U2 docu marred by oddball American

David Letterman joins Bono and The Edge in a new streaming documentary about U2 and one obvious question soon jumps out: What exactly is David Letterman doing here?

The droll, bushy-bearded American comedian is an odd choice to be master of ceremonies for this Disney+ project, unbalancing everything, even the title, “Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, with Dave Letterman.”

Director Morgan Neville does a fabulous job using new interviews - including brilliant insights by musician Glen Hansard and producer Jimmy Iovine - and melding them with old performances as he explores the band’s origins, song creations, highs and lows. But he’s torn about whether this is a travel show or a music documentary and neither work well.

The film’s spine is a concert by Bono and The Edge at the Ambassador Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, where they unveil some of the ways they’ve stripped down and reworked their catalogue for the new acoustic-led album “Songs of Surrender,” including such songs as “Vertigo” “Bad” and “One.”

But Letterman not only distracts, he gets in the way. We watch him wander around Dublin shopping with his clueless, oddball sense of humor, as if the show was about him. “I’m interested in a wheel of cheese. I’ve never purchased a wheel of cheese,” he says.

There’s even a weird sequence in which Bono is reduced to drawing a map of Ireland for his guest and unpacking the complex history of Irish-English animus. “Who do I dislike in this?” asks Letterman. The answer is Letterman.

The documentary does a masterful job of giving context to U2’s rise, the social, religious and cultural changes taking place in the late 1970s and ’80s in Dublin, or as Bono says “as Ireland moves from black and white into color.”

There are insights - some small, like that drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s nickname growing up was “The Jam Jar,” and some big, as when Bono reveals tensions within the band regarding his activism - and moments to celebrate, like the band’s important Super Bowl halftime show after 9/11.

But then there’s Letterman popping up again - visiting polar swimmers or stopping by the recording studio, offering no real insight. Bono and The Edge even write him a goodbye song. Letterman is empty-handed.

Watching the documentary you start to realize how crucial The Edge is, and even get to listen to him sing a few songs and tell the story of how he came up with “Sunday Bloody Sunday” while delivering the riff on a guitar. Bono brings up how key his bandmate is, in a sweet way, live in concert.

“The thing I don’t like about Edge is that he doesn’t need me. He could be doing all of this - writing, singing, performing, playing, producing - on his own. But he doesn’t,” Bono says.

“Because it’s not as much fun,” The Edge replies. The only thing that ruins this special chemistry is the film’s third wheel - the American with the wheel of cheese.

“Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, with Dave Letterman,” a Disney+ release streaming Friday, is rated TV-14. Running time: 124 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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TALLINN, Estonia: Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny learned Monday from his lawyer that a film detailing his poisoning and political activism won the Oscar for best documentary feature.

The 46-year-old politician was attending a court hearing via video link from the prison when his attorney broke the news to him about the documentary, “Navalny,” by director Daniel Roher, according to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. She called it “the most remarkable announcement of an (Oscar) win in history.”

Yarmysh did not report what Navalny’s initial reaction was to the Oscar win.

According to Yarmysh, Navalny faced a court hearing in Kovrov, a town near where the prison is located in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic participated in the hearing on a complaint he filed against Russian penitentiary officials.

At a briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the Oscar win, saying that he hasn’t seen the film and thus “it wouldn’t make sense to say anything” about it. He added that “Hollywood sometimes does not shun politicizing its work.”

Monday’s hearing was on one of the many lawsuits the defiant Navalny has filed against prison administrators over what he alleges are violations of his rights. Two more hearings were scheduled, but those were postponed until later dates.

The documentary portrays Navalny’s career of fighting official corruption, his near-fatal poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 that he that blames on the Kremlin, and his five-month recuperation in Germany and his 2021 return to Moscow, where he was immediately taken into custody at the airport. He was later sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison and last year was convicted and given another nine-year term.

Navalny has faced unrelenting pressure from authorities. He spent several weeks in isolation in a tiny “punishment cell” and last month was placed in a restricted housing unit for six months. He is effectively deprived of phone calls or visits from his family.

At the ceremony Sunday night in Los Angeles, Roher accepted his Oscar by saying he dedicated it to Navalny and to all political prisoners around the world.

MADISON, Wis.: A retired Wisconsin detective has lost a defamation lawsuit against streaming giant Netflix over his portrayal in the 2015 documentary series “Making a Murderer.”

On Friday US District Judge Brett Ludwig ruled in favor of Netflix and “Making a Murderer” filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, concluding that none of them acted with any malice toward now-retired Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Detective Andrew Colborn.

Netflix aired “Making a Murderer” series in 2015. The 10-part series follows the story of Steven Avery, who spent nearly 22 years in prison for sexual assault before DNA tests exonerated him. He was released in 2003 but was convicted four years later along with his nephew, Brendan Dassey, in the 2005 murder and rape of photographer Teresa Halbach. Avery and Dassey were ultimately both sentenced to life in prison.

The documentary raised questions about whether Manitowoc County officials framed them. Colborn, who participated in the Avery investigation, filed a lawsuit in April 2019 alleging that the documentary defamed him by misquoting his testimony — and editing snippets of his testimony, and reactions of others in court to make him appear nervous and uncertain. (AP)