Media

Documentary director Eugene Jarecki, director of the "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," has hit a triple with his new film "Why We Fight." There are many compelling reasons why the Sundance Film Festival may have decided to bestow the Jury Prize on "Why We Fight" last year. Jarecki is a talented filmmaker, with a keen aesthetic sense (his celluloid mojo - lighting, camera work, sound, artistic delivery - makes a film like Robert Greenwalt's recent "Wal-Mart" adventure look downright sloppy by comparison). He also is not afraid to serve up controversy.

To say that George Clooney's new film "Good Night and Good Luck" is one of the most important films of this year is to be guilty of significant understatement. Not since Michael Mann's 1999 thriller "The Insider" has a Hollywood film director made a media-focused mainstream movie this important or timely.

Laura Flanders is one of the most influential anti-war journalists in the United States. Her tough debating skills, powerful intellect and sharp wit have made her a force to reckon with in media today. In addition to hosting countless radio shows, including her current program on Air America Radio, she recently came out with Bushwomen, a book that examines the background of powerful Republican Party women like Condoleezza Rice and Lynn Cheney. Flanders became involved in activism in the 1980s as a student Barnard College, where she circulated petitions against the U.S. government's intervention in Central America and demonstrated against Columbia University's refusal to divest itself of its investments in U.S. corporations doing business in South Africa during the apartheid era. Flanders initially became involved in the U.S. alternative media world as a radical filmmaker.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf and beyond, a new wave of Shock and Awe is gripping the international community in the wakes of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There is an increasingly glaring global inquisition taking place - and the spotlight is on American culture. Nationally, the focus of conservative and mainstream news coverage has suddenly shifted. Questions about American racism, classism, xenophobia and unmitigated consumerism and economic growth have hit the ground running. Even the untouchable topics of renewable energy, conservation and global warming, heretofore relegated to the margins of debate by those classes who have built their fortunes on fossil fuels and nuclear energy, are being uttered again as if they were newly discovered galaxies of hope.