Doc Corner: 'Videofreex' a New Angle on Old News

Glenn here and welcome back to Doc Corner. Each Tuesday we're bringing reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand.

The news is constantly changing, and never more so than in today’s evolving media landscape. Where once a story would unfold nightly on the broadcast network’s news programs, now it unfolds live and often unedited, captured by anybody, anywhere. Here Come the Videofreex is a new documentary by Jenny Raskin and Jon Nealon that examines the very beginnings of this shift in news reportage by going all the way back to the late 1960s and getting up close to the then breaking trend of grass roots video journalism that was birthed in the shadow of Sony’s first video recorder units. Focusing on the collective known as the “Videofreex”, this entertaining film charts how these documentarians – and that’s exactly what they were – captured daily life, beginning with the simple act of taking a personal video camera to Woodstock and in their first act of directorial voice ignored the music entirely and instead focused on the patrons.

Forged by a meeting of like-minded individuals with a passion in sharing their world experiences, the team quickly graduated to CBS news employees, but that was short-lived after an attempt at a television pilot was mooted and everyone was fired. More...

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Link Party

This is Not Porn an 11 year old David Lynch meeting Vincent Price. LOL
TMZ Shadow Trooper trademark filed for the Star Wars franchise. 
Nicks Flick Picks Sometimes the rating has to be an A+. Truly nothing else would do
Salon has a gossipy unflattering list of difficult directors: Lars von Trier, David Fincher, etc...
MNPP Rock Hudson one time 

Variety Nate Parker (Beyond the Lights) isn't waiting around for Birth of a Nation to make him happen in a bigger way. He's already working on writing his next picture Carry On a paralympic wrestler movie.
Variety Julia Roberts to star in a true story lawyer drama. Said to be a meaty role for her though the story sounds like it's all about her client. 
Coming Soon I have no words about this Red Band trailer for the animated comedy Sausage Party
Kenneth in the (212) Actor Robert Davalos (East of Eden) dies at 85. RIP 

Small Screen
MNPP [NSFW] Corey Stoll (♥) goes gay in an explicit scene on Girls 
Playbill Sydney Lucas, the young girl who was so brilliant in Fun Home on Broadway joins the cast of AMC's new series The Son which will star Sam Neill
Comics Alliance new trailer and poster for AMC series Preacher, a comic book adaptation starring Dominic Cooper
Variety Underground, a slave escape drama, is a huge hit for WGN

Off Cinema
Spin Macklemore owns a painting of Justin Beiber with a pancake on his dick
Theater Mania suggests Broadway musicals based on 5 TV shows
Boy Culture an audio recording from Liza Minnelli to everyone who wished her a happy birthday online

Reminder
Tonight is the Hit Me With Your Best Shot for ATONEMENT (2007). You can see read and bask in early entries already from Awards Madness, Cinematic Corner, I Want to Believe, Film Mix Tape, 54 Disney, Christian Bonamusa, and Out to the Movies... and that's a lot in already so tonight might be crazy. Stream it quick and join us. The full roundup will be up late, probably about 10 PM EST

Look, it's Jake Gyllenhaal at SXSW

I don't have a point other than: look at him!

Stage Door: The King and I

This soundtrack got a lot of play during my childhoodWith Tony season fast approaching, it's time to revive our stage column and try to hit the shows that might be competing this year. But we'll start with a throwback to last season, the revival of Rodgers & Hammerstein's The King and I which most everyone knows from its 1956 big screen adaptation which won 5 Oscars (albeit in a weird Academy year) and hopefully not from that 1999 Jodie Foster movie Anna and the King.

For those who aren't well versed in Broadway mechanics there's generally a few weeks of performances called "previews" wherein shows are technically not "open" and yet they're playing every night as they approach opening night. It's the easiest time to get tickets to almost anything so if you miss the previews good luck! Other avid theatergoers might have a different take but I've found that as a general rule it's best to see stage shows late in previews through, oh, four months into the initial run. You're late enough that the actors have fine tuned their work and you're early enough that no one on stage is phoning it after having done it 8 times a week for months on end. Sometimes, though, a show is so popular and expensive that you give up trying to see it. This was the case with yours truly and The King and I, winner of 4 Tony Awards in 2015: Best Revival of a Musical, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Costume Design. 

Shall we dance... after the jump? 

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The Furniture: The Exorcist's Possessed Bedroom

Daniel Walber, new contributor, with the first episode of a weekly feature on production design. Every Monday morning we'll take a look at memorable sets and props, from classic Oscar nominees to the best new releases.

The Exorcist is a movie about a single room. Sure, it starts halfway across the world, on an archaeological dig in Northern Iraq. It’s true that Father Damien has a memorable, upsetting trip to a mental hospital in New York. And those iconic steps lurk just outside the house. Yet all of the violence, all of the vomit, all of Mercedes McCambridge’s legendary profanity issues forth from little Regan MacNeil’s tiny bedroom...

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