THE POST, a Steven Spielberg film about the Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers

I'm curious to see who David Cross and Bob Odenkirk will play.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6294822/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

Bet you're looking forward to shouting "I know that!"

Ominous notes:

Digitized Jason Robards not playing Bradlee

Script by newcomer Liz Hannah was polished by a West Wing guy

Definitely more promising than his other upcoming project. I like that this is shaping up to be the year of Bradley Whitford, anyway.

ok don't let me know about any more TWW connections or i will refuse to see this

I love that Spielberg is fully on board the Michael Stuhlbarg train. Even if it's 10 lines, always worth seeing.

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/mayday17/xpaperstomstreep.jpg.pagespeed.ic.IMand2sxsq.jpg

Matthew Rhys is in this... Ellsberg?

well the title was changed to THE POST...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrXlY6gzTTM

can a prequel to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN succeed without bringing back Woodward and Bernstein?

I'd love to see a Spielberg adaptation of the Henry James story "The Papers."

God I wish Spielberg would work with someone other than Kaminski for a change.

what don'tcha like?

uhhhh

well anyway always happy to see tracy letts get work

worried about non-Kushner script

I know it's just a trailer but honestly this doesn't really appear any more promising than ready player one

It looks as good as Spotlight, as far as trailers goes, which means it'll probably be really good.

He could use a fresh DP, though.

That's what I said upthread. Kaminski's ultra-burnished, desaturated look was fine in the early '00's and he occasionally pulls off a lush, "classical" look ("War Horse") really well but I find his cinematography drab and workmanlike. Would love to see SS work with Lubezki on an adventure film or Deakins on anything else (drama, sci-fi...)

but I usually find his cinematography drab and workmanlike

tbh there's something v strange to me about the whole idea of this movie -- it was the ny times, not the post, that first published the pentagon papers. also odd that dan ellsberg isn't even a character in a pentagon papers movie. i'll still see it of course.

The Times publishing first makes it to the trailer, so I assume it will be about more than just the Post's legal battle.

per the iMdB, Zach Woods is playing Ellsberg.

also Matthew Rhys is playing the Post editor played by Martin Balsam in ATPM.

I'd say the title change is indicative of the movie's focus... also it was the first paper to publish the PPs whose publisher can be played by Meryl Streep.

heh, otm

It's a first-time female screenwriter, and the trailer indicates Katherine Graham's position in that milieu is at the center.

This was pretty forgettable. I'm sure even Morbs will dislike it. Exposition, exposition, exposition -- nobody will stop talking about the stakes ("This could mean the end of the First Amendment!"). Streep is unbearable. Her prop this time are a thick pair of spectacles. My reporter friend kept laughing every five minutes. Tom Hanks' Jason Robards imitation fumbled as much as Kevin Costner's British accent.

worried about non-Kushner script

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Wednesday,

as well you should be

I probably won't see it unless the mods change the thread title

Disagree. Not top tier Spielberg, or even up to the standards of War Horse perhaps. But I felt Spielberg trading in the possibility of a much better crafted movie for a more palpably urgent one. Not unlike rushing to beat the print deadline. (Tons of analog newsprint nostalgia throughout.) For as double underlined as every point about sexism and power structures is, in both presentation and (more awkwardly) in dialogue ... well, we’re kind of in a cultural moment where women are telling things to men in such a manner of bluntness because that’s apparently how women have to tell men things to get through to them.

That's the problem: in making a movie for this cultural moment, he didn't make a convincing movie about journalism, lies, war, or even women.

I didn't get the moral urgency of Bradlee's attempts to coax Graham into turning the WaPo into something other than a rag for Georgetown gossip, and the final buildup toward Graham's decision used every closeup cliché in the film biz. Awful score too.

even Eric's non-pan makes this sound...dutiful at best

Only knowing what Spielberg is capable of when he takes a breath and thinks things through is holding me back. But hey, that he's even capable of something this good when he's relying solely on his innate talents.

I would've thought, Alfred, you'd at least appreciate the JFK-ian depiction of Nixon. And Ben Bradlee's wife.

The business with the lemonade kept throwing me out of the scene.

His least interesting film visually since, what, Amistad? The first Bradley-Graham scene – the breakfast – is the best: the camera eschews closeups for the most part, taking note of their body language.

I would've thought, Alfred, you'd at least appreciate the JFK-ian depiction of Nixon. And Ben Bradlee's wife.

― Fred Klinkenberg (Eric H.),

Did you ever once stop and consider what she was going through?

Seriously. Her plus the one female Post reporter floating around in the den. Stone for a day.

can a prequel to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN succeed without bringing back Woodward and Bernstein?

[KINDA SPOILER I GUESS]

I was only sort of half-joking about this in my mind throughout the film. But the cliffhanger tone of the last and arguably worst scene ... oy.

uh oh

I expected Vader to stand, saber in hand, gleaming obviously at departing Rebel ship.

Bruce Greenwood's McNamara turning on a dime to tell Graham exactly what sort of man Nixon was? Very:

https://media.giphy.com/media/SMEDDr3CIB7s4/giphy.gif

https://media.giphy.com/media/SMEDDr3CIB7s4/giphy.gif

lol, the National Board of Review just gave it best picture, actor and actress wins.

Bummer if this is no good. BFG was a rare flop. And next up is Ready Player One and Indiana Jones 5, which could mark this as his shittiest streak since ... well, he's never really had a sustained shitty streak.

Always and Hook made things look grim for a few years.

Sure, especially if like me you are not a huge fan of the third Indiana Jones film. But of course even a stinker like Hook was followed by his most solid winning streak since the late seventies and early eighties.

I am enjoying Spielberg's Otto Preminger phase.

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) October 4, 2015

Not a bad way to put it, tho Spielberg will never have a SKIDOO ... other than 1941.

and Spielberg gets nervous when an emphatic score and quick editing are at his command.

this will get some ilxors to queue up

I likely won't review The Post so I'll just say its Nixon scenes reminded me a lot of Seinfeld's George Steinbrenner scenes.

— BANDZ STACKHAGE (@NickPinkerton) December 6, 2017

half-expecting ready player one to be major spielberg; this one on the other hand is obviously garbage.

Pinkerton is absolutely not wrong. In fact, most of the swipes that'll be taken against the movie aren't wrong if you choose only to assess the movie in its own little vacuum.

i don't think he means it as a swipe.

Pinkerton is absolutely not wrong. In fact, most of the swipes that'll be taken against the movie aren't wrong if you choose only to assess the movie in its own little vacuum.

― Fred Klinkenberg (Eric H.),

I wouldn't even try to humanize that vacuum.

xp not so sure

Also marks the chilling return of Boston Accent Tom Hanks, previously seen in Catch Me If You Can (2002) ("Knawk knawk")

— BANDZ STACKHAGE (@NickPinkerton) December 6, 2017

i'd forgotten Bradlee was from Boston (hence buddybuddy with JFK). Jason Robards' BB definitely wasn't.

wait till you get the Oscar-ready scene where Hanks is confronted about his JFK friendship.

i am fully warned about The West Wing roots of the writing

Post-Pentagon Papers and post-Watergate it also became clear Graham and Bradlee were not white knights of journalism. In a 1988 speech at the CIA, Graham portrayed herself as a responsible member of the U.S. establishment who could be trusted to dole out just the right amount of information to unwashed Americans. “We live in a dirty and dangerous world,” Graham said. “There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

And while “The Post” portrays Graham and Bradlee as agreeing that the days have to end when they both censored the news to protect their powerful friends, they didn’t. Robert Parry, a reporter who worked at Newsweek in the 1980s (then owned by the Washington Post Company) has written that he was “told that my story about the CIA funneling anti-Sandinista money through Nicaragua’s Catholic Church had been watered down because the story needed to be run past Mrs. Graham, and Henry Kissinger was her house guest that weekend.”

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/22/the-real-drama-in-the-post-isnt-about-journalism-vs-the-government-its-about-journalism-vs-capitalism/

the movie's quite clear about Graham's friendship -- not acquaintance, friendship -- with McNamara.

I approach this warily (because of ATPM--maybe the overlap's minimal), but I was hoping to see it next week. No opening here, though.

my college boyfriend was close friends with her granddaughter, she didn't view Kay as a white knight, closer to a Hillary Clinton type, that has some admirable principles but was ultimately part of the system.

This detail, from THR's story about the White House asking to see THE POST, is blowing my mind a little bit. pic.twitter.com/o1kqZlOguF

— Stephanie Zacharek (@szacharek) January 5, 2018

I have a ticket for a MoMA screening tonight, followed by a Q&A with the two writers which I may blow off depending on my reaction/fatigue.

idg why Zacharek is so mind-blown by that quote

This was fine, and nowhere in the league of Bridge of Spies.

Nice to see the WaPo newsroom partly in the hands of Mr. Show.

Oh, and the first (spec) screenwriter, Liz Hannah, said her next script is about George W Bush on Air Force One on 9/11. *gulp*

a comedy then

she mentioned "empathy"

Mrs. Graham was born with a silver spoon but she also worked for everything she had. Which means you can't play her as a woman who "finds herself," as Streep does. Her authority was much colder than that.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) January 8, 2018

Generally solid, and I'll probably see it a second time. I thought Hanks was the better of the two leads (credit to him for even taking on Jason Robards); I don't like fussy Meryl Streep, although I'd say she gets the film's best moment, when she walks down the steps of the Supreme Court and all those young women look up at her. (Some may find that corny.) Noticing more and more people at the movies who I identify with TV : Caroline Coon, Alison Brie, Jesse Plemons, and--great choice for Ellsberg--Matthew Rhys. The subtext is not a subtext: it clubs you over the head (which doesn't make it invalid). My earlier post wondering how much overlap there'd be with All the President's Men not applicable--so much so that the next-episode flourish at the end seemed kind of superfluous. I liked the use of real White-House recordings.

The subtext is not a subtext: it clubs you over the head

Let me take that back--it doesn't. More accurate to say that you can't miss it, but it's only actually articulated towards the end, and only a couple of times at that.

what I liked about the movie "The Post" is that it basically ends with "Next time on...The Post"

— slackbot (@pareene) January 13, 2018

I don't think Spielberg's been out driving for a while; he forgot that Creedence Clearwater was not meant to be played at medium-low volume.

Man, I thought this was pretty corny. While I mostly blame the pat script, there was also a really weird (to me) dynamic with the acting. On one hand, you've got the closest thing to two beloved legacy actors in the lead. But then they're surrounded by like a dozen high profile mostly TV actors, few of whom have much to do and therefore feel sort of wasted (thinking of Paulson, Rhys, Brie, Coon, dude from Veep, etc.). And *then*, to top it all off, most scenes are played with this heightened theatricality, in the stage-sense, which only accentuated the corniness.

Ha, in other words, very similar take to clemenza's, except I didn't think it was that successful. Would have preferred something less ... old fashioned (?) and more sober, like Spotlight or something like that. But that would have required a better script with a fewer broad strokes and more space.

I got caught up in the corn and I loved every bit of it.

A few nice moments in the second half, but mostly a snooze. Unusually for Spielberg, it even looks boring.

open yr eyes

and close yr ears

SPIELBERG DEFENCE FORCE ASSEMBLE

what movie did Ellsberg get baked to as the PP was prepared for publishing?

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/the-pentagon-papers-secrets-lies-and-leaks-rebroadcast/