Originally posted by CreshoskDoing good. Except I caught some nasty stomach virus that was going around a few weeks ago. My rectum needed an exorcism. lol
More or less. Went through some ups and downs. Spilled some boiling soup on my hands on Wednesday, got second degree burns. Practically healed now five days later. How have you been, other than the location thing.
Originally posted by Creshosk
More or less. Went through some ups and downs. Spilled some boiling soup on my hands on Wednesday, got second degree burns. Practically healed now five days later. How have you been, other than the location thing.
"It took me a few years to recover my typing skills..."
Originally posted by BadabingYikes. Hope you're doing better now.
Doing good. Except I caught some nasty stomach virus that was going around a few weeks ago. My rectum needed an exorcism. lol
Originally posted by Omega VisionNaw, just got into another fandom and fell out of the habit of coming here.
Lol, I was imagining that soup spill accident as the entire reason for your absence."It took me a few years to recover my typing skills..."
hey, read this.. my sister wrote it on her tumblr page...
Kill the Messenger Relevant?
Why Kill the Messenger is Relevant Today Annie Burdeos “A newspaperman uncovers something he did not look to find. Disillusion sets in, giving way to despair. Their misdeeds published for all the world to see.....” The author to her mates January 2014 The zeitgeist of film,when done well, can reflect and comment on the times we live in, modifying how we see ourselves. Witness: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Dirty Harry, To Kill a Mockingbird, 28 Weeks Later, V for Vendetta, The Fifth Estate as indicators of such a statement. All meeting with varying degrees of success. By corollary it is often said we are given the film that best defines us at any particular juncture. Case in point: Nolan’s perfectly rendered Batman trilogy, particularly The Dark Knight Rises, dealing with the 1% as economically defined. The newspaper film has its roots in the earliest days of cinema, and within each decade a film about journalists comes to the fore: the seminal All the President’s Men, Absence of Malice, The Mean Season, The Paper and The Insider. This millenium alone has seen such films as Shattered Glass, Good Night, Good Luck, Charlie Wilson’s War, State of Play, Fifth Estate and the upcoming Kill the Messenger (KTM). The newspaper has lately been replaced by the fifth estate. The fifth estate is described as nontraditional news gathering: with social media being the primary source: Twitter (140 characters), Instagram and WhoSay (Words and Pictures) and Tumblr (a microblogging site). Bloggers proliferate across the internet; some helpful, others bullies. Nowhere is this difference and opposition to mainstream press and media more evidenced than in the Russell Crowe starrer,State of Play. based on the 6 part British miniseries of the same name. A subcategory of the newspaper film is the whistleblower, often bordering on conspiracies, and those who believe in them. Are they mere theories that can be supported by the empirical? When does the theory cease to be conjecture and become fact? Exposing such information is a detriment to his health yet of paramount importance to the health of the public. It’s an interesting quandary. Should we know? Can we know? Is it OUR RIGHT TO KNOW and HOW MUCH should the general populous be entitled to know and be told? At what costs should such knowledge be made public? Is it the function of the government to withhold viable information from its citizens? Are secrets meant to be kept when effecting a government’s constituents? The dismal failure of The Fifth Estate attempted to wrestle with such an issue. The leaking of confidential documents/surveillance data and the display of such data on a computer screen does not lend itself to cinematic appeal. And no director could have made it exciting and challenging. Assange, a polarizing figure to put it mildly, did not care for the film. Perhaps it might have been too truthful about him? Cumberbatch as Assange at the film’s conclusion stated pretty much the same thing. In an interview, Cumberbatch as Assange , facing the camera, denounces the two upcoming WikiLeaks films stating that they will be factually inaccurate having been based on Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s book. Domscheit-Berg and Assange eventually clashed over the leaking of confidential documents. Assange stated these exact same objections prior to the film’s release. Into this comes an independent film fronted by two-time Academy nominee (The Hurt Locker and The Town), Jeremy Renner. It is his company, The Combine’s first foray into production. Much is riding on its outcome. Will people care? Will a story from the 1990’s attract an audience of filmgoers who were either not born or were too little to remember? Will it become this generation’s The Insider? Will it be profitable for its distributing studio and by extension place Renner at the forefront for roles in a similiar vein ? Or will it be lost in an already crowded Fall of upcoming releases? As Ridley Scott wrote of Gladiator **, story and character are the two most important elements in any movie and, based on the trailer, Kill the Messenger has this in abundance. At what cost should such information, once gathered, once investigated, connections made and supported by facts, be told to the public? In this regard, KTM’s Gary Webb is much like Crowe’s Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider which, to this writer, is one of the finest films ever produced. It has always been my contention to any who would listen -- friends, colleagues, my Paper Dragon mates -- that it’s imperative to see Webb as who he was: a man who vehemently believed in what he was doing. He was not without his flaws. It’s of paramount significance that Webb is not portrayed as a martyr at the onset. I’m hoping it will be akin to Crowe’s Wigand: the gradual wearying of a man who began to doubt himself but knew in his heart he was right. The vicious smear campaign conducted against Wigand has to be one of the worst in the history of smear campaigns. Wigand somehow managed to survive this. Webb was not as fortunate. Petty jealousy lead by this writer’s hometown local newspaper, The LA Times, eventually proved to be too much for Webb. I’ve no doubt Renner will excel in this role and he will have us in tears when he, as Webb, takes his life. For this writer, the single most effective line that resonates long after the trailer has ended“National security and crack cocaine in the same sentence. That does not sound strange to you?”perfectly encapsulates what Webb was up against. Renner has said,“Good investigative journalism ruffles feathers. From the reaction he got, Gary was doing something right. It’s a man left out in the wind on his own. The letter (his bosses wrote a backtracking editorial when the shit hit the fan-the writer’s italics) was the ultimate betrayal for Gary, I believe. The mothership bailed and that crushed him. Everything he had in his life was his job. And you take that away from a man, then it leads to a tragic situation.”+ There are those who believe KTM will not do much at the box office and they are probably right. Whistleblower/Investigative journalism films generally,shall we say,underperform. Crowe’s The Insider earned $60m worldwide. State of Play performed a bit better earning $87m total. The ones mentioned herein struggled to earn back their production costs, particularly The Fifth Estate. ($8.5m-domestic and international combined). And there are those who are unaware of who Webb was/is and feel his story is a waste of celluloid. However, the film has been cited as potentially being of importance: IndieWire, PopSugar, Entertainment Weekly, MovieGuru, Poweranks to list a few online sites. How will the film be received? I believe the response is best represented by using a quote from Washington Globe reporter Cal McCaffey to Congressman Stephen Collins: “Why is that? Cuz nobody reads the Papers anymore? Is that it? It’s just another story. A couple days a shitstorm and its wrapping paper. In the midst of all this gossip and speculation that permeates people’s lives, I still think they know the difference between real news and bullshit and they are glad someone cares enough to get things on therecord and print the truth.”++ Individuals such as Jeff Wigand and Gary Webb are integral to our society and should be appreciated for telling the truth not reviled and smeared. In the end their voices were heard, effecting change, however small, and even when the message was being thwarted. Most recently, social media and the fourth estate (reporters and newspaper journalists) have converged: the shooting of an unarmed African-American teenager by a white police officer in Ferguson,Missouri has resulted in dozens of arrests involving reporters, journalists, photographers,bloggers,ordinary citizens. Ferguson has been playing out like a police state. I’d tweeted a friend of mine “the press has a right to be there, trying to get things on the record and print the truth, they’re killing the messenger.” Gary Webb would have been proud. Note: All films cited can be found on Wikipedia and IMDB including box office figures where known. KTM is slated for a platform release by Focus Features beginning October 10, 2014 with final expansion the week Of Oct 24, 2014. Webb’s 1996 Dark Alliance articles are available as is Nick Schou’s Kill the Messenger both of whichare the basis for the film. *Excerpt from Gladiator:The Making of the Ridley Scott Epic”. NewMarket Press, 2005. +www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/11/03/sneak-peak-jeremy-renner-kill-the messenger ++ Quote from State of Play starring Russell Crowe as Cal and Ben Affleck as Collins. Sidebar :The comment at the beginning was the writer’s response to how she would view Kill the Messenger prior to the release of the initial trailer. It was actually written in another post for State of Play.
Originally posted by Omega VisionWe kicked you out, nerd! biscuits
I don't even really post in the CBVF anymore, I'm mostly a GD guy now.
Originally posted by BruceSkywalkerBruce, what does that all mean?
hey, read this.. my sister wrote it on her tumblr page...
My engine mods better get here soon. I can't take waiting anymore! sneer
