Pop Culture Roundup: This Week

Robert Redford doing a movie about Dan Rather and his report on George W. Bush’s military record

If a top-notch movie is built on the foundation of its casting choices, then "Truth" may be one of the year's sturdiest. As evidenced in this clip -- exclusive to The Huffington Post and its parent company, AOL -- Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford make for one of 2015's finest onscreen pairings. Blanchett portrays the venerable producer responsible for the widely criticized "60 Minutes" story that led to the 2005 downfall of Dan Rather, played by Redford. The episode plays out like a taut newsroom drama in "Truth," which marks the directorial debut of "Zodiac" and "Amazing Spider-Man" writer James Vanderbilt. The movie opens Oct. 16.

‘Stonewall’s’ warped gay history 

Roland Emmerich’s “Stonewall,” a departure from the director’s normal action fare, arrived in theaters this weekend dogged by criticism that the filmabout one of the seminal moments in American gay rights history marginalized the transgender people and people of color who played a critical role in the riots against police brutality. Having seen the movie, I can say that despite its white male protagonist, Emmerich gives a lot of screen time to transgender women of color, and the film’s sympathies lie more with them than with middle-age and more moderate gay male activists. But while the utter incompetence of “Stonewall” as a movie means that there’s little risk that it will substantially distort a well-established historical record, the movie’s strange approach to gay activism extends far beyond the question of who struck the first blow against the cops. 

The Imitation Game was a mess, the past deserves better, says historian

The Academy Award-winning film The Imitation Game was an “absolute historical mess of the first order”, the eminent historian Antony Beevor has said.

He warned of the “real danger” of fiction masquerading as fact in novels and on screen, and accused the film’s creators of “changing characters deliberately”. He suggested that unless historical figures were portrayed accurately their names should be changed to keep them “one step away from reality”.