Blogumentary
Arts: Chuck Olsen. Blogumentary.org. 65 minutes.
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This playful jaunt through the blogosphere is aptly shot in an informal, first-person, all-access style. Director Chuck Olsen, an avid blogger himself, used his own blog to document the making of this film, posting scenes while it was still in production.
Olsen sees the blog movement, with its watchdog agenda, as a revolutionary means of returning the media to its "rightful owners" -- the people -- after more than four decades of TV-news pollution. Blogumentary spans a wide web of material, with stops at Howard Dean’s "geek-powered" campaign headquarters and the suburban patio of a right-wing blogger for Power Line.
The film examines the considerable role that blogs played in forcing Trent Lott’s resignation and, more recently, in Rathergate. Along the way, we hear from Entertainment Weekly founder-turned-blogger Jeff Jarvis, web philosopher David Weinberger, We the Media author Dan Gillmor, and front-line war correspondent Stuart Hughes.
Like Olsen’s own blog, Blogumentary is highly personal, particularly when the filmmaker turns the camera on himself in the middle of the night to capture his grief over having accidentally deleted his site. Taking a cue from William Hurt’s network anchor in Broadcast News, this foot soldier in the "pajama brigade" proves he’s not above keeping his own tears in the final cut.
