This extraordinary documentary Pina by German filmmaker Wim Wenders (justly nominated for an Academy Award) on the choreographer Pina Bausch, his countryman, near-contemporary and fellow visionary, was a long time in coming. An artistic collaboration had been planned for some time but in an instance of epic bad timing, Bausch died just two days before filming was to have begun, having been diagnosed with cancer only five days previously.

The movie is thus haunted by the specter of death and of aging, compounded by the fact that many company members had been with Bausch for twenty-plus years. This theme is stated in the opening piece (returned to periodically in the duration of the movie), in which a long line of dancers chants Fruhling…Sommer…Herbst…Winter as they snake along a train platform, behind and onto a stage and later, on a wind-blown hilltop.

The Tanztheater German expressionist influence is clear in their affects, which ride the line between ecstasy and despair. Are they smiling in the face of death, or ruefully acknowledging that life and death march on regardless?

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The X-Men are a cornerstone franchise, the popularity of the book from the 70′s through the 80′s and it’s domination in the 90′s have helped shape an entire generation of artists and storytellers. The man behind most of that legacy is Chris Claremont, one of the most prolific creators in comic history. Now the story of his legendary run on Uncanny X-Men is being told as a documentary and you have a chance to help fund it.

Sequart and Respect Films are putting together the documentary and have set up a kickstarter page looking for funding from true believers like you. If successful, this documentary would be the first in a series of docs that focus on iconic series and creators that are worth telling, but likely would struggle to be big enough for a feature length doc.

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For me and many of my friends, one of our endless debates will always be: Star Trek or Star Wars? Like Coke vs. Pepsi, Ginger vs. Mary Ann or Mac vs. Windows, geeks always have a fun time debating the merits of their favorite things.

One of those favorite things celebrating a milestone today is Gene Roddenberry’s venerable franchise Star Trek. 45 years ago today the show first aired on NBC and from that moment on it spawned generations of devoted fans and turned into a worldwide phenomenon beloved by millions of people all over the world.

To help celebrate that milestone, the Science Channel is working with Gene Roddenberry’s only son, Rod Roddenberry, to produce the world premiere documentary, Trek Nation.

According to the Science Channel, the film “shadows Gene Roddenberry’s son, Rod, as he explores his family legacy and the crusade his father’s passion and curiosity for exploration. Through interviews with his most devoted fans, including George Lucas and J.J. Abrams, Trek Nation follows a son searching for the wisdom of his father.”

Sounds pretty interesting. Think I’ll give it a look.

Trek Nation is set to air on Wednesday, November 30 only on Science Channel. Check out a new clip from the doc after the break.

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The Last Mountain of the title refers to Coal River Mountain, an area in West Virginia being mined by the Massey Energy company. Massey has a long history of violations, as the villagers below are quick to point out—creating lakes of toxic goo that threaten to pollute the waterways of West Virginia and other states; unsafe mining practices that likely caused brain cancer in several residents, union busting, profiteering, global warming and so on.

Director Bill Haney (The Price of Sugar) provides an informative summary of the dangers of Massey Energy’s practices with first-hand accounts from Coal Mountain locals as well as experts. It’s well-researched and articulate, and yes, it’s a problem. But that’s where The Last Mountain stops being informative and Haney’s contempt for Massey takes over.

It gets points for criticizing democrats and republicans alike, but it ultimately lets politicians like West Virginia governor Joe Manchin and Obama off the hook while taking aim at Massey CEO Don Blankenship. Sure, Blankenship may be a crook, but I doubt the filmmakers believe that the next guy in line will act any differently, so what’s the point in vilifying him?

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(Even though it’s been over for a while, there’s still some reviews to squeeze out of SXSW!)

The opening scene of Fambul Tok is as powerful as any documentary could hope for: A few dozen Sierra Leone villagers circle a campfire—the social center of their tiny community—one of them stands and accuses another, her own uncle, of slaughtering her family during the 1991 civil war. The gathering becomes a tribunal as the leader reiterates the charges and then asks the accused if they are accurate. And then, instead of handing down a sentence, the leader asks the man’s accuser if she forgives him. She does.

It’s everything an opening scene should be: engaging, tense, and a capsulation of the film.

Fambul Tok, which is Sierra Leonean for “family talk,” refers to this process, where, instead of charging one with a crime and judging him with a jury of his peers, justice is replaced with forgiveness in the hope of fostering peace. This method, its application and merits, are the focus of the film as explored by director Sara Terry and her guide John Caulker, himself a victim of the Sierra Leonean atrocities.

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As one of those people who still reads a newspaper every day, the thought of an inside look at how a giant daily works makes me pretty excited. As a fan of movies like The Philadelphia Story, All the President’s Men and The Paper, I’ve always hoped for more of a documentary approach to the subject matter that tells the real, inside story.

It looks like my wish is coming true in the form of a documentary called Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times. Making its debut at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, the Andrew Rossi-directed doc gives audiences unprecedented access to the most powerful newspaper in the world.

It tells the story of a once dominating media force now grappling with the implications of the web and digital content as well as questions of its very relevancy in a changing world. It looks pretty fascinating and to get you interested in the film as much as I am, we’ve got the new trailer for it to share today.

The film will be released by Magnolia Pictures later this year. Check out the trailer after the jump.

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Tim Harrison is an animal advocate and police officer in Ohio who spends his days responding to calls about exotic animals that have escaped or have become unmanageable. We’ve all heard the stories about escaped chimpanzees, snakes, alligators, and other pets, and rarely do they end well. As Harrison says, “There are no happy endings.”

The mere fact that Harrison stays busy in Ohio, of all places, is alarming. However, exotic pet ownership and trade is largely unregulated, and many states don’t require any type of license to own a potentially lethal pet.

Director Michael Webber tackles the emotionally charged issue of exotic pet ownership in the United States. He takes us undercover at an exotic pet auction where monkeys, cubs, poisonous snakes and other exotics are casually obtained by anyone who has the money to purchase the animals. Plenty of children were in attendance.

Many people don’t think about the consequences of buying a cute lion cub that will eventually weigh close to 600 pounds when fully grown. Often the owner simply lets the pet go in the wild. There have been so many pythons let loose in Florida that entire ecosystems are changing due to unfettered breeding and overpopulation.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I had the good fortune to meet Becoming Santa’s star, Jack, on the shuttle ferrying us from the horrendous labyrinthine beast of the Austin Convention Center to the heavenly outpost that is the Alamo Drafthouse. Yes, I know I’m mixing mythologies there, so bite me.

Anyway, I met and chatted with Jack before knowing whom he was or even that he had a documentary in the festival, and for those fifteen minutes we conversed, he was just as charming and articulate fellow as he comes across in Jeff Myers’ sweet little documentary.

So I met and liked the guy and ended up watching and liking his film, too. But the two likes are separate from each other; rest assured I’d tear it apart like an eel on a horse head if it were bad (as I well some other films whose directors I likewise met).

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Of the three films I’ve been most excited to see at SXSW, two of them were documentaries, and the two documentaries that pretty much everyone else has been the most excited to see: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Errol Morris’s Tabloid.

Of the two, the one I was a little unsure of was Morris’s. I know Morris to be somewhat of an acquired taste, and I find his films to lag some, but his is a master of interview and editing: No line of dialogue, no word, uttered by a subject in a Morris documentary, is uninteresting.

And Tabloid is no exception—in fact, it may well be the best introduction to Morris and is certainly his funniest.

The story was new to me: Joyce McKinney is a former beauty queen who fell in love with a man who took up with the Mormon faith and left her to perform his required mission trip in London. Joyce tracked him down, supposedly kidnapped him, and further supposedly spirited him away to a cottage in Devon where she (even further) supposedly chained him to a bed and had her way with him.

That’s not the whole story, of course, and one of the best jokes of Tabloid is just how far the story of Joyce McKinney, the tabloid Joyce McKinney keeps going, and going, and going, and shows no intent of slowing down, right up to the now.

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Like most folks, I love food. Its sheer edibleness, its eat-tastic-tude, its ability to be eaten…anything that better facilitates the process of receiving nourishment from something is tops in my book.

Paul Liebrandt, however, might disagree. He views food as a work of art, and the New York chef has made a name for himself over the last decade creating dishes that are meant to be tasted and appreciated for their miasma of flavorful combinations rather than their nourishment.

Sally Rowe’s documentary A Matter of Taste follows Paul’s passion to cook, refine, and perfect his art, as well as provide a brief chronicle of his life as one of the hottest up-and-coming chefs in New York, to his nadir flipping burgers for a simple NY bistro, to his joint undertaking to open Corton, a New York restaurant where he could cook the kind of food he wanted (and wants) to.

Paul is a charming character, surprisingly level-headed and calm given both his youth and profession. He’s also interesting to watch at work, with strands of hair on either side of his head, swinging like pendulums as he mashes a paste of brains and eggs amid a bed of eel tongues (or something like that, but seriously, that’s really the kind of stuff the guy cooks) or discusses the finer points of skinning a pig’s head (as he does in the opening shot).

He works with a swift and violent and hypnotizing precision. You don’t need to taste the food to appreciate the aesthetic of the piece.

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We’ve seen a slew of movies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the fictionalized ones simply haven’t connected with the public.  Even last year’s Oscar winning The Hurt Locker couldn’t manage to pull in large numbers at the box office.

What’s unique about The Tillman Story is that it puts a face on the war, and consequently humanizes it.  You can’t casually dismiss the story of Pat Tillman and his amazing family.  This is not a fiction movie, this is as real as it gets. And it is ugly.

Pat Tillman was charismatic student-athlete who attended Arizona State University on a football scholarship, and later played in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals.  He gave up that career when he, along with his younger brother Kevin, enlisted in the Army shortly after 9/11.

The two eventually became Army Rangers, and Pat did a tour in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was during his second tour, in Afghanistan,  that Tillman’s life was cut short.

Initially Tillman was painted as a  hero who died valiantly trying to save his fellow soldiers during a Taliban ambush.  Tillman was praised and awarded the Silver Star posthumously. However, things did not add up to Tillman’s family. They realized that there was much more to the story.

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