David Strathairn's portrayal of the celebrated newsman...is so dead-on accurate as to be uncanny.
Clooney does a first-rate job handling the movie's themes: Mainly, that a free country must never compromise the civil liberties of its citizens for the professed sake of protecting them. The days of McCarthyism were dark times for individual freedoms in America. For instance, almost every major corporation in the country required its employees to sign a loyalty oath, swearing that they were not nor ever had been members of the Communist Party. CBS required even Murrow to sign the document. If you didn't sign, you could lose your job.
The movie's focus is absolute. It concentrates almost wholly upon the three television programs devoted to Murrow's encounter with Senator McCarthy. In fact, it's almost jarring to see a couple of incidental matters intruding into the story, like the husband-and-wife tangent and the Hollenbeck suicide, no matter how significant they may be to the movie's message. The concentration on the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation is that intense.
The set decoration, cinematography, costumes, and props recreate the time and place of the story in minutest detail. In this regard, the movie plays almost like a documentary or a history lesson. Clooney accurately depicts the atmosphere of the newsroom, with its hectic, last-minute decisions and its abundance of backstage bickering, joking, and teasing. He gives us archival footage not only of McCarthy but of other figures of the period and a few actual ads of the day for Alcoa Aluminum and Kent cigarettes that lend verisimilitude to the proceedings. And, needless to say, he provides Strathairn with the exact on-air words of Murrow himself.
"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one," says Murrow, "and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."
Because of the controversy surrounding some of his stories, Edward R. Murrow found his place in television news slowly diminishing after his public debate with McCarthy. He may have been a pioneer of investigative journalism, but it came at a price. He died of lung cancer two days after his fifty-eighth birthday in 1965. After his censure by the U.S. Senate, Joseph McCarthy was largely ignored by the press and the public. He died in 1957.
Nevertheless "Good Night, and Good Luck" is not about the lives of either of these men; it is about the principals they stood for. And, sometimes, the good guys win.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." --Edward R. Murrow
Video:
For the sake of authenticity and to help recreate the look of mid-1950s' television, Clooney chose to photograph the movie in black-and-white. Now, wait, don't go away. As I said in the beginning, it's beautiful photography, and for his work cinematographer Robert Elswit justly received an Oscar nomination. Indeed, the picture is one of the best-looking pieces of cinematography imaginable and among the best standard-definition B&W transfers since "The Man Who Wasn't There." It's that good.
The Warner Bros. engineers transferred the image to the SD format at a high bit rate in an anamorphic widescreen that nicely accommodates a 16x9 television. The contrasts are good, with strong black levels, radiant whites, and every shade in between well represented. There is also a touch of grain to make the B&W look even more realistic and help blend in the restored archive footage with the newly shot scenes. Remember, there's a reason why many serious still photographers continue to shoot in black-and-white, so one should not let any possible biases against the B&W medium confound one's common sense.
High definition? Put it this way: If the SD transfer is as good as they come, the HD transfer is even better. Again, the differences are not night and day, and, indeed, if one had to flip the disc over and wait several minutes to make a comparison, one might not even notice a distinction. However, I had the advantage of having two discs and being able to play the SD version in one DVD player and the HD-DVD version in another side by side, with instant access to comparisons. Here, we can see that the black-and-white contrasts are stronger than ever in HD, definition is improved, object delineation is sharper, and inner detailing is more evident. As I've said, the SD picture is already excellent; it's just that the HD image is a tad better. One notices on direct comparison a touch of blur in the standard-definition picture that vanishes when one switches to high-def. In addition, blacks are blacker and whites seem a bit more iridescently white.
Remember, though, that Clooney intentionally shot in black-and-white to provide the viewer with a feeling for the age, not to create the world's absolute best B&W images. Even on the big screen, the black-and-white picture quality was not supposed to look perfect. Just close. It's the overall cinematography that's perfect. In any case, the bottom line is what we would have expected: the HD picture wins, not hands down, but enough to make a case.
Audio:
The audio in standard definition is rendered via Dolby Digital 5.1, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be monaural. The sound does come from the front three speakers, but most of it appears to be emanating from the center stage alone, and almost nothing, not even the jazz interludes, comes from the surrounds. This is not a complaint, mind you, as this is the way television would have sounded in the mid 1950s; it's just an observation. Beyond that, the audio is exceptionally clean, quiet, and easy to take.
In high definition the audio is rendered via Dolby Digital Plus 5.1; but because the movie is almost entirely dialogue driven, there is not much disparity between regular DD 5.1 and DD+ 5.1. Certainly, both sound-reproduction systems render the dialogue clearly and distinctly, with perhaps a minute edge to DD+ in the few musical numbers, which seem to a small degree smoother and more natural to my ear.
Incidentally, a compliment to the film's audio engineers: I liked the way they changed the ambient sound from room to room in the story, from the close, dry, boxed-in feeling of Paley's office to the open, spacious sound of the news department's favorite bar, and everything in between. Among other things, it's these sonic nuances that the soundtrack so well captures.
Extras:
The three major extras on the HD side one of the disc are holdovers from the regular SD edition on side two: an audio commentary, a fullscreen featurette, and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The audio commentary is with the movie's director/screenwriter/co-star George Clooney and the movie's producer/screenwriter Grant Heslov. Clooney does most of the talking on the commentary, and he is both enlightening and charming. He and Heslov combine their remarks about the reasons they made the film with historical information and inside facts on the filmmaking. Plus, Clooney is an amusing and self-effacing fellow who makes one want to listen. The "Good Night, and Good Luck" featurette lasts about fifteen minutes and takes us behind the scenes, supported by some of the people who fact-checked the film, including several of those who were around at the time of the actual events depicted.
The extras conclude with twenty-two scene selections, but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles on the SD side and English captions for the hearing impaired added to the HD side. The HD-DVD version also includes pop-up menus, a menu-audio option, and a video zoom/pan feature. The disc comes housed in an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
If a demagogue is a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's prejudices and emotions, then Senator Joseph McCarthy well defines the word. Today, history records Edward R. Murrow as a towering journalist and Senator McCarthy as a sniveling tyrant. Don't you love it when history gets it right. And don't you love it when a film transfer looks this good, standard or high definition?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "Good Night, and Good Luck" for six Academy Awards: Best Picture (producer, Grant Heslov); Best Director (George Clooney); Best Actor (David Strathairn); Best Art Direction (James D. Bissell and Jan Pascale); Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit); and Best Writing Directly for the Screen (George Clooney and Grant Heslov).
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." --Edward R. Murrow
The movie's focus is absolute. It concentrates almost wholly upon the three television programs devoted to Murrow's encounter with Senator McCarthy. In fact, it's almost jarring to see a couple of incidental matters intruding into the story, like the husband-and-wife tangent and the Hollenbeck suicide, no matter how significant they may be to the movie's message. The concentration on the Murrow-McCarthy confrontation is that intense.
The set decoration, cinematography, costumes, and props recreate the time and place of the story in minutest detail. In this regard, the movie plays almost like a documentary or a history lesson. Clooney accurately depicts the atmosphere of the newsroom, with its hectic, last-minute decisions and its abundance of backstage bickering, joking, and teasing. He gives us archival footage not only of McCarthy but of other figures of the period and a few actual ads of the day for Alcoa Aluminum and Kent cigarettes that lend verisimilitude to the proceedings. And, needless to say, he provides Strathairn with the exact on-air words of Murrow himself.
"The line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one," says Murrow, "and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly."
Because of the controversy surrounding some of his stories, Edward R. Murrow found his place in television news slowly diminishing after his public debate with McCarthy. He may have been a pioneer of investigative journalism, but it came at a price. He died of lung cancer two days after his fifty-eighth birthday in 1965. After his censure by the U.S. Senate, Joseph McCarthy was largely ignored by the press and the public. He died in 1957.
Nevertheless "Good Night, and Good Luck" is not about the lives of either of these men; it is about the principals they stood for. And, sometimes, the good guys win.
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty." --Edward R. Murrow
Video:
For the sake of authenticity and to help recreate the look of mid-1950s' television, Clooney chose to photograph the movie in black-and-white. Now, wait, don't go away. As I said in the beginning, it's beautiful photography, and for his work cinematographer Robert Elswit justly received an Oscar nomination. Indeed, the picture is one of the best-looking pieces of cinematography imaginable and among the best standard-definition B&W transfers since "The Man Who Wasn't There." It's that good.
The Warner Bros. engineers transferred the image to the SD format at a high bit rate in an anamorphic widescreen that nicely accommodates a 16x9 television. The contrasts are good, with strong black levels, radiant whites, and every shade in between well represented. There is also a touch of grain to make the B&W look even more realistic and help blend in the restored archive footage with the newly shot scenes. Remember, there's a reason why many serious still photographers continue to shoot in black-and-white, so one should not let any possible biases against the B&W medium confound one's common sense.
High definition? Put it this way: If the SD transfer is as good as they come, the HD transfer is even better. Again, the differences are not night and day, and, indeed, if one had to flip the disc over and wait several minutes to make a comparison, one might not even notice a distinction. However, I had the advantage of having two discs and being able to play the SD version in one DVD player and the HD-DVD version in another side by side, with instant access to comparisons. Here, we can see that the black-and-white contrasts are stronger than ever in HD, definition is improved, object delineation is sharper, and inner detailing is more evident. As I've said, the SD picture is already excellent; it's just that the HD image is a tad better. One notices on direct comparison a touch of blur in the standard-definition picture that vanishes when one switches to high-def. In addition, blacks are blacker and whites seem a bit more iridescently white.
Remember, though, that Clooney intentionally shot in black-and-white to provide the viewer with a feeling for the age, not to create the world's absolute best B&W images. Even on the big screen, the black-and-white picture quality was not supposed to look perfect. Just close. It's the overall cinematography that's perfect. In any case, the bottom line is what we would have expected: the HD picture wins, not hands down, but enough to make a case.
Audio:
The audio in standard definition is rendered via Dolby Digital 5.1, but for all intents and purposes it might as well be monaural. The sound does come from the front three speakers, but most of it appears to be emanating from the center stage alone, and almost nothing, not even the jazz interludes, comes from the surrounds. This is not a complaint, mind you, as this is the way television would have sounded in the mid 1950s; it's just an observation. Beyond that, the audio is exceptionally clean, quiet, and easy to take.
In high definition the audio is rendered via Dolby Digital Plus 5.1; but because the movie is almost entirely dialogue driven, there is not much disparity between regular DD 5.1 and DD+ 5.1. Certainly, both sound-reproduction systems render the dialogue clearly and distinctly, with perhaps a minute edge to DD+ in the few musical numbers, which seem to a small degree smoother and more natural to my ear.
Incidentally, a compliment to the film's audio engineers: I liked the way they changed the ambient sound from room to room in the story, from the close, dry, boxed-in feeling of Paley's office to the open, spacious sound of the news department's favorite bar, and everything in between. Among other things, it's these sonic nuances that the soundtrack so well captures.
Extras:
The three major extras on the HD side one of the disc are holdovers from the regular SD edition on side two: an audio commentary, a fullscreen featurette, and a widescreen theatrical trailer. The audio commentary is with the movie's director/screenwriter/co-star George Clooney and the movie's producer/screenwriter Grant Heslov. Clooney does most of the talking on the commentary, and he is both enlightening and charming. He and Heslov combine their remarks about the reasons they made the film with historical information and inside facts on the filmmaking. Plus, Clooney is an amusing and self-effacing fellow who makes one want to listen. The "Good Night, and Good Luck" featurette lasts about fifteen minutes and takes us behind the scenes, supported by some of the people who fact-checked the film, including several of those who were around at the time of the actual events depicted.
The extras conclude with twenty-two scene selections, but no chapter insert; English as the only spoken language; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles on the SD side and English captions for the hearing impaired added to the HD side. The HD-DVD version also includes pop-up menus, a menu-audio option, and a video zoom/pan feature. The disc comes housed in an Elite Red HD case.
Parting Thoughts:
If a demagogue is a political leader who gains power by appealing to people's prejudices and emotions, then Senator Joseph McCarthy well defines the word. Today, history records Edward R. Murrow as a towering journalist and Senator McCarthy as a sniveling tyrant. Don't you love it when history gets it right. And don't you love it when a film transfer looks this good, standard or high definition?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated "Good Night, and Good Luck" for six Academy Awards: Best Picture (producer, Grant Heslov); Best Director (George Clooney); Best Actor (David Strathairn); Best Art Direction (James D. Bissell and Jan Pascale); Best Cinematography (Robert Elswit); and Best Writing Directly for the Screen (George Clooney and Grant Heslov).
"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." --Edward R. Murrow
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