Filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated film, Zero Dark Thirty, which dramatized the hunt for Osama bin Laden that ended in his execution, were known to have communicated with the CIA multiple times during production. Now, according to a declassified memo obtained by Gawker, it appears the CIA successfully convinced screenwriter Mark Boal to censor and rewrite certain scenes in the film that the CIA did not think presented the agency appropriately .

Film critic Roger Ebert taught us to love the movies. He taught us to love movies for over forty years, as a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times.

I greatly enjoy cinema and make a list of top films that I post every year. Here are some reflections on the films nominated this year.

An HBO documentary on the right that everyone has to a defense lawyer when they are charged with a crime, even if they cannot afford one, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film “Gideon’s Army,” was featured on “Democracy Now!” this morning.

A documentary the filmmakers describe as a “deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance” in a West Bank village threatened by Israeli settlements, which is short-listed for an Academy Award, is streaming now for free through January 6.

Throughout the year, I watch many films. Not only do I enjoy cinema and have a degree in Film/Video, but I find films provide me a way to refresh my insights and keep from getting too burned out from covering an issue or topic as a writer.

The introduction for the New York Times‘ coverage of a police shooting in the commercially decadent hub of New York known as Times Square is the following, “When the tourists and shoppers thronging Times Square on Saturday afternoon first saw the police officers, guns drawn, confronting a knife-wielding man, many thought they had stumbled onto a movie set.” The scene, however, ended with shots being fired that killed a man who had been chased for around seven blocks. So, Times writers add, “It was quickly apparent this was no celluloid fantasy.”

Over at La Figa, Firedoglake‘s politics, entertainment and pop culture blog, Lisa Derrick will be live blogging the Oscars, including the Red Carpet special. Derrick put up a post yesterday on what she thinks we have to look forward to during the Oscars, hinted at the fact that the “French,” through The Artist, could sweep the Oscars and she highlighted the “heavyweight” battle in Best Director category.

So, why is the guy that writes about WikiLeaks, drones, the Occupy movement, torture, etc, doing a post on his Oscar picks?

An Iraq war veteran, who is the focus of one of the short documentaries nominated for an Academy Award, is receiving death threats for providing his individual account of what happened during an incident that has come to be known as the “Collateral Murder” incident.

Girls and women migrate into the Bosnia sex industry because of lack of opportunity and poor economic conditions. Generally coming from Eastern European countries, they answer ads and are promised good job only to find they become property of traffickers. They are moved across borders on routes that avoid official border crossings, all to disorient the girls and women who are likely to attempt escape. The girls and women are sometimes forced to strip naked before their “buyer” and are sold like slaves to men.