Elon Musk is a very familiar figure to Ars readers, given his massive influence (for better and worse) on the technology sector over the last 20 years. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney's latest biographical documentary—simply titled Musk—covers a lot of well-known ground and challenges the carefully crafted public image of Musk as a visionary tech titan.

Gibney's documentary presents Musk as more of a Gilded Age confidence man, rejiggered for the 21st century: an investor cosplaying as an inventor whose real genius is pumping stocks and dazzling investors and the public alike with visions of a high-tech utopian future. The film is bound to push all the right outrage buttons, whether one is a Musk fan or a detractor—which makes it very much a product of the peculiar social media-driven era in which we live.

Gibney has been making documentaries since the 1980s, covering such varied subjects as Jimi Hendrix, Hunter S. Thompson and gonzo journalism, WikiLeaks, Scientology, Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes (the subject of another forthcoming documentary, You Can See Everything, featuring comedian Nathan Fielder), Boris Becker, The Sopranos creator David Chase, alleged Russian interference in the US 2016 presidential election, the opioid epidemic, and cyclist Lance Armstrong. He snagged his first Oscar nomination for 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature two years later for Taxi to the Dark Side.

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The broadcaster on her days as a shoplifter, catastrophising, and a first kiss with her dance partner

Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, Stacey Dooley, 39, left school at 15 and worked as a shop assistant. In 2007 she was selected to take part in the BBC reality series Blood, Sweat and T-Shirts. This led to the series Stacey Dooley Investigates and her career as presenter of hard‑hitting documentaries. In 2018, her face-to-face confrontation with an Islamic State soldier won her the One World Media award and she also received the MBE for services to broadcasting. She has made three new investigative films for the BBC and presents BBC series Clickbait Clinic. She met dancer Kevin Clifton when they were partnered on Strictly Come Dancing; they have a daughter and live in Merseyside.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I’m quite greedy. I achieve something or something’s feeling really brilliant and I’m, like, “Right, what are we doing next? What are we getting next?”

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© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment

© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment

© Photograph: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Expectation Entertainment

TheWrap: Advertisements for Bleecker Street's Elon Musk documentary "Musk" will begin running on Meta and YouTube after previously being rejected by both platforms, according to both companies. The decision comes after a story published by The Hollywood Reporter on Friday detailed that the two tech giants, along with TikTok and the Musk-owned X, were refusing to run ads for "Musk." "This was an error and we're restoring the ads," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap on Saturday.

Trailer for Alex Gibney's documentary "Musk". Gibney is the director of Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Hollywood Reporter: Elon Musk Unmasked in Alex Gibney Documentary: "Insane a Person This Chaotic Has So Much Power" Variety: 'Musk' Review: Alex Gibney's Definitive Documentary Puts the Pieces of Elon Musk Together — It's a Lacerating Portrait of Technocratic Brilliance, Power Lust and Crackpot Delusion People: New Elon Musk Documentary Calls the Trillionaire a 'Man Who Has Lost His Mind': See the Trailer

Alejandro Zuleta (Public Books, 9/9/26), "The Saddest Cattle in the World: Atahualpa Yupanqui, Empire, and the Sound of Stolen Land": "There is a couplet that contains the essence of Argentina's colonial and postcolonial political economy, a poetic image that speaks a thousand words and synthesizes imperial ideology in one definitive swoop. Atahualpa Yupanqui wrote it, and it is the last couplet of the refrain in 'El arriero' (1944), one of his most transcendent songs ... 'The sorrows are ours. The cattle are not.'" Lyrics to "El Arriero" and more. Songs like "Luna tucumana," "Viene clareando," "La Añera," "Zamba del grillo," and "Chacarera de las piedras" are often covered. Several were in the film Horizontes de piedra, including "El Arriero." But many of Yupanqui's songs were co-written by Paula Nenette Pepin, about whom there's a recent album and documentary in French.

Derek vs. Derek (trailer) is a new (premiered at festivals, opening in London soon) UK documentary about Derek Banbury an intensive dairy farmer with 200 cows who's farm is next to Derek Gow's, a former sheep farmer, rewilding project. While both are initially combative to each other ('The man's a psychopath when it comes to hedgerows'- Guardian interview) the documentary presents Derek Banbury slowly coming around to some ideas of rewilding while Gow tries to keep the animals on his land from disrupting the work of farmers around him.

Of note is that Derek Banbury is presented as using intensive agriculture because of the pressures of modern supermarkets and capitalism, not out of any malice or greed, showing why farmers feel they have to resort to mass use of pesticides and synthetic fertilisers. The team behind the film has chosen The Farming Community Network as the charity it is urging others to donate to and is working toward having screenings in rural Britain as well as in the cities. (press release on subject) BBC Sounds interview with the director and both Dereks (who are now good friends) I haven't seen the documentary yet, but everything I've read about it sounds sweet, a little bit of brightness in the current world.

A documentary exploring the lives and classes of British 7 year old children premiered in the 1960s with 7 Up. Director Michael Apted continued 7 years later and every 7 years since. The final chapter is set to air on ITV this upcoming week with the children, now very much not children at 70 years old. Michael Apted passed away in 2021. Two participants, Lynn Johnson and Nick Hitchon, also passed during the intervening years. The participants had a historically fraught relationship with Michael Apted and the documentary series but at the same time, the series has been a big part of their lives.