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This post contains spoilers for "Black Mirror" season 3's "Men Against Fire."

Although "Men Against Fire" released two seasons (and five years) after "Black Mirror" first premiered, it was actually the first ever episode showrunner Charlie Brooker wrote. Well, sort of; in its early draft the episode was called "Inbound," and it wasn't that similar to what "Men Against Fire" would become. In the 2018 book "Inside Black Mirror," Brooker explained:

"'Inbound,' the first ever 'Black Mirror' episode fully written but never made, had been based on a true, harrowing story. ['Black Mirror' writer] Konnie [Huq] had made me watch this gut-wrenching 2010 John Pilger documentary called 'The War You Don't See,' about the Iraq war. There was a lengthy sequence following a grieving mother around her house, in which she was subtitled throughout, describing how members of her family had been killed. Usually you'd just...

Kym Staton’s documentary recruits a starry cast of fierce defenders of the imprisoned leaker but makes no room for the case against

Remember Julian Assange? Having dominated headlines in the 2010s, the WikiLeaks founder has dropped out of sight having been confined at London’s Belmarsh prison since 2019. And that was kind of the plan, this impassioned documentary asserts, with the aid of staunch defenders including the late John Pilger, Tariq Ali, Jill Stein, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsworth and Assange family members. “The persecution of Julian has been a long, slow form of killing somebody,” says Pilger; witnessing Assange’s trajectory from a buccaneering truth-teller to a frail, mentally damaged prisoner, perpetually denied justice, it’s hard to disagree.

According to this documentary by Australian film-maker Kym Staton, Assange has been subject to a coordinated smear campaign. It argues that the 2010 rape allegations against Assange by two Swedish...

John Pilger, the veteran Australian journalist known for his investigative journalism and documentaries, has died aged 84, according to his family.

Pilger’s family this morning posted to the writer’s social media account: “It is with great sadness the family of John Pilger announce he died yesterday 30 December 2023 in London aged 84. His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace.”

Pilger was renowned for countless investigations, particularly into the plight of Aborigines in Australia, American and British foreign policy and the ulterior motives of big business.

His Twitter bio reads: ‘It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.”

More to come…...

‘I Am Woman’.

This year’s Gold Coast Film Festival will be bookended by two Aussie features, opening with Unjoo Moon’s Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman, and closing with the locally shot comedic thriller Bloody Hell, directed by Alister Grierson.

The April festival dropped its full program today, announcing more than 100 films, including four world premieres: Kriv Stenders’ documentary on Silm Dusty’s wife Joy McKean, Slim & I; Hayley MacFarlane’s Swimming for Gold; Josh Hale’s House of Inequity and Serhat Caradee’s A Lion Returns.

Other local films to screen include Never Too Late, Smoke Between Trees, Disclosure, Hearts and Bones, Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks, Tommy Emmanuel: The Endless Road, Dark Whispers Vol 1, The Show Must Go On, Ellie and Abbie (and Ellie’s Dead Aunt), Morgana, and Love Opera.

Ahead of its premiere on the ABC April 19, the festival will also screen...

John Pilger’s passionate film addresses threats to the NHS, from the burgeoning presence of private healthcare companies to the invasion of bureaucrats

Veteran campaigning reporter John Pilger makes no apology for returning to the subject of the National Health Service, and nor should he. The NHS could become Britain’s Gazprom: a gigantic public resource that could so easily be carved up to make corporate oligarchs even richer than they are already.

These are points that have been made by Michael Moore’s Sicko (2007) and Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 (2013), but Pilger brings us more up to date. He takes us through the familiar history, from the founding of the NHS in 1948, through to the 70s, as a new generation of Thatcherite rightists (such as Oliver Letwin and John Redwood) took on health care with a new objective – privatise by stealth. The complaisant Blair government brought in private finance initiatives,...

Icarus Films is releasing veteran journalist and BAFTA-award-winning filmmaker, John Pilger’s feature documentary “Utopia” – a film that reveals the apartheid deep within Australia’s society. “Utopia” breaks what amounts to a national silence about Australia’s indigenous people—the oldest and most enduring human… Continue Reading →...

From Taiwan telephone tete-a-tete to pre-Christmas game of drones, President-elect @realDonaldTrump is inadvertently doing his darnedest to endow John Pilger's eye-opening polemic The Coming War on China with an air of chillingly urgent topicality. The Australian-born journalist's 60th film for U.K. broadcaster ITV is his fourth to be made with cinema exposure in mind — it screened to strong receptions in British theaters the day before its similarly well-received late-evening network bow. And this authoritative indictment of American nefariousness in the western Pacific looks set to eclipse predecessors The War on Democracy (2007), The War You Don't See (2010) and Utopia (2013) in...

John Pilger lays bare the historical horrors of the Us military in the Pacific, exposing the paranoia and pre-emptive aggression of its semi-secret bases

The title of John Pilger’s new film reminded me of a now-forgotten conservative tract from 1991, The Coming War With Japan by George Friedman and Meredith Lebard, a hawkish work which argued that the Soviet collapse meant America should be on its guard against the resurgent old enemy from the second world war. Paradoxically, Pilger’s documentary is about paranoia and pre-emptive military belligerence in the Pacific: a 21st century alt-yellow-peril. It’s a subject which tends to be ignored, especially now that we are (justifiably) concerned by Putin’s Russia.

Continue reading...

★★★☆☆ Since Donald Trump won the Us Presidential election there's been a whole smorgasbord of geo-political anxieties to keep you awake at night. Oliver Stone's Snowden was a timely reminder of the massive repressive state apparatus of para-legal or illegal surveillance that will be at the fingertips of the new occupant of the Oval Office. But if you do manage to drop off to sleep, finally forgetful of the terror of the near future, the subject of veteran documentary filmmaker John Pilger's latest film will have you bathed in a cold sweat and bolt upright in no time. The Coming War on China is an alarming work of some urgency.

Documentary filmmaker places a focus on the lives of women across the globe

Kim Longinotto has been named the 2015 recipient of the BBC Grierson Trustees’ Award.

The documentary filmmaker is known for titles including Sisters In Law, which won the Cicea award at Cannes in 2005, Pink Saris and latest release Dreamcatcher, which won the Directing Award at Sundance in January.

Announcing the award, a statement from The Grierson Trust described Longinotto as: “the creator of numerous groundbreaking films which focus on and explore the lives of women across the globe,. Throughout her career she has consistently given voice to those who have no voice living in some of the world’s most repressive and hostile societies.

Previous winners of the honour include John Battsek, Kevin Macdonald, Alex Graham, John Pilger, Penny Woolcock, Norma Percy, Paul Watson, Mike Salisbury, Nick Fraser, Jonathan Gili, Molly Dineen and Sir David Attenborough.

Grierson Trust chairman Lorraine Heggessey said: “Kim is a filmmaker...

The Coming War will tell the unreported story of the new “Cold War” between the Us and China.

Crusading journalist John Pilger’s new feature doc The Coming War has raised close to $110,000 (£72,000) on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. This represents a record for a UK documentary on Indiegogo.

The campaign for Pilger’s doc was launched on December 10 and closed on January 18, by which time it had raised 120% of its £60,000 goal.

The Coming War will tell the unreported story of the new “Cold War” between the Us and China.

Solution to shrinking finance

Miranda Fleming, head of film UK at Indiegogo, highlighted to Screen the increasing importance of crowdfunding to independent filmmakers in Europe.

“They (independent filmmakers) need finance, not just subsidised finance. There needs to be a solution to the shrinking finance of indie film,” she said.

“In America, they picked up on crowdfunding very quickly because they don’t have subsidised sectors in film.”

Now, Fleming...

Tertiary students in Australia would rather watch online. documentaries such as John Pilger.s Utopia and Gilliam Armstrong.s Love, Lust & Lies and Aussie features than Hollywood blockbusters. That.s apparent from a list of the most popular videos streamed in 2014 on Kanopy, an online platform for universities, colleges and their students.

Excluding instructional videos, 20 of the 30 most watched titles in Australia last year were local productions. Silver Linings Playbook is the only recent Hollywood film to figure in the top 30.

.Students have access to hundreds of Us blockbusters yet they are choosing to watch videos like Utopia, Freedom Writers or Samson & Delilah more regularly than the mainstream Us blockbusters,. Kanopy CEO Olivia Humphrey tells If.

.Crossing the Line, Samson & Delilah, Ten Canoes, Muriel.s Wedding, Looking for Alibrandi, Head On, Lantana and My Brilliant Career all outperform even The Hunger Games.

.It's surprising because student viewing behaviour on Kanopy...

Titles include Shawn Christensen’s Before I Disappear and Suha Arraf’s Villa Touma [pictured]; guests include Mike Leigh and Ruben Ostlund.

The Reykjavik International Film Festival (Sept 25 - Oct 5) has unveiled the 12 features in competition for the Golden Puffin award, reserved for first or second time directors.

They include Us drama Before I Disappear, from director Shawn Christensen, which picked up the audience audience at SXSW, where it received its world premiere.

Also in the running is family drama Villa Touma, from Palestinian/Israeli director Suha Arraf, which played at Venice and Toronto; and Grzegorz Jaroszuk’s Kebab and Horoscope, which debuted at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

The competition line-up includes:

Villa Touma,Suha ArrafThe Lack, Masbedo (It)Age of Cannibals, Johannes Naber (Ger)Before I Disappear, Shawn Christensen (Us-uk)Bonobo, Matthew Hammett Knott (UK)Heimurinn, Iris Elezi, Thomas LogorrheicThe Council of Birds, Timm Kröger (Ger)I Can Quit Whenever I Want,Sydney Sibilia (It)Kebab...

Mr. Turner among first 12 films named in the Riff line-up.

British filmmaker Mike Leigh has been named the guest of honour at the Reykjavík International Film Festival, ahead of its 11th edition (Sept 25 - Oct 5).

His latest film, Mr. Turner, which picked up a Best Actor prize for Timothy Spall at the Cannes Film Festival in May, will be screened at the festival.

Previous Riff guests of honour include Milos Forman, Lukas Moodysson and Jim Jarmusch.

More than 80 features will be screened at the festival and 12 films by new directors will compete for the Golden Puffin in the New Visions category.

Other strands include Open Seas, featuring a variety of recent prize-winning films; green movies, comprising documentaries on environmental matters, in strand titled A Different Tomorrow; Icelandic short films; and a variety of docs.

Ahead of releasing the full line-up, an initial 12 titles have been teased out. As well as Mr. Turner, these include:...

★★★★★ Forthright director John Pilger's previous incendiary documentary, 2010's The War You Don't See, was a brilliant and eye-opening examination of the media's handling of conflict as well as its dubious relationship with various warmongering governments. Grand in both scale and ambition, Pilger's one-man assault on injustice and military expansion spanned the globe. His latest film, Utopia (2013), is a far smaller, much more personal project focusing on the country of his birth, Australia. Here, Pilger explores the history and continued maltreatment of its indigenous population, even borrowing its ironic title from the name of a poverty-stricken settlement in the Northern Territories.

Martin Scorsese’s documentary about The New York Review of Books to receive its world premiere at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Sheffield Doc/Fest (June 7-12) has unveiled this year’s line up and has secured the world premiere of A 50 Year Argument, the feature co-directed by Scorsese and David Tedeschi that charts how The New York Review of Books has reflected Us culture since its launch in 1963.

The festival will include 21 world premieres, 12 European premieres, eight international premieres and 24 UK premieres.

As previously announced, music doc Pulp: A Film About Life Death and Supermarkets will open the festival on June 7.

There will be focuses on South Africa, art, sex, cycling and interactive.

World premieres will include Alex Holmes’ Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story; The Last Man On The Moon, which tells the story of former astronaut Captain Eugene Cernan, who will attend the festival; One Rogue Reporter, written and directed...

John Pilger's documentary about Australia's mistreatment of the Aboriginal people amounts to a searing indictment

As narrator/polemicist John Pilger dryly observes in this searing indictment of the ongoing mistreatment of the Aboriginal people, the white folk who gave the name Utopia to the most disadvantaged area of Australia either had "a very acute sense of irony or were demented by the heat".

In this impassioned and righteously angry piece, Pilger leads us through the appalling plight of the "first Australians", visiting ritzy hotels that once served as concentration camps, pausing en route to harangue sheepish-looking politicians and asking random revellers if they understand why their predecessors don't celebrate Australia Day. Calls for sterilisation and a history of forced assimilation (state-enforced child removals, the "intervention") beggar belief, but Pilger's powerful film has the unmistakable ring of truth.

Rating: 4/5

DocumentaryAustralian politicsMark Kermode

theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

Utopia And John Pilger Q&A | Framed Film Festival | Food For Real Film Festival | The Nuclear Question

Utopia And John Pilger Q&A, Nationwide

You can always trust John Pilger to tell it like it is, though many in his homeland won't thank him for it after seeing his latest documentary. Ironically titled Utopia (the name of an aboriginal homeland in northern Australia), it's a rousing survey of "the greatest expropriation of land in world history", as the veteran journalist puts it. Traversing the country, he surveys the current low living standards and life expectancies of indigenous Australians, revisits the shameful massacres and other abuses directed against them in the past, and highlights the racism that persists beneath Australian society – which Pilger categorises as nothing less than "apartheid". It's personal, political and powerful as ever, and Pilger will explain more via a satellite Q&A after this special screening.

Various venues,...

Don Jon | The Butler | The Counsellor | Dom Hemingway | In Fear | Utopia | Future My Love | Pandora's Promise | Battle Of The Year | Ram-Leela

Don Jon (18)

(Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013, Us) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza, Glenne Headly. 90 mins

Never one to shy away from a risky project, Gordon-Levitt dives into sexual politics and pornography addiction for his first directing job, and just about pulls it off. He's charming as ever, playing a cocksure Italian-American casanova who secretly prefers online onanism to real sex – until dream girl Johanssen prompts him to take a hold of himself. It's snappy, funny, and pertinent, though the Noo Joisey stereotyping is an unnecessary let-down.

The Butler (12A)

(Lee Daniels, 2013, Us) Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo. 132 mins

Old school but illuminating take on American history and the civil rights struggle, viewed through the eyes of a black White House butler who served eight presidents. The dazzling cast is almost a distraction,...

Indigenous communities rarely reap the benefits of mining and attempts by companies to redress the balance often fall short

"It shouldn't be like this. It's a rich country... for some", reflects the veteran left-wing journalist and filmmaker John Pilger in his new documentary about the plight of Australia's indigenous community.

Utopia, which opens in UK cinemas today, offers a searing critique of what Pilger describes as Australia's "hidden secret". In the opening sequences, the viewer is taken from a Palm Beach apartment renting at Aus$30,000 (£17,388) per week to a police station foyer where a young indigenous Australian male is beaten and later dies.

The juxtaposition between Australia's affluent classes, buoyed by a prolonged mining boom, and the grudging poverty of its native populations crops up throughout the film. Pilger seems genuinely bewildered by the gulf. When he questions Warren Snowdon, a long-term parliamentarian in Australia's Northern Territories, about this manifest development gap,...

This powerful film by John Pilger looks at the awful truth behind white Australia's dysfunctional relationship with Indigenous Australians

Veteran investigator John Pilger has an extraordinary story to tell about white Australia and its deeply dysfunctional relationship with the Indigenous Australian community. Pilger sees it as unrepentant apartheid, and cites a bizarre act of taxpayer-funded official hysteria: the 2007 "intervention" in the Northern Territory organised by the John Howard government on the pretext that paedophile gangs were operating in Indigenous settlements. Troops were sent in; townships were compulsorily acquired and native title legislation ignored. Yet no prosecution for child abuse resulted, and studies appeared to conclude that the situation was no better or worse than in white areas.

The awful truth is that Indigenous communities are on mineral-rich lands that cause mouths to water in mining corporation boardrooms. Even if the "intervention" wasn't a straightforward land grab, then it suited powerful...

This campaign is only the premiere, for what I expect to be a long-running blockbuster.

Walking through Soho last week, you may have noticed a unique double billing advertised at a Curzon cinema. There, spelled out in those iconic backlit letters above the entrance, were the words ‘Give Us Fair Pay’ and ‘Recognise the Union’. What better way for fed-up and exploited cinema workers to express themselves?

The cinemas of the Curzon chain are usually found advertising Q&As and screenings of films by such liberal luminaries as John Pilger and Ken Loach.

Gravity | How To Survive A Plague | Seduced & Abandoned | Love Tomorrow | Behzat C: Ankara Yaniyor

Gravity (12A)

(Alfonso Cuarón, 2013, Us) Sandra Bullock, George Clooney. 91 mins

A movie to restore your faith in special effects, 3D and cinema in general, Cuarón's space movie arrives here already heaped with well-earned adulation. Like, say, Avatar or Toy Story, it really does expand the frontiers of what cinema can do; unlike them, Gravity is set in, or at least around, the real world. The story is admirably minimalist: two astronauts get stranded in space and try to get home. The visuals are out of this world but there's much more: riveting tension, sympathetic performances, and a spiritual undertone that only adds to the movie's transcendent nature.

How To Survive A Plague (15)

(David France, 2012, Us) 110 mins

A true story with all the elements of a mythic struggle, this bracing documentary recounts how Aids activists – many potential...

Veteran documentarian John Pilger has reached his mid-70s but this vital, shocking film shows that the fire aimed at imperialist Western politics for decades is still burning bright. Purporting to represent a ‘journey into Australia’s darkest secret’, Utopia doesn’t quite live up to its mission statement – as there surely can’t be anyone of documentary-watching age who isn’t sadly aware of some of the shameful treatment of Aborigines in the land Down Under.

But what this powerful, impassioned piece does manage, is to demonstrate just how disgraceful the treatment of the indigenous has been and, more worryingly, how it’s difficult to see any chance of a solution or even a détente. We see that the Aborigines remain an abandoned, oft-ignored strata of Australian society, while reluctantly acknowledging that the British conquest of the country engendered this behaviour. We’re shown that displacement breeds poverty, poor education,...

Today's film news is an 80s revival all by itself

In the news today

• Tim Burton to direct Beetlejuice 2

• China plans animated Mao Zedong propaganda flick

• Homeland's Damian Lewis joins Werner Herzog's Queen of the desert

• Marvel reveals Doctor Strange movie

• Jason Statham to make comedy with Melissa McCarthy

Coming up elsewhere on the site

• Cine-files is wending its way to the Watershed in Bristol

• Film quiz sinks its teeth into vampire movies

• Why I love ... the 'Captain, I cannot concur' scene in Crimson Tide

• A world exclusive trailer for John Pilger's new documentary Utopia

You may have missed

• Top 10 arthouse movies

• David Cox: 10 reasons today's movies trump TV

• Hollywood report: Gravity still on a high as The Fifth Estate leaks momentum

• Ben Whishaw wanted for Freddie Mercury movie, says Roger Taylor

• Grace of Monaco director calls Harvey Weinstein re-edit a 'pile of shit'

• John Patterson...

Network releasing and ITV to release investigative documentary about Australia.

Network Releasing will distribute John Pilger’s upcoming documentary Utopia, an investigative piece about Australia’s indigenous people and its “suppressed colonial past.”

The film will have its premiere at the BFI South Bank on October 3.

Journalist, writer and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Pilger said: “Utopia will describe not only the uniqueness of the first Australians, but their trail of tears and betrayal and resistance – from one utopia to another”.

The Dartmouth Films production will air on ITV at the end of the year. Network will release in November.

Network releasing and ITV to release investigative documentary about Australia.

Network Releasing will distribute John Pilger’s upcoming documentary Utopia, an investigative piece about Australia’s indigenous people and its “suppressed colonial past.”

The film will have its premiere at the BFI South Bank on October 3.

Journalist, writer and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Pilger said: “Utopia will describe not only the uniqueness of the first Australians, but their trail of tears and betrayal and resistance – from one utopia to another”.

The Dartmouth Films production will air on ITV at the end of the year. Network will release in November.

The Act Of Killing: Directors Tour | East End film festival | All The Right Notes 2 | Avengers marathon

The Act Of Killing: Directors Tour, Nationwide

Co-produced by Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, no less, The Act Of Killing establishes Joshua Oppenheimer as a significant force in documentary, if that's what you can call it. Oppenheimer's movie tracks down the perpetrators of Indonesia's state-sanctioned 60s genocide and encourages them to recreate their crimes as scenarios from Hollywood movies, a project they embrace all too readily. By turns, shocking, surreal and revelatory, this innovative film blurs fact and fiction and leaves you with many questions. To answer some of those, the UK-based American director talks to John Pilger at Brixton's Ritzy on Friday, and Q&As at 10 other venues.

Various venues, Fri to 7 Jul

East End film festival London

Making the colloquialisms of Albert Square look like a far-off universe, or at least a far-off postcode,...

The Ecuadorean embassy's celebrity refugee is used to living in what Assange likens to a space station as he battles extradition

Vivienne Westwood has paid a visit, as have the American civil rights activist Cornel West and the "cyberlibertarian" campaigner and former Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow.

Lady Gaga popped in while in town to launch her fragrance, after the singer Mia tweeted that she would supply tea and cake. On Thursday, René "Residente" Pérez, the lead singer of a Puerto Rican rap duo called Calle 13, called round to collaborate on a song about free expression.

And on Sunday, 362 days after Julian Assange first asked Ecuador to grant him political asylum, the WikiLeaks founder hosted his most senior visitor yet, the country's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño. The politician's meeting with his British opposite number, William Hague, was the first ministerial-level talks of a five-nation diplomatic tangle that to...

Fire in Babylon and Storyville's Afghan Cricket Club take gongs at annual awards for excellence in documentary making

Two documentaries about cricket scooped prizes at the prestigious Grierson awards on the day the sport hit the headlines after three Pakistan players were found guilty of trying to rig a Test match.

The team behind BBC4's Storyville: Afghan Cricket Club – Out of the Ashes was judged best newcomer on Tuesday at the awards, which celebrate the best in documentary making.

Another winner, in the best historical documentary category, was Fire in Babylon, the theatrically released film about the rise to global dominance in the 1970s and 1980s of the West Indies cricket team.

The awards kicked off with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall winning the best documentary series prize for Channel 4 show Hugh's Fish Fight.

Jury chairman Emma Hindley said the judges agreed Hugh's Fish Fight was "a brilliant piece of campaigning journalism and,...

In the 10 years since the September 11 terrorist attacks, film directors have responded in myriad ways. Peter Bradshaw charts the rise and fall of the 9/11 movie

At the Venice film festival last week, George Clooney unveiled his new backstairs political drama, The Ides of March, about a Democratic presidential candidate getting bogged down in compromise, backstabbing and the dark political arts. Clooney said that he could conceivably have completed the film before now, but President Obama had been doing too well, and therefore the time wasn't right.

Perhaps Clooney was being serious and perhaps he wasn't. But the remark typifies the dwindling of the memory of 9/11 in Hollywood cinema. The Obama presidency, ushered in by the catastrophe of the Bush reign, is now perceived to be in trouble, and this enables a prominent Hollywood liberal to make the kind of savvy, ahistorically pessimistic political movie that could have been produced at...

Colour me ungrateful, but as much as I am happy to enjoy the capitalist gift-giving rituals of Christmas time I’m actually not too keen on celebrating the birth of magical Mr. Christ. So for me the forgettable Chronicles of Narnia film series, based on a set of twee, allegory-heavy children’s novels by C.S Lewis, are about as much fun as an afternoon spent in a hot classroom being talked at by an especially pious R.E teacher determined to sex-up the bible for impressionable youngsters.

In these fantasy adventure films, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and now The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Liam Neeson voices everyone’s favourite Jesus-Lion hybrid Aslan and teaches us about the great virtue found in unquestioning, zealous belief and the sanctity of birth-right. (The messiah parallel is less subtle than ever in ‘Dawn Treader’ as Aslan tells the children at one point,...

Bob Ellis on the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech (available on DVD this month), Biutiful, The Company Men and the passing of Sidney Lumet.

The Oxford scholar Peter Levi had a theory that Shakespeare was popular because he had only one theme. A man or a woman, he said, is given a task to which he or she is unequal, and comedy or tragedy follows. Thus Hamlet, an adequate joshing student, is a poor avenger, Brutus, an adequate stoic philosopher, a poor generalissimo, Othello a fine generalissimo but a dumb older husband of a young white wife, Malvolio a shambolic wooer, Viola a lousy transvestite, and so on.

This theory well fits The King’s Speech and explains its international popularity. We all of us as children have been made to recite, or sing, or perform acrobatics on stage, and have dreaded the anguished humiliation the experiment was bound to bring to us.

John Pilger's The War You Don't See is a documentary about the ways in which modern media has become compromised. Critics of wars have been accused of being unpatriotic; footage of atrocities in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine is quietly buried; and while the public is free to discover the truth for themselves thanks to the internet, the mainstream media's one-sided coverage has the effect of increasingly leaving viewers desensitised. After all, the faces of victims of ‘collateral damage' are rarely seen on the news and statistics are a poor substitute. Instead, news reports are delivered from embedded journalists and as Pilger explains, this means that the whole story is rarely heard.

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Kidnapped (Secuestrados) Trailer Interesting thing, the long take. Hotly debated on the /Film podcast with regard to this filmmaking trick, exploring its merits and effective uses some months ago now,...

I had a chance to talk with filmmaker Michael Moore shortly after his personal decision to post $20,000 of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange's $316,000 bail. Joining the list of celebrities that included Bianca Jagger, Ken Loach, John Pilger and Jemima Khan, Moore and his cash had a flagrantly politicized feel. After all, his films “Capitalism: A Love Story” and “Sicko” have provided outlets for whistleblowers, making his contribution to Assange seem like a simple footnote to a Hollywood career that's made its mark thrashing the power elite and knocking the American government. But...

Film-maker defends decision to put up £20,000 to help secure release on bail of WikiLeaks founder, who denies the allegations

The Us conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh has criticised film-maker Michael Moore and others for their decision to put up £20,000 each to help secure the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on bail.

The radio talkshow host, whose syndicated show is the most listened-to talk-radio programme in the Us, said Moore and others who provided surety for Assange's return to court on sex charges filed by Swedish prosecutors were "fans of serial rapists". Film-makers Ken Loach and John Pilger are amongst those who have joined Moore to put up money to help Assange meet the £200,000 bail demanded by senior district judge Howard Riddle at the City of Westminster magistrates court.

"It's so heartwarming to see a bunch of high-minded people out there on the left ... coming out of the woodwork and paying...

Julian Assange has been granted bail, pending an appeal filed by the Swedish authority, with a little help from Michael Moore. The documentarian posted a note on his website this morning entitled "Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange," attesting to his support for the WikiLeaks editor in chief and his commitment of $20,000 toward helping him go free:

Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars.

We were taken to war in Iraq on a lie. Hundreds of thousands are now dead. Just imagine if the men who planned this war crime back in 2002 had had a WikiLeaks to deal with. They might not have...

Somewhere (15)

(Sofia Coppola, 2010, Us) Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius. 98 mins

Let's see: a poor little lost girl; a distant, powerful father figure; artsy observations on wealth and fame – Coppola's hardly hurling herself out of her comfort zone. But there's just enough to make it work, with Dorff's disengaged movie star struggling to bond with his daughter, get a life and check out of Hotel California. It's an almost structureless essay on how celebrity is wasted on the famous.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader (PG)

(Michael Apted, 2010, Us) Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, Ben Barnes. 113 mins

The seafaring odyssey was always the series' most cinematic proposition, and if you can get over the stagey acting and religious homilies, it's a solid kids' adventure.

The Tourist (12A)

(Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2010, Us/Fra) Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany. 103 mins

With its handsome leads, Venetian locations and wrong-man intrigues,...

Documentary-maker John Pilger on the grotesque untruth of "weapons of mass destruction" and the cowardliness of the mainstream media taking the official line

Documentary-maker John Pilger has returned to a subject that can't be revived often enough: the grotesque untruth of "weapons of mass destruction": a cloudy concept, eagerly amplified and lent credibility by credulous and submissive journalists who, after 9/11, lost their nerve en masse. Pilger's contention is that on Afghanistan, on Iraq and on Israel and the Palestinian territories, the mainstream media simply take the official line. The force of his film is in its contention that the colossal scale of civilian casualties is, within the grammar of news, downgraded in importance so that it doesn't figure as news at all, but as all-but-invisible deep background to be ignored. Pilger gives due respect to WikiLeaks, although his praise for al-Jazeera's independence is ironic, given that WikiLeaks has just...

Raggle-taggle of 'household names' offered big sums towards WikiLeaks founder's failed bail plea

The already curious case of Julian Assange took another bizarre twist yesterday when the court learned that a raggle-taggle of "household names" were prepared to stake their reputation in his case, offering sureties to the court with a total value of £180,000.

Despite claiming not to know Assange, the film-maker Ken Loach and the socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan stood before Westminster magistrates and offered big sums towards Assange's bail, though bail was later refused.

Offering £20,000, Loach said he did not know Assange other than by reputation, but added: "I think the work he has done has been a public service. I think we are entitled to know the dealings of those that govern us."

Khan offered a further £20,000, "or more if need be".

In a statement later, she said: "I make no judgment of Julian Assange...

East Side Stories, Edinburgh

Looking at post-reunification depictions of East Germany like The Lives Of Others or Good Bye Lenin! it's easy to forget that the Gdr had its own highly productive state film studio, the Defa. And despite the Soviet control, it didn't just churn out Stalinist tractor operas. Some of its films were even suppressed by the authorities, like 1966's Traces Of Stones, a construction site love triangle coloured by party politics (much acclaimed when it was finally released in 1990), or 1973 hit The Legend Of Paul And Paula, with a modern take on love and marriage. By the 1980s, Defa even had the guts to tackle gay issues in Coming Out. The neo-realist-influenced Berlin: Schönhauser Corner, on the other hand, gives you a flavour of what 1950s life was really like behind the Iron Curtain.

Filmhouse, Sun to 11 Dec

John Pilger, London

You can count on the veteran...