Tabloid

Deb 7 Me 8

I knew nothing about this movie going in and that’s a good thing. That meant the director had to guide me through the experience, and with no expectations, he could provide turns and dead ends and new horizons as he saw fit. This is a pretty straight-forward documentary, mostly talking heads on film. But then the editor got creative and some art director got involved and punched it up with totally cool graphics. Now it’s fun to watch the story unfold.

A word about the editing. I did a video interview with a guy in the 80s who was brilliant in his thinking, but unorganized in his speech. A typical sentence might go like “So we went to the store, it’s on 3^rd and Elm, a big blue building where there was a helicopter crash way back when, and we drove in an old truck so we could carry the keg back and I don’t know who was working there when those kids set the fire.” So in editing I had to stick to the point and eventually ended up with “So we went to the store in an old truck so we could carry the keg.” It looked pretty chopped up on the screen so I did cutaways where I could so it looked cohesive. I wasn’t trying to change what he was saying, just make it on-point. They did a lot of this in the movie, maybe why the graphics guy got to contribute so much, but I felt like the integrity of the story remained in-tact even though the on screen interviews were severely cut up.

Back to the movie, I liked it! It was a crack up, stretched credibility at points, but constantly reassured us that this is the real thing. It was creative, compelling and a real roller coaster of a ride.

Terri

Deb 8 Me 7

Another quiet coming of age kind ‘o movie, this one was endearing. The movie pushes you to accept the situations they provide no resolutions or explanations of their origin or results and I liked that aspect of it. It’s just a bunch of people trying to get along and, for the most part, doing the best they can. John C. Reilly is a bit of a caricature and the guyitar player from the Grass Roots is a capable addition, but the star is a big kid named Jacob Wysocki who really was engaging. There’s a bunch of young actors who are pretty phenomenal these days, I’m curious to see where he goes from here. But the movie was just pleasant to watch, not too deep, not too trite.

Page One: Inside the New York Times

Deb 4 Me 4

This is a look at a few folks and some of the things they face getting the New York Times out. I was struck by how movie star-ish the publisher and war correspondent were. The other main guy was very caricature-ish. The Times faces pressure from new media and they didn’t do a very good job of describing those new media or the pressures they apply to me. I get how the internet can make cutting trees down obsolete and how credibility is diminishing, but they didn’t talk about that a lot. They did talk about how print ads are falling off and how things like Twitter are a threat, but I don’t see how from what was provided in the movie.

I heard them talk about the news delivery system (web v. print) changing, but I didn’t hear them say anything about the news gathering (finding and checking sources) structure changes or remains. They did mention some of their huge guffaws, the guy who made up Pulitzer Prize winning stories and the gal who basically started the war by publishing unsubstantiated stories about enemy weapons build up. Sure these people got fired, and the boss too, but the fact that thousands of people have lost their lives and billions of domestic dollars have been spent on the basis of lies was pretty well shrugged off. Everybody makes mistakes, but they’re still the model for all newspapers.

The movie was lacking, and it got a low score. The Times, and most all news organization fail miserably. Maybe some documentaries that aren’t as self serving as this one might expose some of the inherent problems with the process and bring about some meaningful change.