Tim Robbins Movie:

		List Price: $19.98		Label: GO-KART RECORDS Salesrank: 44570 Released: June 7, 2005
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Orwell Rolls in His Grave Reviews:
Orwell Was Right...Unfortunately
2008-08-21 - It used to be in America that the media--radio; television; newspapers--acted as a Fourth Estate to prevent government officials from getting away with things. But as Robert Kane Pappas' documentary ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE shows us, that very media, through mass consolidations, has for a long time been in bed with the very government it once kept in check.

Taking many cues from legendary writer George Orwell's nightmare novel classic "1984", Pappas, through interviews with people like Vermont congressman Bernie Sanders, former "60 Minutes" producer Charles Lewis (now the chief of the Center for Public Integrity), BBC reporter Greg Palast, and former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, shows us how so many of Orwell's frightening depictions of a future in which the people are treated by the media as so much cattle have now come frighteningly true in a nation where freedom, democracy, and justice are shouted out as virtues to the rest of the world, but virtually no longer acted upon on our soil. The lynchpin of this is the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed large corporations to buy up television and radio stations and newspapers in major markets, and thus control the lion's share of what people read, see, and hear. This leads to big profits for the corporations, of course...and the reality that progressively less of the truth, and less of the really important issues, are being discussed in print and over the airwaves.

ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE also shows how the media's getting in bed with politics resulted in presidential campaign cycles not only crossing the $1 billion threshold, but also how much the media (particularly Rupert Murdoch's far right-wing Fox News Channel) had its way in dealing with a compliant FCC, a cowering Congress (Sanders and a few others excepted), and an enthusiastic Bush presidency. It leads up to stoking America's fears of terrorism post 9/11, and the eventual selling of the war in Iraq.

The outrage over all of these hideous things should long ago have stirred everyone into action. But apparently, we Americans are an indifferent people who accept too much of what the government and its media cronies tell us as Gospel. Pappas and his film suggest that the time to stop it is now, before America becomes a completely corporate fascist state.

Exposing the illusion of diversity concealing a uniform deception
2007-11-28 - Since there are already some very comprehensive and accurate reviews on this 5-Star documentary (based on content instead of glitz and cinematography), I would just like to emphasize a few important points that may have been missed or minimized.

First and foremost is the review from the 'New Yorker' relied on by Amazon above. "The film revisits issues that have been debated ad nauseam..." It is hard to imagine a more misleading and incorrect statement. The film persuasively makes its argument with issues that SHOULD have been debated ad nauseum in the mainstream media, due to their extreme importance and newsworthiness, but were not. The issue that may not be spoken of, the issue of corporate control of the media and corporations themselves, leads the list. Charles Lewis, former 60 Minutes producer turned media public interest crusader, delves headfirst into the issue with the disclosure of the little known fact that the biggest special interest lobby in Washington is the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). The documentary uses facts and observations from an impressive and diverse array of experts and weaves them around an equally impressive array of facts, statistics, interviews, and statements from public figures. Pappas doggedly summarizes some of the more important issues (already accurately outlined in many previous reviews) deliberately excluded or given short shrift by the corporate media monopoly, while at the same analyzing the corporate dominance of the media and the seldom examined results from that control (especially the non-reporting of issues and events that may be detrimental to the corporate media's interests specifically, and corporate interests generally). As Ralph Nader argued for the past thirty years or so, it is much like the old Soviet system where individuals in the Party could be criticized, and a host of other issues could be addressed, but the Party itself was a verboten issue. Similarly, the interviewees point out and evidence (especially with Charles Lewis) that bad corporate players may be attacked in the mainstream media, and an infinity of business-friendly issues and topics may be examined, but corporations as a topic unto itself is a verboten issue, other than singing the praises of corporatism (as the various corporate bootlickers that grace our television screens do ad nauseum infinitum, both implicitly and explicitly).

Pappas deftly weaves in the central theme of "1984": control of the media as a means to control society and subvert democracy. A controlled media is the foundational platform from which all the other tools of totalitarianism are launched. Control is effected not solely by censorship of information, expression, and events by the Ministry of Truth, but also by the re-writing of the past and selective reporting of the present to suit Big Brother's needs. Pappas effectively analogizes Big Brother, the fictional ethereal Stalinists in 1984, to Big Corporate, their modern-day nonfictional brothers in totalitarian spirit (albeit from the opposite side of the political extremist spectrum). By controlling who has access to the public forum, the corporate controllers of media select all the political candidates before elections are ever held. By deciding who gets to speak they decide who gets to run (see Dennis Kucinich for a working example of how this operates).

This is a successful effort to counter corporate propaganda and censorship. It does so with a comprehensive and dizzying assortment of facts, issues, and viewpoints, which, whether new to the viewer or a memory jolt, never should have been removed from the public radar screen.



Bottom Line: '...an important work about America...'
2007-11-13 - This is another MUST SEE documentary for all patriotic Americans. Also, watch 'Why We Fight' and read 'Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia'

Gritty, not pretty, but pointed as hell
2007-11-02 - This review is not organized, but my thoughts are here. "Orwell Rolls" is a documentary without the cant and cuteness the mass audience may expect after Michael Moore's productions. (And really, who's seen more than a couple other documentaries? Which is partly to say we should have, which is also TO THE POINT: If we don't [a] get the Sundance channel and [b] watch it regularly, we will miss many worthwhile and informative, even essential films [unless we search them out online]. If our cable provider doesn't supply Sundance, that's because its owner would rather we don't watch it. Ah, but I do digress....) The sound is desperately uneven; beyond that, I can't think of anything to criticize.

News Flash: The corporate giants have acquired first the politicians (campaign money) and then monopolistically consolidated the media (through not "de-" but RE-regulation) in ever fewer hands. Among the few nuggets of good news, this film documents how the Senate overruled the FCC's reconfiguration of the rules regarding corporate ownership of newspapers and TV outlets in 2003.

What is ESSENTIAL here: The film documents how corporate control limits your access to information, because their interests can determine what stories and what persons are exposed to the public through the media they own. You get the barest flavor of what stories you have probably missed, thanks to this consolidation. In addition, you are challenged to realize that, although for now this lack is made up for by the Internet and the myriad underground sources of information there, the situation may soon change when the corporations move through the FCC to limit digital access to the channels and constituencies that suit their interests; same song, third verse (first verse was the disastrous "deregulation" of radio ownership).

-- Related BOOK recommendation: "Unequal Protection" by Thom Hartmann. It culminates in practical steps (proposed laws and amendments) to curtail the overweening power of corporations, protected by law as "persons" although immortal and immeasurably wealthy. They are able to contest legal action until any private citizen is impoverished and retires from the fray.

A century ago, during the "Gilded Age" of the first giant monopolies, the Sullivan Act took a stand against the oligarchs, the robber barons; history is cycling back around, only with greater concentrations of resources and potentially calamitous results. People, we must hear and act, not just because the government is accountable to us but because our democracy is in trouble. Every act in the right direction is significant. Don't be discouraged, and don't be deceived!

Situation keeps getting worse
2007-07-27 - This documentary is even more appropriate and must-see now as I write this, with Rupert Murdoch trying to buy the Wall Street Journal, a paper he complains has articles that are too long, i.e., have too many facts.

I gave the DVD only 3 stars because it uses images and interviews in a repetitive way in order to get an emotional response out of the viewer. And some of the numbers casually thrown around are suspect.

But the overall message is hard to deny: the media failed to cover Bush's insider trading scandal that should have put him in prison instead of being awarded the 2000 election. It failed to cover Gov Jeb Bush's disqualification of 57000, mostly black, votes in 2000, on the grounds they were ex-cons and not qualified to vote. (The BBC later investigated and said this charge was a crock.) It failed to cover the issues raised in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911". And so on.

The real scary part, though, is that the voting machines used in the US are supplied by companies associated with the Republican Party, and these companies keep secret how the machines actually count votes. The doc also notes that machines have switches that control how the ballots are read that have been set differently in different precincts.

And then the doc leaves the viewer with an echo of 1984 and Big Brother's permanent state of war against changing enemies. Yesterday the enemy was Osama bin Laden, then without missing a beat the enemy became Saddam Hussein, and tommorow? Hugo Chavez?

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