Cheap Orwell Rolls in His Grave (DVD) (Robert Kane Pappas) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of Orwell Rolls in His Grave

Situation keeps getting worse
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? <
> <
>http://ibrakefortrees.wordpress.com

---

Does rolling in the grave help us?
This movie is one of those sort of scary films that make you think and wonder. Personally my thoughts on the film itself were that it is kind of boring because of all the "sit down with a few books behind you" sort of scenes and that gets awful repetitive. The content is very meaningful though. It made me think that 1984 seems so long ago and we definitly passed it and we ARE as bad as 1984 once warned us we would be, and WORSE. The thing that got me was that no matter how bad things are and no matter how bad things are proven to be, we just sort of go along on our merry way. George can roll over and over but until there is another American Revolution we are bound to live through all the deceipt and treachery of our once great government and one fine day find ourselves rolling over in our own graves.

---

Good, but hard to use objectively
As a high school English teacher, I frothed at the opportunity to use this film in a "banned books" unit. It had all the makings of a documentary that would objectively weigh the influence of politics, power, and commercialism on the media (specifically, the "news," A.K.A., the truth for sale). Yes, there were a few expletives that made the use of this piece a bit tricky, but beyond that, the political agenda that is inherent in the film was even harder to mitigate. As a teacher, I have to strike as politically-neutral a tone as possible. With the relentless anti-Bush tirades, disparaging remarks re: Reagan, etc., it was hard to mask the political agenda of this "documentary." Believe me, when it comes to personal politics, I side with Mr. Pappas much more often than not; however, I would file his work under the same sort of pseudo-documentary category as I would Michael Moore. Many parts / points are perfectly legitimate-- it is the packaging and presentation that is stilted. As a personally informative / entertaining piece, I would give it 5 stars, but as a work that is supposed to be objective, I have to give it less. I prefer the educational tools I bring into class to have a more subversive quality that gets students to question the status quo without being indoctrinating, per se.