Sunday 5 April 2009

State of Play: The new All the President's Men?

There is a real buzz building about the film version of the BBC's State of Play, one of those rare dramas like All the President's Men that shows journalists in a good light.
Both The Observer and Sunday Times have big features on the film, starring Russell Crowe, which comes out on April 24.
Bryan Appleyard, who wrote the Sunday Times feature, says of it: "brilliant, see it the minute it comes out" and admits he "teared up" at the closing credits which shows the pressroom of a paper.
He quotes State of Play director Kevin Macdonald saying: “It’s an interesting time. Newspapers are dying throughout the world, and what it will be like when there are no more reporters running around is interesting to contemplate. Originally, I was nervous about making an adaptation of something that was so good, you were only going to be compared negatively. Then I started developing the script and I saw I could do something with it.”
Sounds like the film could be a requiem for the press.
The Observer article gives British Press Awards Critic of the Year Philip French the chance to chose his top five journalism movies. They are The Front Page, Citizen Kane, Front Page Story, All the President's Men and The Paper.
The question is will he be adding State of Play to that list?
You can see a trailer here.

1 comment:

Miles said...

I love Defence of the Realm