Bing Liu Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Jessica Kiang The act of making an observational documentary is built on hope. Or at least, on the slightly reckless faith that once the cameras are rolling, patterns and arcs will duly emerge, coalescing into insightful, manageable storylines that can with luck be shaped to deliver an uptick of optimism.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Writer-director Sean Wang is tough on himself in “Dìdi,” a fresh and funny summer-before-freshman-year flashback that provides an Asian American angle on that Sundanciest of indie-film genres: the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie. In what feels like a cross between Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” and Jonah Hill’s “mid90s” — courtesy of the young director’s teenage desire to make skate videos — Wang serves up some of his most wince-inducing adolescent memories, from an aborted first kiss to the realization that he’d been trying to downplay his Taiwanese heritage.

Plan B Entertainment partners Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner play their cards close to their chests when it comes to strategy and upcoming plans.

Charna Flam The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences has launched an Academy Originals podcast, “The Art of the Documentary.” The new podcast is hosted by Oscar-nominee and “Crip Camp” documentarian Jim LeBrecht. The six-episode season will include LeBrecht sitting down with documentary filmmakers, as they reveal to the host and the audience their filmmaking processes. “The Art of the Documentary,” will chronicle “how a filmmaker approaches their subject and how they engage with it,” according to the press release. The podcast will highlight how the various documentarians work to find new filmmaking approaches, all in an effort to tell their stories in innovative ways. LeBrecht and guests will discuss how they achieve special access and how far they’ll go to get their story — even if that means taking dangerous risks.

EXCLUSIVE: Robert Morgan’s Talaria Media has launched development on Arigato Tokyo, a new drama set in the world of women’s professional wrestling, after acquiring a feature pitch by Daytime Emmy winner Mark Blutman (Ghostwriter, Boy Meets World). Jamie Anderson is on board to direct the pic, with Morgan to exec produce.

Sally Jo Fifer is stepping down after 22 years as CEO of Independent Television Service, the documentary production and funding powerhouse. She will stay in her role while the ITVS board searches for a successor to Fifer, who joined the organization in 2001 after a stint as executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition.

as an art form, addresses the interviewer with shining eyes and a kind voice. In an impassioned monologue that lends the documentary its name, he speaks about skateboarding with a kind of sublime reverence. Despite the bodily costs, he insists, “this is the luxury of having spent my life doing what I love.”“I’m not going to give up until the wheels fall off,” Mullen goes on.

It’s a curious fact that some of the most notable documentaries of recent years have revolved, in one or another, around skateboarding.

Coming off their acclaimed documentary “Minding the Gap,” Joshua Altman and Bing Liu co-direct the searing, bracingly honest “All These Sons.” Continue reading ‘All These Sons’: A Fitting Follow-up to Bing Liu’s ‘Minding the Gap’ [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.