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Shattered Glass

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Atrios hates Shattered Glass, while I quite liked it.

The movie just left out all the important context. It was noted that Kelly was brought in along with a very rigid editing and fact-checking process. I’ll leave it to the readers to remember why it was thought that TNR needed improved fact-checking (hint: think former editors). We only quietly hear the reason why Kelly was fired – in the movie it’s because Peretz thought the magazine had gotten “too nasty,” something which was completely at odds with the sweet portrayal of Kelly and the young folk who were working for him, and which made it just seem like Peretz was being a jerk and firing him for no reason. But, more importantly, Kelly’s rigid fact-checking system obviously was a joke because Glass’s stuff wouldn’t have gotten through if they had any real fact-checking going on (the movie tried to tell us that since Glass’s only “sources” were his “personal notes” that his pieces could only be checked against them. Wuuuuh?)

This is fair.  I never thought of the film as an accurate history of goings on at The New Republic.  I don’t know anything about the internal politics, and I don’t care all that much.  That said, I think the film did make a good effort at describing the context under which Glass’ abuses could happen, specifically the institutional arrogance of the editor and the journalist corps.   It’s true that it let Kelly off the hook, but the point of the movie wasn’t Mike Kelly, and spending more time on him would have detracted from the narrative (Azaria was excellent as Kelly, by the way).  Biggest reason I liked the flick was Hayden Christensen.  He turned in an outstanding performance as Stephen Glass, mastering all of the little delusions and interpersonal tricks that such a character would play.  Most importantly, Christensen put to bed once and for all any notion that George Lucas can competently direct films.  I had assumed that no actor with even the merest talent could look as bad as Christensen did in Attack of the Clones; I didn’t know until Shattered Glass that it was Lucas all along.

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