George Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck"

Also, wallace & gromit is 94%. who the fuck would give a negative review to W&G? (aside from chaki)

Yeah. It was a chain-smoking civics lesson. Pretty good for a civics lesson. The best part was all the actual footage of McCarthy, really, since I'd only seen snippets of that.

Clooney is great. I'll see this at some point. Did anyone see his remake of Fail Safe (I didn't)? Because this looks like a similar approach, visually (er, from what I saw of it).

Quite a few. Good lectures, though. David Strathairn is really good.

Anyway, the movie was fairly good, occasionally excellent. Its brevity mitigated the suspicion that Clooney was fetishizing not just Ed Murrow and the period, but Courage, Decency, Fair Reporting, etc.

also, dig this: he's exec producer on the Keanu K. Dick movie coming out...

-- kingfish neopolitan sundae (jdsalmo...) (webmail), October 17th, 2005 3:46 PM. (kingfish 2.0) (link)

Um... I'm with andy. Few movies need updating less than that one.

oh man, me too. He somehow manages to be obsequious and excruciatingly self-important at the same time.

The jazz interludes were embarassing, and I think cutting out the opening and closing monologues would have made it stronger. With them, it's too pointed in taking aim at Bush, and Murrow is more ambiguous, morally, in the main part of the film.

- Showed how the simple fact that we all have secrets became a feature in the red-baiting; people fessed up fake secrets lest the light be turned on their real secrets.

- Didn't gloss over the male-dominated environment, as it showed how women - despite intelligence and involvement in the issues - didn't actually have a hand in the editorial content, and were sent to pick the papers up for the boys etc.

The Clarkson/Downey Jr. subplot was aimed at showing the repressive culture that people that obtained in the 50's along with the kind of paranoia, secrets and damage that it causes, like living in the closet was portrayed in the 80's.

The jazz interludes were an unbelievable waste of time. My gf pointed out that this would not have looked out of place on American Playhouse. Since it's a very simple plot told quickly, I got the impression that the music was intended not only to pad out the script but set the atmosphere too and make the whole thing a little less preachy.

Between PSH and Strathairn, who would you vote for for Best Actor?

I'll grant that it could very well be close to what they played in the period - but I don't think that in itself makes it a successful artistic choice. It was too sappy, too forceful, where the rest of the film was beautifully restrained.

Or Rosemary Clooney!

I don't get Robert Downey Jr. Except for Chaplin, I don't think I've ever seen him in something where he couldn't easily have been replaced by someone else, and yet there's always this big fuss about him like he's god almighty.

I thought this film kind of stunk. It gives you nothing you couldn't get from a documentary or book about the McCarthy era, and the drama was almost nil. The only thing Clooney seemed to have to say was "McCarthy bad, Edward R. Murrow awesome," a point made far better by Murrow's words themselves than anything Clooney wrote or directed into being.

I knew I was in for a snoozer when the film opened with, and lingered for quite a long time, on an awards dinner. This dinner gives us no real plot set-up, and then following the flashback it's much more of a plot slope than a plot arc - Murrow decides to take on McCarthy, he takes on McCarthy, and he wins. Who is he? What drives him? Does he have any doubts or concerns? Is there a beating heart under there? Does he ever say anything that isn't right and true and pure?

You may have a point, the dramatic structure was quite flat. However, I'd only vaguely heard of Murrow before seeing it, and found the film to be a very interesting introduction to this figure.

i liked it even though as you say there is no structure or plot whatsoever really

Yeah, I don't get all the critics who fell all over this. I didn't get any kind of feel for the main character - why should I care about him? He didn't seem like someone I could identify with? And what was up with the black and white - this is the 21st century! Anyway, this movie makes you think.

I think this came out while people in America still felt the Bush administration was being railed against about as much as McCarthy initially?

AH, WHEN LIBERAL MEN WERE MEN! SMOKIN AND DRINKIN TO JAZZ, TAKIN' NO GUFF.

also, why wasn't Clooney the star of this? he was just some 2-bit side player. I don't get that.

Because he wanted to make as good a film as possible and knew Strathairn would do a better job than him as Murrow?

it's possible he was only in front of the screen at all cuz it would be a draw.

sarcasm is dead

Ray Wise owns this movie.

Murrow decides to take on McCarthy, he takes on McCarthy, and he wins. Who is he? What drives him? Does he have any doubts or concerns? Is there a beating heart under there?

yeah, you maybe shoulda rented that johnny cash movie instead. i thought it was terrible too, there wasn't even a scene that showed how his work was affecting his family life. pshaw.

there wasn't even any scary music when the bad guy came on the screen, fer fucks sake.

we should anticipate his new one; jeffrey wright, philip seymour hoffman, clooney, i-am-still-not-sold-on-ryan-gosling, probably not just guys, also.

What would Gosling have to do, at this point, to sell you?

i think i just haven't seen him in anything much?, it's not an aggressive dislike or anything, more a reaction to him being v visible all of a sudden. i thought he was good in blue valentine but thought the movie was shitty, so that maybe fuels my ambivalence. like in this in particular, it's funny when actors play like journalists or staffers or anything that has that kinda loosened-tie costume, i guess i'm curious to see whether it'll be v regular-guy schtick.

Pretty convinced he could play Jon Arbuckle in a Garfield reboot and I'd still be impressed with his performance, at this point.

ah that's interesting (also well cast)
what would i watch if i wanted to investigate?

I'm probably not the best judge, since I always think he's better than his material. I was ready to give him an Oscar nomination for The Notebook.

i just scrolled through his imdb, there's a lot of funny kinda 'hercules jr' & 'are you afraid of the dark?' stuff. was ... wasn't the notebook that richard gere thing?

okay i am mixed up but i think i saw the poster & thought 'latter day richard gere vehicle'. is it good?

It's horrifyingly bad. But Gosling is fantastic in it.

ha, okay. i think i will probably wait & see him in this, but on account of your enthusiasm i'm psyched to do so. think i am maybe just suspicious of young sharp snappy actors.

really, lazily appending a new Cloonet film to this?

My fave Gosling performance is still The Believer.

i am all in favour of new-thread break-out enthusiasm for this film; cast is great, & this kind of smooth, cloon'd take on murky political underworlds - wag the dog &c - seems like something that studios can be okay at now

he's been around for a long time. the believer was 2001. i think he's bewitching.

a really long time, cf young hercules:

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSIU_tk_XEC4b5ZsXP0SXDJXZFFLCMdSuNj4Nfqe-A-vmAhO_H8

i feel bad for flaunting all your recommendations, here; i have still not found a satisfactory cost benefit analysis equation for sitting through one of his films just for the positive yield of his performance/radiance.

lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5PxZZuIh8OY

well done ryan gosling

buff bro dressed like old timey sailor barrels into group of people, breaks up non-fight

god, what a great ass

crazy stupid love was pretty good

his ass gave a superb performance

xxxp

yeah i assumed this was some kind of low quality performance art piece

watch yr back franco

^^^ I mean it

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/theater/george-clooney-broadway-good-night-good-luck.html

ive heard him say a version of this quote several times… notably, he used to say 80 instead of 90 iirc

Clooney is conscious of time passing. “I had this conversation with Amal when I turned 60,” he said. “I said, ‘Look, I can still play full-court basketball. I can still run around. I can still do pretty much everything I did when I was 30. But in 30 years, I’m 90. That’s a real number. My dad just hit that. And there are some things you’re not doing no matter how many granola bars you eat. I told Amal, ‘We have to focus on the next 20, 25 years of making sure that we’re jamming in everything we can.’ Not just work, because no one at the end of their life goes, ‘God, I wish I worked more.’”