[Director] Stephen Frears splices in archival footage of Ali at his articulate, charismatic best, but really, the main dramatis personae are Eight Grumpy Men from the Supreme Court (one, Thurgood Marshall, recused himself) as they argue around a conference table. Result is a worthy but faintly dull civics/history lesson that's well suited to broadcast by producer HBO, but doesn't have the muscle mass for theatrical distribution.

Here are a few clips from the movie at Indiewire.

The movie's slated for HBO in the fall. [EW]

Davis is known for her short stories -- some of them as short as just a sentence or two. Said Christopher Ricks, the chair of the judging panel for this year's prize of Davis' stories, in a press release: "Just how to categorise them? They have been called stories but could equally be miniatures, anecdotes, essays, jokes, parables, fables, texts, aphorisms or even apophthegms, prayers or simply observations ... There is vigilance to her stories, and great imaginative attention. Vigilance as how to realise things down to the very word or syllable; vigilance as to everybody's impure motives and illusions of feeling."

Here's an example of one of Davis' ultra short works, called A Double Negative:

At a certain point in her life, she realizes it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.

As she told the Guardian a few years back: "When I first began writing seriously, I wrote short stories, and that was where I thought I was headed. Then the stories evolved and changed, but it would have become a bother to say every time, 'I guess what I have just written is a prose poem, or a meditation', and I would have felt very constrained by trying to label each individual work, so it was simply easier to call everything stories."

Good or bad, we'll let you decide...

Well, this year at TAP NY, they made it official. For the first time, the New York beer festival awarded the Governors' Cup to a brewery for best craft beer in New York State.

The winner: the Peekskill Brewery in Peekskill, for its Higher Standard IPA.

So I obviously had to try the best beer in the state... you know, for journalism.

Twelve films are on the slate covering a range of topics, among them: bullying, poetry, the Albany High School girls' basketball team's championship season, and the city of Albany's youth boxing program. The full slate is after the jump.

There are two screenings: 7 pm and 9:15 pm, with a Q&A with the filmmakers after each. Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 students. Proceeds go to support YouthFX's summer program.

It rained. A lot. And it's going to rain more. [TU][WNYT][NWS]

Recent agreements between the Cuomo administration and the Mohawk and Oneida tribes to keep new casinos away from reservation gaming establishments have ruled out a Lake George casino, but made Saratoga a much more likely site for one.[TU][Saratogian]

Niskayuna's school board will propose another round of budget cuts that could include school closures, before putting a spending plan up for a vote again in June.[TU]

OK, without further ado, the schedule...

For every three or four ounces of milk, Chobani and other companies can produce only one ounce of creamy Greek yogurt. The rest becomes acid whey. It's a thin, runny waste product that can't simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers. That could turn a waterway into what one expert calls a "dead sea," destroying aquatic life over potentially large areas. Spills of cheese whey, a cousin of Greek yogurt whey, have killed tens of thousands of fish around the country in recent years.

The scale of the problem--or opportunity, depending on who you ask--is daunting. The $2 billion Greek yogurt market has become one of the biggest success stories in food over the past few years and total yogurt production in New York nearly tripled between 2007 and 2013. New plants continue to open all over the country. The Northeast alone, led by New York, produced more than 150 million gallons of acid whey last year, according to one estimate.

And as the nation's hunger grows for strained yogurt, which produces more byproduct than traditional varieties, the issue of its acid runoff becomes more pressing. Greek yogurt companies, food scientists, and state government officials are scrambling not just to figure out uses for whey, but how to make a profit off of it.

As you know, New York State was the nation's biggest producer of yogurt in 2012, thanks in large part to the Greek yogurt factories in the state (including Chobani). So this is a pressing issue upstate -- especially as companies to continue to expand production. And there doesn't appear to be an easy answer.

Update: Chobani sent along a statement about the situation surrounding whey. It's in full after the jump.

Modern Farmer: Yep, that's the new publication based in Hudson.

Interesting. Beautiful.

"Subliminal Transcriptions" is the creation of Yael Erel, an architect currently in an RPI grad program for architecture and lighting. She's also the co-founder of a lighting design company called lightexture. Here's a short Etsy video about the company from a few years back.

Exhibit blurbage:

Subliminal Transcriptions grew out of a project to understand and control projected reflections from light fixtures, along with the drawings they produce. While working as a luminaire designer, an accidental discovery allowed Erel to realize the complexities evident in the simplest materials and smallest textures. "It all started with a piece of double sided tape" said Erel. When amplified with a reflector, the minuscule and seemingly invisible surface textures were revealed beyond what the naked eye could see.

The opening reception for the installation is June 6 from 5-9 pm. The installation will be on display in the Arts Center's black box theater June 6-8.

Yep, the Arts Center has advertised on AOA.

John Davis beat self-proclaimed fascist, and reptile owner, Jose Lopez for a seat on the Albany Public Library Board of Trustees. [APL Press release]

Andrew Cuomo has reached a casino agreement with the Mohawk Tribal Council that will give the Mohawk's casino exclusivity in an 8-county region of northern New York in exchange for $30 million in back payments to New York State plus future revenue shares from the casino. The move eliminates the prospect of locating a casino in Lake George. [TU][Post Star][Gazette]

Two of Vito Lopez's alleged harassment victims are "actively considering" suing Sheldon Silver for negligence in light of recent reports that Silver covered up earlier harassment claims through confidential settlements. [NY Post]

A 26-year-old Albany man was shot in the leg early Tuesday near the intersection of 1st and Judson Streets in the city. [TU]

A New York State judge has backed a decision by Albany's Zoning Board of Appeals to block dance parties at the Washington Avenue Armory. The original decision was made, in part, by consulting the dictionary for a definition of auditorium. [TU]

The unemployment rate in the Capital Region was 6.5 percent in April -- down from 7.2 percent during the same period last year, according to the state Department of Labor. [NYS DOL]

Today's map: The breweries, wineries, and distilleries of New York State.

We created this map based on data recently posted by the state. It includes big breweries and distillers, but also microbreweries, farm wineries, and cider producers. Check it out in large format -- where there's also a legend for the map.

To some extent, this is just sort of map gawkage. But it does highlight certain patterns...