The Playlist

Review: Provocative Doc 'We Steal Secrets: The Story Of WikiLeaks' Is Essential Immediate Viewing

By Gabe Toro
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May 22, 2013 11:35 AM
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4 Comments

Reviews

Titles can be sticky, none moreso than “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks.” The “we” mentioned could be speaking in first-person perspective in regards to the muckracking online collective, which helped power the biggest security breach in government history. Then again, is the story of WikiLeaks anything other than our story? The story of anyone online who’s ever wanted to know more, who ever wanted to remove the veil of secrecy? If anything, director Alex Gibney might have shot himself in the foot: he could never begin to grasp the magnitude of our collective societal curiosity that has helped bring down walls during the current administration.

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Alex Gibney To Direct 4-Hour Documentary On Frank Sinatra For HBO

By Kieran McMahon
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May 1, 2013 6:29 PM
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0 Comments

News

It is no overstatement to describe documentary-maker Alex Gibney as one of the pre-eminent filmmakers in America, a blotless 30-year career has seen him accumulate a back catalogue striking not only for the consistently outstanding quality of his work, but also for the boldness and incisiveness of his subject matter. Highlights include “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Taxi to the Dark Side” (which won him an Oscar) and “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” and we await his upcoming “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” and his forthcoming documentary on legendary Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, “Finding Fela!” Thus it is with no little excitement that we greet the announcement of his next subject, one Frank Sinatra.

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Watch: Log On With The Trailer For Alex Gibney's 'We Steal Secrets: The Story Of WikiLeaks'

By Kevin Jagernauth
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March 21, 2013 4:33 PM
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2 Comments

News

Hero, martyr or threat? Depending on where you stand, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is either one of the above or all three, and now Hollywood is coming to tell his story, or at least their version of it. While Benedict Cumberbatch will play the platinum haired whistleblower in this fall's "The Fifth Estate," first out of the gate is Alex Gibney's "We Steal Secrets: The Story WikiLeaks" and it seems like a crash course in everything you need to know about Assange and the group that continues to frustrate authorities worldwide.

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Documentarian Alex Gibney Planning Feature Film About Accused WikiLeaks Source Bradley Manning

By Joe Cunningham
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December 21, 2012 3:50 PM
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2 Comments

News

There’s no doubt that the whole WikiLeaks scandal and the fallout from their major information releases ever since has been nothing short of fascinating. Well, Hollywood seems to think so anyway, and they’re seeing a whole load of storytelling potential in it, with both dramatic features and documentaries on their way. Among them, there’s the Australian TV movie “Underground: The Julian Assange Story,” which played at TIFF (our review here); Bill Condon’s as-yet-untitled movie that will star Benedict Cumberbatch as Assange; a delayed project at HBO; a possible drama from Mark Boal (“Zero Dark Thirty”) based on a New York Times article; and a documentary titled “We Steal Secrets” all at various stages of development.

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Review: 'Mea Maxima Culpa' A Provocative, Emotive, Dogged Investigation Into A Landmark Clerical Sex Abuse Case

By Jessica Kiang
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November 14, 2012 12:01 PM
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2 Comments

Reviews

By turns moving, absorbing and downright rage-inducing, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” is celebrated documentarian Alex Gibney’s account of sexual abuse in St John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee during the '60s and '70s, which he then uses as a launchpad to follow the chain of culpability up the hierarchy of the Catholic Church right to the Vatican and the Papacy itself. As topics go, it doesn’t get much more incendiary, but Gibney’s (“Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) native intelligence and tendency to (mostly) downplay, means the film emerges as much more than the torch-and-pitchfork affair it could have been.

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Review: 'Magic Trip' A Pleasant But Unremarkable Trip Down A Druggy Memory Lane

By Christopher Bell
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August 4, 2011 4:18 AM
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2 Comments

Best known for his forward, concise, and unyielding documentaries attacking big business, the government, and the media, filmmaker Alex Gibney takes a brief sabbatical from the "heavy issues" and partners up with frequent editing partner Alison Ellwood for the Ken Kesey LSD-extravaganza "Magic Trip." The two cobble together footage and audio recordings from a free-wheelin' cross-country jaunt to the World's Fair in New York lead by the "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" scribe, the end result feeling something like a cross between Gibney's own "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" and last year's enjoyable "Lennon NYC." However, much like those examples, those who are uninterested in Kesey and his generation (or worse, can't even stomach it) won't find much to bark about.

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Viva Assange! 'The American' Writer Rowan Joffe To Pen One of Several Hundred Wikileaks Projects

By Sam Price
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June 10, 2011 2:00 AM
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1 Comment

Ah, Julian Assange. Aside from the interminable line-up of Snow White projects threatening to engulf the entire Western seaboard, he’s become the most in-demand bleached blond belle of the ball. With so many competing film projects about the prurient leaker of state secrets clamoring for our attention, it’s hard to keep track of them all. One project in particular, though, just got a healthy kick up the posterior. Deadline reports that the HBO-BBC co-production adaptation of last year’s New Yorker article, ‘No Secrets: Julian Assange’s Mission for Total Transparency’, has recruited producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall to its cause and bagged a screenwriter, Rowan Joffe.

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Trailers & Clips: The 'Zookeeper,' 'Super 8,' 'Transformers: Dark Of The Moon' & 'Good Neighbors'

By Edward Davis
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May 19, 2011 2:37 AM
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3 Comments

Also Alex Gibney's Ken Kesey-Centered Documentary, 'Magic Trip'Alright, a whole slew of new trailers and clips have arrived. Lets do this. Hold your nose.

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Oscar Winning 'Inside Job' Director Charles Ferguson To Direct HBO's Julian Assange Film

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 29, 2011 1:20 AM
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3 Comments

Alex Gibney Already Four Months In On His Assange Project For UniversalWhile he may have fallen off the front page of newspapers around the world -- at least for now -- there hasn't been a character as fascinating as Julian Assange in quite a while. The man behind Wikileaks has singlehandedly caused government leaders to sweat by leaking classified cables and documents that in many cases have shown politicians bending the truth, lying or covering up facts about a number of diplomatic issues. Hardly surprising. But in an era when fewer journalists seem willing to kick down doors and more complacent to simply report what's handed to them by Washington PR teams, the actions were a severe wake up call. The fact that as a personality, Assange is equally as interesting certainly didn't hurt and as the heat around the shadowy figure grew, so did Hollywood executives' interest, with a number of competing projects now in the works. And two of them are now pulling ahead with documentary filmmakers at the helm.

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Universal Picks Up Doc On Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange To Be Directed By Alex Gibney

By Kevin Jagernauth
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January 21, 2011 8:53 AM
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1 Comment

Enron, Eliot Spitzer, Jack Abramoff, Hunter S. Thompson, Guantanamo Bay and now Julian Assange. Documentary director Alex Gibney has found the subject for his next film and he's lined up a major studio to back the production.

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