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Steve Jobs Man in the Machine

   2015    History
Directed by Alex Gibney, it follows the life and work of ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Gibney starts the doc by showing how much people around the world worship Steve Jobs as if he were an idol. He then provides you with a wealth of background information about Jobs' childhood, teenage and college years including how he formed Apple Inc. Fortunately, not all of the doc is hagiography because Gibney does briefly delve into the darker side of Jobs, particularly how selfish he was and mistreated those around him including his ex-wife. Jobs comes across as a charming, intelligent narcissist who knows how to captivate an audience whenever he speaks. In other words, like all great narcissists, he's a very good actor. Gibney certainly knows how to choose the right subject because Jobs' complexity makes him all the more captivating and worthy of a feature-length film. As is usually the case with Gibney's docs, this one is slickly-edited and has just the right amount of comic relief, mostly in the brief video of an young boy joyfully lists all of Apple's technological devices that Steve Jobs created. You'll catch a glimpse of what makes Jobs fallible, and find a little mildly provocative food for thought about the advancement of modern technology, i.e. how technology helps to connect us to one another yet alienates us at the same time.

Stop Making Sense

   1984    Art
Over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, filmmaker Jonathan Demme joined creative forces with Jordan Cronenweth and Talking Heads... and miracles occurred. Following a staging concept by singer-guitarist David Byrne, this euphoric concert film transcends that all-too-limited genre to become the greatest film of its kind. A guaranteed cure for anyone's blues, it's a celebration of music that never grows old, fueled by the polyrhythmic pop-funk precision that was a Talking Heads trademark, and lit from within by the geeky supernova that is David Byrne.
This circus of musical pleasure defies the futility of reductive description; it begs to be experienced, felt in the heart, head, and bones, and held there the way we hold on to cherished memories. On those three nights in December 1983, Talking Heads gave love, life, and joy in generous amounts that years cannot erode, and Demme captured this act of creative goodwill on film with minimalist artistic perfection. Stop Making Sense is an invitation to pleasure that will never wear out its welcome.

Stress-Proof

   2022    Medicine
What if you could combat aging and discover the full potential of the human body? Global movie star Chris Hemsworth, despite being in peak superhero-condition, is on a personal mission to learn how to stay young, healthy, strong, and resilient. Undergoing a series of epic trials and extraordinary challenges in order to understand the limits of the human body, he'll learn firsthand how we can live better for longer by discovering ways to regenerate damage, maximize strength, build resilience, supercharge memory and confront mortality.
Ever since his teenage years, stress has been part of Chris’s life, and he wants to learn how to deal with it better. Psychologist Modupe Akinola challenges him to stay calm during a terrifying walk along a crane that’s projecting out from the roof of a skyscraper. Modupe will train Chris in powerful physical and psychological techniques we can use to control the stress in our lives and combat the risk it poses to long-term health.
Series: Limitless with Chris Hemsworth

Sunken Ship Rescue

   2015    Culture
Follows the epic operation to secure, raise, and salvage the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which ran aground and tragically capsized off the coast of Italy on January 13th 2012, killing 32 people. The wreck stretches the length of three football fields, weighs 45,000 tons, and lies half submerged on the site of a protected reef, with a 160-foot-long hole in its hull. Moving it from its precarious perch on the edge of an underwater cliff will be a huge technical and logistical challenge. Joins a team of more than 500 divers and engineers working around the clock as they attempt the biggest ship recovery project in history.

Terra

   2020    Science
What sort of alien civilizations might exist in the vastness of space? Terra is the fictional world imagined in Episode 4, a planet nine billion years old, twice as old as Earth. Old enough that a truly advanced intelligence could evolve. It was once a fertile world, now it is barren. But life can still thrive here in artificial domes. Over time, they've evolved not to need their bodies. They exist only as neural tissue. They never age, they never die. They're monitored and maintained by robots.
If alien civilizations are statistically so likely, why haven't astronomers found any sign of them? Where is everyone? Every time we look at an individual star, that's like dropping a bucket in the ocean. We're going to have to look at a lot of stars and to search through a lot of data until we find the clue that leads us to another civilization.
Series: Alien Worlds

The Act of Killing

   2012    History
The filmmakers challenge former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers. Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodeling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.
Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.
The Act of Killing is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike ageing Nazis or Rwandan génocidaires, Anwar and his friends have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries. The Act of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. And The Act of Killing is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.