Comments on: DVD Review: All The President’s Men

By: All the President's Men « Michael P.F. van der GaliÃ«n

All the President's Men « Michael P.F. van der GaliÃ«n — Thu, 03 May 2007 22:24:25 +0000

[...] 3rd, 2007 by mvdg A great review of All the President’s Men at The Moderate Voice by Dan Schneider; one of the best reviewers on the [...]

By: kritter

kritter — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:00:03 +0000

I guess I was more interested in how the story broke, than in the two of them —but that’s a matter of taste. Cosmo. Today I don’t think anyone would have the guts to break or print a story of that magnitude. Investigative reporting is on the wane, as is print journalism, unfortunately for those who want the truth about how their government ticks. I never went to film school, but would have loved to take a class. I was a poli sci major, history minor.

By: cosmoetica

cosmoetica — Thu, 03 May 2007 20:19:51 +0000

It’s a good film, Kim, but a biot more into what made the reporters tick could haved nudged it over the hump into greatnes. But, if you went to film school, this is a real whack off film, in the best sense.

By: kritter

kritter — Thu, 03 May 2007 20:15:04 +0000

Well, I must admit I never noticed the film’s flaws until you pointed them out here. I thought it was interesting, well-done and unusually detail-oriented. There aren’t many movies that are done from the POV of investigative journalists and these are two of the best. Without them Nixon would never have had to resign. I do agree that little attention is paid to Nixon himself, who was a fascinating subject. But to a political junkie, both movies were well worth watching. All the President’s Men was fast-paced but unlike many docudramas didn’t distort the real events to make the storyline more dramatic. That, in itself, is refreshing.

BTW, I didn’t realize for the longest time that Fred Fielding was suspected for years of being Deep Throat. No one guessed that it was Mark Felt.

By: cosmoetica

cosmoetica — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:45:59 +0000

Actually, I quoted Ebert and agreed on that assessment.

By: Shaun Mullen

Shaun Mullen — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:38:00 +0000

Dan writes that “All The Presidentâ€™s Men is truer to the craft of journalism than to the art of storytelling, and thatâ€™s its problem. The movie is as accurate about the processes used by investigative reporters as we have any right to expect, and yet process finally overwhelms narrative- weâ€™re adrift in a sea of names, dates, telephone numbers, coincidences, lucky breaks, false leads, dogged footwork, denials, evasions, and sometimes even the truthâ€¦.yet they donâ€™t quite add up to a satisfying movie experience.”

That is so true, but that’s why investigative journalism is singularly unsexy: Many many more misses that hits, laboring in obscurity for lousy pay and under lousy conditions, pissing off more people than you win over, and now being threatened with becoming a dinosaur as more papers cut back on investigative reporting because . . . well, it doesn’t sell papers.