Shattered Glass

This was an interesting movie on journalists (2003) starring Hayden Christensen. The storyline is In the wake of the scandal at the New York Times, in which journalist Jayson Blair contrived sources and quotes, Shattered Glass offers a potent exploration of another journalist's motivations for doing similar in the magazine world in the 1990s. As the youngest staff member of the political magazine The New Republic, Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is bylined month after month, and his writing has such verve, such power, such wit and humor that he's getting calls to freelance for all the best publications. He's also a really nice guy, complimenting the secretary's lipstick and helping new writers find their footing. Nice as he is, though, Glass is also a little childish: He tends to pout; he's always asking fact checkers and editors to help him out with his stories; and he's going to law school because his parents "made him." Because he's such a nice, sweet, innocent kid, nobody suspects the somewhat outrageous stories he files are anything but true--until two writers at Forbes Digital pull the thread that causes Glass' carefully stitched web of lies to unravel. For more on the movie click or the whole review : http://www.hollywood.com/review/Shattered_Glass/1732752

Now comes the real reason why I thought this movie is relavant. We look at the media stories we find stark reality starring into our faces. Don't we see many of these people around us? On electronic media we see "sensational breaking news" everyday.....the relavance is mostly at the lowest common denominator. Come to think of it, Shilpa Shetty got read and talked more about than say Tata bagging Corus! DUMBING DOWN never got clobbered on to us with such continuity. Or say the perceived conflict between SRK and Amithab Baccachan. Irrelavance is today becoming so relavant today that the truth is seemingly being forgotten or kept under wraps and conviniently forgotten.

Glass story is increasingly relavant to all of us as he doctured up something, made it look like a true story and got rave reviews....what is happening right now in India is similar, frivilous gets all the attention while the true story lies somewhere in between. We Indians pride ourselves for having emotional depth, a transition perhaps to becoming shallow. Talk about, Chalta Hai attitude emerging into a new avtaar!!