Rating: 
Summary: Glass half full
Review: "Shattered Glass" is a clever film about the rise and fall of an attention-craving, fawning huckster. It's rare these days to watch a suspense movie that literally has no action, but "Shattered Glass" succeeds marvelously. I had a blast watching the film's self-fixated protagonist squirming as the screws were tightened and he was snared in a web of his own deceit. Stephen Glass wanted the big byline, the articles that would catapult him to fame and grant him the status he desired. In order to achieve this, he fabricated stories with such enthusiasm one couldn't help but be swept up in the excitement. Hayden Christensen plays him to the hilt, with nuanced mannerisms, golden boy charm, and a sincerity that gradually grows stale. His insecurity is evident when he ends his conversations with apologies, false compliments, and self-deprecation designed to elicit sympathy or praise. His theats at suicide are at once chilling and pathetic.
The story is deceptively simple, but the details are complex, adding layers of psychological instability. I also enjoyed Peter Sarsgaard's performance as a poised editor who will do the right thing even if it means alienating himself from the office staff, who fall prey to Glass's manipulations. The film is brilliantly bookended with fantasy scenes that show Glass's true motivations--lying to gain public attention and acclaim, not unlike a serial killer who turns himself in to become a figure of notoriety.
Amazingly, the story seems to continue as Glass published a novel, "The Fabulist", which also tries to twist the truth to shift responsiblity to other parties. Online reviews of this novel smack of author participation, as if the writer sought to balance the negative reviews with his own glowing summations. Why else would the reviews be so incredibly polarized, with most giving the novel one star, while others give it five stars? Decide for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Of The Year
Review: Stephen Glass (Hayden Christiansen) was a promising young assistant editor for THE NEW REPUBLIC. The publication that happens to be billed as the in-flight magazine of Air Force One, and the publication that has the power to affect public policy. It's just too bad he made up most of his stories. Shaking up a magazine, and the entire journalistic community as a whole. WOW. After the film ended and the credits began to roll I realized how deeply affected I was. How the film unfolds, you can see most of it coming from a mile away and then BAM; the film grips your whole being. It actually convicts you. That's the key to a great film and SHATTERED GLASS is one of the best I've seen all year. The one character that stands out is Peter Sarsgaard (Empire) who portrays Chuck Lane, Glass's editor. The role was layered, so much in fact that you feel sorry for him, and you want to hate him all at the same time. But by the end you begin to root for the man who has been thrown into a difficult position, with his whole staff is against him, and still he tries his hardest to stick behind one of his own. The one scene that forces us to embrace him is the scene in which he is confronted by Caitlin (Chloe Sevigny, American Psycho), another writer and close friend to Glass. He has just fired Glass, the temple of deceit and lies is about to fall down and he makes his case. Sure she's mad at this guy, but then both of them have a connection. His heart-filled plea for her sympathy is both layered and powerful. This scene stands as a testament to really great acting and great filmmaking. Hayden Christiansen does a bang up job too. At some point during the film I said to myself this is a subpar performance. It's flat, wooden, and boy is this guy oily and creepy. Why would anyone buy this guy's lies? And then the movie pulls a switch, as he unravels, you begin to unravel with him. The film has actually put you, the audience, in Glass's shoes. If you leave this movie thinking your innocent then you're a far better person than I am. Writer/First-Time Director Billy Ray has crafted a film that decomposes humanity. That exposes the true danger of breaking the old commandment "Thou Shalt Not Lie". In real life, if you fake a war for oil, or if you lie about sex with an intern, we as humans all drop one step down the moral staircase. Sure Stephen Glass didn't really hurt anyone, or did he? If you're looking for a challenging film, if you looking for a film that will hopefully allow you stand up for what's right, then SHATTERED GLASS is the film for you. In a day where finding a good film is few and far between, it's nice to know that some interesting films are still being made.
Rating: 
Summary: Are You Mad At Me?
Review: Thanks to Billy Ray for taking an interesting story and turning it into an After School Special. "Shattered Glass" is "All the President's Men" for stupid people. It has one redeaming element -- an outstanding performance by Peter Sarsgaard. Otherwise, this is another example of how low the bar has dropped for what is considered intelligent American filmmaking today. Yes, Billy Ray, I am mad at you.
Rating:
Summary: SMALL LENS, BIG ISSUES: A BRILLIANT THRILLER!
Review: Screenwriter Billy Ray's absolutely fab directorial debut based on the true story of onetime New Republic star Stephen Glass, who substantially fabricated the majority of his pieces for the magazine in the mid-1990s. His pieces were gripping, incisive, meticulously detailed attention-getters, whether about young Republicans' antics or dot-com insanity. But his compulsive "creativity" caught up with him as two Forbes.com writers (Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson in brief, brisk parts with cynical charm) start picking apart one of Glass' stories. Peter Sarsgaard, who plays Glass' editor, Chuck Lane, is wonderfully understated as the misunderstood editor. As far as I am concerned, he almost carries the movie, his performance should go into Oscar nominations. Billy Ray shows amazing finesse in capturing the minutiae of a small world to ask big questions. You get the sense that there's probably more to the story than you get here. But the movie's moral may soon be indelible: it's a tough call to try and fake it in the Internet age. It's easy to forget the journalistic responsibility in pursuit of personal glory or attention, but it's the reader who gets hurt. While people with a journalistic bent NEED to watch it, the film's twists and turns and shocking (yet true!) goings-on make it a top-drawer thriller for pretty much anyone who enjoys a good thriller!
Rating: 
Summary: "Glass" is see-through but still compels
Review: March was a big month for ethically challenged journalists. First, infamous ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair published his book, "Burning Down My Masters' House," a tome that generated reviews uniformly more interesting than the actual contents of its pages. Then "Shattered Glass" was released on video. The film looks at Stephen Glass, a young writer and associate editor for The New Republic who, in the mid- to late '90s, rose to notoriety with his vivid, colorful articles - many of which were later found to be, in whole or in part, simply products of his imagination. The movie focuses on the period in 1998 when Glass' jig was just about up. In order to cover his tracks, he's forced to fake his notes, manipulate office politics, create phantom voicemail accounts and manufacture Web sites and business cards. As depicted by "Shattered," passing off fiction as journalism isn't just a despicable practice, it also appears to involve about four times more sweat than doing actual, honest work. It's a fascinating story that, on the whole, is deftly handled. Unfortunately, Hayden Christensen, who plays Glass, doesn't seem as skilled a con artist as the guy he's portraying had to have been. With his passive-aggressive apologies and transparent flattery, he's more of an Eddie Haskell than a convincing fraud. I'm a reporter at a newspaper that's a long way away from the infinitely more sophisticated, more competitive New Republic, yet Glass' manipulation, as rendered by Christensen, wouldn't fly in my newsroom for five seconds. As a result, the movie suffers somewhat and, while that may also be a fault of the writing, the script doesn't fail actors Peter Sarsgaard and Hank Azaria who, as Glass' editors Charles Lane and Michael Kelly, give smart, flawless performances and are the best reasons to see the movie (yes, Sarsgaard is every bit as good as the hype claims). Also solid is Steve Zahn as Forbes reporter Adam Penenberg, and the scenes in which he disproves one of Glass' articles fact-by-fact play like lighter reversals on "All the President's Men." On the DVD: The lone extra feature is a brisk "60 Minutes" segment on the real Glass, in which we see what a low-key, blank-eyed cipher he actually is. There's also a somewhat self-serving though no-less-interesting commentary track by Lane and writer-director Billy Ray that, ironically, points out the many inventions and dramatic licenses that were taken in order to make the story more cinematic. It's too bad they didn't give the actual subject of the movie an opportunity to comment on the movie that's been made from an unfortunate, pathetic chapter of his life; that would've been something to hear.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe everything you read in the papers!
Review: Shattered Glass is the true story of a young American journalist whose stories in the New Republic magazine, among others, entertained and enthralled readers and colleagues alike until they were exposed as works of pure fiction. Hayden Christensen puts in an accomplished performance as Stephen Glass, the charismatic, popular, but ever modest hack who peers out through over-sized glasses. Editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria) is spared the worst of the publication's impending embarrassment as he's replaced before the revelation by the unpopular Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard). The sympathy and admiration you feel for Glass in the beginning is progressively eroded. "Are you mad at me?" he says innumerably, with puppy dog eyes, in response to the slightest sign of aggression from editors. His frantic and futile attempts to cover his tracks are as agonizing to watch as his beleaguered editor's attempts to uncover them. A deeper insight into Glass's psyche and motives would have been pleasing but as it stands Billy Ray's directorial debut is a thought-provoking and timely cautionary tale told with panache.
Rating:
Summary: Hey, boys and girls, see what happens when you plagarize?
Review: I had a bad semester with students plagiarizing papers, catching a half-dozen of them. What was upsetting was not their audacity but rather their stupidity. It was not that the papers were clearly not their own work but rather than they did not meet the assignments, so that they would have received failing grades even if an internet search did not reveal their source in ten seconds. Every time I find another plagiarized paper and see how little effort they put into cheating I am reminded of something a professor told me years ago, which was that to get away with plagiarism you had to work so hard to cover up what you are doing that you might as well have done the work in the first place. With the case of "New Republic" reporter Stephen Glass you have to admit that he certainly put a lot of effort into making up sources and support for his stories, but with that much effort he could have just stuck to the truth. Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is the youngest writer at the "New Republic" and apparently knows everything he should be doing to be liked by his young co-workers. The story of how he was found out is paralleled with his talking to the journalism class at Highland High School, while his teacher beams proudly. While Glass tells the kids about the right way to get ahead in the wonderful world of journalism, we get to see whether he practices what he preaches in the real world. It becomes clear that what Glass comes up with are stories that are funny, bright, and clever, filled with characters who seem too good to be true, from one about a convention of political novelties enjoying the Monica Lewinsky scandal to Young Republicans turning a National Convention into a drunken frat party. The reluctant hero of the film is Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), who becomes the young editor of the "New Republic" when Micheal Kelly (Hank Azaria) is fired). Glass is worried Lane is jealous of his ability to come up with great stories, but, of course, that is not the real problem, which emerges when Glass comes up with his latest great story on Hackers. The story is all about a teenage hacker who hits a company and then gets paid off to back off and leave the company alone. The story is so great the editor at the on-line magazine for "Forbes" demands to know of his reporter, Steve Zahn (Adam Penenberg), why he did not get the story first? Zahn is ticked off that he did not, and when he tries to do a follow up on the Glass piece it becomes clear there is something very wrong here, although the truth is so beyond belief that they people are thinking there has to be something else going on with the article. The result is like watching a building fall down in slow motion, because you keep thinking that the whole house of cards Glass has constructed is going to quickly fall apart. But then at one point Glass explains to the class the complicated process by which stories are written, checked, rewritten, verified, and rewritten again before seeing publication. The irony is that this process could not catch Glass in his web of lies before the stories were published and then slowed down the actual process of revealing his deception. Of course, Glass is scrambling to plug the holes in the dike and it takes a while for Lane and the rest of the "National Republic" staff to accept what is going on with this guy they all seem to like so much. You have to appreciate how much friendship got in the way of these people seeing the flaws in Glass and underscores why this is a story worth telling, even if you do not want to be a journalist when you grow up. The extras on this DVD are the "60 Minutes" interview with Stephen Glass, which features Chuck Lane, who does a fascinating commentary track with director Billy Ray. The pair talk about not only where things come from and the accuracy of what we are seeing on screen, which is a reasonable concern given the topic, but the real world concerns of trying to understand why Glass was doing all of this. This is one of the best commentary tracks for a feature film I have heard in several months and anybody who watches the movie has to treat themselves to this bonus as well. Ironically, after his down fall Glass went on to write a novel, "The Fabulist," which is supposed to be fictional story of a pathological liar who makes up newspaper stories but which apparently has more truth in it that most of the articles he wrote for the "New Republic" and other publications.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I'm not a fan of anything, but I had to rate this movie. I saw it last night, and can't get it out of my mind. It's a thoughtful exploration of the ethical foundations of journalism, as much as it is a so-awful-hide-your-head portrait of a pathological liar.
Rating:
Summary: What was he THINKING?
Review: This is an amazing movie. It's real. That's what's so amazing about it. I kept looking at my husband and asking, Is this really real? What was this idiot thinking? Shattered Glass is the story of a respected, well-liked, and ambitious journalist for The New Republic who apparently made up - out on cardboard, water, and thin air - whole stories that somehow passed by the batteries of fact-checkers. This guy, an inexplicable pathological liar, I guess, makes Jason Blair of the NYT look like a cartoon Pinocchio by comparison.
Amazing. Watch it, and then, the next time you read a riveting feature article in some well-respected newspaper or journal, ask yourself if it's possible that at least some of it is pure eyewash.
Sheesh.
Rating:
Summary: Fabricated stories got this wonder-boy journalist fired!
Review: I love The New Republic magazine and have a subscription. But I started reading it a mere two years ago, well after the scandal of 1998, in which a Stephen Glass, a boy-wonder reporter, was proven to have fabricated no less than 27 stories. How could this have happened in this staid political magazine, which hadn't changed much since its early beginnings in 1914 and is so low key that it doesn't even have photographs? Well, Stephen Glass, brilliantly played by Hayden Christensen, was likable. He was the self-effacing, quiet type who would bring lunch to a fellow-staff member on a deadline. He told humorous stories and kept people smiling. And, most of all, he wrote the kind of stories that everyone wanted to write. His writing was always peppered with the kind of quotes that put life into the story. And he was excellent at his craft. Everyone loved him. Problem was that most of his stories were partially or completely fabricated. When veteran editor, Jack Kelly, is fired, one of the writers, Chuck Lane is promoted to take his place. Everyone hates him because they had loved the older editor. Peter Sasgaard plays this role with just the right amount of angst of a young man who is slightly unsure of himself and has been given difficult job to do. And, as the story of Stephen Glass's lies begins to break, we all can identify with this harried editor. This time Steven Glass had gone too far. He wrote a story about a convention of hackers and a young teenager who was courted by and awarded some big bucks to work for the company he just had hacked. When the online publication ForbesOnline, saw this story, they immediately started asking questions about Glass's sources. Stephen Glass began to lie. The lies got bigger. His excuses got stranger. He even created a false website and some false voice-mail boxes. His own editor wanted to believe him. But the evidence mounted. And, eventually Glass was discovered and fired. All this took place a mere six years ago but I couldn't help being reminded at how technically advanced we've all come since then. And Glass was able to get away with some things just because his editor was unwise in the world of computers. I really did get into the story, which was well paced and well acted. And then, as a special bonus on the DVD, there was a recent interview with Glass from "60 Minutes". Glass says he's reformed after years of therapy and has recently written a novel. He has also graduated from law school and now has a law degree. Whether or not he'll ever be able to practice law is in question, however, due to his background. He came across as sincere and believable. But we all now understand that he always was able to do that. Frankly, I would never trust him.
|
