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Outfoxed

For the first time ever, this documentary reveals the secrets of Former Fox news producers, reporters, bookers and writers who expose what it’s like to work for Fox News. These former Fox employees talk about how they were forced to push a “right-wing” point of view or risk their jobs.

“Outfoxed” examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, have been running a “race to the bottom” in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public’s right to know.

The Fog of War

The Fog of War, the movie that finally won Errol Morris the best documentary Oscar, is a spellbinder. Morris interviews Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and finds a uniquely unsettling viewpoint on much of 20th-century American history.

Employing a ton of archival material, including LBJ’s fascinating taped conversations from the Oval Office, Morris probes the reasons behind the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War–and finds a depressingly inconsistent policy.

Noam Chomsky – Distorted Morality

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government is powerfully scrutinized in Distorted Morality, a scathing thesis presented by renowned scholar Noam Chomsky. Speaking before an intimate audience at Harvard University on February 6, 2002, Chomsky sets fair and logical parameters to his thesis.

Distorted Morality deserves the widest possible audience. In the short period between Chomsky’s Harvard speech and the start of America’s war against Iraq in March 2003, Chomsky’s thesis has attained the chilling status of prophesy.

All the President’s Men

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford are perfectly matched as (respectively) Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose investigation into the Watergate scandal set the stage for President Richard Nixon’s eventual resignation. Their bestselling exposé was brilliantly adapted by screenwriter William Goldman, and director Alan Pakula crafted the film into one of the most intelligent and involving of the 1970s paranoid thrillers. Featuring Jason Robards in his Oscar-winning role as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, All the President’s Men is the film against which all other journalism movies must be measured.

Wag the Dog

There’s a fresh spin quite evident here, a nervy satire of a presidential crisis and the people who whitewash the facts. The main players are a mysterious Mr. Fix-It (Robert De Niro), veteran Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman), and a White House aide (Anne Heche).

Can the president’s molesting of a young girl be buried in the two weeks before an election? A war in Albania just might do the trick.

Primary Colors

John Travolta stars as Jack Stanton, a presidential hopeful whose campaign is challenged by dual dilemmas: how to squelch a scandal involving the candidate’s alleged sex with an underage girl, and how to handle information that could potentially ruin Stanton’s opponent (superbly played by Larry Hagman).

Stanton’s wife (Emma Thompson) stands by her man despite awareness of his infidelities, but his loyal campaign planners (played by Billy Bob Thornton, Maura Tierney, and promising newcomer Adrian Lester) experience a crisis of conscience.

The Candidate

Michael Ritchie’s 1972 drama about a political idealist (Robert Redford) recruited to make a run for the Senate is still engrossing and still a terribly accurate reflection of the contemporary campaign process. In one of his trademark roles as a man haunted by some shadow of inauthenticity, Redford is superb as a first-time candidate watching his values and control over his message disappear in the age of TV-friendly prefabrication.

Bob Roberts

Written and directed by actor Tim Robbins (who also plays the title role), this 1992 mock documentary about an upstart candidate for the U.S. Senate is smart, funny, and scarily prescient in its foreshadowing of the Republican revolution of 1994. Bob Roberts is a folksinger with a difference:

He offers tunes that protest welfare chiselers, liberal whining, and the like. As the filmmakers follow his campaign, Robbins gives needle-sharp insight into the way candidates manipulate the media.

Network

Media madness reigns supreme in screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s scathing satire about the uses and abuses of network television. Peter Finch plays a veteran network anchorman who’s been fired because of low ratings. His character’s response is to announce he’ll kill himself on live television two weeks hence.

What follows, along with skyrocketing ratings, is the anchorman’s descent into insanity, during which he fervently rages against the medium that made him a celebrity. Through it all, Finch urges the viewer to repeat the now-famous mantra “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” to reclaim our humanity from the medium that threatens to steal it away.

Dr. Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick’s cold-war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with “the purity of precious bodily fluids,” mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so- called “Doomsday Device,” and the world hangs in the balance.

Journeys With George

Journeys with George ia an unprecedented, all access pass to candidate George W. Bush in the months before he won the closest and most controversial presidential election in history. The documentary looks unflinchingly at the built-in conflicts, contradictions and seductions of big-time political reporting – and the tactics used by candidates to win over reporters over the course of months and months of campaigning.

The War Room

Documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back) and Chris Hegedus shot behind-the-scenes at command central for Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign and came up with this film. The center of the film is really James Carville, who steered the machine for Clinton’s ’92 run and who comes across in this film as a deeply passionate, complex, and somehow timeless man who could have fit into any chapter of American history.

Unprecedented

Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is the riveting story about the battle for the presidency in Florida and the undermining of democracy in America. Filmmakers Richard Ray Perez and Joan Sekler examine modern America’s most controversial political contest: the 2000 election of George W. Bush.

What emerges is a disturbing picture of an election marred by suspicious irregularities, electoral injustices, and sinister voter purges in a state governed by the winning candidate’s brother. This 2004 Campaign Edition features new commentary by Danny Glover and a new segment on the dangers of electronic voting machines.

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