This past weekend, the husband and I decided to revive my stagnated NetFlix queue and watch "Good Night, And Good Luck." (Sad to say, the previous movie on my queue was a Spanish movie that sounded great but languished on my entertainment center for about two weeks and was finally returned unwatched.) The film we did watch was George Clooney's acclaimed take on Edward R. Murrow bringing down Joe McCarthy. I thought it would inspire all kinds of journalistic fervor in me, which I need a boost of, but sadly, it fell a bit short. I laud the CBS folks for standing up to McCarthy's Red Scare, and I found it appaling how people had bought into the hysteria of those show trials, but the movie didn't live up to its material. Why? It was slow. Really, really slow. The envelope said it was just 1 hr. 33 mins., but man, it felt a lot longer. Probably even more so for the reformed smoker Brad since every character lit up like a chimney in every scene. They were trying all kinds of dramatic angles and lighting and so forth, but they left the drama out of the plot.
It was, of course, interesting for its historical matter. And for how what were no doubt Murrow's exact words were so applicable for our current administration's tactics. And it was fun seeing the film clip of McCarthy's censure, which I otherwise only knew from R.E.M.'s song "Exhuming McCarthy."
After a period movie that's supposed to arrive today, the next film on my queue happens to be "All the President's Men." Yet another aspect of journalistic history that I lack any real knowledge of. Sadly, I owned this book but hadn't gotten around to reading it before Mark Felt outed himself as Deep Throat. Kinda takes the thrill out of reading it, so I'm opting for the visual version. Hopefully this will stir me up a bit more.
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Welcome to my odditorium, a collection of curiosities made up of snippets about my life and occasional machinations on deeper subjects.
4 comments:
Hmmm... I want to see Good Night and Good Luck, too... and I know what you mean about letting a film languish on the entertainment center for weeks on end... that's how we were with "Mystery Train," and then I really enjoyed it. Go figure. Right now our holdout is Cronos... after a stomach virus, I just wasn't up to vampires and subtitles. :)
I have to ask why as a journalist you were not forced to watch "All the President's Men" already in your past!?!?!?!!?! GASP! I am horrified.
Oh. Okay. I only watched it because it was required for the journalism majors at my institution of higher learning.
"Citizen Kane", however, THAT one I watched on cable in the sorority suite one weekend, AND own a copy of.
P.S. I don't like blogger beta in that it can't remember me for anything and I always have to put all my info in again. SIIIIGH.
I was not an actual journalism major. My school only had one instructor, and he was an MFA in creative writing that happened to have been a reporter! Clemson is known for many things, and journalism isn't one of them. Though our student paper one best of show at the national convention one year -- and half the staff had been drunk the night that particular issue was laid out!
And my own PS -- I really hate Beta too, but I can't switch back!
Oops, uh, we won. Yeah, I was a copy editor.
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