in Hollywood, and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar...

Netflix has certainly been making waves in original programming from series like "House of Cards" to new seasons of "Arrested Development," not to mention original stand-up specials and documentaries like The Battered Bastards of Baseball. Now they have another doc coming this fall, and it looks like a powerful one. Virunga will get a limited theatrical release to qualify for the Oscars at the same time it premieres on the streaming service and it takes a look at a conflict surrounding the African Congo, where the world’s last remaining mountain gorilla population lives in the forested depths of the Virunga National Park. Watch! Here's the first trailer for Orlando von Einsiedel‘s documentary Virunga from Netflix: From the forested depths of the African Congo, among the last of the mountain gorillas comes Virunga, an incredible true story of idealistic conservationists, armed militia, and the struggle to control Congo’s rich natural resources.

One of the best documentaries I've seen this year is the Netflix original The Battered Bastards of Baseball. Directed by brothers Chapman Way and Maclain Way, the doc premiered at Sundance back in January where Matt gave it a glowing review and debuted on Netflix last month where you can still instant stream it today. The film follows the Portland Mavericks, an independent baseball team created by actor and lifelong baseball enthusiast Bing Russell in 1973. In addition to being the only professional team in America to operate without a Major League affiliate at the time, the Mavericks held open tryouts and built a roster that was made up almost entirely of players who had long been forgotten by the world of organized baseball. The result was a team that played with a supreme chip on their shoulder that not only lead to wins but also record setting attendance numbers that stand to this day.

The Bennett Miller-helmed adaptation of “Moneyball” aside, the best baseball-centric movies in the past couple of years have been coming via Espn’s superb “30 for 30” series and this year’s “The Battered Bastards of Baseball.” The newest entry into the sub-genre is the Dock Ellis-centric “No No: A Dockumentary,” and its first trailer has arrived online. Ellis was a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early '70s, a charismatic and controversial figure (at least as far as racist baseball fans were concerned) who would later admit to pitching a “no-no,” baseball speak for a game in which the opposing team is not able to achieve a single hit, while high on LSD. The documentary tells the story of Ellis' ascent to notoriety as a major league pitcher, and though he passed away in 2008 before the completion of the film, director Jeffrey Radice was able to get...

"It was easier to pitch with the LSD, that's the way I was dealing with the fear of failure." Today's trailer is for another fascinating baseball documentary that premiered at Sundance this year (we also recommend The Battered Bastards of Baseball). This one is titled No No: A Dockumentary about pitcher Dock Ellis, the man famous for pitching a no-hitter game in 1970 while on LSD. "It was an ugly no-hitter," he admits in the trailer, but still a "no-no". While Dock passed away in 2008, filmmaker Jeff Radice was able to interview him extensively and it's amusing and enlightening to hear his story, filled with anecdotes, archival footage and stories from other players. Looks like another great baseball doc and I'm looking forward to seeing this. Watch the official trailer for Jeff Radice's No No: A Dockumentary, originally from Yahoo: Short synopsis: In the 1970s Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter...

While some less sophisticated folks might proclaim that watching soccer is "boring," we'd argue your average baseball game is like watching paint dry. At least at the major league level. But get down the minors, and you see the lively spirit of the game in its purest form, and there were none more mighty that the beloved Portland Mavericks. They existed for a brief shining moment in the 1970s, the only independently owned Class A team in the Northwest League and they were a sensation. And now they have a movie to tell their tale. The wonderfully titled "The Battered Bastards Of Baseball" recounts how Bing Russell (yep, father of Kurt Russell) threw his hat in the ring for a baseball franchise after the Portland Beavers left for Spokane. And once he got the rights, he put together a team the only way he knew how: by having a lot of fun.

Netflix has released The Battered Bastards of Baseball trailer online. Directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way, the film chronicles Bonanza actor Bing Russell’s formation of the independent baseball team the Portland Mavericks and the ensuing confrontation with organized baseball. I caught the film at Sundance, and it was a blast, and I'm glad it's coming to Netflix since it will give plenty of people the opportunity to see it. Whether you're a sports fan or not, you can still connect to the rebel spirit of the team and how a bunch of misfits can win the heart of a city. Hit the jump to check out The Battered Bastards of Baseball trailer. The documentary will be available on Netflix on July 11th. Via EW.

The post The Battered Bastards Of Baseball Trailer: Sundance Documentary Celebrates Indie Baseball Team the Portland Mavericks appeared first on Collider.

Netflix plans to debut three original documentaries over the next few months. First up is The Battered Bastards Of Baseball. It chronicles how in 1973 Bonanza actor Bing Russell formed what at the time was America’s sole independent baseball team. Seen as a real-life version of the Bad News Bears, the Mavericks lasted three years before they were pushed out of Portland by the return of the major-league-backed Portland Beavers. The pic was co-directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way, produced by Juliana Lembi, exec produced by Nancy Schafer and includes cast members Kurt Russell (Bing Russell’s son) and Todd Fields. It’s set to premiere July 11 on Netflix. Also on the slate is Mission Blue. It tells the story of legendary oceanographer, marine biologist, environmentalist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and her impassioned campaign to save the world’s oceans from modern threats like climate change,...

The world premiere of the 30 For 30 documentary When The Garden Was Eden marking actor Michael Rapaport’s feature directorial debut will kick off the Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival on April 17.

The line-up includes Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield taking part in an on-stage conversation as part of the Tribeca Talks series, as well as the world premiere of the documentary Maradona ‘86.

Each of the Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival films will screen throughout the festival and every one will screen again on April 26.

The Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival sponsored by Mohegan Sun will present a series of free, sports-related games and activities on Sports Day under the umbrella of the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair on April 26.

The Tribeca Film Festival will run from April 16-27.

Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival

Synopses adapted from those provided by the festival.

Gala

When The Garden Was Eden (Us), dir Michael Rapaport.

Actor [link=nm...

The world premiere of the 30 For 30 documentary marking actor Michael Rapaport’s feature directorial debut will kick off the Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival on April 17.

The line-up includes Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield taking part in an on-stage conversation as part of the Tribeca Talks series, as well as the world premiere of the documentary Maradona ‘86.

Each of the Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival films will screen throughout the festival and every one will screen again on April 26.

The Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival sponsored by Mohegan Sun will present a series of free, sports-related games and activities on Sports Day under the umbrella of the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair on April 26.

The Tribeca Film Festival will run from April 16-27.

Tribeca/Espn Sports Film Festival

Synopses adapted from those provided by the festival.

Gala

When The Garden Was Eden (Us), dir Michael Rapaport.

Actor Michael Rapaport delivers his love letter to the Knicks in a fast-paced...

Justin Lin has a lot of projects on his plate after leaving the Fast And Furious franchise. Aside from directing the next installment in the Bourne franchise, Lin just recently obtained the rights to a retelling of the Sundance documentary The Battered Bastards Of Baseball. Based on the story of Russell's father, Bing Russell, The Battered Bastards is a film tailor-made for the big screen. Documentary directors Chapman Way and Maclain Way were being pursued by multiple studios before Lin...