Filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty, which dramatized the hunt for Osama bin Laden that ended in his execution, were known to have communicated with the CIA multiple times during production. Now, according to a declassified memo obtained by Gawker, it appears the CIA successfully convinced screenwriter Mark Boal to censor and rewrite certain scenes in [...]

Film critic Roger Ebert taught us to love the movies. He taught us to love movies for over forty years, as a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Dan Zak at the Washington Post states, “A critic’s noblest and most generous act is to inspire passion in others.” Ebert inspired that passion in this writer. He influenced [...]

Last year, I made picks here at The Dissenter. I greatly enjoy cinema and make a list of top films that I post every year. Here are some reflections on the films nominated this year. * The front-runners for Best Picture all have facets that lead me to be not particularly excited about the fact [...]

An HBO documentary on the right that everyone has to a defense lawyer when they are charged with a crime, even if they cannot afford one, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film “Gideon’s Army,” was featured on “Democracy Now!” this morning. The film’s release coincides with the fifty-year anniversary of the Supreme Court [...]

A documentary the filmmakers describe as a “deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance” in a West Bank village threatened by Israeli settlements, which is short-listed for an Academy Award, is streaming now for free through January 6. Alive Mind Cinema has posted it on their website. The film consists almost entirely of footage shot [...]

Throughout the year, I watch many films. Not only do I enjoy cinema and have a degree in Film/Video, but I find films provide me a way to refresh my insights and keep from getting too burned out from covering an issue or topic as a writer. The Dissenter may be a civil liberties/national security blog, [...]

The introduction for the New York Times‘ coverage of a police shooting in the commercially decadent hub of New York known as Times Square is the following, “When the tourists and shoppers thronging Times Square on Saturday afternoon first saw the police officers, guns drawn, confronting a knife-wielding man, many thought they had stumbled onto [...]

Over at La Figa, Firedoglake‘s politics, entertainment and pop culture blog, Lisa Derrick will be live blogging the Oscars, including the Red Carpet special. Derrick put up a post yesterday on what she thinks we have to look forward to during the Oscars, hinted at the fact that the “French,” through The Artist, could sweep [...]

The Tramp. The Great Dictator. One of the great iconic actors in cinematic history. Charlie Chaplin. He is known to have been prevented from returning to the United States by J. Edgar Hoover in 1953 when he went to London for the premiere of his film Limelight in London. Now, tens of thousands of files from [...]

An Iraq war veteran, who is the focus of one of the short documentaries nominated for an Academy Award, is receiving death threats for providing his individual account of what happened during an incident that has come to be known as the “Collateral Murder” incident. The incident received wide attention when WikiLeaks released a classified video [...]