FanFare

In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around. [more inside]
posted by latkes on Jun 22, 2024 - 0 comments

A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
posted by kokaku on Apr 12, 2024 - 44 comments

Follow along as a bunch of reporters follow political candidates along the primary trail and wait for the drama to unfold. [more inside]
posted by sardonyx on Apr 11, 2024 - 9 comments

“Nuanced and deeply intelligent—a view of Egyptian politics that sometimes seems to look at everything but and that opens onto an endlessly complex place and people.” —Kirkus, starred review [more inside]
posted by rue72 on Apr 12, 2022 - 2 comments

If you slept on it, Wyatt is still there for you. The Second Season is a must-watch if you want to think "What does 're-opening' schools mean in the middle of a pandemic?" HBO published all the episodes on Youtube in the wake of George Floyd's murder. Earlier Fanfare posts 1 and 2 [more inside]
posted by eustatic on Jul 12, 2020 - 0 comments

The movie begins and ends with images of print on paper. Typewriter keys slam a date onto a blank page: June 1, 1972. President Nixon, in the midst of his re-election campaign and returning from a trip to Moscow, arrives at the Capitol Building to address Congress and the nation. Soon after, in the pre-dawn hours of a Saturday morning, security guard Frank Wills (portraying himself in the film) summons police to the Watergate Complex after discovering evidence of intruders in an office building. In the 6th floor headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, plainclothes officers responding to the call apprehend five well-dressed men in the midst of an attempted burglary. Later that morning 29-year-old reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), hired just months ago at the Washington Post and the lowest-paid member of its staff, is called in to cover the suspects’ arraignment. The case seems of little importance, yet puzzling details soon emerge that arouse Woodward’s suspicions. Another eager young Post reporter, Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), is assigned to join Woodward in following-up on the story. Through diligence, persistence, prodding from editors, and crucial assistance from a shadowy source, the duo uncover some startling connections. [more inside]
posted by theory on Aug 19, 2019 - 17 comments

Everyone's favorite late night show is back for a second season! unions : a modest proposal- jashoezzi : education [more inside]
posted by eustatic on May 12, 2019 - 2 comments

On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Apr 30, 2019 - 7 comments

An atheist's life is turned upside down when he is "friended" by God on Facebook. [more inside]
posted by numaner on Nov 8, 2018 - 16 comments

This week:

• The summit with North Korea is called off. North Korea sends Trump a message in an oversized envelope. Trump calls the summit back on. Trump admits he hadn't read the contents of the envelope. Leader of the greatest nation in the world, folks.
• Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko is declared to be dead on worldwide news, but then discovered to be alive, his faked death an element in a sting to catch a group of Russian assassins.
• In the UK, the chairman of the British Monarchists Society, one "Thomas J. Mace-Archer-Mills, Esq.," a fixture on TV during the royal wedding, is revealed to actually to have been born and lived to his teens in the US, and even got an unrelated elderly British couple to call themselves his grandparents.
• And Now: The Very British Put-Downs of Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow.
• Main story: Legal guardianship, a state under which senior citizens can be put where they have limited rights, and can find it difficult to get out of.

The main story (16 minutes long) is available on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jun 7, 2018 - 6 comments

A few weeks ago, Reveal host Al Letson jumped in to protect someone who was being attacked by counter-protesters in Berkeley, California. We found the man behind the attack. He says he's a member of antifa and is taking the fight to white nationalists. We also interviewed rally organizers who are connected to right-wing extremists. ...
posted by latkes on Sep 25, 2017 - 1 comment

A candid portrait of beloved author and screenwriter Nora Ephron, written and directed by her son Jacob Bernstein.
posted by ellieBOA on Aug 15, 2016 - 0 comments

This week....

• A recap of the Olympic opening ceremonies. Part 1 - Part 2 (both 4m)
• And Now: Newscasters Perv Out Over a Shirtless Olympian in National Dress
• Main Story: Journalists (19m), and the increasing difficulty that news outlets have staying in business while not compromising their work. With a special guest appearance by Tronc (MeFi)! Finishes with a trailer for "Stoplight," a depressingly realistic take on the plight of a reporter in the 21st century.

[more inside]
posted by JHarris on Aug 8, 2016 - 8 comments

Ed Crawford had never been to a protest until he heard about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Robert Cohen, a staff photographer with the St. Louis Post Dispatch, ended up taking a photograph of Ed that would be seen around the world, and change both of their lives.
posted by Potomac Avenue on Dec 12, 2015 - 2 comments

In the summer of 2001, new Boston Globe editor-in-chief Marty Baron tells his staff on the paper's "Spotlight" team that he wants them to focus on allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Initial incredulity aside, they come on board, one by one. [more inside]
posted by Sheydem-tants on Nov 28, 2015 - 14 comments

Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole is one of the most scathing indictments of American culture ever produced by a Hollywood filmmaker. Kirk Douglas gives the fiercest performance of his career as Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter who washes up in dead-end Albuquerque, happens upon the scoop of a lifetime, and will do anything to keep getting the lurid headlines. Wilder’s follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred exposé of the American media’s appetite for sensation that has gotten only more relevant with time. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Feb 6, 2015 - 8 comments

Nightcrawler tells the story of Lou, a dark character doing whatever he can to get ahead in modern Los Angeles. Lou finds his calling when he stumbles across a camera crew recording a graphic traffic accident. He is introduced to the world of freelance crime journalism, where if it bleeds it leads. The film is the directorial debut of Dan Gilroy and features a transformative performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla on Oct 31, 2014 - 21 comments

Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow looks to bring down Senator Joe McCarthy. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Oct 12, 2014 - 6 comments