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Alex Winter, who directed the documentary “Zappa” and recently reprised his role in the “Bill & Ted” franchise, has set his next project: a doc about the history of YouTube and the video platform’s impact on society.

“Mass Effect: The Story of YouTube” is Winter’s return to films about the tech space after he got his start in documentaries with 2013’s “Downloaded,” about the rise and fall of Napster, and 2015’s “Deep Web,” a look into the hidden dark web. His new documentary explores the humble beginnings of YouTube in the attic of a pizzeria to its explosion on the world stage; the platform brought in $5 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2020 alone, with more than 30 million music and premium paid subscribers.

The film will also examine YouTube’s role in shaping the cultural and political discourse, examining present issues such as radicalization, surveillance, algorithmic capitalism, the...

Bill Simmons’ Ringer Films is partnering with HBO on “Showbiz Kids,” a documentary about children in the entertainment business.

The film will feature interviews and examinations of the lives and careers of the most famous former child actors in the world. It will be directed by Alex Winter, a former child actor himself. The film is executive produced by Bill Simmons, Winter and his Trouper Productions, as well as Glen Zipper of the Zippo Bros.

“I have been fascinated by this specific topic for an especially long time, so grabbing the chance to explore it with people as talented as Alex and Glen was one of the all-time no-brainers for me and everyone else at Ringer Films,” Simmons said. “There’s a high degree of difficulty for this one but I also think that’s what makes it so appealing.”

“This project is very close to my heart, born of...

Actor Alex Winter isn't just sitting around, waiting for Bill & Ted 3 to get made. While he hopes for that hugely anticipated sequel to finally lift off, he's been busy making a new tech documentary. And it looks intense and somewhat scary. Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain has just delivered its first trailer, and it explores the strange new world of a future that is barreling at us at full speed.

Trust Machine is opening October 26 in New York, and November 16 in Los Angeles. And it looks like another enthralling tech dive by former Lost Boys star Alex Winter, who has made quite a name for himself in the world of documentaries this past decade.

In his newest film, Alex Winter drills down on blockchain, the decentralized technology that supports cryptocurrencies. Why are banks terrified while Unicef Ventures embraces it to help refugee children? Winter follows tech innovators striking a...

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter will reprise their roles as “Ted” Theodore Logan and “Bill” S. Preston Esq. in “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” the third film in the franchise.

The first film, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” was released in 1989. The sequel “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” came out in 1991.

Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon have penned the script. Dean Parisot will direct. Steven Soderbergh is executive producing alongside Scott Fischer, John Ryan Jr., and John Santilli. Scott Kroopf will produce with Alex Lebovici and Steve Ponce of Hammerstone Studios.

Also Read: 'John Wick' TV Spinoff Coming to Starz; Keanu Reeves Expected to Guest

MGM is set to release the film domestically under its Orion Pictures banner. Endeavor Content negotiated the deal.

“Bill & Ted Face the Music,” which is currently in production, will follow the two men no longer the time-traveling teenagers we’ve come to know — they are now responsible adults. They’re writing dozens of songs but not one seems to stick, until someone from the future tells them that only their song can save the world. Soon, they embark on a time-traveling adventure to save the universe.

“We couldn’t be more excited to get the whole band back together again. Chris and Ed wrote an amazing script, and with Dean at the helm we’ve got a dream team!” Reeves and Winter said in a statement.

See Video: Keanu Reeves Addresses Those Immortality Rumors

Reeves is currently in production on the third installment of “John Wick: Chapter 3,” which will be released May 2019. He will also next star alongside Winona Ryder in “Destination Wedding.” His other notable credits include “Matrix Trilogy” and “Point Break.” He is represented by Wme.

Winter also starred in “The Lost Boys” and has transitioned to a writer and director with credits that include the Epix documentary “Deep Web” and the VH1 documentary “Downloaded.” Most recently, he directed and produced two shorts documentary films, “Relatively Free” and “Trump’s Lobby.” He is represented by CAA and Forward Entertainment.

Read original story Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter to Reprise Roles in Third ‘Bill & Ted’ Film At TheWrap...

Field of Vision has debuted a new short film about Donald Trump called “Trump’s Lobby” just in time for Friday’s presidential inauguration. The seven-minute short was produced and directed by Alex Winter (“Deep Web,” “Downloaded”).

Read More: Field of Vision Launches New Website and New Slate of Short-Form Documentaries

Here’s the official synopsis:

“Combining original photography captured at Trump Tower, and a trove of archival news coverage, Trump’s Lobby is a short film that explores the tense and surreal atmosphere around President-Elect Donald Trump. Ever since the election, there has been a continual flow of high-level visitors to Trump’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower. This piece focuses solely on the extraordinary array of people on their way to and from Trump via his gold-plated elevator. The cast of characters are some of the most powerful and famous people in the world, and their expressions, given the nature of these meetings,...

The early narrative surrounding Sean Parker's premium VOD service The Screening Room suggests that it would be good for the industry, an argument bolstered by the support of filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Brian Grazer, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and even Peter Jackson. But pushback towards the plan, which would see customers pay $50 to watch new films at home the same day they open in theaters, is starting to gather momentum. The Art House Convergence, which represents 600 theaters, issued an open latter against the proposal, and now the biggest cinema group in the country has followed suit. Read More: Review: Napster Documentary 'Downloaded'  The National Association Of Theater Owners has circulated an open letter making it clear that The Screening Room model represents a threat to the brand value and artistic intention behind the business and the art of filmmaking. Here's the open letter: The owners and operators of movie.

The 2015 St. Louis International Film Festival, also known as Sliff, has begun. Even though Alex Winter couldn’t bring Freaked in town, he did bring his two great tech documentaries, Downloaded and Deep Web – in addition to being awesome to us and presenting Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Sliff has a robust schedule full of independent and foreign cinema along with some mainstream affair like Legend starring Tom Hardy and some possible future Oscar contenders like Carol. However, since we are a horror website, we are going to highlight some films that should definitely be on your radar!

Feature Films

The Nameless

Filmed in “The Exorcist House” here in St. Louis, which most of you might have seen last weekend during Discovery Channel’s laughable Exorcism: Live!, this thriller borrows from the premise that The Exorcist was based out of by having a main character, Amy, return to the house...

Perhaps you've heard the term Gamergate. But what does it mean, exactly? If you don't live inside the Internet, and are only a casual gamer, chancres are you might not know. Well, a new drama is going to spell out every ugly detail. And it might be told with a big name star at the center of this digital tsunami that quickly turned into a shit show.

Amy Pascal, who knowns her way around an Internet scandal after being the target of a massive Hack at Sony Studios, will be producing this upcoming drama. The Gamergate movie will be written by screenwriters Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum. They will be adapting the memoir of game designer Zoe Quinn titled 'Crash Override: How to Save the Internet From Itself.'

This won't be a small production. And sources close to the project claim that Avengers: Age of Ultron star Scarlett Johansson...

Director Alex Winter’s Deep Web screens at The St. Louis International Film Festival Thursday, November 5th at 7:30. Winter will be in attendance and will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. Ticket information for that event can be found Here. Alex Winter will also attend a screening of Bill And Ted’S Excellent Adventure, the 1989 comedy which he co-starred in along with Keanu Reeves and George Carlin at The Tivoli Theater Friday, November 6th at 9:30. Ticket information for that event can be found Here. Finally, Winter will attend a screening of his 2013 documentary Downloaded Saturday November 7th at 4:30 pm at The Tivoli Theater. Ticket information for that event can be found Here.

Winter is coming to St. Louis! The St. Louis International Film Festival honors former St. Louisan Alex Winter, whose varied career includes acting on stage and in film, and directing both narratives and documentaries. Winter’s new film Deep Web,...

Read More: Alex Winter Kickstarts Doc About Bitcoin and Silk Road In October of 2013, a young man named Ross Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco, accused of creating and running the Silk Road, a massive black market on the Dark Net. A few weeks later I launched a Kickstarter campaign for my documentary on the story of Ross and the Silk Road. Thus began an 18-month journey that would end on May 31st of 2015, the day of the film's release on Epix and only two days after Ross Ulbricht was sentenced. My previous documentary, "Downloaded," was about the rise and fall of Napster. While I had begun work on this project many years before, when Napster was still up and running, I did not make the film for over a dozen years after Napster closed its doors. "Downloaded" was a purely retrospective examination of the Napster saga, with full access to the core participants.

Before his death at age 52, Frank Zappa produced one of the most massive discographies in recorded music. The Mothers of Invention leader's music spanned rock & roll, doo-wop, jazz, classical and everything in between, usually accompanied with a lighthearted smirk, over the course of 100 albums released so far. No matter how well you know his music, though, you can't help but feel like you have a perspective somewhat akin to a flea's eye view of an elephant. The only thing more overwhelming than attempting to make sense of Zappa's life's...

Following his acclaimed work with Downloaded and Deep Web, Alex Winter is sticking with the documentary format for another upcoming project. He'll direct an as-yet untitled film about the legendary counter-culture musician Frank Zappa, with the full co-operation of the Zappa Family Trust.The absurdly prolific Zappa made almost 70 albums in less than 35 years, before his untimely death in 1993. His music is difficult to describe - and often just downright difficult - but takes in jazz, rock, electronica and even classical influences. Usually with a good dose of humour: sometimes wry, sometimes more caustic. Hs best known work is perhaps the stuff he did with his band, The Mothers Of Invention. He also gave early shots in the arm to the careers of contemporaries like Captain Beefheart, and up-and-comers like Alice Cooper.Winter's approval by the Zappa estate means he has unrivalled access to the Zappa vaults, which means he...

The Zappa Family Trust has given its approval to a new documentary about the original Mother of Invention, Frank Zappa. The film is in the early stages of development and will likely come out in 2017, according to Variety.

Director Alex Winter, whose early acting roles in the Bill and Ted movies and The Lost Boys have given way to directing tech-based documentaries (Deep Web, Downloaded), will helm the film based on his own script. "There has yet to be a definitive, authorized documentary on the extraordinary life and work of Frank Zappa,...

Here’s what you need to know to understand where Alex Winter’s documentary Deep Web begins. When you browse the internet and use search engines to find content, you’re engaging in the “surface web.” Whenever you put in a password to log in to a protected website or webpage (your email client, online banking, protected corporate or government sites), you are accessing the “dark web.” If you are going totally off the grid to find sites that are completely anonymous except through the use of special software, then you are on the “deep web.” The most famous example of the deep web is The Silk Road, an online marketplace for drugs and other illegal items that launched in 2011. Its name became part of the national conversation after a raid by the FBI appeared to have uncovered its leader — an administrator going by the name “Dread Pirate Roberts” (from...

While you may know him as Bill S. Preston, Esq, Alex Winter the actor has effortlessly become Alex Winter the director. Hot on the heels of his successful Napster documentary Downloaded comes Deep Web: a look behind the curtain at the 96% of the internet we don't see. But while the film began as an overview of this expansive world freely accessible by Tor—for good (journalistic anonymity) and bad (illegal drug trade)—something happened during production that blew the doors wide open.

I’m not sure if it’s the intention of Alex Winter to carve out a niche for himself as the chief explainer of the digital age, but it seems like that’s what he’s doing. In 2012, he released Downloaded, a look at how Napster and file sharing has changed the music business and the perception of copyright, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of how computers and the internet have changed things. Winter’s latest, Deep Web, tackles notions of privacy, intelligence and law enforcement in the internet age through the story of the man who may or may not be the most prolific drug trafficker in history.

The title, Deep Web, refers to a wide swath of the internet that’s hidden underneath all the cat videos, remixes and other bric-a-brac that makes up the internet as we know it, or what the computer literate call “the surface web.

★★☆☆☆ Deep Web (2015) could have been a documentary about the drug trafficking online retail establishment equivalent of a local Costco outlet. Deep Web could have been an insightful foray into the as yet unexplored field of the direct effect online drug caverns have on the multi billion-dollar war on drugs in the United States of America. Deep Web could have become the go to study of Ross Ulbricht (otherwise known as 'Dread Pirate Roberts'); an intellectual driven by Austrian economy and libertarianist philosophies. The problem resides in Downloaded director and one-time actor Alex Winter's desire to throw all of these possible films into one unnecessarily long whole.

Keanu Reeves has joined the anticipated new Epix Original Documentary, Deep Web, as narrator. From director Alex Winter, the film chronicles one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century - the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur recently convicted of being 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road. This is the first time Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter have worked together since 1993's Freaked, which followed their co-starring roles in the successful Bill and Ted' films. Deep Web&#160will world premiere at South by Southwest this Sunday, March 15 and will make its&#160World&#160Television Premiere on Epix Spring 2015. Content Media handles the film's international sales and distribution.&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236&#8236 Said Keanu Reeves:

"I'm honored to be working with Alex Winter on his timely and vital documentary, Deep Web. The Silk Road and trial of Ross Ulbricht involve many...

Epix Original Documentary unites stars of Bill and Ted films for the first time since 1993’s Freaked.

Keanu Reeves will narrate Alex Winter’s Deep Web.

The Epix Original Documentary marks the first time the Bill and Ted co-stars have worked together since 1993’s Freaked.

Premiering this Sunday [March 15] at SXSW, the documentary chronicles one of the most important digital crime sagas of the century - the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur recently convicted of being ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’, creator and operator of online black market Silk Road.

Reeves commented: “I’m honoured to be working with Alex Winter on his timely and vital documentary, Deep Web. The Silk Road and trial of Ross Ulbricht involves many important and complex issues that impact the life of Mr. Ulbricht and us all.”

Deep Web will make its world television premiere on Epix in spring. Content Media handles international sales and distribution.

Alongside Winter...

Efm: Content Film has added another title to its Berlin sales slate and will kick off talks with international buyers next week on Alex Winter’s documentary.

The company will show a promo from Deep Web, which chronicles the October 2013 arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur alleged to be ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ - the founder of online black market The Silk Road.

The documentary features exclusive interviews with the Ulbricht family including the protagonist’s parents Lyn and Kirk Ulbricht, who have become public advocates for digital rights and due process.

“The Silk Road was anarchy online, a free market for everything, regardless of the rule of law,” said Content’s film president Jamie Carmichael.

“This film pulls back the curtain on the revolutionary movement taking place with the hidden corners of the Internet.”

Deep Web is an Epix Original Documentary. Winter produced alongside Glen Zipper and Marc Schiller and has previously collaborated with Schiller...

The deep web is fascinating — the idea that there is something subterranean to a utility we all use for far too many hours a day is thrilling, and Alex Winter has traveled into the romantic drama of that world and emerged with a documentary. On the heels of looking at filesharing in Downloaded, Deep Web explores the online marketplace for drugs known as The Silk Road, as well as the man with the Princess Bride-evoking code name that the government believes was behind it. The trailer for the doc is sexy. Heavy music, bold statements, the questioning of reality in a world designed to obscure identity. All of it seems to capture the organic intrigue that the illegal side of the deep web itself contains. What’s under this rock, and what happens when we lift it up? Deep Web will hit the Epix channel this spring, and it will join a growing wave of documentaries about...

Epix has released the first trailer and clip from their upcoming original documentary Deep Web, the latest directorial effort from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure star Alex Winter (Downloaded). The documentary chronicles one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century - the October 2013 arrest of Ross William Ulbricht - and will feature exclusive interviews with the Ulbricht family including Lyn and Kirk Ulbricht, Ross' parents who have become public advocates for digital rights and due process. Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur alleged to be "Dread Pirate Roberts" - founder of Silk Road, the notorious online black market best known for drug trafficking, is currently on trial in New York.

The feature-length documentary explores the inside story of the investigation and unveils how the brightest minds and thought leaders behind the Deep Web and Bitcoin are now caught in the crosshairs of the battle for control of...

Here’s a lively first teaser for Deep Web, a new documentary from Bill and Ted co-star Alex Winter, who recently directed the doc Downloaded. The new film Deep Web looks into the FBI takedown of Silk Road, the online marketplace most famous for dealing drugs online, and investigates the charges against Ross Ulbricht, who authorities claim […]

The post ‘Deep Web’ Teaser Trailer: Alex Winter Documents the Takedown of Silk Road appeared first on /Film.

Director, actor and former Bill & Ted star talks about his latest film, Grand Piano, his documentary Deep Web, and lots more...

Although perhaps best known for his roles in two Bill & Ted films and The Lost Boys, Alex Winter is equally at home behind the camera, having spent the last two decades working predominantly as a director – from the cult classic Freaked, through various music videos, adverts and movies, up to his recent documentary Downloaded (which tells the story of Shawn Fanning and Napster) and the upcoming, Kickstarted-funded Deep Web.

Recently, however, he’s taken a rare step back into acting, appearing alongside Elijah Wood and John Cusack as a villainous usher in Eugenio Mira’s stylish thriller Grand Piano. We caught up with Alex down the line from his new home base in La, to discuss his work on both sides of the actor-director divide.

So I guess the first question,...

Just as Rufus (George Carlin) predicted, Bill and Ted have had a profound influence on our culture. Maybe not as the rockers who would inspire a utopian global society by the 27th century, but look at how many other dumb-duo movies there have been since the release 25 years ago this week (on February 17, 1989) of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" -- there's "Dumb and Dumber," "Beavis and Butt-head Do America," "Dude, Where's My Car," "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion," "Dick," and all of Kevin Smith's "Jay and Silent Bob" offerings, for starters. Plus, "Bill & Ted" launched a franchise and made a leading man out of Keanu Reeves.

Still, as often as you've traveled back in time and revisited the "Excellent Adventure," there's probably still plenty you don't know about the movie, including where it was filmed (hint: Not in San Dimas, California), which historical figures almost found their way into the film,...

Maker Shack Agency takes a unique look at the “maker” movement through the adventures of Wolfie, a 13-year-old inventor with a grand idea and a motto of “fail forward.” Together with his friends Merle, a tech wizard, and Jo, a girl who can build anything, they create gadgets to help fellow classmates. Wolfie, Merle and Jo use all the branches of science and personal ingenuity to solve problems and kids can look forward to a new invention in every episode. Created in conjunction with the think tank Applied Minds and the production company Electus, the pilot was written by Arland Digirolamo (Sketchy), Geoff Barbanell (Kickin’ It) and directed by Alex Winter (Ben 10, Downloaded) and features original music from Dr. Dog.

Watch the pilot and help decide if Maker Shack Agency should be made into a series.

While I continue to dream that one day Alex Winter will hit up Kickstarter for support of a Freaked sequel, I guess I can settle for him making another documentary about the Internet. Winter, who we’ll always first and foremost think of as Bill S. Preston from the Bill & Ted movies (the third of which is currently dealing with budget issues), recently made his nonfiction feature directorial debut with the Napster history Downloaded. It’s a pretty good doc, sometimes superfluous and obvious and not quite as insightful about the digital and online revolution as something like We Live in Public or We Are Legion, but it’s plenty informative with its straightforward, orally chronicled telling of the who and the what. If you’d like to check it out for free, which is the appropriate way, you can stream it on AOL and not even have to illegally download it. Winter...

1. HBO Go: Now you can watch "Game of Thrones," "Boardwalk Empire" and other HBO shows via HBO Go on Chromecast. HBO Go has just added Chromecast support to their Android, iOS and web app, according to the Google Chrome blog. 2. Kickstarting a Silk Road film: Alex Winter, best known as either the director of "Downloaded," the documentary about Napster, or as Bill from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," has taken to Kickstarter to raise funds for "Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk Road." The documentary will be "an exploration of a pivotal moment in cultural history. The events that are currently taking place at this juncture of the digital revolution will shape our future," according to the project's Kickstarter page. Read more about it here. 3. App.net: App.net Broadcast is a new free marketing tool that filmmakers can use to send push notifications directly to fans.

Alex Winter, best known as either the director of "Downloaded," the documentary about Napster, or as Bill from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," has taken to Kickstarter to raise funds for "Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and Silk Road." The documentary will be "an exploration of a pivotal moment in cultural history. The events that are currently taking place at this juncture of the digital revolution will shape our future," according to the project's Kickstarter page.  The Silk Road, the online black market -- often used to buy drugs and weapons -- that protected its user's privacy using various encryption technologies and used the online currency Bitcoin, was recently infiltrated by federal authorities (see a recent report from Wired magazine here).  In addition to Winter, who will direct/produce, marketing strategist Marc Schiller will produce, along with Glen Zipper ("Undefeated"). Read More: The 10 Most Creative Celebrity Kickstarter Backer Rewards The.

Last month came the news that crime writer Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Shutter Island) was at work on the screenplay for a drama about illegal online drugs bazaar The Silk Road and its recent high profile FBI takedown. It now transpires that Alex Winter is heading in the same direction but approaching from a different angle. The Downloaded director is planning a documentary that will take in The Silk Road but centre on the online currency Bitcoin.Bitcoin was first posited in an academic paper in 2008, and became operational in 2009. Officially an "experimental online currency", it has avoided most of the pitfalls that previous similar experiments have encountered; achieved some degree of legitimacy (sites like Wordpress and Reddit accept it, for example); and been the subject of financial speculation, making it an attractive proposition compared to the euro and the pound... for those with the nerve.Its detractors, however, accuse...

While Keanu Reeves has a famous reputation for being a very 'sad' man, fans know that he actually has a great sense of humor. And that sense of humor is often dark and skews to the left side of being weird. In a recent interview, the actor claimed his long-awaited sequel Bill & Ted 3 had been overtaken by what he described as 'a darkness'.

Here are his exact words.

"It's a long story. There's lots of subterfuge and conspiracy theories. There's a whole thing...I might have to do one of those independent press, conspiracy, other-name kind of [statements] explaining why it hasn't happened yet, because it's pretty dark out there. DeNomolos is everywhere!

There's all sorts of stuff, and it just can't...There's darkness out there that's keeping it from happening. It's not winning right now. It's that part of the story where it's looking grim. It's the dark period! It's the Apocalypse Now of pre-production.

Remember that thing called Napster? Of course you do; it marked the start of a digital music revolution, the beginning of a new way of understanding piracy and the Internet. While the infamous file-sharing service was briefly touched upon in "The Social Network," its story is finally being told in the new documentary "Downloaded." Written, directed, and produced by Alex Winter, of "Bill & Ted" fame, "Downloaded" follows the digital downloading revolution from its inception in 1998 to the rippling effects it has had on technology and the music industry. The film premiered at SXSW this year, and now you can watch it for free -- that's right, you don't have to illegally steal this movie! -- thanks to AOL and VH1.

Watch the full movie above and nostalgically remember the amazement you felt the first time you downloaded free music (don't deny it, we're pretty much all guilty).

WikiLeaks founder to judge films at the 21st Raindance Film Festival; 2013 line-up unveiled.Scroll down for full line-up of films

Julian Assange has joined the jury of the 21st Raindance Film Festival (Sept 25 - Oct 6), a London-based event that celebrates independent film in the UK and around the world.

The appointment is a controversial one. The Australian editor-in-chief and founder of WikiLeaks took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about sexual assault allegations.

It is understood that he fears Sweden would extradite him to the Us, where he believes he is wanted in relation to WikiLeaks’ disclosure of a significant amount of classified Us military and diplomatic documents.

Commenting on Assange’s appointment, Raindance founder Elliot Grove said: “Every year Raindance invites interesting people to join our jury. In the past we have had musicians like Mick Jones, Marky Ramone and [link...

Title: Downloaded Director: Alex Winter David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin provided a superlative look at the messy founding of one of the new digital age’s true pillars with the Oscar-winning “The Social Network.” Before Facebook, though, there was of course Napster — the decentralized music file-sharing service that represented the original web-era socioeconomic disrupter, and brought the recording industry to its knees before itself flaming out in a bevy of lawsuits. Directed by Alex Winter, the documentary “Downloaded” provides a robustly engaging overview of its renegade birth and premature death rattle. Wanting to be able to trade and share electronic music files, Shawn Fanning and co-creator Sean Parker (who would [ Read More ]

The post Downloaded Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

If you were lucky enough to have regular access to a computer and a reliable internet connection in the late '90s/early '00s, you were undoubtedly asked by those also online, "Are you on Napster?" In today's world where music can be streamed and downloaded through an endless array of legal options, it's easy to forget what a monumental groundshift Napster represented. The common shorthand narrative is that Napster arrived and the music industry imploded, but the service was essentially around for two years and in that time, its influence on how audiences obtained, shared and enjoyed music was perhaps even more profound. And it's that element that director Alex Winter (yes, Bill from "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure") gets right in his documentary "Downloaded," a comprehensive look at the rise and fall of the music service, that unfortunately may be a bit too cozy with the men who started it.

Downloaded is a great documentary for many reasons. The greatest of these might be its effortless and uncanny ability to throw into stark relief just how massively the world of computers and the Internet has radically changed in just a few short years. This offering from director Alex Winter takes a look at the little file-sharing community that started it all, Napster, and follows the rise and fall of a concept that indelibly changed the entire world forever. Though slightly long and running with the standard "talking heads" mode of documentation, Downloaded is an informative and comprehensive look at the conception and implementation of Napster, the world's first mp3 file sharing network. Beginning as a mere gleam in the eye of engineer Shawn Fanning, and...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

"You cannot build a business on copyright infringement," points out Ian Rogers, the CEO of Topspin, not too long into Downloaded, director Alex Winter's too-breezy account of Napster, the teensy app that liberated digital music, destroyed the record industry, and swallowed some $500 million worth of loans and seed money from bubble-age investors convinced that a start-up built to facilitate the free sharing of mostly pirated material was somehow bound to be wildly profitable. What an age that was: Angels expecting huge yields after investing cash into the exact opposite of capitalism.

The doc is only about as revealing as a middling magazine article on the subject. But it will fascinate and frustrate anyone already interested, which, going by Napster's own high-water ...

For anyone in their 30s (or beyond), they've lived through a tremendous change in how music is consumed and shared in a third of a lifetime. From vinyl to cassettes to CDs to mp3s, from mixed tapes to mixed CDs to Spotify playlists, everything about how we engage with music has been profoundly pushed forward, and part of that most recent shift is thanks to Napster. The file sharing service that essentially brought the once mighty record industry to its knees connected listeners in ways that no one had ever thought of. It's a story with more twists and turns than your average Hollywood thriller. And it's now being told. Alex Winter (yes, Bill S. Preston himself) has quietly been putting together a directorial career and his latest is the documentary "Downloaded" that chronicles the rise and fall of Napster, and includes the very players involved to help tell the tale.

Following its showings at SXSW in Austin and Hot Docs in Toronto, VH1 is taking its original documentary "Downloaded" to theaters. The film, which is directed by Alex Winter (yes, Bill of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"), charts the rise of online music-sharing service Napster and the contribution it made in leading up to the current ubiquity of digital media sharing, as well as its incalculable effect on the music industry. Mike D of The Beastie Boys, Oasis' Noel Gallagher and Henry Rollins are just a few of the musical figures interviewed in the film. "This project has been important to me for many years and it's been great to see it realized with the team at VH1 rockDocs," said Winter in the announcement. "We've had a very strong festival run so far and I look forward to getting it out to a wider audience." "Downloaded" will play at the Village...

"Downloaded," Alex Winter's documentary about the rise and fall of the transformative but controversial company Napster, will receive theatrical and VOD runs from VH1 beginning in late June, the music network announced on Monday. Directed and produced by Alex Winter, the film will open in New York City on June 21 and Los Angeles on June 28, and will then expand to Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Columbus, Grand Rapids, Martha's Vineyard, San Francisco and Seattle, among other cities. Richard Abramowitz of Abramorama will partner with VH1 on the theatrical release. The film premiered at...

Awesome Fest returns to Philadelphia this summer with a series of 1980's themed screenings - and concerts - that fully merit the 'awesome' tag. How so? How about a double bill of The Psychedelic Furs and A Flock Of Seagulls? How about Alex Winter on hand to present screenings of Downloaded and Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure? How about Escape From New York and a shedload of John Hughes films nestling up against Interior. Leather Bar? How about most events being free?Check out the full press release below and the festival trailer - created by Twitch fave Brian Lonano and his Robot Hand crew - even farther below that. The Awesome Fest Announces Summer Festival Lineup -Thursday, June 14, 2013 - Friday, August 17, 2013-...

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Exclusive: Alex Winter’s documentary about about the rise and fall of Napster has a new online home. AOL will be making Downloaded available to visitors to its on.aol.com via streaming later this year. This is the portal’s first foray into longform streaming as a part of the distribution deal between the brand company and VH1, which is showing the film theatrically. Downloaded will be on AOL after its big-screen release this summer by the Viacom-owned broadcaster’s VH1 Rock Docs in partnership with Cinetic Media and Richard Abramowitz. The film on the legacy of file sharing pioneer premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. Downloaded will also be on Cable VOD and iTunes later this year as well. “We sold the film to AOL at SXSW,” ,” Winter told me. “Cinetic’s John Sloss, VH1 and I made a deal with our partners that focused heavily...

It was perhaps inevitable that at the Q&A that followed a screening of Alex Winter's Napster documentary "Downloaded" on Monday night, one audience member would ask if the movie was going to be available on the internet for free. The film, after all, chronicles the rapid rise and equally rapid fall of the file-sharing service that fundamentally changed the music industry, ushering in a generation of music fans who got their music for free online rather than paying for it in record stores. To admirers, it was a revolution that put power...

From Napster to Now, Winter Examines the Downloading Boom

Napster’s rise and fall and the ensuing decade of music piracy is at this point common knowledge but it is easy to forget that at the outset it was just a dozen college kids sitting in a crowded room, eating cold pizza, trying to keep the servers up. From the creators of peer to peer file sharing, the artists who suffered, the artists who benefited (an oft-overlooked group, and a huge one), or the people who created this seismic shift (the fans), with Downloaded, docu-helmer Alex Winter sharply stitches together a balanced, all encompassing view on the subject and its many assiduous voices.

One kid in his dorm room has the power to bring the music industry to its knees and forever re-shape the way we buy, access and listen to music. This much we know. What Napster’s creator...

Alex Winter, one half of the rock 'n roll duo Bill and Ted aka Wyld Stallyns, has focused mostly on directing in the last few years, and his latest film, a documentary called "Downloaded," takes a look at the technology that changed the music industry forever, Napster.

MTV News sat down with Winter at SXSW, where he and VH1 Rock Docs premiered "Downloaded" this past week, and spoke with him about bringing the project together and how our own little news organization played a part in making it all happen.

"I pulled a lot of archival from the MTV News vaults, which hyper-covered this story," Winter told Josh Horowitz. "I was finding amazing gems in that. [Sean] Parker and [Shawn] Fanning young, all of the Metallica raid on the office, all of it, most of which is in the movie."

When Winter approached the two Napster founders about making the doc, he...

Downloaded is a great documentary for many reasons. The greatest of these might be its effortless and uncanny ability to throw into stark relief just how massively the world of computers and the Internet has radically changed in just a few short years. This offering from director Alex Winter takes a look at the little file-sharing community that started it all, Napster, and follows the rise and fall of a concept that indelibly changed the entire world forever. Though slightly long and running with the standard "talking heads" mode of documentation, Downloaded is an informative and comprehensive look at the conception and implementation of Napster, the world's first mp3 file sharing network. Beginning as a mere gleam in the eye of engineer Shawn Fanning,...

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When Napster co-founders Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker took the stage after the world premiere of the new documentary Downloaded at SXSW, about the rise and fall of their revolutionary music-sharing service, they were met with tremendous applause. That, says director Alex Winter (Bill from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, incidentally), was a moment of tremendous relief and vindication.

“The guys were just happy to see the public liked it,” says Winter, 47, who first met the tech entrepreneurs back in 2002 and has been working to bring Napster’s story to light for over a decade. He himself was an early...

"Downloaded," the first film selected by SXSW thanks to its perfect intersection of the festival's three themes of music, film and interactive technology, opens with the squelchy crunch of a dial-up modem, a sonic signifier of just how far we've come since 1998. The film by Alex Winter, formerly of "Bill and Ted" fame, tells of the rapid rise and dramatic fall of pioneer file-sharing tech, Napster.

"It could have been told from one perspective or the other, and so to make a documentary that had historical perspective and also tells both sides of the story in an objective way is difficult to do," noted infamous Napster co-founder Sean Parker after the world premiere screening at the Paramount theatre ended in rapturous applause. "Coming here, I wasn't sure how the audience would react, but it seemed like everyone was pretty into it. The guys in front of me were really into it,...

VH1′s Emmy winning Rock Docs series is back with Downloaded, a brand new documentary about the rise and eventual fall of Napster. The movie was directed by Alex Winter, who is (perhaps) best known for his role as Bill S. Preston Esq. in the two Bill & Ted movies. On the red carpet at the world premiere of his newest film last night, we stopped him on the red carpet and asked him about the rumors that he’s going to be re-teaming with Keanu Reeves for a new installment of the universally beloved movie franchise.

“I have [no updates],” he confided. “If I say the words ‘Bill’, ‘Ted’ and ‘And’ in a sentence, it gets turned into like a massive Twitter explosion. So I try to watch myself. But we’re working on a new movie, we’ll see what happens.”

We got a little bit more on the movie’s...

Austin, Texas — "Downloaded," a documentary film exploring the history of sharing music on the Internet, made its world premiere Sunday at South by Southwest, a festival that marries music, technology and film.

Director Alex Winter focuses on Napster, the file sharing network that allowed 25 million people to share 80 million recordings in what became an early social network. The service allowed users to download music for free from each other's computers until a lawsuit brought by the recording industry forced it to shut down in 2001.

But by then, a new generation had become accustomed to getting music for free, and the industry and musicians saw revenues plummet.

The founders of Napster, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, participate in the film, but Winter allows all sides of the debate over free music to make their cases, often using archival news footage.

"It wasn't hard for me to balance the two points of view,...