Coming soon on the small screen

Winehouse, Joplin, Sinatra and...Ari Gold?

By HANNAH BROWN
Amy Winehouse (photo credit: PR)
Amy Winehouse
(photo credit: PR)
Music lovers will be happy to hear that YES Docu is featuring a week of musicrelated films from April 10 to 14.
All films will be aired on the channel and will also be available on YES VOD.
The Oscar-winning documentary Amy, about the short, tragic life of the incredibly talented Amy Winehouse, will be shown on April 14 at 10 p.m. The movie, directed by Asif Kapadia, features interviews with Winehouse’s friends, colleagues and family, as well as many clips of her performances and interviews. Although it is a sad story, it is wonderful to see and hear her amazing jazz singing.
Perhaps no one could help her get off drugs, but the director does not press her parents as to why they encouraged her to continue performing when it was clear that she was near death. One of her best-known hits was about not wanting to go to rehab, but that song seems sad now, rather than defiant and funny as it once did.
The most heart-breaking moment comes when she wins multiple Grammy awards during a brief period when she was drug-free and tells her friend how boring life is when she is not high.
Another singer who died too young was Janis Joplin. Her brief life and musical career are documented in the film Janis: Little Girl Blue by Amy Berg, which will be shown on April 10 at 10 p.m.
Told through Joplin’s letters and music, the acclaimed documentary features interviews with contemporary singers who talk about how Joplin’s bluesinfused rock music influenced them. Like Winehouse, Joplin sang with a rare power and authority for someone so young. And, also like Winehouse, she died at 27.
Sinatra: All or Nothing at All is a four-part series about Frank Sinatra, the man many feel was the greatest pop singer of all time.
It will air from April 10 to 13 at 9 p.m. It was directed by Alex Gibney, the Oscar winner who recently made Zero Days, a documentary about cyber warfare that premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. Among his other films are Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief; and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.
This Sinatra documentary is organized into segments inspired by the 11 songs he sang as part of his 1971 farewell concert. It’s an affectionate portrait and does not focus on some of the seamier aspects of his life, notably his Mafia connections, but on his music and marriages. The documentary is a must-see for anyone who loved the singer, and it could introduce his work to a new generation.
Is the Entourage movie kind of dumb? Yes, but like the series, it’s also fun and is at its best when it is filled with insider jokes about how stars’ egos run rampant in Hollywood. It’s showing on HOT Gold at 10 p.m. on April 8. The entitled movie star, Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), and his gang of old friends and family are back, but the best character is still Jeremy Piven as the megalomaniac agent, Ari Gold. The movie picks up not long after the series left off, with Ari leaving retirement to head the corporation that runs the studio. He wants to give a plum role to Vince, but Vince now wants to direct, and he and his buddies are way out of their depth trying to make a big-budget sci-fi flick.
An unrecognizable Haley Joel Osment, who starred in The Sixth Sense, plays the son of the billionaire bankrolling their movie.
Among celebrity cameos in the movie are Warren Buffett (yes, the Berkshire Hathaway mogul), Mike Tyson, Matt Lauer, Liam Neeson, a bunch of supermodels and, of course, Mark Wahlberg, whose misadventures with his own posse were the basis for the series.
Rex Lee, who played Lloyd, Ari’s loyal former assistant and the most likable character on the show, is in the movie, but his appearances are mainly through video chats as he plans his wedding — to Olympic gold medal-winning diver Greg Louganis.