Goodnight and Good Luck — A dramatised version of the campaign against Joe McCarthy by 50’s CBS programme See It Now, but with so many modern parallels in today’s climate of terrorism, fundamentalism, secrecy and censorship. Beautifully shot, and compelling. My eyes didn’t waver from the screen for the full 90 minutes.
On a couple of related notes:
George Clooney says he didn’t actually write the blog entry in the Huffington Post “I am a Liberal. There, I said it!”, but that he does stand by the statements in it, which were compiled from two separate interviews. He takes a potshot at the (US) Democrats: Just look at the way so many Democrats caved in the run up to the war. In 2003, a lot of us were saying, where is the link between Saddam and bin Laden? What does Iraq have to do with 9/11? We knew it was bullshit. Which is why it drives me crazy to hear all these Democrats saying, “We were misled.” It makes me want to shout, “Fuck you, you weren’t misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.”
Ever wondered what the media won’t talk about? Sure, some of it’s media barons directing from on-high, but there’s also D-Notices. The D-Notice system lists the topics they shouldn’t report on. Theoretically it’s a voluntary system.
5 replies on “Goodnight and good luck”
I wanted to see GN&GL, but it was only shown in two cinemas in Vicotria, way way out, a long way away.
Just wait for the DVD, I said. And I did. Home theatre, surround sound, just me and whoever I say, no noise, no screaming kids, no interuptions lest I say. Good food, good toilet.
Sweet.
Dear Tim
I go to the cinema to get away from screaming kids.
Rog.
PS Daniel, I agree with you about Goodnight and Good luck. Very powerful film. Hard to tell the difference between old footage and the new filming – the acting was so good.
It’s no wonder I haven’t been able to get a hold of Mr and Mrs Vladimir Petrov.
Great film. Have to disagree about the old/new footage being hard to tell apart, though.
A TV critic in the US put forward a suggestion that Clooney should revive the live-to-TV drama style of the 1940s 50s and very early 60s. He was involved with the live ER episode a few years back. The suggestion was that it might revitalise TV and he seemed to be the person best able to do it.
Superb film, Goodnight and Goodluck. Acting so good, you don’t realise they are acting. Superb production skill. Definitely worth seeing to get you thinking about today’s society.
As to D-Notices, which seem to have been stopped, if I read correctly…Something else obviously exists, as explained by my internet service provider, Internode, who advise that they cannot provide all newsgroups to their Australian subscribers due to censorship provisions.
The similarity? Simple, they cannot tell us what is prohibited. Sort of if we tell you, we’d have to kill you stuff, but more like, if we told you, we would have committed an offence. As a softener, they said in their email you really truly wouldn’t want to see the material that is banned …you haven’t missed anything!