Author Archives: basiltsiokos

New to VOD this week: 14 MINUTES FROM EARTH

Jerry Kolber, Adam “Tex” Davis, Trey Nelson, and Erich Sturm’s look at a stratospheric sky dive debuted at Tribeca this year. It also screened at the San Francisco Doc Fest. Gunpowder & Sky now releases the doc to VOD platforms including Amazon Video, Google Play, iTunes, Microsoft Movies & TV, Sony PlayStation, and Vudu.

Alan Eustace, Google’s Senior Vice-President of Knowledge, comes up with what seems like an impossible plan: traveling up to the stratosphere without a rocketship – using a balloon instead – and then free-falling back to Earth. The film chronicles his daring mission, which includes designing and manufacturing a custom spacesuit, developing the balloon, conducting tests, and ultimately making the jump. It’s not an uninteresting idea for a doc, but the execution here is so utterly non-cinematic that it sinks the project. Instead, the four credited directors take an approach that mimics an overproduced television science program, and is chiefly marred by incessant, unnecessary expository narration and manipulative music and sound design, not to mention very surface-level talking head comments from participants.

New to DVD and VOD this week: MAGICIANS: LIFE IN THE IMPOSSIBLE

Christoph Baaden and Marcie Hume’s portrait of professional prestidigitators debuted at Hot Docs this year. It also screened at Napa Valley and Philadelphia. It now comes to DVD and to VOD platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, and YouTube.

Baaden and Hume follow four men whose lives revolve around magic. Each has seen some level of success – Jan Rouven headlines a popular Las Vegas spectacle, Brian Gillis was a regular on Johnny Carson’s TONIGHT SHOW, Jon Armstrong is on the Board of he Magic Castle, and David Minkin has been on television several times – but it’s still not enough. The film follows their efforts to make a bigger mark, noting the sacrifices they’ve made for their obsessions and their desire for more recognition. While featuring likeable enough protagonists, there are unfortunately just too many of them for one film, and they don’t all feel essential to the story being told, lending a somewhat repetitious feel to the project. Were the film to have instead focused on just Gillis and Rouven, for example, highlighting illusionists more or less at opposite ends of their careers, the contrast might have made for an ultimately more compelling film. Still, Baaden and Hume have created a solid survey that does showcase some impressive tricks.