Truth – We Are Movie Geeks

TRUTH Starring Cate Blanchett on Blu-ray and DVD Today

If there ever were a single event that established the internet as a counter to a highly biased press, it was Dan Rather’s blatant attempt in 2004 to fix an election using phony documentation. It’s been well documented that 60 Minutes Producer Mary Mapes and Rather wanted a “gotcha” story so they ignored journalistic standards to produce one. And they might have gotten away with it (and in an earlier day they would have), except we had entered the Internet age where almost anyone at home could check the facts and documents. That’s what happened and the story quickly fell apart. They got caught lying and fabricating evidence and were drummed out of the mainstream media. That would make an interesting movie rather than TRUTH, an attempt to make cheaters look like they were doing something noble.

Yet some critics liked the film. Cate Marquis here at We Are Movie Geeks wrote:

“TRUTH is a strong film about the challenges of journalism now, told through a famous incident that brought down a man who had been seen as a giant of TV journalism and which marked a shift in how reporting was perceived.“Read all of Cate’s review HERE

Now you can judge for yourself as TRUTH has arrived on Blu-ray and DVD from Sony Pictures.

Experience an incredible true story that rocked the world of television journalism when TRUTH premieres on Blu-ray^™and DVD Feb. 2 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Directed and written by James Vanderbilt (writer Zodiac, The Amazing Spider-Man 2), TRUTH is based on award-winning TV producer Mary Mapes’ memoir, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power, which chronicles the story of Dan Rather (Robert Redford) and Mary Mapes’ (Cate Blanchett) investigation into a sitting President’s military service. But when doubts arise, sources change their stories and accusations fly, their story becomes one of network news’ biggest scandals.

The TRUTH bonus features further illuminate the events and issues that sent shockwaves through the journalistic community. Exclusive to the Blu-ray are deleted scenes and a featurette, “The Reason for Being,” with Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett discussing the real events upon which the story was based and the important questions the film raises about journalism, political influence and the meaning of truth. Included on both the Blu-ray and DVD is a special featurette, “The Team,” where the A-list cast and filmmakers discuss the journey of bringing the film to the screen; a Q&A with Cate Blanchett, Elisabeth Moss and James Vanderbilt; and a Commentary with James Vanderbilt and producers Brad Fischer and William Sherak.

SYNOPSIS

Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett star in TRUTH, based on a riveting true story of one of network news’ biggest scandals. As a renowned producer and close associate of Dan Rather (Redford), Mary Mapes (Blanchett) believes she’s broken the biggest story of the 2004 election: revelations of a sitting U.S. President’s military service. But then allegations come pouring in, sources change their stories, document authenticity is questioned, and the casualties begin to mount. This dramatic thriller goes behind the scenes to expose the intricacies of journalistic integrity and what it takes to reveal the TRUTH.

Blu-ray & DVD Bonus Features:

Featurette:The Team
Q&A with Cate Blanchett, Elisabeth Moss and James Vanderbilt
Commentary with Director James Vanderbilt, Producers Brad Fischer and William Sherak

Blu-ray & Digital Exclusives*:

Deleted Scenes
Featurette:The Reason For Being

TRUTH – The Review

By Cate Marquis

TRUTH examines the events around the 2004 “60 Minutes” report on then president George W. Bush’s military service, which led to Dan Rather’s resignation and producer Mary Mapes’ firing. But in truth, the film is as much about the pitfalls of news reporting under the pressure of the 24-hour news cycle, and journalism’s traditional mission, the search for truth. Viewers may think they already know this story but, like the document at the center, not all is what it seems, and the truth is more complicated.

Robert Redford plays Dan Rather and Cate Blanchett plays his long-time producer Mary Mapes, in this drama based on Mapes’ book “Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and The Privilege of Power.” The report, which aired in the heated atmosphere of a presidential election, purported to show that George W. Bush not only used family connections to obtain a slot in the National Guard, avoiding service in Vietnam during that war, but was actually AWOL during part of his service. The document that was shown as proof of the later was immediately scrutinized and questioned by people on the internet, the first case of citizen journalists vetting a news report. The resulting firestorm of questions uncovered flaws in the reporting, undermined Rather’s reputation and lost Mapes her job.

Response to this film is likely to be divided, based mostly on how the viewer feels about Dan Rather. Just as many were prepared to believe the document that Rather reported on had been fabricated by biased reporters, or a least by their source, bent on bringing down the president as soon as the internet questions surfaced (just as others were eager to believe it on face value), there will be those who do not want to see this film and risk the possibility there is something more complex underneath. But the curious, the more open-minded or those concerned about the state of journalism in this country would do well to give TRUTH a look.

Mapes produced the “60 Minutes” segment that exposed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which won her an Peabody award – or at least CBS, after they fired her. She is the real focus of this film, not Rather, and the story is told from her viewpoint.

Topher Grace plays Mike Smith and Dennis Quaid portrays Lt. Colonel Roger Charles, two of Mapes’ research team, whose cross-cultural bickering provide much of the comic relief in the film.

Director and scriptwriter James Vanderbilt uses a restrained tone, evoking earlier films about journalism like ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, although this is a very different kind of story. The film takes a straight-forward approach to events, starting with the seed of the story, and detailing the pressures of getting a story out in a timely manner while doing due diligence on fact-checking.

The document a source had brought to Mapes was a copy, which limited the kind of testing that could be done to verify it, and officer whose signature appeared on it had since passed away. On the strength of handwriting expert verification and with sources verifying the content, the decision was made to air the report despite imperfect documentation.

Questions were raised immediately and the media firestorm ensued. Once doubts were raised, Mapes found sources recanting or even revealing deceit. As the film reveals, Mapes and her team were able to clear up all the issues raised about the document eventually, but it did not matter – once the internet talkers seize it, the scandal became the story, not the content of the report. Fact-checking no longer mattered.

Blanchett does an excellent job as the woman journalist at the center of this scandal. She portrays the doubts and uncertainties she grapples with, balancing the time needed for vetting and mixed results from that process with a looming deadline and pressure to get the program on air before the election. Redford plays Rather like an old-school journalist, committed to uncovering the truth in Edward R. Murrow-style, but perhaps too trusting of his long-time producer and protege Mapes. Late in the film, there is a powerful, chilling scene where Redford as Rather talks about how television news morphed from a public service that made no money into profitable info-tainment. The film is worth seeing for that scene alone.

TRUTH is a strong film about the challenges of journalism now, told through a famous incident that brought down a man who had been seen as a giant of TV journalism and which marked a shift in who reporting was perceived.

TRUTH opens in St. Louis
on Friday, October 30th, 2015

OVERALL RATING: 4 OUT OF 5 STARS

This Week’s WAMG Podcast – ROCK THE KASBAH, ROOM, Maureen O’Hara and More!

This week’s episode of our podcast WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is up! Hear WAMG’s Michelle McCue, Jim Batts and Tom Stockman discuss the weekend box office, and next weekend’s releases. We’ll review THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, ROCK THE KASBAH, ROOM, TRUTH, and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: GHOST DIMENSION, . We’ll also preview SUFFRAGETTE, BURNT, OUR BRAND IS CRISIS and LOVE THE COOPERS. We will discuss the new Star Wars trailer, Chris Rock hosting the Oscars, the films of Danny Boyle and we’ll pay tribute to the late Maureen O’Hara. WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is a weekly podcast and can be heard streaming at ONStl.com Online Radio.

Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:

This Week’s WAMG Podcast – CRIMSON PEAK, GOOSEBUMPS, Spielberg, and More!

This week’s episode of our podcast WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is up! Hear WAMG’s Michelle McCue, Jim Batts and Tom Stockman discuss the weekend box office, and next weekend’s releases. We’ll review BEAST OF NO NATION, GOOSEBUMPS, CRIMSON PEAK, LABYRINTH OF LIES, and GOODNIGHT MOMMY. We’ll also preview SPOTLIGHT, THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, TRUTH, and ROCK THE CASBAH. We’ll discuss ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and our favorite films of director Steven Spielberg. Tom will discuss his weekend visit to New York and his look at Martin Scorsese’s movie poster collection. WE ARE MOVIE GEEKS The Show is a weekly podcast and can be heard streaming at ONStl.com Online Radio.

Here’s this week’s show. Have a listen:

Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford In New TRUTH Clips

Director James Vanderbilt’s TRUTH is in theaters today in NY and LA. (Trailer) The film will open in St. Louis on October 30th.

Sony Pictures Classics has released new clips from the docudrama starring Cate Blanchett as Mary Mapes and Robert Redford as Dan Rather.

The Washington Post is reporting that CBS has refused to run TV spots for the film.

CBS has denounced the movie, which opens Friday, as a disservice to the public and journalists.

Sony Pictures Classics sought a multi-million dollar ad buy to promote the film on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show,” the “CBS Evening News,” ‘’CBS This Morning” and “60 Minutes,” but was turned down, said Sherri Callan, president of Callan Advertising, the company that places ads for Sony.

Instead, Sony is advertising on ABC, NBC, Fox and several cable networks. CBS, which confirmed the rejection, told Callan it was not comfortable accepting the ads because of inaccuracies and distortions in the movie, and that it would offend longtime CBS News employees.

On the morning of September 9, 2004, veteran CBS News producer Mary Mapes (Cate Blanchett) believed she had every reason to feel proud of a broadcast journalism job well done. By the end of the day, Mapes, CBS News, and the venerable CBS News anchor Dan Rather (Robert Redford) would be under harsh scrutiny.

The evening before, 60 Minutes II had aired an investigative report, produced by Mapes and reported on-air by Rather, that purported to reveal new evidence proving that President George W. Bush had possibly shirked his duty during his service as a Texas Air National Guard pilot from 1968 to 1974. The piece asserted that George W. Bush had not only exploited family connections and political privilege to avoid the Vietnam War by joining the Texas Air National Guard, but he had failed for many months to fulfill his most basic Guard obligation-showing up on base.

Mapes and her team of researchers had scrambled under a tight deadline to pull together both on-air eyewitness testimony and newly-disclosed documents to make their case, and they felt confident that their story was solid. In the lead-up to the 2004 Bush v. Kerry presidential election, the “Bush-Guard” story could have had profound ramifications.

But within days after the story broke, George W. Bush’s military service record was no longer the focus of media and public scrutiny. Instead, it was 60 Minutes, Mapes, and Rather who were under question: the documents supporting their investigation were denounced as forgeries, and the 60 Minutes staff was accused of shoddy journalism or, perhaps worse, accused of being duped. Eventually, Mapes would lose her job and reputation. Dan Rather would step down prematurely as CBS News anchor.

How did attention end up focused on the journalists who questioned the official version of the story? How did the minutiae of document typefaces, line breaks, and superscripts become seemingly more important to the national discourse than the question of whether the President had failed to fulfill his military obligations?

Have journalistic integrity and independence been fundamentally altered in today’s newsrooms and boardrooms?

TRUTH is based on Mary Mapes’ memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power (2005, St. Martin’s Press).

New Trailer And Poster For TRUTH Stars Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford

Here’s a look at Sony Pictures Classics trailer and new poster for TRUTH, featuring Cate Blanchett & Robert Redford.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In his TIFF review, writer Todd McCarthy (THR) says, “Blanchett gives this dynamo of intelligence and doggedness a real human dimension that allows the propulsive drama to breathe; it’s another stellar performance that rates among her best.”

TRUTH opens in select theaters on October 16.

TRUTH is an independent feature film based on the book “Truth and Duty” by Mary Mapes. In the vein of “All The President’s Men” and “The Insider”, it is the incredible true story of Mary Mapes (played by Cate Blanchett), an award-winning CBS News Journalist and Dan Rather’s producer, who broke the Abu-Ghraib prison abuse story, among others.

The film chronicles the story Mapes and Rather (played by Robert Redford) uncovered that a sitting US president may have been AWOL from the United States National Guard for over a year during the Vietnam War.

When the story blew up in their face, the ensuing scandal ruined Dan Rather’s career, nearly changed a US Presidential election, and almost took down all of CBS News in the process.

https://www.facebook.com/TruthFilm

Watch Robert Redford And Cate Blanchett In The First Clip From TRUTH

Sony Pictures Classics has released the first video, along with three new images, from TRUTH.

Starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather, Cate Blanchett, Topher Grace, Bruce Greenwood, Elisabeth Moss, and Dennis Quaid, the film premieres on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival.

TRUTH is an independent feature film based on the book Truth and Duty: the Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power by Mary Mapes.

Check out the clip below. (via EW)

On the morning of September 9, 2004, veteran CBS News producer MARY MAPES (Cate Blanchett) believed she had every reason to feel proud of a broadcast journalism job well done.

By the end of the day, Mapes, CBS News, and the venerable CBS News anchor DAN RATHER (Robert Redford) would be under harsh scrutiny.

Mapes and her team of researchers had scrambled under a tight deadline to pull together both on air eyewitness testimony and newly-disclosed documents to make their case, and they felt confident that their story was solid. In the lead-up to the 2004 Bush v. Kerry presidential election, the “Bush-Guard” story could have had profound ramifications.

In his stirring final broadcast, Dan Rather invokes the public trust in journalism’s quest for truth, and closes his farewell with his trademark “Courage.”

Robert Redford talks about the delicate business of real lives intersecting with screen lives: “I said ‘Look, Dan. I’m going to be playing you. This is tricky. Would you like to tell me anything? From your point of view, can you tell me what this was really about?’ And he said, ‘Yes, it was about loyalty. It was a tripod loyalty to my partner and producer, Mary Mapes, my boss, CBS, and myself. It was all equal. I was equally loyal to CBS, my boss, and equally loyal to my compatriot.’”

Inspired by the “church of CBS” ethos, Vanderbilt and composer Brian Tyler aimed for an almost devotional quality in the music behind the key montage of Americans watching the 60 Minutes II report on President George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service.

Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, TRUTH opens in theaters on October 16.

Review: CATFISH

CATFISH is a challenging film to review. Not because of it’s quality, because the movie is excellent. It’s a challenge because so much of the film’s success relies on not knowing anything, going into the experience with a clean slate. The audience will benefit the most from this movies by simply going for the ride, devoid of any and all expectations, thrilled by where the story leads.

Nev Schulman is a photographer from New York. His brother Ariel Schulman is a filmmaker, so in 2007 he and fellow director Henry Joost decided to shoot a documentary about Nev and his online friendship with a talented 8-year old artist named Abby. The project seemed innocent enough at the time, but what the three would gradually discover is what makes this documentary so compelling.

Abby is a huge fan of Nev’s photography, so she paints pictures from his photographs. The two communicate via Facebook, Nev sends Abby photographs and Abby in turn sends Nev paintings of those photographs. The essence of the relationship is charming. Perhaps even too charming. Nev finds himself fascinated by Abby, her mother Angela and her big sister Megan.

Encouraged by his brother, Nev reluctantly agrees to continue being the subject of Ariel and Henry’s documentary, despite his growing discomfort with putting his life on display. The three ultimately set out on a road trip to meet this curious family, which is where the “truth is often stranger than fiction” element begins to run it’s course in CATFISH with shocking straight-forwardness.

Watching CATFISH is an experience unlike anything I can think of – certainly, many will draw comparisons to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or BORAT, although undeservedly so – this film is much more than any mockumentary you’ve seen before. CATFISH, intentionally or not, draws upon the viewer’s morbid curiosity, dwelling within that same region of the human mind responsible for rubbernecking as we pass by an accident. For all intents and purposes, I am 99.9% positive CATFISH is an honest-to-God “real” documentary, but I still found myself pondering its realism.

Easily, the most extraordinary revelation I had in viewing CATFISH is — regardless of whether its “real” or “fake” — the movie still falls somewhere between inspired creativity and brilliant commentary. Either way I interpret the film, I still return to this overwhelming sense of having witnessed a moving, somewhat shocking and all-too-honest and contemporary social self-portrait of an era of human relationships unique to our Internet generation of the virtually connected.

For the skeptics – and I’m sure there will be plenty – CATFISH may present itself as being too unbelievable to be true, but I return to my earlier reference of the “truth is stranger than fiction” phrase. Nothing about the “performances” feel fake, forced or fabricated. The honesty and authenticity of the characters’ emotions, reactions and interactions with each other is strikingly sincere. More over, to have pulled this film off as it stands — and if it would turn out to be fabricated — is as much a commendable feat as it would be for this three-person crew to have so brilliantly captured the potentially darker, yet innocently non-malicious nature of Nev’s discovery… of living in a society more comfortable in the cyber-surrogate world of online contact than the tangible, flesh and blood world.

CATFISH presents us with a carnival fun house mirror. On one side we see ourselves for who we are, unable to pretend without revealing that we’re pretending. On the other side, the mirror allows us to reinvent ourselves into what we want ourselves to be, even what others want to interpret us as, hiding the reality from each other. I recommend this film to everyone, especially anyone with a Facebook profile. CATFISH is entertaining, yes… but, it’s also quite possibly one of the most culturally significant documentaries this year, if not of the decade.

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OVERALL RATING: 4 OUT OF 5 STARS

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Overall rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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