I'm looking for a movie called Control Room. Its a documentary released this year focussed on problems effecting the middle east and focussing on the faults of all parties involved over there. It was recommended to me by someone who says its a very good movie and shows a lot of things from the point of view of people living in that region, which was of extreme interest to me.

EDIT:

Review pasted on post 8. Do check it out!

Never heard of it. Was it in theaters or is it one of those history network documentaries? I actually watch a lot of those documentaries on the history network.

It wasn't a theatre movie and considering its a movie made in the middle east and even features networks such as Al Jazeera, I highly doubt any theatre in North America would even dare to show something like it. But I just did a suprnova search on it and it lists it as a movie as well as a tv show .. so I guess it was a made for television movie. Don't know where it was shown though.

prolly PBS. They do show some stuff like that sometimes.

I've seen it, and yes, it was actually released here in theaters early on in the summer season. I watched it on DVD, though.

I didn't find it as striking or shamelessly entertaining as say... Fahrenheit 9/11, but it is a surprisingly poignant look at a news station that in spite of garnering a lot of flack from the US for being 'pro-Middle East' is pretty much a mirror of certain news stations we have over here. I gave it a B+.

Seek it out. It's a good film.

Here's the Rotten Tomatoes page for it, by the way:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/control_room/

It was probably the best-received out of all the political docs released this past year.

So I've heard. I also heard it features Al Jazeera a lot ... focusses on anti-americanism but during the whole thing, it ends up showing how news stations themselves can be so biased.

I've also heard that it has this great scene in it where they're interviewing some dude there and there is mention of how paranoid the public in that region is. That if anything at all happens, its Israel's fault ... and how everything is blamed on them in a paranoid fashion .. to the point that its a scapegoat for them and stops them from looking at deficiencies inside themselves.

DKmuto, is there more informaiton you can provide us with ?? Thanks for the RT link .. I'm gonna get on it right now.

Hm. Well, I don't really know where to find any more information besides basic info, reviews, etc. Though, here is the film's IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391024/ with some discussion going on in the forums.

http://www.worldofkj.com/bABA-ControlRoom.php

I just finished watching it. A solid A+, not mainly for the content but more so to force people to watch it. It is great!

Sorry bABA, I moved it here. dolce said it might get more attention in this section.

By me at least. 8) If you wanted moved back you can of course

I know we were just talking about this, and I'm very excited to see the movie. It had a very small run, not alot of prints out, so the copies travelled. It made over 2.5 million, which is pretty good for a documentary (21st rank) especially since it largest expansion was only 74 theatres. I think it had additional popularity because of the current situation, but hey, you use whatever tools you can to get the word out.

The word for this particular docuemntary is exactly that. Must be interesting to see a documentary about news reporters, since in short, its a bit self-critical. Think about it, a reporter talks about how he/she presents information to the public, which is exactly what the documenterer is doing. So, an interesting process. With the content and people being covered being previously unheard of (over here) people who have suddenly been vaulted into the limelight under questions of being educators of a population (people who watch and listen...as our family does on the internet).

It got a 96% rating on rotten tomatoes, so the critics seemed to all love it, and there were 95 submissions.

Its a 2004 release? Is there a reason it isn't nominated for an oscar? Tv release first?

I'm going to watch it as soon as I can and tell you what I think. Anyone else seen or heard anything about this doc?

the best thing is that it shows the problems with reporting, how reporters have agendas. Yet even this documentary has agendas but the cool thing is, it doesn't try to disguise that fact at all.

In know. i saw a preview for it where an reporter said something like, "Sure, I care. I people to know what I'm thinking and where we should go." or something like that. It was an odd moment of refreshing honesty, since people here would be *outraged* at the open acknowledgment of bias and then they would sit their butts down and watch FOX news anyways. Thinking it was somehow more nuetral. all reporting has an agenda. The choice of topic is agenda enough. Its not like al-Jazeera was a network that sprung up in the last 5 years. Its been around for ages. why are we only covering it now? Choice of topic is the fundamental agenda already. So for reporters to acknowledge and be more open about that is interesting.

Finish finals next sunday. Then I'm going to watch this, and a ton of other films. I've wanted to see bad education, motorcycle diaries and maria full of grace too. Story of Weeping Camel anyone? Hehe. I guess not.

I will have a review up. hopefully, before christmas.

i believe its been around since '96

:x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x

Just came back from the rental place. All the copies were already rented!

:x :x :x :x :x :x :x :x

That's okay, it's not that flat, and rather uninsightful.

The best stuff is the deleted scenes.

I agree, based on the information presented in this film, I would say FOX is more anti-American than Al-Jazeera (in the sense that FOX's jingoistic propoganda-based perspective is surely against the founding principles of America). The most interesting point in the film to me was how US propoganda extends to painting Al-Jazeera as some kind of pro-terrorist network, whereas here it is portrayed as controversially objective within the middle East region itself. In effect both sides are trying to ban it at times!

There is simply no objective point of view in our modern corporate controlled media.

Just finished watching it today. Wow, best doc of the year I've seen thus far and far more sympathetic to both sides of the story. Very interesting, I will have a full review up asap, but it gets an A- from me.

I really found almost every signle one of the primary interviewees to be very interesting characters and very refreshing personalities. I also think there were some very insightful remarks throughout the whole thing including the one by the soldier who said he was disgusted in his own more laizes faire (sp?) attitude when viewing Iraqi dead on tv as in comparison to U.S. troop deaths.

Everyone should check out this documentary.

Donald Rumsfeld speaking in Iraq on Christamas eve had this to say about Al Jazeera:

"We have freedom of the press.  We believe in that.  We believe that democracy can take that massive misinformation and differing of views and that free people can synthesize all that and find their way to write decisions.  Out here it's particularly tough.  Everything we do here is harder because of television stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyah and the constant negative approach... and we, as a country, don't do that.  We don't go out and hire journalists and propagandize and lie and put people on payroll so that they'll say what you want.  We just don't do that and they do and that's happening.  And Al Jazeera is right there at the top."

:?

yea .. go figure that one out .... rumsfields comments are pretty much propaganda really .. discrediting an entire network for lack of support in the region. and thats another great thing about control room, how it doesn't condemn this at all. it starts of by saying that if a war is not fought without this type of propaganda, then whoever leading this war is pretty much stupid ... or something to that effect.

I feel the need to bump this up for many reasons

a) OUT OF all the documentaries i caught this year, this was the most deserving for an oscar in my opinion.

b) i just rewatched it again and i know that in my review for it, i missed out one of the most prolific themes, one that i didn't even catch the first time. Its so subtle because its a theme that is built throughout the movie, completely hidden and you can't see it till the very end. You wouldn't have even seen it if it wasn't for the comments of the main dude in the movie

"There is only victory, no justification"

6 words and they hit you hard when you take the time to actually think about what he says and apply it to history. look at all the results of every war that has ever taken place. the eventual winner of each event is always kept in the greater light. There is indeed ONLY victory, nothing more. If Bush's plans come through, if he eventually succeeds in his quest even if his reasoning or the whole war was wrong to begin with, in a hundred years, the feelings towards these events will be judged according to the victory and not the circumstances.


Very deep ...

If I needed to teach someone who knew nothing of America's war policy, I would use Control Room, Fog of War, and Fahrenheit 9/11.

All do a great job of examing different aspects of the US and it's wartime policy.

I would also use control room to teach people how news is not something thats factual but tailored to the needs of the audience.