Help with film title?

Tim

Creative Writer
watched late one night over ten years ago.

it was a drama in semi documentary style about a news channel covering events round a terrorist nuking of a US city. i remember the nuke was placed on a boat in harbour and a reporter/newscameraman was on board a US naval vessel out at sea from the harbour when it went off whilst swat and bomb disposal moved in, unable to defuse the bomb.

it's vaguely in my head, not on the tip of my tongue, something like :

CBS News Broadcast
 
woohoo! thankgod for bloggers!

Special Bulletin

Special Bulletin (TV Movie 1983) - IMDb


believe me, i've googled and googled and googled till i thought i'd never find the films name. but due to the advent of more bloggers post inane stuff on the net i finally get the name of the film i have to try tracking down and into my collection!

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from the bloggers site :


"Special Bulletin proved once again how difficult it is for some people to separate a legitimate news report from a staged performance if you give the performance the a news look and sound of news that people are familiar with. Instead of Martians landing in Grovers Mills, New Jersey, Special Bulletin has terrorists with an atomic bomb treating to blow up Charlotte, North Carolina.

The finer you draw the line between fact and fiction, the harder it is for more and more people to see the truth. I was one of the people initially fooled by Special Bulletin because of the circumstances under which I saw it. I don't know why I had my TV tuned to whatever station it was on, but I was busy with something else and not paying much attention.

The first thing that got my attention was the announcement of a special bulletin by somebody who looked and sounded like a network news anchor. I didn’t know who he was, but I figured he could have been a new guy. I didn’t notice the phony network because I thought I knew what network I was watching. I didn’t know any of the actors so I didn’t know they were acting…until I started noticing something peculiar about the way some of the people on "live" camera were talking. People who should have been cussin’ like troopers were using language suitable for "all audiences." Then I started noticing other little tings that didn’t look or feel quite right until it slowly dawned on me that I had been had.

Once I began to question the reality of what I was seeing the more obvious the act became. If I saw it again I could probably tell you the point at which I started to see the light. I’m pretty sure it was at least ten minutes. What was embarrassing then, was the fact that I didn’t see the clues that were staring me in the fact all along. "

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and i'll admit, like a certain UK nuclear war drama : Threads, which i watched whilst in zimbabwe on the 40th anniversary of the bombing of japan, the news report styling fooled me, for a bit!!! just enough to wake me up to carry on watching when it was late at night and i was getting ready to switch the tv off (you know, that last flicking through the channels before you go to bed to see what you are going to miss :smiley: )

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viewer review off amazon.com :


[font=verdana,arial,helvetica][size=-1]
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AT 4AM COMMING IN IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS MOVIE....., March 12, 2003
[/size][/font][font=verdana,arial,helvetica][size=-1][/size][/font][font=verdana,arial,helvetica][size=-1]Reviewer: peggy rose thompson (Campbellton,, FL United States) - See all my reviews [/size][/font]IN 1988, I BEGAN MY JOB AT 5AM. AS I DRESST TO GO, I HAD TURNED THE TV ON. THE MOVIE HAD BEGAN. MY FIANCE BROUGHT ME COFFEE ON HIS WAY HOME FROM HIS 3RD SHIFT JOB. HE TURNED THE SOUND UP AND WE BOTH WATCHT IN SILENCE.I WAS PUTTING ON PINK SOCKS (I DO REMEMBER THAT)! WE LIVED IN NASHVILLE AT THE TIME, NOT FAR FROM
THE 'SITE' OF THE ACTION. I WAS SO SCARED!, I WAS WEEPING. I ASKT HIM IF I "SHOULD GO AHEAD & PICK UP THOSE SICK PEOPLE & TAKE THEM TO DIALYSIS?" "SHOULD WE JUST STAY TOGETHER? NO PLACE TO HIDE OR OUTRUN THE INEVITABLE"!. I WAS EXTREMELY DISTRAUGHT. WE DID DECIDE TO STAY W/ OUR RESPECTIVE SCHEDULES AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. I REMEMBER SAYING "MAYBE THIS IS A BIG JOKE ON EVERYONE." I THOUGHT ED FLANDERS WAS WALTER CRONKITE? NO ONE LOOKT LIKE tv STARS...I PICKT UP MY PATIENTS & DELIVERED THEM TO THE CENTER. NONE OF THE NURSES LOOKT UPSET. I CALLED HOME, AND WAS TOLD BY MY FIANCE, THAT HE'D LOOKT AT THE STATION TO THE END,
AND IT WAS "JUST" A MOVIE. WE NEVER SAW THE DISCLAIMERS? I JUST JUST KNEW
"JUDGEMENT DAY" HAD ARRIVED.&..I LEARNED TO TRY TO "STAY READY". TOMMORROW IS NOT PROMISED. THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY UNFORGETTABLE MOVIE! ESPECIALLY IN 1988, AT FOUR O'CLOCK AM IN THE PREDAWN HOURS ...... O3/13/03 PEGGYROSEINWOODS

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the filming style of this movie has that edge that the tv series Homicide : Life On The Street has. coming from before NYPD blue H:LOTS used handheld digicams to record everything that went on with the main characters and the routine sounds of the city intruding into the film. Special Bulletin was recorded onto video, not film. this meant that everything looked more believable and aired originally during a time when most people didn't have effective tv schedulers, it could very likely have set a few heart attacks off or sent survivalists into the hills. admittedly in this day and age, obtaining the film on purpose will lose that very feel that changing channels and finding it on live had, but the films merits can be dissected at will and make you wonder why the networks don't create something similar from time to time and just air it without pomp or reason. War of the Worlds was maybe the first effective armerican "live" broadcast to scare the hell out of the public in the name of entertainment, this was the next stage in tv's evolution in this genre.
 
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