<p><span class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><span><span data-post-image="" class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54a2ce30dd089569458b45c0-809-606/snowden.jpg" border="0" alt="Snowden"><span class="source"><span>'Citizenfour'</span></span><span class="caption">NSA leaker Edward Snowden</span></img></span><p></p></span></span>It's not easy to truly be anonymous online. Sure, there are plenty of chat apps and secret-sharing sites that claim to offer you privacy, but it's tricky to know whether US intelligence agencies have a backdoor in them or not.&#xa0;</p>
<p>The best way to stay anonymous online has been to use Tor, a special kind of web browser developed to help US government employees hide their tracks online.</p>
<p>But if you want to be properly anonymous, you need a combination of extra services and websites on top of Tor to avoid detection.&#xa0;<a href="https://www.reddit.com/comments/whg1n/how_to_stay_anonymous_a_guide/">There are plenty of online guides&#xa0;that offer advice</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">, but it's always been hit and miss.&#xa0;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Now, leaked NSA documents provide a big clue on how to remain hidden. They show that the agency has trouble breaking certain methods of encryption.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html">Der Spiegel published a collection of documents that detail what systems the NSA has troubling decrypting</a>. In the past documents have mainly focused on what the NSA is good at, not what it finds difficult.&#xa0;</p>
<p>The documents reveal that the NSA ranks targets according to how difficult they are to decrypt. There are five internal levels: One to five. Level one is known as "trivial," meaning it's pretty easy for the NSA to track targets or decrypt messages. But level five is "catastrophic," which essentially means that the NSA can't break the encryption.</p>
<p>The NSA says that reading someone's Facebook message is a level two "minor" task. And monitoring people using Tor is tricky, with the NSA classing that as a "major" level four problem.&#xa0;</p>
<p>So any level of anonymity classed as level five, known as "catastrophic," means that the NSA will find it near-impossible to break.&#xa0;</p>
<p>The NSA identifies one anonymity method which it warns is virtually impossible to break. Here's the method outlined in the leaked documents:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Tor</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">VPN</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">CSpace</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">ZRTP</span></li>
</ul>
<p>Let's break that down: Tor is the special kind of web browser that helps people stay anonymous online by encrypting their web traffic. A VPN is a service that makes an internet connection more secure, using proxy servers to hide their real-world location.&#xa0;</p>
<p>CSpace is a kind of anonymous internet chat service that uses heavy encryption to protect any files sent over its network. And ZRTP, the last part of the method, is a kind of encryption for voice calls and text chats.</p>
<p>Combine the above stack of services together, using multiple kind of encryption, a special web browser, and a service to hide your location, and the NSA claims in its internal documents that it probably won't be able to read your messages. The leaked NSA document says that the encryption method results in a "near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications, presence."</p>

Leaked NSA Documents Reveal The Best Way To Stay Anonymous Online

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/51b09690eab8eaa951000001-1200-924/rtr18ywc.jpg?maxX=484&amp;maxY=360" border="0" alt="RTR18YWC" width="484" height="360"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&amp;VBID=2C0BXZL70NPUN&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1817&amp;RH=831">REUTERS/Jason Reed</a></span></p><p class="caption">Another leaker among their ranks?</p></img></div><p></p></div>For months, journalist Glenn Greenwald has suggested that Edward Snowden wasn't his only source of national security-related leaks. On July 4, Greenwald tweeted that it "<a href="https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064">seems clear</a>" there were multiple leakers from inside the US intelligence apparatus, a statement that implied Snowden may have started a wave of disclosures from national security insiders that the US intelligence community would be powerless to stop.</p>
<p>Now, Yahoo investigative journalist Michael Isikoff is <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker--for-snowden-reporters-165741571.html">reporting that Greenwald's second leaker is under federal investigation</a>, specifically for passing along information on the US government's terrorist watch list that became the basis for <a href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/05/watch-commander/">a major story in The Intercept on Aug. 5</a>.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Isikoff reports that "</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The FBI recently executed a search" of the home of "</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">an employee of a federal contracting firm,"</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> while "federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter" of the alleged leaks. One source told Isikoff that</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> investigators are pursuing the case, "but are not ready to charge yet."</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Shortly after The Intercept published its story in August, US officials told CNN that the scoop had<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-leaker-who-isnt-edward-snowden-2014-8"> convinced them that there was a second leaker</a> within their ranks with access to sensitive national security information.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Greenwald has used the existence of this second leaker to legitimize Snowden's actions. As Isikoff notes, there's one point in "Citizenfour," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/citizenfour-review-of-snowden-movie-2014-10">filmmaker Laura Poitras's recent documentary</a> about the Snowden leaks, in which Greenwald reveals the existence of the other leaker to Snowden himself.</span></p>
<p class="p1">"The person is incredibly bold," Snowden says when Greenwald tells him about the other leaker. "It was motivated by what you did," Greenwald replies.</p>
<p class="p1">Additional leakers would potentially aid the case for offering some form of amnesty to Snowden. New leakers would prove the lack of a robust internal process for addressing the concerns of whistleblowers while helping to create the public pressure needed to reform the US national security apparatus - thus vindicating Snowden and bolstering the case for allowing him to return to the US.</p>
<p class="p1">If the government has in fact identified a second leaker, the case will be a benchmark for how and whether the US's stance towards national security leakers has changed in the 16 months since the first Snowden disclosures. The alleged leaker revealed highly sensitive and compartmentalized information, and he or she would likely qualify as the most high-profile leaker to emerge since Snowden became a household name.</p>
<p class="p1"><span>Isikoff notes that some inside the intelligence community </span><a href="https://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker--for-snowden-reporters-165741571.html">believe that federal investigators are now notably hesitant</a><span> in pursuing criminal cases against leakers. T</span>his case may clarify whether the Snowden precedent, and over a year of national debate on the scope, purpose, and legality of the US's government's surveillance programs, has had any impact on the government's approach. </p>

REPORT: The FBI Has Raided The Home Of The 'Second Snowden' Leaking Stories To Journalists 

<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/552d2303ecad04537d23faac-808-606/snowden-141.jpg" border="0" alt="Snowden"><p class="source"><span>'Citizenfour'</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div>The Wall Street Journal </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/snowden-and-beijings-cannon-1428968106">thinks</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> Edward Snowden may have incidentally provided China with a new, powerful cyberweapon.</span></span></p><p>China is known for its "Great Firewall," a nationwide system of web blocks and filters that the government uses to maintain strict online censorship in mainland China.</p><p>Now it reportedly has a complementary offensive tool - dubbed the Great Cannon - to go after sites it doesn't like. And Snowden may be to blame.</p><p>"The Great Cannon is not simply an extension of the Great Firewall," <a href="https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/">experts at the <span>University of Toronto's Citizen Lab</span> reported</a>, "but a distinct attack tool that hijacks traffic to (or presumably from) individual IP addresses, and can arbitrarily replace unencrypted content as a man-in-the-middle."</p><p>China <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-just-revealed-a-terrifying-new-cyberweapon-2015-4">can now re-route innocent traffic</a> coming to Chinese websites and use it for a malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to overload the servers of another website. It may also be able to inject malicious code into target computers.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/552d25f769beddb1724fe556-1024-735/image01-1024x735.png" border="0" alt="China's " Great="" Cannon=""><p class="source"><span>CitizensLab</span></p><p class="caption">This diagram shows how China's "Great Cannon" works with its "Great Firewall" to hijack traffic and attack the websites GitHub and GreatFire.org.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Citizen's Lab notes that the only other "<span>known instances of governments tampering with unencrypted Internet traffic to control information or launch attacks"<span> involve the use of a program called QUANTUM that was developed by the US's National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).</span></span></p><p><span>Snowden <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/10/how_the_nsa_att.html">revealed</a> the existence of QUANTUM through slides given to American journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong after he arrived on May 20 2013. The Journal is now wondering if the former NSA contractor provided the source code to Beijing before flying to Moscow on June 23.</span></p><p><span>"Did Snowden give the Chinese the code for the Great Cannon?" The editorial <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/snowden-and-beijings-cannon-1428968106">asks</a>. "He denies sharing anything with foreign governments. But then he's an admitted liar, and we don't know what the Chinese and Russian spy services have been able to copy from what he stole."</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b1a1b4ecad04fd4286766b-1200-1000/rtx10wqs.jpg" border="0" alt="snowden"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Bobby Yip</span></p><p class="caption">A monitor broadcasts news on the charges against Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), by the United States, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong June 22, 2013.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Journal's evidence regarding Snowden and the Great Cannon is scant and circumstantial and is mainly based on suspicion of Snowden, the similarities between the Great Cannon and QUANTUM, and timing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">"A South China Morning Post </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;"></span><a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1764378/chinas-great-cannon-programme-has-been-development-about-year-sources-say">report</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;"> that the Great Cannon has been under development for about a year is suggestive," the Journal asserts. "This means China's hacking bureaucracy geared up to produce this new product soon after the Snowden leaks."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #000000;">In any case, China now has a powerful new cyberweapon to enforce its the world's vastest internet censorship regime.</span></p><p>"The operational deployment of the Great Cannon represents a significant escalation in state-level information control: the normalization of widespread use of an attack tool to enforce censorship by weaponizing users," CitizenLab <a href="https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/">notes</a>.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-impact-brain-body-sleep-2015-2">This is what happens to your brain and body when you check your phone before bed</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="BvMjVqcjoHdZBG6tTpXy8UkhB5_46U_c" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'BvMjVqcjoHdZBG6tTpXy8UkhB5_46U_c',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

The Wall Street Journal suggests that Snowden gave China an incredibly powerful cyber weapon

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/569931708d3eae2603e0158b-1920-1080/the%20girlfriend%20experience%20transactional%20pictures%20of%20ny%20lp.jpg" alt="The Girlfriend Experience Transactional Pictures of NY LP" data-mce-source="Transactional Pictures of NY LP"><p class="source"><span>Transactional Pictures of NY LP</span></p><p class="caption">"The Girlfriend Experience."</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>Since his self-imposed retirement from directing movies in 2013, Steven Soderbergh has not eased back on his workload.<p>He was an executive producer on an Oscar-winning documentary, "Citizenfour," and was executive producer/cinematographer on the "Magic Mike" sequel, "Magic Mike XXL." But the terrain he's been most interested in exploring is television.</p><p>Along with directing HBO's Liberace biopic "Behind the Candelabra," starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, since 2014 he's also directed every episode of the acclaimed Cinemax series "The Knick," starring Clive Owen as an unorthodox surgeon at a New York City hospital in the early 20th century.</p><p>Now for his latest TV project, the Oscar-winning director is staying behind the scenes and introducing the mainstream to the talents of some of independent film's best and brightest.</p><p>"The Girlfriend Experience" (premiering on Starz on Sunday), is an adaptation of Soderbergh's 2009&#xa0; film of the same name that looks at the life of a high-end Manhattan call girl as she interacts with her wealthy clients. But what sets this call girl apart from others is her willingness to have an emotional connection with her clients, not just sex - known in the industry as a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlfriend_experience" target="_blank">girlfriend experience.</a>"</p><p>Soderbergh was pitched the TV idea by producer friend Philip Fleishman. The director saw potential to tell the story on the cheap, as he did with the movie version, which was made for just over $1 million.</p><p>But Soderbergh didn't want to direct the TV version (he is an executive producer on the show). Instead, he wanted the entire series to be made by two filmmakers, one male and one female.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/570412cc52bcd01f7b8baa68-1200-900/amy%20seimetz%20jason%20kempin%20getty%20final.jpg" alt="Amy Seimetz Jason Kempin Getty final" data-mce-source="Jason Kempin/Getty"><p class="source"><span>Jason Kempin/Getty</span></p><p class="caption">Amy Seimetz.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>He called on indie film veteran <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0449868/?ref_=ttfc_fc_dr1#director" target="_blank">Lodge Kerrigan</a> and actress/director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1541272/?ref_=nv_sr_2" target="_blank">Amy Seimetz</a>, whose work has been a mainstay in the low-budget film world for over a decade.<p>"Soderbergh called me to do it and I was like, 'I've never directed television,' and he was like, 'That's the best way to start,'" Seimetz told Business Insider at this year's Sundance Film Festival.</p><p>The plan was not to take on the series in a traditional sense, but to use Kerrigan and Seimetz's experience as independent filmmakers who know how to stretch a dollar to basically create a low-budget TV show.</p><p>"That's the reason why Lodge and I got executive producer credit on the show, too," Seimetz said. "In TV, the power is where the money goes and when you're working at this budget and you want it to appear on screen, the director and the EP have to agree where the resources are being allocated properly."</p><p>Seimetz wouldn't divulge the show's budget, only saying that by TV standards it's low, but in the world of indie films it's a good amount of money.</p><p>"For the cost of one episode, I could go out and make numerous movies," she said. "But at this level, you can't ask people to take $100 a day. They are getting decent union pay on this."</p><p>Like the movie, Starz's "The Girlfriend Experience" is shot with natural lighting on inexpensive cameras and has&#xa0;a cast of character actors. And the show's lead is a relative newcomer, Riley Keough (porn star Sasha Grey was the lead in the movie version), who plays a twentysomething who spends her days as a law student and nights as a call girl.</p><p>But creatively, the show extends further than the movie did, something Soderbergh encouraged Seimetz and Kerrigan to do.</p><p>"It was always supposed to be taking this topic and making something new," Seimetz said.</p><p>And to do that, Seimetz and Kerrigan spent a lot of time interviewing call girls, learning that portraying the girlfriend experience for a client isn't just about gaining money and power.</p><p>"They make a lot of money, yes," Seimetz said. "Some of these women don't take a client for less than $10,000. But I think that's not a motivating factor for all women. I think it's a rush of being in a secret world. And I don't know if they seek power. They like getting into the intimate space with men."</p><p>Though Seimetz has never asked Soderbergh, she believes his motivation behind having a male and female perspective in the director chair was giving the show a different feel than most TV.</p><p>"It's very common, the idea of the male gaze and how that is portrayed in cinema and TV," she said. "I think it's interesting that he wants to see the storytelling told by both a male and female, if there's a difference. Is there a difference between a female gaze and a male gaze?"</p><p><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/I40Z6pp8-30" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div></p><p><em>"The Girlfriend Experience" premieres on Sunday on Starz.</em></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/games-of-thrones-book-characters-ages-2016-3">'Game of Thrones' is even more shocking when you realize how young the characters are</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VzeWRvdzqitOjLRYRgR6KucEZgGjAwU5" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'VzeWRvdzqitOjLRYRgR6KucEZgGjAwU5',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

How TV's provocative new call-girl drama 'The Girlfriend Experience' breaks all the rules

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/586fccf0ee14b637588b6799-2400/undefined" alt="Debbie Reynolds Carrie Fisher" data-mce-source="Getty/Ethan Miller"><p class="source"><span>Getty/Ethan Miller</span></p><p class="caption">(L-R) Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>The world lost two of Hollywood's most towering figures in little more than the blink of an eye with the shocking deaths of Carrie Fisher, on December 27, and her mother Debbie Reynolds the next day.<p>As is so often the case&#xa0;in the career of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-sheila-nevins-hbo-documentary-films-president-2015-6">Sheila Nevins</a>, head of HBO Documentary Films, her cameras will be the coda to the story.</p><p>On Saturday at 8 p.m., HBO will air the documentary "Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds." Directed by Fisher Stevens and Alexis Bloom, it gives an intimate final look inside the lives and professions of the two legends who have been dominating the news and your social-media timelines for weeks.</p><p>This is familiar ground for Nevins. When the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Memphis_Three" target="_blank">West Memphis Three</a> were finally let out of prison in 2011 after decades of being on death row for a crime they didn't commit (a story brought to light by the HBO documentary "Paradise Lost" and its sequel), her cameras were there among the throng of press to recount their release. The event would later be fleshed out in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's final chapter, "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory."</p><p>From the&#xa0;shocking conclusion to the true-crime miniseries "The Jinx" to director Laura Poitras' encounter with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the Oscar-winning "Citizenfour," Nevins has made HBO the home for getting the deeper story behind news that's captivated the country.</p><p>But the death of Carrie Fisher was different because Nevins was a close friend of the actress and writer.</p><p>Nevins first became captivated by Fisher while sitting with an audience to watch her one-woman show "Wishful Drinking" in 2009. She went to Fisher so HBO Documentary Films could tape a version for the channel. That led to a friendship between the two until Fisher's sudden death.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/557f010f6da8114f57322ae0-2400/sheila-nevins-stephen-lovekin-getty.jpg" alt="Sheila Nevins Stephen Lovekin Getty" data-mce-source="Stephen Lovekin/Getty"><p class="source"><span>Stephen Lovekin/Getty</span></p><p class="caption">Sheila Nevins.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>"It was instant love," Nevins recently told Business Insider over the phone while getting emotional. "I so admired her honesty and her intelligence. I mean there was nothing about her that was phony."<p>Nevins recalls that Fisher was the same to everyone, whether they were going to stores together, having lunches, or Fisher was signing autographs at New York Comic-Con.</p><p>"Carrie was no different with those people on that line than she was with celebrities," Nevins said. "She was one person fighting to be alive, fighting to have fun, fighting to survive mental illness." <br><br>Then two years ago Nevins got a call from Fisher Stevens with the idea of doing a documentary about&#xa0;the lives of both Carrie Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds, an icon in her own right going back to her starring role in the 1952 musical "Singin' in the Rain."</br></br></p><p>"Bright Lights" follows the two through their everyday lives, which often started with Carrie walking the path to her mother's house, as the two lived beside one another in separate houses on the same plot of land they called "the compound." When the two aren't having back-and-forth repartee similar to the leads from the landmark Maysles brothers' documentary "Grey Gardens," they are on the road giving the fans what they want. For Reynolds, at 83, it's doing a lounge act in a casino in Connecticut while Fisher goes to a comic convention or is in London shooting "The Force Awakens."</p><p>"I was always interested in that house. I was always bewitched by the relationship, but it didn't occur to me that it would be something to make a documentary about," said Nevins, who gave complete credit to Stevens and Alexis Bloom for convincing her it could be a movie.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/586fce00ee14b61c008b6f2e-644/undefined" alt="Bright Lights HBO" data-mce-source="HBO"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p><p class="caption">"Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds."</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>"Bright Lights" has been completed for a while and played at the Cannes and New York Film Festivals in 2016. It was scheduled to premiere on HBO May 8 (Mother's Day) and even when Nevins got word of Fisher's death she was wasn't going to change the airdate.<p>"When I found out she died, I almost couldn't speak because I thought she would be okay," Nevins said. "I didn't realistically face what could happen and we weren't given information that she wasn't responding. If she's breathing she'll come back."</p><p>Nevins made the decision to keep the Mother's Day airdate as the film would now be for Reynolds to remember her daughter. But then when Reynolds died, Nevis felt it had to air immediately.</p><p>"It seemed like a piece of memorabilia that needed to be shared with the public," she said. "This movie was them, unadulterated, this was the way they were. From Debbie not wanting anyone to come in because she didn't feel well, Carrie losing weight and drinking Coca-Cola - that was the life as I had seen it and it seemed like it was time to share it because it couldn't be given to someone like Debbie, but it could be given to the audience."</p><p>The passing of Debbie Reynolds is another step away from the old Hollywood royalty that was born and bred within the studio system. But Nevins said she could never see an end in sight for Fisher and that's what's most painful about her death.</p><p>"Carrie still had a million books, a million shows, a million wisecracks," Nevins said. "There were many, many more songs that Carrie had to sing, and I don't mean just music. I think she still had a lot of things to talk about. She wasn't the end of anything - she ended too soon."</p><div><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/K97Rthh-qmk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blade-runner-2049-sequel-trailer-harrison-ford-2016-12">We just got our first look at 'Blade Runner 2049' and it looks amazing</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="FqNXhkODE6oT23NV7CIanNBKSkhWRwC5" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'FqNXhkODE6oT23NV7CIanNBKSkhWRwC5',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

An intimate new documentary looks at the real Carrie Fisher: 'There was nothing about her that was phony'

<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5460af2a69bedd3a16b76fb3-602-407/b2epiehcqaekzjk.png?maxX=800" border="0" alt="snowden" width="800"><p class="source"><span>Russian media</span></p></img></div><p></p></div>"Russian TV shows new photo of Edward Snowden playing with his dog Rick (?) somewhere in Russia," BBC News Moscow Correspondent Steve Rosenberg <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/531516087100514305">tweeted</a> on Sunday. "Host says: 'Both of them look at ease.'"<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></h3>
<p>Edward Snowden's latest appearance in Russian media shows the 31-year-old American with <a href="http://rt.com/news/203927-russia-snowden-dog-friend/">a dog named "Rick</a>."</p>
<p>Snowden has been in Russia since June 23, 2013. Here's how he got there:</p>
<p>After arriving in Hong Kong on May 20, 2012, Snowden spent <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-says-he-didnt-cover-his-tracks-in-hong-kong-2014-7#ixzz3ALSZpsWo">11 days off the grid</a> before checking into the Mira Hotel under his own name.</p>
<p>He <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/citizenfour-review-of-snowden-movie-2014-10">reportedly</a> met with American journalists Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald on June 3 and began publishing stories revealing NSA domestic spying.</p>
<p>On June 9, Snowden revealed himself to the world before <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-and-snowden-in-hong-kong-2014-7">reaching out</a> to WikiLeaks for help finding asylum. A few days later, he <span>provided documents </span><a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed">revealing</a><span> "operational details of specific attacks on computers, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, dates of attacks and whether a computer was still being monitored remotely" to </span><span></span><span>Lana Lam of the South China Morning Post.</span><span><br /></span></p>
<p><span>On June 15, the US asked Hong Kong to provisionally arrest Snowden for the purposes of extradition and subsequently <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-seeks-asylum-ecuador/story?id=19466318">revoked</a> his passport on June 22. WikiLeaks advisor Sarah Harrison flew to Moscow on June 23.</span></p>
<p>Very little is known about Snowden's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-wont-talk-about-russian-spies-2014-6">discussions</a> with Russian officials in Hong Kong or his living arrangements in Russia. Anatoly Kucherena, who sits on the public-relations body for the FSB, serves as Snowden's lawyer in Russia.</p>
<p>Ex-KGB Major Boris Karpichkov <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-kgb-spy-the-russians-tricked-snowden-2014-6">believes</a> that Russian spies tricked Snowden into going to Moscow. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-told-snowden-to-stay-in-russia-2014-5">said</a> that he advised Snowden to go to Russia and stay there because he wouldn't be safe elsewhere.</p>
<p>Here's a look at Snowden's photo opportunities in Russian media since he arrived in Moscow.</p>
<h3>July 12, 2013: Snowden announces his plea for Russian asylum at a press conference in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.</h3>
<p>"Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum," Snowden <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-asylum-statement-human-rights-groups-un-venezuela-russia-moscow-airport-2013-7#ixzz3IgHHYTxp">said in a statement</a>. "These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless."</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/51e00a5f6bb3f7e165000013-600-450/789800687.jpg" border="0" alt="Edward Snowden Moscow airport" width="800"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://twitter.com/KenRoth/status/355676544217264129">Twitter/@KenRoth</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></p>
<h3>August 1: Snowden leaves the  Sheremetyevo Airport and heads to an undisclosed location after being granted asylum and a Russian visa.</h3>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/521e1855eab8ea26402e077f-620-465/snowden-31.jpg" border="0" alt="snowden"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://twitter.com/daithaigilbert/status/363334665228152832/photo/1">Twitter</a></span></p><p class="caption">Snowden walking in Moscow Airport with WikiLeaks advisor Sarah Harrison and lawyer Anatoly Kucherena after being granted asylum.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5384afd26bb3f76d5adfdb98-1200-885/snowdend.jpg" border="0" alt="snowdend" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><p class="source"><span>Kremlin</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></h3>
<h3><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span></h3>
<h3><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-grocery-shopping-in-russia-2013-10">October 7</a>: A man who at least resembles Snowden is shown grocery shopping.</h3>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5252ce346bb3f72b4bfdcbb6-625-348/enhanced-buzz-31077-1381155407-0.jpg" border="0" alt="Snowden" width="800"><p class="source"><span>LifeNews</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></p>
<h3>October 9: Snowden receives an award in Moscow. He is joined by Harrison (2nd R) as well as US whistleblowers (L-R) Coleen Rowley (FBI), Thomas Drake (NSA), Jesselyn Raddack (DoJ) and Ray McGovern (CIA).</h3>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5257ddc169beddf05c57f2f4-594-375/bwocqircyaidx9_.jpg" border="0" alt="snowden" width="800"><p class="source"><span>Getty</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></h3>
<h3>October 31, 2013: Snowden is shown on a boat in Moscow with the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in the background.</h3>
<h3><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/52d9279969bedd403a60e6bf-1200-862/snow-26.jpg" border="0" alt="snowden"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS</span></p><p class="caption">A screenshot of Rossia 24 TV channel shows Edward Snowden on a boat trip in Moscow in September.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></h3>
<h3>April 17, 2014: Snowden <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-putin-q-a-surveillance-2014-4">appears</a> on a nationally-televised interview with Putin ask the Russian President if he spies on Russian citizens. Putin denies doing so.</h3>
<p>David Herszenhorn, a Moscow-based reporter for The New York Times, <a href="https://twitter.com/herszenhorn" target="_blank">called</a> it a "stunning in-your-face move" by the Kremlin.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5460c2a66bb3f7433eb76fad-1024-512/putin-snowden-4.jpeg" border="0" alt="Putin Snowden"><p class="source"><span>Twitter/@Ukroblogger</span></p><p class="caption">Snowden asking Putin a question on Russian TV in April 2014.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<h3>August 2014: Snowden is shown visiting Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre.<br><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53ecb3b869bedd657e2af1d8-600-497/bupym4wcyaaquim.jpg" border="0" alt="snowden" width="800" style="font-size: 1.17em;"><p class="source"><span>Life News</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></br></h3>
<h3><a href="https://twitter.com/joshuafoust/status/522426573941927936">After the release</a> of the documentary "Citizenfour" by Laura Poitras in October - the movie revealed that girlfriend Lindsay Mills has visited Snowden - Russian media released a photo of the two of them at the Bolshoi.</h3>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5460aee769beddfa23b76fab-634-509/1413311603816_wps_11_edward_snowden_pictured_w.jpg" border="0" alt="Snowden lindsay mills" width="800"><p class="source"><span>Russian media</span></p></img></div><p></p></div></p>
<h3>The US Intelligence Community has put together <a href="https://nsa.gov1.info/dni/snowden.html">a comprehensive list</a> of Snowden's interviews, statements, and appearances outside of Russian media.</h3>
<p>Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who co-authored <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Nobility-Restoration-Security/dp/1610390555">a history</a> of the Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/world/europe/snowden-russia.html">told The New York Times</a> last November 2013 that when the FSB "actually got him, they started to handle it their own way. This is the way the security services operate all the time."</p>
<p>American experts point out that the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-has-classified-intel-in-his-head-2013-7">classified intel in Snowden's brain</a> makes him very appealing to a US adversary like Russia.</p>
<p class="a3s">"To a foreign intelligence service, Snowden is priceless," <a href="https://twitter.com/robertcaruso" target="_blank">Robert Caruso</a>, a former assistant command security manager in the Navy who is now a consultant, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-edward-snowden-is-stuck-2014-4">told Business Insider</a>. "He can be exploited again and again." </p>
<p class="a3s">In any case, it's likely that the former NSA contractor will remain in Russia for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>"He does not have the training to deal with this kind of situation," Soldatov <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-snowden-may-never-leave-russia-2014-3">told Business Insider</a> in January. "Every time, he found himself in some new difficult circumstances and he was forced to make some decision. And long term, it's a very successful thing [for Russia]."</p>

Snowden's Latest Appearance In Russia Media Shows Him Petting A Dog

Here's Director Steven Soderbergh's Epic List Of Everything He Read And Watched In 2014

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image on-image"><a title_source="Kevin Winter/Getty Images" title_caption="The cast and crew of " Birdman="" take="" the="" stage="" to="" accept="" best="" picture="" award="" at="" Oscars.="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54eaba6f6da8113411fe8b83-960/birdman-best-picture.jpg"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54eaba6f6da8113411fe8b83-1200-800/birdman-best-picture.jpg" border="0" alt="birdman best picture oscar 2015" /></a><p class="source"><span>Kevin Winter/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">The cast and crew of "Birdman" take the stage to accept the best picture award at the 87th Oscars.</p></div><p></p></div></div>"Birdman" went home the big winner of the 87th Academy Awards.</p><p>The film won a total of four Oscars including best picture and best director.</p><p>Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore were among the other big winners of the night.</p><p>See all of the Oscar winners below. </p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Winners are highlighted in bold.</span></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Picture</strong></p><p>"American Sniper"<br><strong>"Birdman"</strong><br>"Boyhood" <br>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" <br>"The Imitation Game"<br>"Selma" <br>"The Theory of Everything" <br>"Whiplash" </br></br></br></br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Actor</strong></p><p>Steve Carell in "Foxcatcher"<br>Bradley Cooper in "American Sniper"<br>Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Imitation Game"<br>Michael Keaton in "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"<br><strong>Eddie Redmayne in "The Theory of Everything"</strong></br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Actress</strong></p><p>Marion Cotillard in "Two Days, One Night"<br>Felicity Jones in "The Theory of Everything"<br><strong>Julianne Moore in "Still Alice"</strong><br>Rosamund Pike in "Gone Girl"<br>Reese Witherspoon in "Wild"</br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Supporting Actress</strong></p><p><strong>Patricia Arquette in "Boyhood"</strong><br>Laura Dern in "Wild"<br>Keira Knightley in "The Imitation Game"<br>Emma Stone in "Birdman"<br>Meryl Streep in "Into the Woods"</br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Supporting Actor</strong></p><p>Robert Duvall in "The Judge"<br>Ethan Hawke in "Boyhood"<br>Edward Norton in "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"<br>Mark Ruffalo in "Foxcatcher"<br><strong>J.K. Simmons in "Whiplash"</strong></br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Best Director</strong></p><p><strong>Alejandro G. Iñárritu <strong>"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" </strong></strong><br>Richard Linklater <span>"Boyhood"</span><span> </span><br>Bennett Miller <span>"Foxcatcher"</span><span> </span><br>Wes Anderson <span>"The Grand Budapest Hotel"</span><br>Morten Tyldum <span>"The Imitation Game"</span><span> </span></br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Animated Feature Film</strong></p><p><strong>"Big Hero 6" Don Hall, Chris Williams, and Roy Conli</strong><br>"The Boxtrolls" Anthony Stacchi, Graham Annable, and Travis Knight<br>"How to Train Your Dragon 2" Dean DeBlois, and Bonnie Arnold<br>"Song of the Sea" Tomm Moore and Paul Young<br>"The Tale of the Princess Kaguya" Isao Takahata and Yoshiaki Nishimura</br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Documentary Feature</strong></p><p><strong>"CitizenFour" Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky</strong><br>"Finding Vivian Maier" John Maloof and Charlie Siskel<br>"Last Days in Vietnam" Rory Kennedy and Keven McAlester<br>"The Salt of the Earth" Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and David Rosier<br>"Virunga" Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara</br></br></br></br></p><p class="p1"><strong>Best Original Song</strong></p><p>"Everything Is Awesome" from "The Lego Movie"<br>Music and Lyric by Shawn Patterson<br><strong>"Glory" from "Selma"</strong><br>Music and Lyric by John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn<br>"Grateful" from "Beyond the Lights"<br>Music and Lyric by Diane Warren<br>"I'm Not Gonna Miss You" from "Glen Campbell…I'll Be Me"<br>Music and Lyric by Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond<br>"Lost Stars" from "Begin Again"<br>Music and Lyric by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois</br></br></br></br></br></br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)</strong></p><p><strong>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Alexandre Desplat</strong><br>"The Imitation Game" Alexandre Desplat<br>"Interstellar" Hans Zimmer<br>"Mr. Turner" Gary Yershon<br>"The Theory of Everything" Jóhann Jóhannsson</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in cinematography</strong></p><p><strong>"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" Emmanuel Lubezki</strong><br>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Robert Yeoman<br>"Ida" Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski<br>"Mr. Turner" Dick Pope<br>"Unbroken" Roger Deakins</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in costume design</strong></p><p><strong>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Milena Canonero</strong><br>"Inherent Vice" Mark Bridges<br>"Into the Woods" Colleen Atwood<br>"Maleficent" Anna B. Sheppard and Jane Clive<br>"Mr. Turner" Jacqueline Durran</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Best documentary short subject</strong></p><p><strong>"Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1" Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dana Perry</strong><br>"Joanna" Aneta Kopacz<br>"Our Curse" Tomasz Sliwinski and Maciej Slesicki<br>"The Reaper (La Parka)" Gabriel Serra Arguello<br>"White Earth" J. Christian Jensen</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in film editing</strong></p><p>"American Sniper" Joel Cox and Gary D. Roach<br>"Boyhood" Sandra Adair<br>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Barney Pilling<br>"The Imitation Game" William Goldenberg<br><strong>"Whiplash" Tom Cross</strong></br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Best foreign-language film of the year</strong></p><p><strong>"Ida" Poland</strong><br>"Leviathan" Russia<br>"Tangerines" Estonia<br>"Timbuktu" Mauritania<br>"Wild Tales" Argentina</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in makeup and hairstyling</strong></p><p>"Foxcatcher" Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard<br><strong>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Frances Hannon and Mark Coulier</strong><br>"Guardians of the Galaxy" Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou and David White</br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in production design</strong></p><p><strong>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock</strong><br>"The Imitation Game" Production Design: Maria Djurkovic; Set Decoration: Tatiana Macdonald<br>"Interstellar" Production Design: Nathan Crowley; Set Decoration: Gary Fettis<br>"Into the Woods" Production Design: Dennis Gassner; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock<br>"Mr. Turner" Production Design: Suzie Davies; Set Decoration: Charlotte Watts</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Best animated short film</strong></p><p>"The Bigger Picture" Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees<br>"The Dam Keeper" Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi<br><strong>"Feast" Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed</strong><br>"Me and My Moulton" Torill Kove<br>"A Single Life" Joris Oprins</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Best live-action short film</strong></p><p>"Aya" Oded Binnun and Mihal Brezis<br>"Boogaloo and Graham" Michael Lennox and Ronan Blaney<br>"Butter Lamp (La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak)" Hu Wei and Julien Féret<br>"Parvaneh" Talkhon Hamzavi and Stefan Eichenberger<br><strong>"The Phone Call" Mat Kirkby and James Lucas</strong></br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in sound editing</strong></p><p><strong>"American Sniper" Alan Robert Murray and Bub Asman</strong><br>"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" Martín Hernández and Aaron Glascock<br>"The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" Brent Burge and Jason Canovas<br>"Interstellar" Richard King<br>"Unbroken" Becky Sullivan and Andrew DeCristofaro</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in sound mixing</strong></p><p>"American Sniper" John Reitz, Gregg Rudloff and Walt Martin<br>"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, and Thomas Varga<br>"Interstellar" Gary A. Rizzo, Gregg Landaker, and Mark Weingarten<br>"Unbroken" Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, and David Lee<br><strong>"Whiplash" Craig Mann, Ben Wilkins, and Thomas Curley</strong></br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Achievement in visual effects</strong></p><p>"Captain America: The Winter Soldier" Dan DeLeeuw, Russell Earl, Bryan Grill and Dan Sudick<br>"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett and Erik Winquist<br>"Guardians of the Galaxy" Stephane Ceretti, Nicolas Aithadi, Jonathan Fawkner and Paul Corbould<br><strong>"Interstellar" Paul Franklin, Andrew Lockley, Ian Hunter and Scott Fisher</strong><br>"X-Men: Days of Future Past" Richard Stammers, Lou Pecora, Tim Crosbie and Cameron Waldbauer</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Adapted screenplay</strong></p><p>"American Sniper" Written by Jason Hall<br><strong>"The Imitation Game" Written by Graham Moore</strong><br>"Inherent Vice" Written for the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson<br>"The Theory of Everything" Screenplay by Anthony McCarten<br>"Whiplash" Written by Damien Chazelle</br></br></br></br></p><p><strong>Original screenplay</strong></p><p><strong>"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" Written by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. &amp; Armando Bo</strong><br>"Boyhood" Written by Richard Linklater<br>"Foxcatcher" Written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman<br>"The Grand Budapest Hotel" Screenplay by Wes Anderson; Story by Wes Anderson &amp; Hugo Guinness<br>"Nightcrawler" Written by Dan Gilroy</br></br></br></br></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/furious-7-super-bowl-trailer-2015-2">The new 'Furious 7' trailer is ridiculous</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5tYTk0czrA2o5NIIsM8n3M8EZN2mWsSC" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '5tYTk0czrA2o5NIIsM8n3M8EZN2mWsSC',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

Here's a complete list of all the Oscar winners

Here's the full list of Oscar nominations

<p><strong><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d2db4f077dcc1e008b48e3-2400/snowden_03835_rgb.jpg" alt="edward snowden film" data-mce-source="Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films" /><p class="source"><span>Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></strong>The new film "Snowden" is a wildly entertaining thriller centered around the most-wanted man in the world, though I was left with many more questions than when I started.</p><p>The Oliver Stone-directed film starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden takes viewers through most of Snowden's adult life in a series of flashbacks amid interactions with journalists in a Hong Kong hotel.</p><p>While the story will be fascinating for many, it glosses over a number of unanswered questions in the Snowden saga.</p><p>To be clear, the movie is not supposed to be a documentary or definitive account of Snowden's life, but I hoped, nevertheless, it would shed at least some light on a younger version of the ex-NSA contractor who leaked thousands of documents to journalists in 2013, which it did not do.</p><p>Instead, it starts with his apparent Special Forces training with the US Army. The extent of his army career has never been all that clear, and the Pentagon only confirmed that he enlisted as a Special Forces recruit in May 2004 who was discharged four months later.</p><p>(Business Insider has tried unsuccessfully to get Snowden's military discharge document released, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-army-special-forces">as has</a> The Guardian).</p><p>The film shows Snowden going through what seems to be Army basic training where stress fractures wear and tear on his body until finally, he breaks his legs jumping from the top bunk during an early-morning wakeup. The real Snowden, for his part, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-army-special-forces">told</a> The Guardian his legs were broken in a training accident.</p><p>"There are plenty of other ways to serve your country," the doctor, who recommends an administrative discharge, tells him in the film.</p><p>The film's pace is brisk. Soon after his Army washout, Snowden is undergoing an intensive polygraph and interviewing for a position with the Central Intelligence Agency. Here we meet Corbin O'Brian, Snowden's CIA recruiter, instructor, and main antagonist in the film, who is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/edward-snowdens-long-strange-journey-to-hollywood.html">quite obviously named</a> after the villain in George Orwell's "1984."</p><p>He even says Orwellian things like, "Secrecy is security and security is victory."</p><h2>'I'm going to give you a shot, Snowden'</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d1ee7609d29358008b6cac-1056/screen shot 2016-09-08 at 4.03.21 pm.png" alt="corbin o'brian snowden film" data-mce-source="Open Road Films/YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4">Open Road Films/YouTube</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Actor Rhys Ifans plays Corbin O'Brian quite well, offering a spooky and secretive man who appears to be the driving force in Snowden's career. In interviewing Snowden, O'Brian says he ordinarily would not have hired him, but in 2006 - the height of the Iraq war - "these are not ordinary times." He tells Snowden he's getting his shot, and in turn, Snowden promises he won't let him down.</p><p>At this point, the real CIA recruiter O'Brian is based on (if he exists) is probably kicking himself.</p><p>Still, Snowden is portrayed as something of a boy genius.</p><p>In his initial CIA training, he aces a five-hour-long test in 40 minutes. He rapidly moves up the chain and <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/">gets advanced training</a> before heading to Geneva on an assignment - one that ultimately begins his slow disillusionment with the government and the messy business of intelligence gathering.</p><p>While Snowden's longtime girlfriend Lindsay Mills was non-existent in Laura Poitras' documentary "Citizenfour" - except for a brief shot of her reuniting with him in a Moscow apartment - "Snowden" makes her a central character that moves along the plot and makes things much more interesting.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d2dc0f077dcc1c008b490b-2400/snowden_dc_large_rgb.jpg" alt="edward snowden film" data-mce-source="Courtesy of Open Road Films" /><p class="source"><span>Courtesy of Open Road Films</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>That was a particularly good move since, despite various movies depicting exciting things happening in intelligence circles or in the military, the truth is that much of what is actually done is painfully boring. Sure, battles and spy craft happens, but Hollywood doesn't really care for the less glamorous work of reading through raw intelligence and writing endless reports, or Snowden's real job <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive">of taking clueless NSA employees</a> step-by-step through the process of opening a document, for example.</p><p>Stone adds more action to the mix by having drone strikes on computer screens in the workplace, which often seem out of place. Gordon-Levitt sometimes delivers lines that make Snowden seem like the most important person in the intelligence field, instead of just one man among more than 800,000 people <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/">with</a> top secret security clearances.</p><p>"Our government is hemorrhaging billions of dollars to Chinese hackers and I've been hired to shut them down," he tells his girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, at one point in the film.</p><h2>The crown jewels in the Rubik's Cube</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d1ef4909d29324008b6cc8-1677/screen shot 2016-09-08 at 4.06.50 pm.png" alt="snowden rubik's" data-mce-source="Open Road Films/YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4" /><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlSAiI3xMh4">Open Road Films/YouTube</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Eventually, Snowden ends up working at the NSA facility in Hawaii, taking a contract systems administrator job with Dell and later, Booz Allen Hamilton.</p><p>Though I'm pretty sure it was just done for the sake of expedience and Hollywood being Hollywood, the facility there is somewhat open - almost like a Silicon Valley startup - with the offensive hackers hitting China over there, while Snowden and others protecting US networks sit over there. No doors, no key cards.</p><p>This seems far outside the reality - especially so for an NSA facility. Sensitive compartmentalized information (SCI) literally means compartmentalized, to the point where one NSA analyst wouldn't even know what the guy in the next cubicle is working on. But for "Snowden," the typical office banter happens regularly, and friendships are formed among coworkers in different departments.</p><p>One such friendship is integral to Snowden's later whistleblowing, according to the film, when he meets an NSA hacker named Gabriel Sol (played by Ben Schnetzer). Through Sol, he quickly gains access to top secret programs that would later be exposed.</p><p>Perhaps the most notable is Prism, which gave the agency direct access to data on the servers of Facebook, Google, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data">and other tech giants.</a> Sol later taps into a random woman's webcam and watches her live as Snowden looks on, uncomfortably - likely an allusion to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data">program exposed in 2014</a> called Optic Nerve, which allowed British spies to intercept millions of webcam images from Yahoo users.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d2dcfb077dcca2018b48a1-2260/snowden_00374_rgb.jpg" alt="snowden film" data-mce-source="Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films" data-mce-caption="Snowden and Gabriel Sol." /><p class="source"><span>Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films</span></p><p class="caption">Snowden and Gabriel Sol.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Another friend in particular actually keeps his mouth shut when he sees Snowden downloading the critical NSA files to an SD card. It's a moment of high drama, but it's doubtful this even happened, especially when the film's climactic scene is put up against the reality: Instead of grabbing all the files in one day, Snowden apparently started downloading the cache more than a year before he met with journalists in Hong Kong, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-snowden-dell-idUSBRE97E17P20130815">according</a> to a report from Mark Hosenball in Reuters.</p><p>That scene features this exchange: "The NSA may come after you," Snowden tells his coworker. He responds: "I don't know what you're talking about."</p><p>Then he just lets Snowden grab a bunch of top secret documents hidden inside a Rubik's Cube, finally walking out the front door with a smile on his face (Snowden has never said how he actually grabbed the files). And before he hops in the elevator, Snowden has an unspoken exchange of, <em>I'm leaving right now with tons of files and you're never going to see me again, wink wink, </em>with his old friend Gabriel.</p><p>These interactions make it seem like intelligence professionals support what Snowden did, but that's a sentiment not backed up in statements from various officials, on the record or said anonymously. One former hacker with NSA's elite hacker unit, Tailored Access Operations, put it this way: "I can't believe anyone listens to him," the source told Business Insider. "It's so infuriating. He was the help desk administrator for the government."</p><h2>Unanswered questions</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d2de0f077dccda0b8b47df-2400/snowden_01325_rgb.jpg" alt="edward snowden film" data-mce-source="Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films" /><p class="source"><span>Jürgen Olczyk/Open Road Films</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Overall, the film was fairly good. If you're searching for a solid flick offering a look into the world of the CIA and the NSA, you'll get it. And if you're a fan of Edward Snowden and believe he's a patriot, this movie is going to support that viewpoint.</p><p>But Snowden skeptics will be left wanting.</p><p>Many important questions go unanswered or are breezed past, and it ultimately does a disservice to its subject matter and the viewer. These include the open question of what Snowden was doing for the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/questions-about-snowden-2015-6">11 days he spent in Hong Kong <em>before</em></a> he met journalists, his somewhat questionable claim of being "<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/snowden-says-us-stranded-him-in-russia-2014-5">stranded</a>" in Moscow, and whether he took any stolen documents with him to Russia.</p><p>For example, in the film Snowden proclaims "I no longer have any access to the data myself" as he deletes files on his laptop in a Hong Kong hotel room. But his claim to have destroyed the documents was contradicted in an interview he gave to the South China Morning Post, <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1268209/snowden-sought-booz-allen-job-gather-evidence-nsa-surveillance?page=all">in which he said</a> he would like to leak more documents later to "journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."</p><p>"Snowden" also moves a bit too quickly at times for its own good, leaving out any mention of Snowden's childhood or how he ended up in a CIA interview. He <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/">apparently first got a top secret</a> clearance working as a security guard, for example, which is not in the film. There is also little revealed of his new life in Russia, where he has been living under asylum since 2013.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57d2deed077dcc1c008b4943-1792/neil degrasse tyson interviews edward snowden via telepresence_credit_carlos valdes-lora-1.png" alt="Neil deGrasse Tyson and his guest Edward Snowden on StarTalk" data-mce-source="Carlos Valdes Lora" data-link="http://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/">Carlos Valdes Lora</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>All that viewers see of that is a cameo appearance by the real Snowden at the end of the film where he delivers a powerful speech <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/edward-snowdens-long-strange-journey-to-hollywood.html">from the second home</a> of Anatoly Kucharena - a Kremlin-connected lawyer who <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/28/world/europe/snowdens-lawyer-comes-with-high-profile-and-kremlin-ties.html">represents Snowden</a> in Moscow and wrote a novel loosely based on his flight from the US. Stone optioned that book, and Luke Harding's "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Snowden-Files-Inside-Worlds-Wanted/dp/0804173524">The Snowden Files</a>," for the basis of the film.</p><p>"Snowden" is held up by strong performances, most notably in Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character. He absolutely nails Snowden's voice and mannerisms; so much so that it's often hard to distinguish him at times from the real thing. And then there are similarly strong performances turned in by Zachary Quinto as journalist Glenn Greenwald and Nicholas Cage as Hank Forrester, a disillusioned NSA employee who acts as a mentor to Snowden, ultimately praising his haul of top secret documents by the end of the film.</p><p>"He did it. The kid did it," Forrester says.</p><p>Forrester seems to be based on another NSA whistleblower <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-flaw-in-snowden-doc-citizenfour-2015-5">named William Binney</a>, who initially offered high praise for Snowden when NSA documents revealed a mass spying dragnet. But Binney eventually shifted his view after Snowden leaked specific NSA hacking targets to a Chinese newspaper: He <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-flaw-in-snowden-doc-citizenfour-2015-5">told</a> USA Today that Snowden seemed to be "transitioning from whistleblower to traitor."</p><p>"As I have said in the past, revealing specific targets or successes of US intelligence activities is not in the public interest," Binney <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-flaw-in-snowden-doc-citizenfour-2015-5">told</a> Business Insider in 2014.</p><p>"Snowden" leaves that part out.</p><p>The film is out in theaters on Sep. 15.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ice-cream-sandwiches-walmart-melt-timelapse-video-2016-9">We tested Walmart's ice-cream sandwiches, which supposedly don't melt, and were mystified by the results</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="k1YTRvNTE6sLHUn8QhU-mjmBtNhuWak7" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'k1YTRvNTE6sLHUn8QhU-mjmBtNhuWak7',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

You Searched For "citizenfour" and got 10 results

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The Wall Street Journal suggests that Snowden gave China an incredibly powerful cyber weapon

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An intimate new documentary looks at the real Carrie Fisher: 'There was nothing about her that was phony'

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Snowden's Latest Appearance In Russia Media Shows Him Petting A Dog

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Here's a complete list of all the Oscar winners

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Here's the full list of Oscar nominations

Kirsten Acuna,Aly Weisman

'Snowden' portrays the infamous NSA leaker as a hero, leaving many important questions unanswered

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