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List Price: $17.95 | | Label: Cinema Libre
Salesrank: 109218
Released: September 20, 2005 |
| Our Price: $4.43 |
| Used Price: $3.99 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Embedded is a ripped-from-the-headlines satire about the madness surrounding brave men and women on the front lines of a Middle East conflict. It skewers lapdog embedded journalists, scheming government officials and the media's insatiable desire for heroes. Beautifully captured (by 9 cameras) directly from the controversial Tim Robbins' play in New York City, Embedded Live puts the audience in the front-row to this thought-provoking and timely production.
Description of Embedded Live:
Tim Robbins' Embedded is like a theatrical grenade, sending satirical shrapnel in all directions: Masked lampoons of the leaders who sent soldiers to war without having ever gone to war themselves; self-congratulatory, fatuous journalists; and a hard-driving drill sergeant with a weakness for show tunes. These broader jabs are juxtaposed with a more naturalistic depiction of soldiers writing letters to their wives and a thinly-veiled version of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the pretty blonde who the military claimed they rescued from imprisonment under heavy fire, but later was revealed to have been in a hospital where an Iraqi doctor had carefully tended her wounds. Excerpts from actual news reports--such as rapturous descriptions of the statue of Saddam being pulled down, or a BBC report of a coalition plane bombing its own troops--are presented side by side with mock reports. This collage theater piece, captured in a performance at the Public Theatre in New York City, wants to mirror the chaos of the politics surrounding the Iraq war, but the cumulative effect of the clashing styles grows more diffuse as the piece goes on. Still, the agitprop zest of writer/director/actor Robbins (Bull Durham, Mystic River) is valuable in an era of timid journalists and hypocritical politicians; what will stick with you, when the play is over, are nonpartisan moments of paradox, confusion, and personal loss. --Bret Fetzer
Embedded Live Reviews:
Unbelievably Vapid and Inane 
2009-11-01 - Amazon needs to find a way to allow reviewers to rate a product with negative stars -- if only for the sake of Embedded Live, a work whose psuedo-intellectual pretension is only outdone by its utter lack of artistic merit (indeed, to use the word "merit" in connection with this "product" is to devalue the word).
Anyone with even the weakest appreciation for this play either does not have the faintest idea as to what differentiates art from ideology, or does not have a clue as to politics, philosophy, and intellectual history -- or both.
I imagine Mr. Robbins thinks that because he can read headlines from the NY Times (I will assume arguendo Mr. Robbins *can* read) that he has the credentials to speak of Leo Strauss and his political philosophy. One need only have a passing familiarity with the works of Strauss to know that Robbins's understanding of the man and his ideas is as misconceived and misdirected as Mr. Robbins's artistic abilities -- which is nil.
My only consolation after experiencing this unbelievably vapid and inane product is that this play, as well as the ideas (such as they are) behind it, will soon be as dated and irrelevant as Robbins's acting career itself.
Didn't laugh
2006-10-03 - Gave up at minute 43 (under halfway thru). Wanted very badly to laugh but didn't. Didn't even smirk.
Cuts to the audience didn't show much laughter - suspect that what there was was polite laughter because the cast was trying hard.
Reminded me of skits back in my college days where people thought it was enough that they found the subject humorous, but failed to show the humor in the situation.
Good but obvious 
2006-06-10 - Embedded/Live is a play that details journalistic aspects of the war and the difficulty of obtaining and reporting (truthful) information during wartime. It also shows 3 soldiers going off to war, including a barely-disguised Pfc. Jessica Lynch as "Private Ryan;" it also shows a thinly-veilded caricature of the current administration as they plan the next move in the war. The journalists are first put through a sort of bootcamp where the basic gist is that they cannot report anything the military does not approve. Embedded/Live goes on to follow the lives of the journalists as they try to report the war, the 3 soldiers, including Jessica Lynch's capture, rescue, and the intense media coverage that followed, and the admistration. Embedded/Live is good, but not incredibly well-done or subtle. There are quite a few very obvious jokes, and the administration, wrong or right as it may be, is portrayed in such a ridiculous manner that the audience cannot take it seriously and see it as a satire. Additionally, the following of the soldiers is scattered and abrupt, the play would have done better to focus much more on the journalists' part; indeed, those were the strongests points of the play. All in all, not terrible, not great.
Very good, but unsurprising 
2006-02-05 - This is Tim Robbins' play about the Iraqi conflict of 2003 onward. It is a live performance of the play, with the audience visible. It is not shot FROM the audience, but constantly shows a variety of angles, including close-ups.
The thing that struck me most about "Embedded" was the fact that its ideas were just those that are obvious to reasonable people who are not somehow deluded by the spin the Administration has managed to put on Iraq. I expected the ideas to be more radical somehow. It is actually a bit sad to think that perfectly common-sense and "safe" ideas are as marginalized as this film/play is. One might have expected from all the controversy surrounding Robbins there must be some scandalous inside information here that reveals once and for all the evil plot behind the whole conflict-something like "Fahrenheit 9/11." Yet, there is little more here than perfectly healthy skepticism about politicians and the media, coupled with humanitarian concern for soldiers (recognizing that they are largely the American underclasses.) Remember Nixon? We are SUPPOSED to distrust politicians. If this is counterculture, we are living in a very, very sad time.
The plot involves the contrast between mainstream reporters and independent ones. It shows reported in a kind of bootcamp in which they are trained to deliver "appropriate" stories. Meanwhile, a chorus of neocon elites meets in a smoky room, plotting their next steps in world domination and giving a running comic commentary on recent events. It is fairly heavy-handed Brechtian theater. Since most Americans will think that is "weird," this is likely to stay marginalized.
Brilliant !! Historic !! A Meticulous Documentation of the Shame of American Media 
2005-09-22 - Mr. Robbins not only entertains with humor, powerful music, and deeply moving emotional scenes, but also does the hard work of using historically accurate recitations of the United States media corps. shameful adulation of war, in spite of the reality they became aware of.
Robbins brilliantly shows how our American media was an accomplice in the destruction of so many American and Iraqi lives. I doubt people working in the media will have the stomach to watch this . . . but they should. For only repentant souls can find peace in this life.
Our media has much to repent for. If they cannot see the error of their ways, then God help us, for as Mr. Robbin's play suggests again and again . . . Gomorrah (Iraq) was only the first in the series of oil rich lands the powers that be plan to invade with fictitious reasons delivered special delivery by our own media corp.
This play may actually change the direction of humanity !!
