Died-Walter Cronkite "most trusted CIA man in America&a

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Postby compared2what? » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:24 am

Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
barracuda wrote:compared2what?, I could say I wish I'd said that, but that wouldn't be quite what I'd mean. Nicely done. A life is rarely so single-mindedly lived that you can't give a man his due when all is done.

Oh, I agree. I fully expected c2w's subtle but fair human assessment having just processed McNamara.

That's precisely why I made the point I did the way I did.


You know what else? I've got some very strong doubts about whether anything you do is attributable to precisely the reasons you give for doing it. And I really don't give a fuck how unpopular saying so makes me. Or how prohibited it is. Fuck you and your fucking insinuations about brevity and your willful misrepresentation of history and your fucking obstruction of any and all discourse that might effectively reduce the advance of fascism. In short, fuck you and your fucking bullshit and every tide of fucking bullshit that swells up in other areas whenever anyone calls you on it.

I'm done. You win. Please be my guest and have the last word over and over and over again until everyone else has fallen dead with exhaustion in their tracks. I'm sure you'll still be doing it by the time I've written my personal so-longs. Which might take a while, I should alert the very, very limited number of people who know who they are, and who, until I get around to it should please remember to allot all blame for the delay to me, not themselves.

Wishing everyone nothing but the best,

c2w
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Postby RomanyX » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:37 am

I hope you change your mind, c2w. Your posts are some of the most enjoyable here. :(
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:41 am

compared2what? wrote:
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:
barracuda wrote:compared2what?, I could say I wish I'd said that, but that wouldn't be quite what I'd mean. Nicely done. A life is rarely so single-mindedly lived that you can't give a man his due when all is done.

Oh, I agree. I fully expected c2w's subtle but fair human assessment having just processed McNamara.

That's precisely why I made the point I did the way I did.


You know what else? I've got some very strong doubts about whether anything you do is attributable to precisely the reasons you give for doing it. And I really don't give a fuck how unpopular saying so makes me. Or how prohibited it is. Fuck you and your fucking insinuations about brevity and your willful misrepresentation of history and your fucking obstruction of any and all discourse that might effectively reduce the advance of fascism. In short, fuck you and your fucking bullshit and every tide of fucking bullshit that swells up in other areas whenever anyone calls you on it.

I'm done. You win. Please be my guest and have the last word over and over and over again until everyone else has fallen dead with exhaustion in their tracks. I'm sure you'll still be doing it by the time I've written my personal so-longs. Which might take a while, I should alert the very, very limited number of people who know who they are, and who, until I get around to it should please remember to allot all blame for the delay to me, not themselves.

Wishing everyone nothing but the best,

c2w

Please see your mailbox, c2w.

I don't approve of threads being 85% interpersonal kerfuffle but that was so harsh I'll have to address this. Sorry, board.

I don't know what set you off. But you're very mistaken. And I'll only piss you off by explaining your error. So be it.

I don't "willfully misrepresent history" or any of the rest of your rant.
I'm going to make an educated guess what you couldn't handle.

Seems you underestimate what I've picked up from four years of posting here and the predictable reactions to what I write.

Just as some here know what I'm going to write in response to something, I knew you'd probably write exactly what you did. Or else others would in piece-meal fashion.

All that "yes-but" about the more-liberal-than-expected Cronkite would miss the point unless I made it unflichingly stark-
He worked for a Nazi psyops outfit. And the nation loved it.

CBS has always been the first home base for CIA on television and this is the single most important thing to consider on Cronkite's death, far more important than that one man's epitaph and finding personally exonerating things to say at the funeral to the family.
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Postby OP ED » Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:51 am

He worked for a Nazi psyops outfit. And the nation loved it.



no. he did not.

that is a willful misrepresentation of history, btw. however slight.

[one of many many many many many]

just so you know.



CBS has always been the first home base for CIA on television and this is the single most important thing to consider on Cronkite's death, far more important than that one man's epitaph and finding personally exonerating things to say at the funeral to the family.



incorrect. congratulations on missing the point once again.
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Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:27 am

RomanyX wrote:I hope you change your mind, c2w. Your posts are some of the most enjoyable here. :(


Agreed. And Hugh too. Although obviously the implication is that HMW is disinfo in some way; many of the larger minds on this board have said, suggested or (perhaps, I'm only imagining) considered the possibility that HMW's motives are disingenuous.

So this is like the show-down, or something. Either consensus is reached that HMW is practicing disinfo, and thus should be banned (or leave, or whatever or whereever it is that pseudonyms go when they leave RI), or c2w should depart (for breaking the rules of calling someone disinfo, or rather because she chooses not to really break the rules, and chooses self-exiling).

Or maybe cooler heads will prevail, and the board will go on, big and broad enough for both HMW and c2w, with that tantalizing tension crackling in the cyber, and we'll all get to read many more great posts from both people.

Peace.
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Postby RomanyX » Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:28 am

Just to clarify: I, personally, have no problem with the Manatee. I must confess that I just plain don't understand 95% of what he posts, but I chalk that up to my own level of perception. :shrug:
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Postby RocketMan » Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:58 am

RomanyX wrote:Just to clarify: I, personally, have no problem with the Manatee. I must confess that I just plain don't understand 95% of what he posts, but I chalk that up to my own level of perception. :shrug:


Agree somewhat. Also, I don't see what the point of Hugh's voluminous posting is, because he keeps on making the same point: CIA runs mainstream media, Disney is CIA for kidz, like his sig says. All the detailed analysis, photos and screen grabs just again and again make the same really very simple point. Trust nothing you see, everything is psyops.

I have no problem with HMW despite the occasional self-righteous thread highjack and mostly unbearably condescending stance. Nowadays I just skip his posts.
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Postby MinM » Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:29 pm

Too soon? Perhaps, but when else would it make sense for Hugh to broach this issue than when there's an ongoing national debate about Cronkite's legacy?

This reminds me of Jeff's thread commemorating Sydney Pollack:

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - RIP Sydney Pollack

Although to Hugh's credit he did not 'hijack' another thread to make his point this time. HMW clearly stated where he was going with this:

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - Died-Walter Cronkite "most trusted CIA man in America&a

So, RItards, which I proudly include myself as one, had the choice of ignoring this or not. That said I for one appreciate HMW's take on this. While shows like Democracy Now, and blogs like Glenn Greenwald's, predictably and rightfully extoll the virtues of the man. It's also important to remember that, like I. F. Stone, Walter Cronkite dropped the ball on the biggest story of his career.

Were there always nefarious motives behind the coverage of the JFK case? Probably not. But that should not preclude us from asking the question. So, thanks to Hugh for another provocative thread, and thanks to posters like c2w?, for keeping everyone honest.
Last edited by MinM on Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Mon Jul 20, 2009 1:59 pm

I won't speak for c2w but we've made contact in pm in an 'agree-to-disagree-with-serious-reservations' kind of way. We both take things very seriously and I respect that in someone since I abhor complacency. Which is the reason for my sig quote and focus.

Some people are really sick of hearing about CIA media.
Some people don't understand what I write.

But, as MinM pointed out, the occasion of mass media icon Cronkite's passing is a valid time to examine the context and effect of his life on other people's lives, not just rate him on his intentions. It's a 'Fog of War' moment.

Few people illustrate the value of understanding parasocial interaction as a propaganda tool as much as Walter Cronkite. See 'Obama.'

parasocial interaction news - Google Search

1. Parasocial Interaction and Local TV News: Perceptions of News ...

"ED296389 - Parasocial Interaction and Local TV News: Perceptions of News Teams and News Personalities in Denver."
www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDet ... o=ED296389

2. Loneliness, Parasocial Interaction, and Local Television News Viewing.

"EJ331085 - Loneliness, Parasocial Interaction, and Local Television News Viewing ."
www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/recordDet ... o=EJ331085

3. Television News Anchor Longevity, Name Recall, Parasocial ...

"27 Aug 2007 ... Television News Anchor Longevity, Name Recall, Parasocial Interaction, and Paracommunity Orientation: A Case Study of Anchors Who Stayed in ..."
www.cci.utk.edu/node/3596

4. Identifying with Arabic Journalists: How Al-Jazeera Tapped ...

"Key Words: Al-Jazeera • Arab world • parasocial interaction • satellite news. Gazette, Vol. 67, No. 2, 189-204 (2005) DOI: 10.1177/0016549205050131 ..."
gaz.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/189

5. Identifying with Arabic Journalists: How Al-Jazeera Tapped ...

"Levy, M.R. (1979) 'Watching TV News as Para-Social Interaction' , Journal of Broadcasting 23: 69-80 . Lewis, F. (1994) 'Getting by: Race and Parasocial ..."
gaz.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/67/2/189

6. LONELINESS, PARASOCIAL INTERACTION, AND LOCAL TELEVISION NEWS VIEWING

"tors of parasocial interaction with a favorite local television news personality . ..... parasocial interaction. Local news is broadcast two or three times a ..."
doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1985.tb00071.x

7. Antecedents and Consequences of Presidential Parasocial Interaction

"presidential communication, medium theory, parasocial interaction ... Mediated Politics: How Press Freedom, Media Ownership and News Exposure Influence ..."
www.allacademic.com/meta/p195561_index.html

8. Impact of Motivation, Attraction, and Parasocial Interaction on ...

"... active and regular consumers of news media (Annenberg Public Policy Center, 1996). .... Parasocial interaction is an "illusion of intimacy" between media ... Several researchers have investigated parasocial interaction (PSI) during ..."
www.allbusiness.com/information/interne ... 153-1.html

9. Local Television News Audience andthe Para-Social Interaction

"items asthe firstand strongest factor, suggesta para-social interaction may be operating for some respondents'television news viewing. Respondents who ..."
www.informaworld.com/index/911319453.pdf

10. Watching TV News as Para-Social Interaction

"suggests that para-social interaction with news personae is a com- ..... The para-social interaction between audiences and news per- ..."
www.informaworld.com/index/911329099.pdf


Cronkite's career is also an exceptional example of the continuity from World War II journalist relations with the US government to the Cold War dynamic since it was the same men involved.

There is a timeline of rational moral choices that bent a few degree towards means-justifies-ends every year to get us to the 180 degrees-out-of-phase role of CIA media today meant to hide as much as possible as Stability Operations.

That's not simplistic demonization.

It is key to understanding how likeable people end up doing things that contradict their sincerely held ideals and how much they are willing to admit about this once they are out of the saddle.

And only starkly pointing at the darkest truths can break through the fog.
Ex-CIA whistleblower, John Stockwell, wrote that only being told point blank by friends that he didn't have to do what he did for the CIA and it was appalling...led to him admitting to himself that it was true and flipping 180 degrees into relentlessly telling the truth.

I wish Cronkite had come around to that moment.
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Postby StarmanSkye » Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:39 pm

IMHO, HMW makes a vital observation which with I completely agree:
--quote--
"There is a timeline of rational moral choices that bent a few degree towards means-justifies-ends every year to get us to the 180 degrees-out-of-phase role of CIA media today meant to hide as much as possible as Stability Operations.

That's not simplistic demonization.
It is key to understanding how likeable people end up doing things that contradict their sincerely held ideals and how much they are willing to admit about this once they are out of the saddle.

And only starkly pointing at the darkest truths can break through the fog."

--unquote--

I sure don't get a sense of Cronkite having acknowledged even a tiny part of the last fifty+ years enormous mass-deception project of MSM which he took an active, even leading-role part in. The gradual distortion of principle and reason over decades to legitimize violations of law, abuses of power, excesses, censorship, public-opinion management, extreme policies and moral exemption has shifted social values to such an extent that basic assumptions aren't even questioned, even when the hypocrisy and contradictions to 'official' intentions are blatant, as with US troops in Iraq, Afghansitan and now Pakistan are 'fighting for their country'. That's one of the LAST things they are 'fighting' for.

Sidestepping Cronkite's complcity in a culture of media propaganda would NOT be honoring him, or the best way to acknowledge his criticism of the Vietnam (somewhat belated to be sure) and Afghanistan wars. But then, wasn't he essentially sidelined precisely because he was unwilling to continue unquestionably carrying water for the Pentagon?

I too greatly value C2W and HMW's challenging and insightful contributions to this forum. I don't especially find irreconcilable contradiction between their positions, as comments that spur greater consideration are invaluable without my need to pick 'sides'. I'm still trying to make greater sense of the world we are in. Throughout much of Cronkite's career, he was an integral part of misinforming the populace. He could have used his popular influence to really challenge the public's understanding about how power and wealth really work, and the post-democratic transformation of our society undermining our basic principles. For whatever reason, he didn't. Certainly, he knew better.
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Postby sunny » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:18 pm

Honoring Cronkite is not our job, as I see it. Tributes to him have been omnipresent since he died, and what we usually do here at RI is swim against the tid[al wave]. I'm sure his family loved and will miss him and I'm sorry for his absence in their lives, but let's be honest here-his death does not affect us one iota and I could frankly give a shit when an extremely rich extremely elderly man dies. Asking people to acknowledge non-existent grief or admiration or to give him his "due", whatever that is, now that he is dead ....I'll give him this: for decades, he was 'the most trusted man in America'. What does that prove? That Americans will believe a lot of things. Did he express some quasi liberal views late in life? Yes, and what did that prove? That he no longer had anything to lose.
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Postby barracuda » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:42 pm

No one is asking anyone to change their opinion about Cronkite. But framing him up as one of the world's great CIA-funded mass murderers via his crimes of omission is absurdly hyperbolic. But that seems to be Hugh's own brand of psyop. Amen.
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Postby IanEye » Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:54 pm

MinM wrote:Too soon? Perhaps, but when else would it make sense for Hugh to broach this issue than when there's an ongoing national debate about Cronkite's legacy?

This reminds me of Jeff's thread commemorating Sydney Pollack:

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - RIP Sydney Pollack

Although to Hugh's credit he did not 'hijack' another thread to make his point this time.


Thanks MinM for that Pollack blast/past. What an odd thread, MacCruiskeen and I agreeing about things. Weird.

To be honest, i read some of that thread and i am like, "huh? I wrote that? Who is that guy?"

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Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Tue Jul 21, 2009 2:03 am

"The torture never stops."
-Frank Zappa

More essays on Cronkite's bootprints on humanity-

source-
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.c ... d-cia.html

* Walter Cronkite: Most Trusted Asset of Operation Mockingbird
http://constantineinstitute.blogspot.co ... et-of.html

* Cronkite Belatedly Called War in Vietnam Unwinnable, Not An Atrocity
http://constantineinstitute.blogspot.co ... ar-in.html

* Beyond the Hype: Cronkite and the Vietnam War
http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/1162/no ... _the_hype/
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Postby MinM » Fri Jul 31, 2009 12:20 pm

John Farr: The Ten Best Movies About Journalism by Farr
Writer, editor and lecturer on timeless film
Posted: July 27, 2009 02:31 PM


I don't know how many of you caught the superb "American Masters" tribute to the late Walter Cronkite on PBS last week, but it was highly illuminating.

Most of us think of "Uncle Walt" sitting behind his anchor desk at CBS, but this program also outlined just what brought him there. Throughout the Second World War, he served as a war correspondent for UPI, and appears to have seen nearly as much action as most battle-fatigued infantrymen.

What's particularly interesting is that Cronkite never forgot his early training. Over the course of his long and distinguished television career, he was hardly chained to that anchor desk. The correspondent in him saw the value of going out into the field, whether to cover the space program or the Vietnam War. And the succeeding generation of top newscasters- Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw- would all follow his lead.

We often speak of the "golden age of film", but juxtaposing Cronkite's legacy with what we're seeing now in the news business, there is no doubt that print and television journalism had its golden age too, and that sadly, we are now past it.

In the wake of this revered figure's passing, I've attempted to isolate the ten best movies about journalism. Included are serious films about war correspondents, investigative journalists, as well as pictures which portray the sensationalism which Cronkite so hated, and which represents the enduring Achilles' heel of the industry. (Note: I've intentionally excluded "Citizen Kane", as it's such an obvious choice.)

Here then are my own ten picks, in chronological order:

Foreign Correspondent (1940)- Crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) is renamed Huntley Haverstock by his editor and sent to Europe as a foreign correspondent. On the brink of war and teeming with espionage, the continent is full of juicy stories - and Johnny/Huntley soon finds one. Covering a peace mission, he witnesses an assassination, and is soon on to a nefarious spy ring and wide-ranging plot to aid the war-mongering Fascists. Can this Yank in treacherous waters uncover the whole mystery, and survive long enough to post the biggest scoop of his career? This unsung Hitchcock thriller is outstanding, his first to deal directly with the new war in Europe. Bolstered by a first-rate script (both James Hilton and Robert Benchley contributed dialogue) and superb cast (with the suave yet treacherous Herbert Marshall particularly memorable), "Correspondent" is consistently engrossing and entertaining, with some indelible set-pieces only this director could conjure up.

The Story Of G.I. Joe (1945)- At the height of World War II, war correspondent Ernie Pyle (Burgess Meredith) follows Company C, a platoon of infantrymen led by commander Lt. Bill Walker (Robert Mitchum), from the battlefields of North Africa to the devastated townships of Italy, getting to know each intimately. As the campaign progresses, Pyle sticks with them through the worst of circumstances and earns their respect. He, in turn, records their stories for readers at home, noting their courage, fierce loyalty to each other, and the mounting exhaustion they feel at the end of each battle. William Wellman's cinematic homage to the real-life Pyle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has been called one of the greatest war films of all time, and it certainly earns that distinction. The combat scenes are intense and realistic, but the film also shows the humdrum day-to-day duties and concerns of enlisted men with an almost documentary-like fidelity. Meredith lovingly evokes Pyle's humanistic and devoted attitude toward the ordinary soldiers who were his subjects, and Mitchum - in an early, star-making role - combines grit with gut-wrenching emotion. Pyle advised Wellman on this treatment, but sadly never saw the end result: He was killed in action in 1945.

Ace In The Hole (1951)- Thanks to womanizing, a drinking problem, and a defiant streak, fiery big-city journalist Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) has been relegated to working a local beat for a tiny New Mexico Daily, but he hasn't lost his taste for the big time. When a miner is trapped in a cave-in, Tatum savvily exploits and prolongs the man's plight in hopes of engineering his own prime-time comeback to the big-city dailies which have discarded him. Prescient, cynical, and daring for its time, Billy Wilder's acid-tongued satire on media sensationalism stars Kirk Douglas in one of his fiercest early roles. As Tatum, he's a mean-spirited multiple loser pursuing self-glorification at any expense. The luscious Jan Sterling wins points, too, for her portrayal of the trapped man's battered, unhappy wife, Lorraine, who threatens to blow the lid off Tatum's whole circus act. Wilder's astute handling of the chaotic scene around the mine - the media hordes, the gawkers and hangers-on, the souvenir and snack peddlers profiting off the situation - has much to say about our culture's lingering appetite for "human interest" tragedy.

The Parallax View (1974)- Reporter Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is onto a terrifying, wide-ranging conspiracy in the wake of a prominent senator's assassination. He must substantiate his theory to editor Bill Rintels (a seasoned Hume Cronyn), who has reason to doubt him thanks to past irresponsible behaviors. Frady does indeed have a tiger by the tail, but will he live long enough to get his scoop? One of our top political paranoia thrillers (and owing an obvious debt to John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate"), director Pakula uses this story to stir up close-to-the-surface fears and doubts about hidden machinations deeply embedded in our country's recent past. The result is eerily compelling. Direction, script and acting are uniformly excellent, and the film's climax is particularly intense. This subtle, intelligent thriller ranks among my favorite Beatty outings, with Paula Prentiss and Cronyn providing first-rate support.
YouTube | Alex Cox intro - Moviedrome - THE PARALLAX VIEW conspiracy
Image
http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/12/thin ... dd-up.html

All The President's Men (1976)- A true-life detective tale about a pair of intrepid reporters, this film follows Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they uncover a possible connection between the 1972 Watergate burglary and a White House staffer. With the blessing of executive editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) and inside dope from Woodward's ultra-secret source, "Deep Throat" (Hal Holbrook), they "follow the money" all the way to the top. Although you never glimpse anyone playing Nixon, this Oscar-nominated film documents how the power of the press and determination of two young journalists brought down this president, who two years prior had won re-election by the widest margin in history. Faithfully adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book authored by these reporters, the movie is more exciting than fiction, and the starring triumvirate of Redford, Hoffman, and Robards merge seamlessly with their real-life counterparts.

The China Syndrome (1979)- To the consternation of her bosses, ambitious TV reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) wants to get away from doing cheesy lifestyle segments and latch on to a serious story. She inadvertently finds it when she and cameraman Richard Adams (Michael Douglas) cover a day in the life of a nearby power plant, and witness some frightening irregularities. Not surprisingly, the powers-that-be don't want their cover blown on these life-threatening issues, but senior plant official Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) won't accept a cover-up, and bravely attempts to get the story out, with Kimberly's help. This tense and timely nail-biter is effective not only because director James Bridges gets all the fundamentals right, but because its explosive subject matter would soon hit home with a terrifying real-life incident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Lemmon's Godell is a shattering portrayal, for which the actor received an Oscar nod, and Fonda is appealing and believable as a journalist who wants to be more than a pretty face. Co-star Douglas also produced.

The Year Of Living Dangerously (1982)- In 1965, Australian reporter Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) arrives in Indonesia to track the turbulent Sukarno regime. There he meets half-Chinese news photographer Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), who quickly gets him acclimated to the people, place and politics. Billy then introduces Guy to Jill (Sigourney Weaver), a British embassy attaché, and romantic sparks fly. But Guy is there to uncover the next big story, and a country on the brink of revolution is no place to fall in love. This romantic thriller is one absorbing and atmospheric ride. Director Peter Weir heightens our awareness of impending societal disruption, keeping us continually on edge. Gibson has never been more magnetic as Guy, and the captivating Weaver exudes sensuality and mystery. Yet actress Hunt is the revelation in the gender-bending role of Billy -- it won her a richly deserved Oscar.

The Killing Fields (1984)- True story chronicling the experiences of New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg (Sam Waterston), who, with his assistant Dith Pran (Dr. Haing S. Ngor), covers the growing unrest in Cambodia, until the 1975 take-over by Khmer Rouge guerrillas forces him to evacuate. Unfortunately, Dith Pran is less fortunate, and endures years of torture and confinement during the ensuing genocide before attempting a daring escape. Harrowing tale of man's appalling cruelty to man would seem incredible were it not true. Director Roland Joffe crafts an authentic and intelligent portrayal of individual heroism, as Pran overcomes enormous hardship and suffering to seize his chance for freedom. Both Waterston and Ngor (a non-professional actor who won an Oscar) are outstanding. A disturbing but important film.

The Insider (1999)- Based on a well-publicized true story, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), an embittered tobacco company employee, decides to blow the whistle on mammoth employer Brown & Williamson's deceptive practices. He enlists the help of Lowell Bergman, senior producer on 60 Minutes (Al Pacino), to get the story out. The process quickly becomes dangerous, however, and both men's lives are nearly destroyed. Carrying the imprimatur of reality-and courtesy of Michael Mann's tense, semi-documentary shooting style- the shocking events of the Big Tobacco scandal get brought into close proximity, holding you breathless. "The Insider" represents a cautionary tale wrapped up in a top-notch thriller. Watching the byplay between Pacino and Crowe, viewers get to witness two consummate actors at the top of their respective games. Crowe is particularly impressive playing against type.

Shattered Glass (2003)- Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is a rising young reporter for The New Republic whose shocking stories about celebrity hackers and illegal hijinks at a Young Republican convention earn him the respect and admiration of his peers, not to mention kudos from managing editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria). But Glass's highly irregular reporting practices gradually come to light when new editor Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard) steps up to replace Kelly. Director Billy Ray's "Shattered Glass" stands alongside the classic film exposé "All the President's Men" as a riveting journalistic thriller based on real-life events. Dealing with the disturbing present-day phenomenon of journalistic plagiarism, the drama's timeliness gives the film an edgy, unnerving effect. While Glass's blank, unlined face never betrays his personal motivation, the movie addresses a familiar pitfall: the insidious attraction of taking the easy way out, and the peculiar arrogance and excitement that builds when you actually get away with doing something very wrong.
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MinM
 
Posts: 3286
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:16 pm
Location: Mont Saint-Michel
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