Documentary Archives - Page 40 of 63

History welcomes you to “The Godfather Legacy”

July 23, 2012 StayTuned Staff

The Corleones. People have been talking about them, obsessing on them, quoting them and referencing them for more than 40 years, since Mario Puzo’s pulpy little bestseller first took hold of the reading public. But it was the story’s incredible transition to the screen in the deft hands of director Francis Ford Coppola that really made the Corleone family — and everything those two words now imply — an indelible part of the American psyche. And over the decades, neither they nor the films that brought them to us have lessened in impact. In recognition of this achievement, History will […]

Beauty and aging discussed in HBO’s “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now”

July 20, 2012 Channel Guide Contributor

By Jay Bobbin One thing is for sure: HBO has one of the most attractive documentaries of the year. How could it be anything but, with such participants as Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs, Paulina Porizkova, Carol Alt, Beverly Johnson, Isabella Rossellini, Lisa Taylor, Marisa Berenson and Jerry Hall? Those names should indicate that modeling is the subject. Indeed, About Face: Supermodels Then and Now (debuting Juy 30 at 9pm ET/PT) finds those women and other peers giving filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (The Black List) their thoughts on their industry, their experiences in it, and its present and future as they see […]

AMC and Anthony Bourdain say you’d better watch “Mob Week”

July 19, 2012 StayTuned Staff

Yeah, tough guy, I’m lookin’ at you. So you’ve seen Goodfellas more times than there are oranges in The Godfather. And you’ve seen The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II — judiciously skipping the oft-maligned Part III — so often that you half believe that the reason Michael Corleone hasn’t called you up is because he keeps his enemies closer. Well, you’re gonna get a chance to see all of these films again, but you’re also gonna get the chance to dig further into the gangster film canon than television typically dishes out when AMC has New York chef, author […]

History gets on board with “Great Lakes Warriors”

July 18, 2012 StayTuned Staff

Never let it be said that the fishermen of the Bering Sea or down in the Gulf of Mexico have all the fun. Smack in the middle of North America, a different sort of battle is waged in the waters of the Great Lakes. An essential trade route to the heart of the continent, the lakes bear heavy traffic much of the year — except in the months leading up to the brutal winter, when advancing ice, winds and waves make the waters exceedingly deadly. During these times, it’s the tugboat men who keep the lanes moving, in spite of […]

Sex and Celibacy: TLC’s “Strange Sex” and “Virgin Diaries” return

July 12, 2012 Jeff Pfeiffer

Two ends of the titillation spectrum are on hand as a couple of popular TLC franchises come back over the next week. Season 3 of the series Strange Sex returns Sunday, July 15, at 10pm and 10:30pm ET/PT with a look at more bizarre sexual fetishes and conditions. This season will include a man who cured his erectile dysfunction by drinking his wife’s breast milk, a woman who undergoes vaginal rejuvenation (hymenoplasty) for her 40th wedding anniversary, a woman who experiences painful orgasms and the woman in the video below, who has an uncomfortable-looking condition called gigantomastia that gives her […]

HBO examines the 2011 Japan earthquake and its aftermath in “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”

July 12, 2012 Lori Acken

In the mid-afternoon of March 11, 2011, a small contingent stood on a Japanese hillside, watching in increasing despair as monstrous waves swept away every vestige of their city, turning everything before them into a brackish stew and washing away fellow residents before their eyes. The footage they shot makes up the chilling opening scenes of The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, the Oscar-nominated documentary from Lucy Walker that chronicles the Great East Japan Earthquake and makes its television debut Monday, July 16 on HBO. With a magnitude of 9.0 that triggered 133-foot waves, the quake was the most powerful ever […]

Documentary special looks at the history and evolution of the Batmobile

July 10, 2012 Jeff Pfeiffer

The CW will be airing the broadcast network premiere of a new half-hour special about the history and evolution of Batman’s iconic ride — the Batmobile — on July 16 (the special makes its world premiere July 12 at Comic-Con in San Diego, where all six of the Batmobiles from film and TV will also appear for the first time together). The special is simply, and appropriately, called The Batmobile, and uses archival footage, images and illustrations of the Batmobile to document its birth and evolution to the present day. Interviews with filmmakers, key designers, builders, stunt drivers, actors and […]

TCM to honor Ernest Borgnine July 26

July 9, 2012 StayTuned Staff

In a salute to the extensive lifelong career of Hollywood great and Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine, who passed away at the age of 95 this past weekend, TCM will feature an all-day marathon of some of Borgnine’s most memorable performances, as well as TCM’s Private Screenings: Ernest Borgnine special. Lineup for the memorial day of programming Thursday, June 26, will be as follows: 6am: The Catered Affair (1956) 8am: The Legend of Lylah Clare 10:30am: Pay or Die 12:30pm: Torpedo Run 2:30pm: Ice Station Zebra 5:15pm: The Dirty Dozen 8pm: Private Screenings: Ernest Borgnine 9pm: Marty 10:45pm: From Here to Eternity 1am: The […]

HBO’s “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island” takes a sobering look at the job crisis

July 6, 2012 Lori Acken

In the opening moments of HBO’s disquieting new documentary Hard Times: Lost on Long Island, balding, bespectacled Alan Fromm — an unemployed corporate trainer — catalogs the catastrophes he survived prior to losing his job a year earlier: struck by lightning at 15; heart trouble at 21; in the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing; on the Long Island Rail Road when Colin Ferguson gunned down 25 passengers nine months later; and in the north tower on 9/11. By comparison, he says, unemployment doesn’t seem so bad. But it’s getting there. Fromm often gathers with a rotating crew of […]

History’s “Shark Wranglers” goes after the Great White … to save it

June 29, 2012 StayTuned Staff

Here’s a job that even the Deadliest Catch guys likely wouldn’t go near. History’s new series Shark Wranglers, premiering Sunday, July 1 at 10pm, documents noted ocean explorer and elite fisherman Chris Fischer on what the show’s release describes as “the most ambitious shark expedition in history.” Fischer and his crew travel to the waters off South Africa, home to giant great whites, with the intent of catching and tagging at least 50 sharks within 40 days. In achieving their goal, Fischer and his team track each great white, maneuver them onto the cradle of their 126-foot boat in tumultuous […]