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    Sundance Film Festival 2017

    How Trump trumped the media: Documentary examines how the press got the election so wrong

    Jane Howze
    Jan 24, 2017 | 11:20 am

    Donald Trump may have officially assumed the nation's highest office in Washington, D.C., but he continues to be a major presence at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “Trumped: Inside the Greatest Political Upset of All Time” was screened for 200 members of the press Monday in a tent off Main Street in Park City, Utah, while a ferocious blizzard caused water to drip from a leaky ceiling. Despite the less than ideal conditions no one left.

    The documentary, created by John Heilemann, who has covered every election since 1992, Mark Halperin and former Austin political operative Mark McKinnon (creators of Showtime’s The Circus) analyzes the 2016 election from the vantage point of hindsight and as a result offers an outside-the-bubble perspective of how nearly everyone in the media got the bizarre and unprecedented presidential election so wrong. It traces Trump’s entry into the race, his destruction of each Republican contender, and culminates in his surprise election victory.

    Heilemann, in the Q&A session following the film, acknowledged that Sundance booked the film when it was just an idea and that his team had worked around the clock since the election and had only finished editing the film this week.

    The highly entertaining documentary focuses on the campaign from the press’s perspective, including many of the sound bites already seen on TV. Political junkies expecting insight from his advisers will be disappointed — the filmmakers let the story unfold through replays of his press conferences, the debates and several short interviews from the Trump private jet — always with a TV on in the background. I found these particularly interesting.

    On one you can catch a glimpse of Trump from a distance talking animatedly and affectionately with Melania Trump. On another, an interviewer asks Trump if he gets coached on what to say and he says no, he doesn’t need that. He speaks from his heart. Indeed he does and the film shows that while many supporters don't like all he says, they like that he is unscripted.

    This documentary has some laugh-out-loud parts, perhaps because truth can sometimes provide the best humor. Does anyone remember in 2015, when then-President Obama was asked if he could imagine Trump as president and he replied “yes, in a Saturday Night Live skit?” Similarly Trump’s comments about his….er…manhood, when replayed, had many in the audience chortling. If you just watched those snippets, you could see how the election was so shocking.

    Yet, through the lens of hindsight, the spectacle of the Trump plane pulling up to a hangar full of supporters, the excitement of the crowds (one young woman stated “I grew up watching him on The Apprentice”) and the politically incorrect and supremely confident Trump provided a moment of “How did we all miss this?”

    The film chronicles election night at Hillary Clinton’s extravagantly outfitted Jacob Javits Center election party that included a glass ceiling and a stage in the shape of the United States. One of the first signs that all was not going well was NBC's Andrea Mitchell telling the filmmakers that she is getting unsettling reports from Michigan. The film shows the shock and dismay of the filmmakers: “We were wrong and we need to figure out why.”

    Concluding the Q&A, Heilemann was asked by someone who was tactfully critical of the press (this is Sundance after all — not many openly Trump supporters here), asking what happened to reporter objectivity. He replied that everyone agrees the press is “fucked up” but they disagree on why.

    Some critics have taken the filmmakers to task for not trying to destroy Trump. He commented, “I think that it is incumbent on journalists not to become dispassionate because that’s phony. I think you should be passionate for the things that matter which are things like truth and accountability. We should try to represent the interests of the country and to hold people in power accountable and try to stay focused on what is true and which is false. “

    Even those who didn’t vote for Trump will find this documentary interesting, entertaining and instructional for future campaigns —even though, in the documentary, Bernie Sanders warns that an election should not be sport or a soap opera. The documentary will be screened on Showtime on February 3.

    In one segment, an interviewer asks Trump if he gets coached on what to say and he says no, he doesn’t need that. He speaks from his heart.

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    Movie Review

    Avatar: Fire and Ash returns to Pandora with big action and bold visuals

    Alex Bentley
    Dec 18, 2025 | 5:00 pm
    Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
    Oona Chaplin in Avatar: Fire and Ash.

    For a series whose first two films made over $5 billion combined worldwide, Avatar has a curious lack of widespread cultural impact. The films seem to exist in a sort of vacuum, popping up for their run in theaters and then almost as quickly disappearing from the larger movie landscape. The third of five planned movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash, is finally being released three years after its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water.

    The new film finds the main duo, human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and his native Na’vi wife, Neytiri (Zoë Saldaña), still living with the water-loving Metkayina clan led by Ronal (Kate Winslet) and Tonowari (Cliff Curtis). While Jake and Neytiri still play a big part, the focus shifts significantly to their two surviving children, Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as two they’ve essentially adopted, Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and Spider (Jack Champion).

    Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who lives on in a fabricated Na’vi body, is still looking for revenge on Jake, and he finds help in the form of the Mangkwan Clan (aka the Ash People), led by Varang (Oona Chaplin). Quaritch’s access to human weapons and the Mangkwan’s desire for more power on the moon known as Pandora make them a nice match, and they team up to try to dominate the other tribes.

    Aside from the story, the main point of making the films for writer/director James Cameron is showing off his considerable technical filmmaking prowess, and that is on full display right from the start. The characters zoom around both the air and sea on various creatures with which they’ve bonded, providing Cameron and his team with plenty of opportunities to put the audience right there with them. Cameron’s preferred viewing method of 3D makes the experience even more immersive, even if the high frame rate he uses makes some scenes look too realistic for their own good.

    The story, as it has been in the first two films, is a mixed bag. Cameron and co-writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver start off well, having Jake, Neytiri, and their kids continue mourning the death of Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) in the previous film. The struggle for power provides an interesting setup, but Cameron and his team seem to drag out the conflict for much too long. This is the longest Avatar film yet, and you really start to feel it in the back half as the filmmakers add on a bunch of unnecessary elements.

    Worse than the elongated story, though, is the hackneyed dialogue that Cameron, Jaffa, and Silver have come up with. Almost every main character is forced to spout lines that diminish the importance of the events around them. The writers seemingly couldn’t resist trying to throw in jokes despite them clashing with the tone of the scenes in which they’re said. Combined with the somewhat goofy nature of the Na’vi themselves (not to mention talking whales), the eye-rolling words detract from any excitement or emotion the story builds up.

    A pre-movie behind-the-scenes short film shows how the actors act out every scene in performance capture suits, lending an authenticity to their performances. Still, some performers are better than others, with Saldaña, Worthington, and Lang standing out. It’s more than a little weird having Weaver play a 14-year-old girl, but it works relatively well. Those who actually get to show their real faces are collectively fine, but none of them elevate the film overall.

    There are undoubtedly some Avatar superfans for which Fire and Ash will move the larger story forward in significant ways. For anyone else, though, the film is a demonstration of both the good and bad sides of Cameron. As he’s proven for 40 years, his visuals are (almost) beyond reproach, but the lack of a story that sticks with you long after you’ve left the theater keeps the film from being truly memorable.

    ---

    Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theaters on December 19.

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