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Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times (Film)

Rating: M

Running Time: 88

Country: USA

Director: Andrew Rossi

Cast: Carl Bernstein, David Carr, Bruce Headlam, Bill Keller

Distributor: Madman

Release Date: August 18, 2011

Film Worth: $16.00

FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth

A fascinating but sobering look at the rapidly changing world of media – one that may have journalists and publishers quaking in their boots.

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In either a stroke of genius, or a dash of grim irony, the venerable newspaper, The New York Times, established a "Media Desk" - a department dedicated to reporting upon changes and developments within the constantly shifting world of modern media - just as mainstream print media was starting to hemorrhage thanks to the incursion of internet news sites. Documentary filmmaker Andrew Rossi was granted access-all-areas permission to film this burgeoning department, and delivers not just a fascinating look at the workings of one element of a massive news institution, but - even more presciently - a kind of pre-eulogy for the mainstream print media. Though not quite in its death throes, this once dominant, now lumbering beast has certainly seen better days, and you can feel Rossi's fondness for it in every frame.

 

Nicely crafted with haunting music, a clean shooting style, and a deliberate, artful sense of pacing, Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times surprisingly shows this newsroom not as a place of harried purpose and constant deadline-chasing, but rather one of deep reflection. It's rare to see so much unbridled intelligence on screen, and the assembled journalists - particularly David Carr, a former crack addict brought in from the outside who now defends The New York Times with an acolyte's zeal - make for a compelling bunch.

 

It is the film's documentation of the changing media world (and the many pointed questions that it asks about it), however, that is most fascinating. While some obviously like the idea of big news institutions - which have for so long operated from a privileged vantage point of arrogance and authority - crumbling, Rossi shows that without them, the various web-based news sites will no longer have anything to leech off, and that news reportage itself may disappear. Page One is a sobering but captivating look at a rapidly changing world, and its ever growing number of victims.

 

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