WikiLeaks movie ‘The Fifth Estate’: Bradley Manning episode ‘the best part of the film’ (photo: Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange in ‘The Fifth Estate’) (See previous post: “‘The Fifth Estate’ Movie Review Pt.1: ‘Tasty’ But ‘Opaque’ Take on Julian Assange.”) The Fifth Estate begins and eventually circles back to the Bradley Manning episode, in which the now-incarcerated Army private handed almost 450,000 U.S. military documents to WikiLeaks. This section is, by a far sight, the best part of the film. It slows down to consider the stakes and let interpersonal conflicts simmer and boil. Here, Daniel’s growing sense of apostasy towards the imperious Assange mixes with traditional media (represented by David Thewlis, as The Guardian reporter Nick Davies) deciding whether to cross the Rubicon and get into bed with someone so arrogantly deficient in journalistic ethics. Out of self-preservation, the old-school Guardian partnered with the internet provocateur and got what it deserved.
- 10/3/2013
- by Mark Keizer
- Alt Film Guide
Director: Bill Condon; Screenwriter: Josh Singer; Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, Peter Capaldi, Dan Stevens, David Thewlis; Running time: 124 mins
There are several existing and in development films about WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing site founded by Julian Assange, but few may live up to the odd spectacle of director Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate. The film is a trendy adaptation of Daniel Berg's Inside WikiLeaks, an autobiographical portrait of the German technology activist's time at the controversial organisation, as a programmer, a spokesperson, and right-hand man to its founder.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange as a white haired genius who in 2007 recruits Berg (Daniel Brühl) to help him run his underground whistleblower site with the goal of revealing the truth, by any means necessary. Spanning five years, the movie gives context to the stories we all know. Focusing on some of the most explosive leaks from the website, starting with...
There are several existing and in development films about WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing site founded by Julian Assange, but few may live up to the odd spectacle of director Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate. The film is a trendy adaptation of Daniel Berg's Inside WikiLeaks, an autobiographical portrait of the German technology activist's time at the controversial organisation, as a programmer, a spokesperson, and right-hand man to its founder.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Assange as a white haired genius who in 2007 recruits Berg (Daniel Brühl) to help him run his underground whistleblower site with the goal of revealing the truth, by any means necessary. Spanning five years, the movie gives context to the stories we all know. Focusing on some of the most explosive leaks from the website, starting with...
- 9/6/2013
- Digital Spy
Just a month before Bradley Manning finally appeared before a military judge to confess that he did indeed leak thousands of sensitive military documents, Alex Gibney’s latest docu investigation which chronicles Manning’s involvement with the whistle blowing website Wikileaks and it’s notorious figurehead Julian Assange, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I met up with the prolific documentarian in Park City following the film’s warmly received world premiere to discuss how he got involved with the project, the challenges of presenting characters through on screen text, the moral issues of leaking government documents, what it was like dealing with the ever so slippery Assange, and trying to edit down a sprawling three hour plus cut to just over two. Our conversation in both video and text form is below.
Jordan M. Smith: I guess my first question is why Wikileaks,...
Jordan M. Smith: I guess my first question is why Wikileaks,...
- 5/24/2013
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Alex Gibney's documentary is a thoughtful look at the WikiLeaks saga but reveals little about its central mystery: Julian Assange
You'd think you'd learn a lot about Julian Assange from We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. Allow me to disavow you of that notion. The latest documentary to roll out of the Alex Gibney factory looks at the life and times of the crusading website and explores related themes such as freedom of information and the moral responsibility of activism, but is far less illuminating about its silver-haired standard-bearer.
It's probably too soon for a meaningful perspective on the WikiLeaks saga. Nonetheless Gibney ploughs ahead and adopts a conventional architecture – outlining facts that will be familiar to anyone who has kept up with the news. He sprinkles a liberal dose of talking heads over the brisk exposition, punctuated by dynamic digital renderings of cyber-chat and the flow of information.
You'd think you'd learn a lot about Julian Assange from We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks. Allow me to disavow you of that notion. The latest documentary to roll out of the Alex Gibney factory looks at the life and times of the crusading website and explores related themes such as freedom of information and the moral responsibility of activism, but is far less illuminating about its silver-haired standard-bearer.
It's probably too soon for a meaningful perspective on the WikiLeaks saga. Nonetheless Gibney ploughs ahead and adopts a conventional architecture – outlining facts that will be familiar to anyone who has kept up with the news. He sprinkles a liberal dose of talking heads over the brisk exposition, punctuated by dynamic digital renderings of cyber-chat and the flow of information.
- 1/23/2013
- by Jeremy Kay
- The Guardian - Film News
A-ha! Bank of America is indeed the large United States bank whose internal documents and e-mails were rumored to soon appear on the Internet. But twist! The leaker of those documents was not WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, spectral nuisance and folk hero, but Anonymous, the rabble-rousing hacking collective. The documents are available at the temperamental Web site BankofAmericaSuck.com, not to be confused with BankofAmericaSucks.com, a single-interest community message board. Perhaps Anonymous could invoke Assange’s help in the art of branding/self-mythologizing: the name “Bank of America Suck” doesn’t suggest quite the same seriousness of purpose as, say, “Collateral Murder.”...
- 3/14/2011
- Vanity Fair
A new book by a WikiLeaks insider blasts Julian Assange as a megalomaniac who regularly lied about the website and boasted about how many children he'd sired. Philip Shenon reports.
A new book by a former top WikiLeaks insider portrays Julian Assange as a paranoid megalomaniac-an "emperor" -who cared so little about computer security and the anonymity of his sources that control of vast amounts of secret information leaked to the website was seized from Assange by WikiLeaks dissidents last fall. And never returned.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Bogus Assange Rape Case
The book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Assange's former spokesman and right-hand man, says that WikiLeaks functioned for almost all of its existence as a two-man operation-Assange and Domscheit-Berg-despite Assange's claims of a large staff of paid workers and volunteers, and that Assange routinely lied to the public about the whistleblowing site and the extent of its support.
A new book by a former top WikiLeaks insider portrays Julian Assange as a paranoid megalomaniac-an "emperor" -who cared so little about computer security and the anonymity of his sources that control of vast amounts of secret information leaked to the website was seized from Assange by WikiLeaks dissidents last fall. And never returned.
Related story on The Daily Beast: The Bogus Assange Rape Case
The book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Assange's former spokesman and right-hand man, says that WikiLeaks functioned for almost all of its existence as a two-man operation-Assange and Domscheit-Berg-despite Assange's claims of a large staff of paid workers and volunteers, and that Assange routinely lied to the public about the whistleblowing site and the extent of its support.
- 2/10/2011
- by Philip Shenon
- The Daily Beast
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