Crime, Corruption and Cockiness: The Whitey Bulger Story
His name was once second on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, right after that of Osama bin Laden. But even with notorious gangster Whitey Bulger captured, convicted and behind bars for the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary, the families of those he mercilessly killed are not convinced that justice was done. Every aspect of Bulger’s life is over-the-top dramatic, from his beginnings as a young thug in South Boston, to a stint at...
Ken Burns Gets Intimate With the Roosevelts on PBS
Just as “The Civil War” and “The War” before it, master documentarian Ken Burns’ “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History” is turning out to be a massive blockbuster for PBS. The sprawling documentary chronicling the lives of Theodore, Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt began Sunday night with the first of its seven, two-hour episodes, which garnered a 5.8 rating and an average audience of 9.06 million viewers, according to Nielsen...
Carnage and Courage in HBO’s ‘Terror at the Mall’
We have just commemorated the 13th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, yet many people may not realize that September marks another such tragic milestone. It’s been one year since an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group based in Somalia attacked a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 71 people dead and hundreds wounded. A new documentary airing on HBO and then on CNN, “Terror at the Mall,” takes a harrowing look inside the...
Big Men: A Story of Greed and Corruption Unfolds When Big Money is at Stake
One of the things that POV on PBS, now in its 27th season, does best is showcasing the work of the world’s finest independent documentary filmmakers, and the upcoming “Big Men” is a prime example. Airing Monday, August 25 on PBS, the documentary is a nail-biting exposé of the global dealmaking and the dark underside of what happens when the US oil industry goes into Africa to drill. It becomes a contest for money and power that...
Variety TV Summit: The Future of the Business on Multiple Platforms
Variety is known for putting on top-quality entertainment industry conferences and last week’s TV Summit was no exception. The all-day series of seminars got started with a keynote address from Marc Juris, president and general manager of WeTV – a warm-up act, if you will, for a conversation between Conan O’Brien and Variety’s Cynthia Littleton. For anyone who had not had enough morning coffee at that point, Conan’s humor and insights...
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