Inside Job Gets Forbes’ Oscar Vote
10/11/10
**The film that cost over $20,000,000,000,000 to make**
“A crime story like no other in history.”
“If you’re not enraged by the end of the movie, you weren’t paying attention.”
“Stunning!” “Will stand as a definitive investigative primer on the disaster.”
“A very angry, very carefully and brutally clear documentary about how the American film industry set out deliberately to defraud the ordinary American investor.”
“A powerhouse that will leave you both thunderstruck and boiling with rage.”
“A masterpiece! Scarier than anything Wes Craven and John Carpenter have ever made.”
“Compelling!”
THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS ON 2008
COST TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THEIR SAVINGS, THEIR JOBS, AND THEIR HOMES
THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED.
Indiewire is reporting that Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s Wall Street expose, and one of the best films of 2010, is already doing well at the box office already, joining the ranks of Waiting for Superman and Catfish as the year’s biggest money makers in the doc category.
Meanwhile, Forbes’ Magazine’s Robert Lenzer wrote a few days back:
Larry Summers. Tim Geithner, Bob Rubin, Hank Paulson, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke refused to make voluntary appearances in the documentary film on Wall Street’s collapse, which gets my vote for the Oscar documentary. Sadly, documentary film makers don’t have subpoena power. These Masters of the Universe were skewered anyway by a film that is a gripping, must-see narrative of the financial meltdown. Good on Sony Classic for giving the filmmakers total control over their product. The purity of the film’s narrative is impressive.
‘Inside Job’ is a comprehensive , exhausting series of ethical and sometimes illegal actions that casts Wall Street in a very dim light. It is the real thing– not a fictional concoction from Hollywood like “Wall Street-Money Never Sleeps” –which is more Barnum & Bailey fantasy than a non-fiction-though clearly biased — documentary. I left Lincoln Center last night inspired by the muckraking and furious that no-one has gone to jail. The audience definitely wanted blood and gave the director Charles Ferguson a standing ovation– more than Oliver Stone will ever get for his cinematic mess.
A must-see. And anyway, wouldn’t it be great if this was the film that cracked Oscar’s Best Picture ten? If an animated film can do it, why can’t a documentary?
New Yorker’s David Denby:
The documentary “Inside Job,” written and directed by Charles Ferguson—who made “No End in Sight,” the best of the nonfiction movies about the Iraq war—doesn’t replace any of those works, but it provides the most comprehensive brief narrative of the causes of the crisis (which was set in motion well before that homeowner in Stockton signed a piece of paper). Many documentaries are good at drawing attention to an outrage and stirring up our feelings. Ferguson’s film certainly does this, but his exposition of complex information is also masterly. Indignation is often the most self-deluding of emotions; this movie has the rare gifts of lucid passion and informed rage.
www.awardsdaily.com/2010/10/inside-job-gets-forbes-oscar-vote/Cannes 2010: Inside Job
Charles Ferguson is one of the self-appointed truth-tellers – someone whose mission it is in life to bring information to the general public. And what information it is this time around with Inside Job, the story of the most disgraceful case of corruption amid trusted American financial institutions ever perpetrated against the public.
The funny thing is – it happened. We all know it happened. Not even right wingers can excuse the injustice of the corporations like AIG and Goldman Sachs robbing people blind and walking away with millions stuffed in their pockets. Our government did nothing. They need to dig for that bone harder. We are such a numbed out nation with our minds on whether or not Angelina and Brad are fighting we haven’t been carrying torches and pitchforks and demanding these criminals go to jail. No, we just take it. And we take it.
Please sir, may I have another?
Inside Job lays out the criminal activity, the corporate greed, the unforgivable way poor people were led to believe that they were able to afford a home for the first time ever. They are foreclosed on, forced to move god knows where, and they’re stuck with a bill they can’t pay back – all so that some morally bankrupt piece of shit in a suit could profit off of their bad luck.
No one can watch Inside Job and not feel palm-sweating anger. This was clearly Ferguson’s intent; this isn’t a Frontline piece – this is activism, direct and exacting. An Oscar nomination for this film would hopefully bring more awareness — a silly concept considering this has been covered in the press continuously — to the need for direct action and reform.
Bill Clinton gets a blow job in the Oval Office and suddenly the American government shuts down and it’s considered the biggest scandal of his presidency. America is suddenly up in arms against our philandering Pres. But this? Oh, this is nothing – just more of the same. The rich get rich and the poor stay poor.
Besides the message in Ferguson’s film, it is well made – beautifully filmed, and gets more intense as more information is revealed. Most telling of all are those who refused to talk to Ferguson — they prefer to keep their mouths shut: don’t ask, don’t tell, turn on Dancing with the Stars.
I put Inside Job up there as one of the best films I’ve seen here at Cannes. I have given up trying to predict what the doc branch will do – so I can’t even venture a guess. Although I get his point, I don’t think Ferguson needs the last shot in the film, which I won’t spoil for you. I feel like it guilds the lily. No need. But yeah, point taken.
www.awardsdaily.com/2010/05/cannes-2010-inside-job/Again, ... the Trailer
www.awardsdaily.com/2010/08/inside-job-trailer/ www.awardsdaily.com/2010/08/inside-job-trailer/
