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documentaries - page 4

A superstar opens up in Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry [Apple TV+ review]

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Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry
She's young, she's human, get used to it.
Photo: Apple TV+

With Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, the young pop star gets a showcase and a bio-doc, which means she’s gotten so hugely popular that people demanded to know more about her.

The good news is, Eilish is a humble and interesting subject. The bad news: Being a depressed teenager with high-tension demands placed upon you isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

Surf’s up! Apple TV+ dives into World Surf League docuseries

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Apple TV+ goes behind-the-scenes at the 2021 World Surf League championship.
Seven-time World Surf League champion Stephanie Gilmore at Honolua Bay.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s video streaming service is hitting the waves. It ordered a documentary series that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the aspirations, failures and accomplishments of the world’s best surfers as they compete in the World Surf League championship.

Feast your eyes on Earth at Night in Color [Apple TV+ review]

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The Earth At Night in Color
Brace yourself for an unequaled eyeful of nature.
Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+ steps up its nature doc game again with Earth at Night in Color. Exciting, beautiful and cute, the show is as easy to watch as it is cumbersome to say.

Narrated by Tom Hiddleston, the series looks at parts of the natural world previously only revealed in grainy and intense night vision. It’s as exciting and revealing as anyone could hope for.

Get wowed by amazing camera tech in Earth at Night in Color on Apple TV+

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‘Earth At Night In Color’ premiers December 4 on Apple TV+.
Earth At Night In Color journeys into the night , and makes it like day.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s next nature docuseries goes where ordinary cameras fear to tread: the darkness. Earth at Night in Color uses cutting-edge camera technology to explore life after dark in ways not possible before.

Watch the official trailer for the Apple TV+ series to get a first glimpse.

Becoming You will make you marvel at human development [Apple TV+ review]

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Becoming You is sensational, no matter your age
Becoming You is sensational, no matter your age
Photo: Apple TV+

New Apple TV+ documentary series Becoming You is the kind of admirably human show that seems designed to rack up grateful viewers.

Tackling the earliest development of the human brain in more than a hundred children the world over, the docuseries makes a calculated plea for empathy and togetherness — and a convincing one at that.

Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds will fill you with wonder [Apple TV+ review]

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Clive Oppenheimer and Werner Herzog guide us through
Clive Oppenheimer and Werner Herzog guide us through Fireball.
Photo: Apple TV+

Werner Herzog’s latest documentary is truly an all-timer for the Bavarian buddha. Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, a doc about meteors that debuts on Apple TV+ on November 13, looks at no less than the way the heavens speak to us insignificant earthlings.

In traditional Herzog style it’s discursive, loopy and unspeakably beautiful. However much Apple TV+ spent on this film, it was a bargain. Because this is the kind of documentary you’ll want to watch over and over again.

Becoming You’s epic toddlers will clobber you with cute

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Apple TV+ Becoming You
This kid can surf better than I can.
Photo: Apple

Apple TV+ looks to continue building its sterling reputation with the upcoming six-part documentary series Becoming You. Narrated by Oscar-winner Olivia Coleman, the series will tell the story of the first 2,000 days of life for 100 kids from around the world.

It hits me, as the kids say, “right in the feels.” Check out the trailer below.

The Velvet Underground music doc explores avant-garde ‘60s band for Apple TV+

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Discover how an unsuccessful rock band went on to become hugely influential in the Velvet Underground documentary on Apple TV+.
Discover how an unsuccessful rock band went on to become hugely influential in the Velvet Underground documentary on Apple TV+.
Photo: Apple

Apple TV+ is carving out a niche of musical documentaries. It’s latest project is The Velvet Underground. This will be, of course, about the 1960s band that found little success in its day, but went on to be hugely influential.

You’ll want to open Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You again and again [Apple TV+ review]

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Bruce Springsteen's Letter To You review: Upcoming Apple TV+ documentary offers a moving look at the songwriter's life and music.
The upcoming Apple TV+ documentary offers a moving look at Bruce Springsteen's life and music.
Photo: Apple TV+

Just in time for election day, America’s real president makes a stump speech that’s part biography and part self-mythologizing letter to an equally mythic version of the state he calls home. Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You, like a lot of the Boss’ later albums, isn’t exactly groundbreaking or inventive. However, there’s a good reason his homespun coastal Americana never goes out of fashion. Nobody gets America like Springsteen.

Upcoming Apple TV+ documentary Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You showcases the songs on his 20th album. While it won’t tell you anything you didn’t already suspect, you will find an incalculable kind of value in the songwriter’s company.

You won’t believe the crazy camera rigs used to shoot Tiny World

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Tiny World making of: Turns out these tiny frogs are grapplers.
Turns out these tiny frogs are grapplers.
Photo: Apple TV+

New Apple TV+ nature docuseries Tiny World was definitely not shot on iPhone.

Documentarians who captured those pint-size critters’ everyday adventures show off some of their crazy camera rigs in a new behind-the-scenes video. And the photo gear looks absolutely crazy. The clip also shows off some of the incredible footage in the series, which debuted Friday on Apple TV+.

Apple TV+ reels in another star with music doc Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry

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Documentary
The world's a little blurry, and so is this photo of Billie Eilish.
Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+ just landed another star for its ever-growing galaxy. The service will stream upcoming documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry in February 2021, the same month the film makes its theatrical premiere.

The “highly anticipated documentary” is being produced by Apple Original Films and directed by R.J. Cutler, Apple said in a press release Monday. Cutler made a name for himself with documentaries The War Room and The September Issue as well as TV shows American High and Nashville.

Tiny World amazes with an Ant-Man view of nature [Apple TV+ review]

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Apple TV+ enters the world of nature docs with the charming 'Tiny World.'
Apple TV+ enters the world of nature docs with the charming Tiny World.
Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+ invites you to take a look at the things beneath your feet in its new documentary series Tiny World. Narrated by Paul Rudd, this show is charming, if maybe too cute for its own good.

Tiny World, which premieres on October 2, is the first of three new docuseries coming to the streaming service this fall. It’s a shrewd and promising start, as Apple TV+ positions itself as a provider of episodic nonfiction content to match its high-profile dramas and films.

First Tiny World trailer promises big adventures on Apple TV+

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Ant-Man is the perfect narrator for Tiny World, an upcoming Apple TV+ nature documentary.
Ant-Man is the perfect narrator.
Image: Apple TV+

Little critters face enormous challenges in the first trailer for Tiny World, a new nature documentary series coming to Apple TV+.

The trailer, released Thursday, shows small creatures on land, at sea and in the air as they struggle to survive in a world filled with threats both large and small. As is the way with all successful trailers, the eye-grabbing footage makes the tiny beings’ encounters look larger than life.

Boys State is a timely and terrifying political documentary [Apple TV+ review]

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Ben Feinstein appears in the terrifying Apple TV+ documentary Boys State
Ben Feinstein appears in the terrifying Apple TV+ documentary Boys State.
Photo: Apple TV+

If you looked at the crowds of white nationalists bearing tiki torches at the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and wondered what took them from innocent children to gimlet-eyed monsters of borrowed ideology, Boys State is a harrowing but necessary research tool.

The new Apple TV+ documentary by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss delivers a frightening look at a time-honored tradition that appears to have actively made the world a worse place.

Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner Boys State, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+, may nauseate you. But you’ll be glad you saw it, if only because it’s a shocking and sobering reminder that the next generation of conservatives is ready to step in and replace the one about to die — and they’re no less efficacious.

Werner Herzog’s astronomical documentary Fireball shoots toward Apple TV+

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Werner Herzog is one of the greatest living filmmakers, and he’s co-directing Fireball for Apple TV+.
Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog is co-directing Fireball for Apple TV+.
Photo: Apple

Apple bought the rights to Fireball, a documentary about meteorites co-directed by Werner Herzog and professor Clive Oppenheimer.

The two filmmakers have worked before. Very successfully. They scored an Oscar nomination for Encounters at the End of the World and an Emmy nomination for Into the Inferno.

Greatness Code proves Apple TV+ is in the relationship business [Apple TV+ review]

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Greatness Code
What is the code for greatness? No one in the documentary series Greatness Code is going to tell you.
Photo: Apple TV+

There’s a reason this review only has one image in it: Apple TV+ doesn’t have any more press pictures for this show. Why? Because why should it? This paper-thin passel of hagiographies isn’t worth promoting.

Greatness Code, which debuts July 10, isn’t a show so much as it’s an investment in the big star athletes being interviewed. To say no to the project would have meant scuttling potential relationships with some of the biggest names in sports. But to admit it’s worth your time seems a bridge too far.

Boys State trailer somehow makes politics look like summertime fun

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First Boys State trailer makes politics look fun.
Who says politics needs to be nasty?
Image: Apple TV+

It might seem totally impossible in 2020, but upcoming Apple TV+ documentary Boys State makes politics look fun. The first trailer, which Apple released Tuesday, introduces some of the real-life young men who engage in an annual Texas tradition that’s basically summer camp for citizens.

That might sound nerdy and dry, but the first promo spot crackles with energy. It feels almost like a mashup of Election, Dazed and Confused and Napoleon Dynamite (with a little bit of Little America and, hopefully, Meatballs, thrown in to spice things up).

Who on earth is Dads for? [Apple TV+ review]

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Dads review: Glen Henry and his daughter, one of many subjects in the enthusiastically weightless Apple TV+ documentary Dads.
Glen Henry and his daughter, one of many subjects in the enthusiastically weightless Dads.
Photo: Apple TV+

Apple TV+ secured another handsomely produced, blandly pleasant, absolute mediocrity when it purchased Bryce Dallas Howard’s feature documentary debut, Dads. What’s Dads about, you ask? Why dads, of course. Next question.

Up until now, Apple TV+ hasn’t been the most cautious content provider. Apple execs lavished money on a lot of utter nonsense with enormous price tags because they seemed to aesthetically fit in with the rest of the company’s design scheme. HomeCentral Park, See — none of them are good television, but they’d look good testing TVs on a showroom floor, which seems to be the prevailing ethos for a lot of the Apple TV+ purchases.

Dads, released Friday just in time to remind you to forget Father’s Day, is much the same and quite a bit less.

Beastie Boys Story relives the beer-soaked glory days of hip-hop’s original hell-raisers [Review]

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Beastie Boys Story: Mike Diamond, Adam Yauch and Adam Horovitz in 1993 from an archival photo used in “Beastie Boys Story,” premiering globally on Apple TV+ on April 24.
Beastie Boys turned hip-hop on its head, and a new doc captures the magic.
Photo: Apple TV+

Beastie Boys Story, director Spike Jonze’s endearing Apple TV+ documentary about the first white rap phenoms, proves as powerful as it is screamingly funny.

Jonze, a confidant and collaborator of the group since the Beasties’ experimental mid-career, exhibits an easy candor with his subjects. That familiarity allows all of them to open up, which is important when it comes to discussing their failures and losses.

Make the most of self-isolation with streamable documentaries [Deals]

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Curiosity Stream All
Take a tour of our world and more with unlimited access to more than 2,000 documentary features and series.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

One of the few consolations of being cooped up is the time it gives us to catch up on streaming content. But reality TV and movies can only keep us busy for so long before our brains get hungry. With access to more than 2,000 documentaries, CuriosityStream offers some food for thought.