OneBigTorrent.org

In Guantanamo

Category: Documentary
Description:
Guantanamo naval base, 'Gitmo', covers forty five square miles of Cuba inside an area under a controversial 'permanent lease' to the United States. Since 2002, the base has become synonymous with its detainment facilities for suspected terrorists. Although Barack Obama has given orders for the detention camp to be closed, the facilities remain open to this day. David Miller's quiet, powerful film is the result of three days the filmmaker spent touring the camps in May 2008 as part of a small group of media representatives allowed there. Although the event was presented as a chance to 'see inside' the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images. The film was produced in 2008/2009 in conjunction with Yvonne Ridley, PRSNL Pictures and the VODO team. Special thanks to Editor Luca Lucarini. IN GUANTANAMO is released via VODO under a Creative Commons Non-Commerical No-Derivs Attribution License. The filmmaker does not permit remixes but would like the work to be shared freely for non-commercial purposes. ABOUT VODO VODO is founded by Jamie King, one of the figures behind STEAL THIS FILM (www.stealthisfilm.com). VODO brings filmmakers together with the distribution power of the filesharing community. It aims to offer fresh, quality films on a free-to-share basis, promoted and distributed through a 'coalition' of filesharing partners that includes big names like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, Miro, TorrentFreak, Isohunt, Plube, OneDDL Vuze and and Frostwire, amongst many others. 'Together, the filesharing community has a distribution capacity that rivals and even exceeds that of the mainstream media,' says Jamie King. 'VODO aims to leverage that power for the benefit of filmmakers and other creators. By sharing films freely through the most popular and fastest growing filesharing sites, we're building audiences in the hundreds of thousands for artists. That has material value for these filmmakers, through raised profile, donations and marketing. It's a win-win situation and it's the future of distributing media after copyright.' Followers of release groups like aXXo will be familiar with the model. But VODO is a release group with a twist. Not only are artists voluntarily sharing: downloaders can choose to make voluntary donations to creators. VODO lets creators manage their own donation links, with all donations going directly to the filmmaker. Regular supporters of the VODO project will receive access to all the films being considered for release. VODO aims to release at least one film per month during the rest of 2009 and 2010. Forthcoming titles include the premiere of 'In Guantanamo', a documentary by first-time director David Miller that provides unprecedented access to the Guantanmo prison camps - but King says that fiction titles, animation and shorts will also be on the distribution list. 'During 2010 VODO will build out a series of revenue opportunities for its creators, with the free-to-share model at their core,' he explains. ABOUT THE TEAM VODO collaborators include Nils Hellberg of Piratbyran (Sweden, Design) and Rama Cosentino of BurnStation (Argentina, programming), with programming support by Dan O' Huiginn (UK). Members of the advisory board include Ashwin Navin, ex-CEO of Bittorrent Inc., and Peter Sunde of The Pirate Bay. VODO, which has been in development since 2008, has been produced with the support of the Arts Council UK, Emerald Fund and the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation. VODO's not hiring right now, but it is looking for voluntary collaborators to help out as it grows and takes shape. Just send an email to info@vodo.net to find out more.
Seeders: 1622
Leeches: 110

CBC Doc Zone-Berlin: 20 Years After (2009).HDTV.XviD.Ekolb

Category: Documentary
Description:
Berlin, 20 Years After Thursday November 5, 2009 at 8 pm on CBC-TV It was a completely unexpected event, a dizzying moment shared by millions across the world. The Berlin Wall, which, for close to thirty years, had divided a nation and seemed as permanent as the concrete out of which it was built, had fallen. What had once been a powerful symbol of Communist repression and the Cold War had suddenly become the site of a jubilant and seemingly never-ending street party. A country had been freed, a people reunited. Communism was dead. All without a single shot. When the border crossings were finally opened, a throng of ecstatic East and West Germans fell into one another's arms. Families, friends and neighbours were finally reunited. The party, which would last for weeks, unfolded before the eyes of the entire world, everyone caught up in the euphoria and optimism of a moment marking the end of the Cold War and the dawn of a freer age. The entire planet was witnessing history being written. Once the wall had fallen, a 1.3-km portion was preserved and artists from across the globe were invited to come and paint on it. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the City of Berlin decided to breathe new life into the murals, inviting the same artists to repaint their works. With over 100 murals, this piece of wall is known as the East Side Gallery and is today a monument to freedom. It's also the world's biggest outdoor gallery. Berlin, 20 Years After takes a fresh look at the fall of the Berlin Wall using unseen archival material and contemporary accounts. The story is told from the perspective of three family members spanning three generations, and through the recollections of a CBC correspondent who was covering Germany at the time. The film discovers people who experienced the event in unique ways: a border guard posted in East Berlin; a Quebec filmmaker in search of inspiration; the first artist who dared to paint the Wall; a well-known jazz singer who was spied on by the secret police; the last German to have been imprisoned for attempting to cross the Wall; a writer made famous by his descriptions of the lives of young people behind the Wall; and two Quebec architects who helped build the new Berlin. CBC correspondent Jerry Thompson had been covering the situation in Germany for some months. "Here is the iron curtain, you know the wall of shame between the east and west and nobody seriously believed that that was going to come down and yet as the night wore on people started lining up just to see what would happen." Twenty years later, Thompson is back in Berlin. "It is an amazing difference in 20 years. I remember seeing how wrecked all of eastern Europe was at the time and Germany, alone, has been able to completely transform all of that and people like Jamila and her generation has none of that baggage. They're forward into a new future with a completely a new kind of optimism, the new Germany the new Europe - it's probably going to be pretty good for them." Berlin, 20 years after is a one-hour documentary, produced by CBC/Radio-Canada. Format : AVI Length : 349 MiB for 44mn 29s 2ms Codec : XviD Source : HDTV Language : English CA Subtitles : None Genre : Documentary Video #0 : MPEG-4 Visual at 951 Kbps Aspect : 608 x 336 (1.810) at 29.970 fps Audio #0 : MPEG Audio at 132 Kbps Infos : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz Enjoy! Ekolb
Seeders: 1
Leeches: 1

PBS Frontline - Obama's War (October 13 2009)

Category: Documentary
Description:
PBS Frontline - Obama's War (October 13 2009) Tens of thousands of fresh American troops are now on the move in Afghanistan, led by a new commander and armed with a counterinsurgency plan that builds on the lessons of Iraq. But can U.S. forces succeed in a land long known as the "graveyard of empires"? And can the U.S. stop the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan, where U.S. troops are not allowed and the government is weak? In Obama's War, veteran correspondent Martin Smith travels across Afghanistan and Pakistan to see first-hand how the president's new strategy is taking shape, delivering vivid, on-the-ground reporting from this eight-year-old war's many fronts. Through interviews with top generals, diplomats and government officials, Smith also reports the internal debates over President Obama's grand attempt to combat terrorism at its roots. "What we found on the ground was a huge exercise in nation building," says Smith. "The concept's become a bit of a dirty word, but that's what this is. We started with the goal of eliminating Al Qaeda, and now we've wound up with the immense task of re-engineering two nations." The brunt of the work is falling on rank-and-file soldiers, and nowhere is it more difficult than in the dusty, unforgiving landscape of Helmand province, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, where FRONTLINE embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. Since the Marines' arrival in July, Helmand has become the most lethal battlefield in Afghanistan. But FRONTLINE found the Marines trying to act as armed diplomats, attempting to build the necessary trust for badly needed economic development. "It's trying to change the culture of the organization," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, tells FRONTLINE of the administration's plan. "At the end of the day, our best counterinsurgents are going to be young sergeants who just have an ability to deal with people. We've got to give them the flexibility to make decisions." Even as American soldiers struggle to make progress in Afghanistan village by village, equally vexing challenges remain across the border in Pakistan. "In Afghanistan we know what to do; we just don't know if we have the resources or the time available to do it," David Kilcullen, a leading counterinsurgency expert, tells FRONTLINE. "The problem in Pakistan is we're not really sure what to do." When FRONTLINE confronts the Pakistani army about its reluctance to take out key Taliban leaders, the military's chief spokesman, Gen. Athar Abbas, argues that the accusations are misplaced. There is no truth, he claims, that insurgents stage attacks on American forces from the Pakistani side of the border. "They operate from Afghanistan. If somebody claims that everything is happening from this side of the border, I am sorry, this is misplaced, and we refute it." Barred from sending troops across the border, the United States is left with few good options. No quick fix will solve Pakistan. "If we have a strategy in Pakistan," says George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, "it's to build up the civilian government to the point where it can be a kind of counterbalance to the military and begin to reorient their own sense of their destiny. Is that even thinkable for a foreign power to do? Even as I say it, I think, why do we think we could even begin to accomplish that?"
Seeders: 74
Leeches: 12

Matthew Shepard - Death In The High Desert (2001)

Category: Documentary
Description:
Matthew Shepard - Death In The High Desert (2001) Hear from the mother of the student whose death set off an international media furor and spurred new rounds of legislation. On October 6 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old, homosexual student at the University of Wyoming, was lured from the Fireside Bar in Laramie by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. Why Shepard went with them is unclear, but what happened afterwards is not: Shepard was robbed, beaten into a coma and lashed to a fencepost. He was not discovered for 18 hours. The ""crucifixion"" of a young, gay man in ""cowboy country"" was tailor-made for the media, and the crime attracted international attention. Gay rights groups saw it as a symbol of society's often-brutal intolerance of alternate lifestyles, and Shepard's martyrdom spurred rounds of fresh anti hate crime legislation. It also led to life without parole prison sentences for McKinney and Henderson. AMERICAN JUSTICE® examines every aspect of the Matthew Shepard story, from the fateful night at the bar to the controversy over some of the legislation that came out of the tragic incident. Among the many people sharing their insights are Shepard's mother, prosecuting and defending attorneys from the trials, and Wyoming Senator Michael Massie.
Seeders: 6
Leeches: 5

Avenge But One of My Two Eyes / Nekam Achat Mishtey Eynay (2005)

Category: Documentary
Description:
נקם אחת משתי עיני The title comes from Samson's famous last prayer asking God to give him the strength one last time to take revenge. In a surprising exercise of symmetry, Avi Mograbi uses Jewish mythology to portray the Palestinian mindset. Against a backdrop of senseless daily persecution, Mograbi shows us lost people, clueless in a situation that nobody seems to make any sense out of. It is a fresh new approach void of the usual bloody violence and hatred, with no commentary or voice-over, where real-life people enact a macabre and surrealist play. It is this kind of documentaries that give me hope because I can see that there are still people in the midst of all this hatred that can still retain enough lucidity to recognize what they see for what it is : a shame. Two peoples with so much in common entangled in a death embrace that will consume them both. Just like the director of the documentary, we want to scream at them " What are you doing ?!" Released: ;; July 14th, 2005 Technical Details: ;; MPEG 4 - resolution: ;; 560x320 - Millions of colors FPS: ;; 29.97 MPEG Layer 3 audio, Stereo, 48.000 khz Data Rate: ;; 969.88 kbit / second
Seeders: 0
Leeches: 0

How To Cook Your Life (D. Dörrie, 2007)-aNaRCHo

Category: Documentary
Description:
How To Cook Your Life (D. Dörrie, 2007)-aNaRCHo (FILM IS IN ENGLISH, ENGLISH AND SPANISH SUBTITLES INCLUDED) This documentary profiles Zen Master Edward Espe Brown and shows the art of Zen and cooking. Espe Brown first became interested in baking as an 11-year kid when he realized the startling difference between mass-produced supermarket bread and the fresh homemade stuff. When he asked his mother to teach him how to bake, however, she said "No, yeast makes me nervous." Brown became the head cook at the Tassajara Mountain Centre in California when he was in his early 20s, and has been practicing the art of Zen Buddhism and cooking for more than 40 years. As a chef, he is typically short-tempered and exacting, but as a Buddhist master he is exactly the opposite. Director Dörrie (Men, Naked) sets her camera on Espe Brown as he travels from the Scheibbs Buddhist Centre in Austria to Tassajara, offering cooking seminars based upon the principles established 800 years ago by Master Eihei Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Japanese Soto-Zen school. Master Dogen wrote about the necessity of treating food as if it was as valuable as your eyesight. From washing rice, to preparing vegetables, every action could be a path to Zen. Or as the master said, "When you're washing the rice, wash the rice." A charming taskmaster who regularly punctures his holiness with moments of self-deprecation and humour, Espe Brown's observations on modern culture, cooking and human foibles are often as acerbic and hilarious as they are profound. --Brett-Lloyd PLEASE SEED AND ENJOY!!!
Seeders: 2
Leeches: 3

Perilous Times (ebook) [cpdl]

Category: eBooks, Magazines, Audio Books
Description:
Copy Paste title: Perilous Times; free speech Digital |> in wartime From the Sedition Act Librarian | `> of 1798 to the War on Terrorism _______| `____________ author: Geoffrey R. Stone || | | | isbn: 0-393-05880-8 ||infor-| |control + a|| ||mation| | || word count: 298,769 ||wants | |control + c|| pages: ||to be > | || format: htm ||free `> |control + v|| version: 1 ||__________`|___________|| CPDL |___________><____________| release no.: 00006 _______________________________________________________ GEOFFREY STONE's "Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America during wartime. Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era. Full of fresh legal and historical insight, "Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents--Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon--to the Supreme Court justices--Taney, Holmes, Brandies, Black, and Warren--to the resisters--Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, "Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/183925478
Seeders: 1
Leeches: 0

PBS POV - Johnny Cash - The Man,His World,His Music August.05.2009

Category: Documentary
Description:
PBS POV - Johnny Cash - The Man,His World,His Music August.05.2009 In this classic 1969 documentary, the Man in Black is captured at his peak, the first of many in a looming roller-coaster career. Fresh on the heels of his Folsom Prison album, Cash reveals the dark intensity and raw talent that made him a country music star and cultural icon. Director Robert Elfstrom got closer than any other filmmaker to Cash, who is seen performing with his new bride June Carter Cash, in a rare duet with Bob Dylan, and behind the scenes with friends, family and aspiring young musicians. Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music paints an unforgettable portrait that endures beyond the singer's 2003 death. " In the middle of the song, both John and Bob [Dylan] forgot the lyrics. So the recording session stopped while people scampered around the Columbia Records building trying to find the lyrics to a Bob Dylan song.” — Robert Elfstrom, Filmmaker
Seeders: 18
Leeches: 17

Network (Lumet, 1976)[+Extras]-aNaRCHo

Category: Misc
Description:
THIS IS MY PERSONAL FAVOURITE FILM, AND IN MY OPINION THE BEST FILM EVER MADE! SIDNEY LUMET'S MASTERPIECE...FROM THE 2-DISC SPECIAL EDITION... Network (Lumet, 1976)[+Extras]-aNaRCHo (FILM IS IN ENGLISH, ENGLISH AND FRENCH SUBTITLES INCLUDED) Essay by Greg Ng from Senses of Cinema The 1970s in Hollywood were a fertile time. The emergence of the director, as a legitimate artist in his or her own right, shifted focus from the studios, which by the '60s had grown formulaic and unadventurous in their output, to a new generation of writers and directors, whose concerns and experience were markedly different from the conservative voice of the movie industry at that point. Due in part to falling profits and the rise of television, a vacuum arose in the industry that opened the door for fresh ideas. Hollywood was redirected and, as a result, American cinema entered a new age – an age when box-office success did not necessarily preclude sophisticated content in a movie, an age when political discourse was not relegated to non-existence or tokenism, or a niche-market. The period between 1969 and the beginning of the 1980s saw American cinema, inspired as it was by international filmmaking (such as the French New Wave), offering critical, ambiguous and highly artful movies. At its most ambitious, the New Hollywood was a movement intended to cut film free of its evil twin, commerce, by enabling it to fly high through the thin air of art. The filmmakers of the '70s hoped to overthrow the studio system, or at least render it irrelevant, by democratising filmmaking, putting it in the hands of anyone with talent and determination. However, as the decade passed, the promise of real change receded; the status quo prevailed. As Peter Biskind puts it, in his book Easy Riders and Raging Bulls: How the Sex 'N' Drugs 'N' Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, although the decade of the 70s contains shining monuments to its great directors, the cultural revolution of that decade, like the political revolution of the 60s, ultimately failed. Robin Wood, in Hollywood: from Vietnam to Reagan, argues that the Vietnam War, among other things, focussed Western society's dissenting voices, simultaneously discrediting 'the system' and emboldening the dissenters. However, like Biskind, Wood acknowledges “this generalized crisis in ideological confidence never issued in revolution. No coherent social/economic program emerged.” Commercial imperatives once more came to play their part in shaping the output of the industry, as previously fêted directors suffered box office losses and investment money turned to more secure propositions. Thus, a central tenet of political economy – i.e., the inherent censorship of the mass market – prevailed. Ironically, one of the films that stands as a testament to '70s Hollywood's freedom and ambition, Sidney Lumet's Network (1976), depicts precisely this phenomenon. Network is an example of a hugely successful and critically acclaimed feature film that offers a critique of television, ideology, radical chic and the consequences of American-led post-war capitalism, whilst being funny – no mean feat, and something only barely achieved in the current day by the likes of Michael Moore, et al. Lumet's direction and Paddy Chayefsky's script lambaste the ills of the modern world (couched within the fast-paced soliloquies delivered by the stellar cast of Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall and William Holden) and are oft times prescient, predicting the rise of 'reality television', and the subsequent decline of both production and social values. One of the central themes of Network – the decay of society and of love, concurrent with a plunge in standards and morality of the audience, which represents the world (in keeping with the mindset of both the film and its characters) – proves salutary in explaining what happened to Hollywood after the '70s. Just as the collapse of the old studio system in the '60s was precipitated by a change in demography and values, so too has a drift toward social conservatism and the continuing project of marketising everything affected our age. When Howard Beale (Peter Finch), the ageing news anchor for Union Broadcasting System, is fired due to poor ratings, he announces to his friend and network executive Max Schumacher (William Holden) that he intends to “blow my brains out, right on the air, right in the middle of the 7 o'clock news”. Schumacher replies, “You'll get a hell of a rating. I'll guarantee you that. 50 share, easy.” He facetiously begins to run with the idea: “We could make a series out of it. 'Suicide of the Week.' Oh, hell, why limit ourselves: 'Execution of the week.'” Beale joins in, “Terrorist of the Week”, and Max's eyes get distant; he temporarily becomes the visionary commercial television producer: I love it. Suicides. Assassinations. Mad bombers. Mafia hit men. Automobile smash ups. The death hour. Great Sunday night show for the whole family to see. It'd knock fucking Disney right off the air. The joke, these days, has poignancy. Chayefsky's blistering script seems aimed fairly and squarely at commercial television, and its producers. Network is presented as a voracious predator that consumes everything in sight for the sake of audience share. Nothing is sacred – not least of all love, as is demonstrated amply by the soulless programming executive, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway). “The only reality she knows comes at her over the television.” Network portrays a dark vision of an industry that has largely come to be. The dumbing-down of the news, from informative to entertaining (“television is showbiz”, says Christensen to Schumacher) is prescient of the rise, in the late 20th century and early 21st, of infotainment. The UBS news is transformed into a near-variety show, with a soothsayer, a psychic detective and the star, the “Mad prophet of the airwaves”, Howard Beale. The disturbing thing about this, for Chayefsky, runs along the lines of neo-Marxist criticism of the day. To quote Stuart Hall: the cultural industries do have the power constantly to rework and reshape what they represent; and, by repetition and selection, impose and implant such definitions of ourselves as fit more easily the descriptions of the dominant or preferred culture. That is what the concentration of cultural power – the means of culture-making in the heads of the few – actually means. Television's ruthlessness and its lack of discernment in its search for ratings, as joked about by Schumacher and his 'death hour' idea, has fulfilled his prophecy. 'Reality television' abounds, with its low production costs and supposed interactivity – its invitation for audiences to spectate at someone's demise, and even play a part in it. Network satirises 'the revolutionary underground', and the script dextrously portrays the ease with which the likes of Christensen incorporate such movements into a commercial framework, in order to make them a marketable commodity. Says Diana, to her staff, as she pitches the idea of what we would now call a reality television show, Look, you've got a bunch of hob-goblin radicals, calling themselves the Ecumenical Liberation Army who go around taking home movies of themselves robbing banks! Maybe they'll take movies of themselves kidnapping heiresses, um, hijacking 747s, bombing bridges, assassinating ambassadors! She goes on to tell them, “I want angry shows. I don't want conventional programming on this network. I want counter-culture. I want anti-establishment.” Christensen, television incarnate, has, as such, the mind of the market. She slots, programmes and categorises everything, reducing totalities to glib, trite, preclusive stereotypes (or soundbites). At her meeting in Los Angeles, with the aforementioned hob-goblin radicals, she introduces herself: “Hi. I'm Diana Christensen – a racist lackey of the imperialist ruling circles.” “And I'm Lorraine Hobbs – a bad-ass Commie nigger”, comes the reply. Her idea is staggering and speaks of the sheer hubris of unfettered, market capitalism – as immanent in television itself. Without a moral concern in her body, Christensen pitches: “Each week, we open, with an authentic act of political terrorism.” The concept, in 1976, may have been preposterous. But in 2005 it is quite literally inconceivable. There's a war going on – let's not forget – a war on terrorism. And in wartime, as they say, the first casualty is the truth. The adage here is admittedly stretched, but the degree of self-censorship that began, and has prevailed, across the world's media since 2001 is evident. Hollywood seems nowhere near touching subjects like this, much less laughing at it. It's not just the subject matter; it's the way it is delivered. Lorraine Hobbs answers back to Diana's pitch with uncertainty: The Ecumenical Liberation Army is an ultra-left sect, creating political confusion with wildcat violence and pseudo-insurrectionary acts, which the Communist Party does not endorse. The American people are not yet ready for open revolt. We would not want to produce a television show that celebrates historically deviational terrorism. Chayefsky's script is simply much more ambitious, and verbose, than anything Hollywood offers up for contention these days. Network's assumption that audiences could respond positively to what is essentially a dense, wordy screenplay, set amongst current events and asking uncomfortable questions, was vindicated. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay. Hollywood's 'best and brightest' have rarely offered much in the way of criticism since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. One cannot help but think of Christensen's pitch here; might we assume that '911' would have gotten the Network nod, as entertainment? In fact, the years that followed saw Hollywood directors, such as Ridley Scott, supplicate themselves to the Pentagon message, with films that glorified American actions around the world and supported the US government's view of history. With the release of 1969's Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper), American cinema came of age. The late 60s had seen a crisis in the studio-dominated film industry: attendances were down and the old men who ran [the studios] were increasingly out of touch with the vast baby boom audience that was coming of age in the '60s, an audience that was rapidly becoming radicalised and disaffected from its elders. The influence of the French New Wave, among others, provided inspiration for aspiring auteurs like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet and Terrence Malick, to name but a few. The late 1960s saw a break from the old, studio-dominated conventions of film making, and for the first time placed the director in lights, over and above the studio, and producer. By the time of the late 70s, after the critical (and sometimes commercial) successes of films like Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976), et al, the 'voice' of the new directors was sounding more confidently. Network is nothing if not a collection of polemics. As New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael said, “Chayefsky isn't writing a farce: he's telling us a thing or two.” Howard Beale's “latter day prophet, denouncing the hypocrisies of our time” takes to the air with paternalistic sermons: Because less than three percent of you read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get from over this tube. Right now there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. Kael savages Chayefsky's preachiness here and decries the tendency of the time towards “vindictive, moralizing condescension”, citing “Beale's denunciations of the illiterate public (Chayefsky apparently thinks that not reading is proof of soullessness).” She continues to assert that television has not rendered people soulless, just as cinema did not, or the theatre. The film treats us to the high farce of the nominally 'revolutionary' Ecumenical Liberation Army in contractual negotiations with their lawyers and UBS's – an extremely comical (if dark) satire of the fickle nature of the expedient marriage of the political and the commercial. When Beale uses his nightly tirade to denounce the fact that “the Arabs control 60 billion dollars of this country”, and rants an extensive list of Arab interests in US capital, including “com[ing] back at us with our own dollars to buy General Motors, IBM”, et al, he blows the deal for Frank Hackett, the corporate head of UBS (played perfectly by Robert Duvall), the show and his own career. Michael Moore's Palme d'Or winning 'documentary', Fahrenheit 911, essentially spoke to the same phenomenon – that is, the coincidence of US and Saudi corporate interests, and its enmeshment with foreign policy, and the challenge to the notion of national sovereignty this presents . However, Moore's treatment is characteristically shallow, and not given any sense of historical context. Without an acknowledgement of the history of the US-Saudi relationship or of the role America has played in promoting the very system that allows for the situation he bemoans, Moore himself turns into the populist evangelical that Peter Finch portrays with finesse in Network. Network's ultimate concern – the negative impact of corporate culture and the mass market on society, and the processes by which it affects this – is essentially a mirror for what happened in Hollywood after the 1970s. By the end of what was a dazzling period of innovation and artfulness – delivering films such as Easy Rider, M*A*S*H* (Altman, 1970), Badlands (Malick, 1973), The Conversation (Coppola, 1974), Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973) and Network, Hollywood succumbed to commercial pressures – eschewing unhappy endings and highly political content and commentary in its films for 'the blockbuster' – usually dated to the release of Steven Spielberg's Jaws, in 1980. Film narratives switched back to happy endings, resolution and dominant societal paradigms reasserted themselves. One only need look at the young George Lucas' spectacular rise to fame with Star Wars (1977), an overly simplified fairy tale of 'good vs. evil'. (11) Gone was the subtlety and sophistication of Taxi Driver or Badlands, with their confused and often violent protagonists, and their near-nihilistic challenges to bourgeois morality, and back were the classical 'heroes' of the big screen, whose essential goodness was never in doubt and who always triumphed over the 'bad guys'. As Biskind suggests, the flowering of American cinema, only too brief, had ended – and Spielberg had 'won'. Because the fact of the matter is that although individual revolutionaries succeeded, the revolution failed. [...] As Coppola later recognized, the market selected and shaped these directors, snuffing out the careers of those whose films were not commercial, and boosting and molding the careers of those that were. It seems only right to close with one of Chayefsky's more incisive soliloquies, delivered by the owner of UBS, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty): You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken millions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man, who thinks in terms of nations, and peoples. There are no nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds; there is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Rubles, Pounds and Sheckles. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And you will atone. You get up on your little 21 inch screen, and howl about “America”, and “democracy.” There is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T. And Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. EXTRAS INCLUDE: - Director's Commentary as second audio track - The Making of Network (L. Bouzereau, 2006) 1hr 25min documentary - Vintage Paddy Chayefsky Interview On Dinah! - Private Screenings With Sidney Lumet - TCM Host Robert Osborne Interviews Director Lumet - Original Theatrical Trailer PLEASE SEED AND ENJOY!!!
Seeders: 8
Leeches: 2

Stuart Bliss (N. Grieve, 1998)-aNaRCHo

Category: Misc
Description:
Stuart Bliss (N. Grieve, 1998)-aNaRCHo Stuart Bliss has everything one man could want, a job, a big house, a beauitful wife and a shiny red BMW Everything that is except his sanity. After his frustrated wife abruptly walks out on him, Bliss's mind slowly slips into a muddled mixture of conspiracy fantasies, apocalyptic visions,and rampant paranoia. From employee of the month to paranoid psychotic. "Stuart Bliss walks a thin line between psychological terror and absurdist black comedy." To keep it short this movie is one of those 'you've seen it, you can't unsee it' type movies. A marvel of modern movie-making. I saw it a few years and again yesterday and it's as fresh as it was when I first saw it. I find the surreal world is created by it's words, it's ideas and it's ideals. Strange and haunted but no more so than a dream. If you are the kind of person who can't understand James Bond movies, this is not for you. On the other hand, if you are smart intellectual and sexy, this movie will give you feverish dreams for Months. Listen to my advice, see this movie. If you don't like it, meh. But if you understand it, it will stay with you and influence you like Hollywood films never do. Everything I write, essays, novels, etc. Everything I say, has been effected by seeing this movie. Now are you waiting for, go Watch this movie. This is one of the strangest films I have ever watched, but the strangeness is something completely different from, say, "Donnie Darko" or "Abre los ojos." The strangeness lies not in a man in a rabbit suit or a man who lives in a dream, but rather in everyday occurrences. Perception is the key to "Stuart Bliss," whether it be time, chance occurrences that seem to be linked, perhaps even mental derangement. No answer to any question asked by the film or the audience should be expected. Like Stuart says of time, how it is able to move wards and forwards, this film seems to present a portrait, a snapshot, of something that is blurry and cannot be entirely distinguished. Watching the film more than once, however, allows for the viewer to notice details that went by unnoticed the first time. For example, anyone watching this film should pay attention to the pink notices Stuart keeps receiving, as they play a keep part in understanding the film, at least as much as it can be understood. This is a film that is difficult to describe or dissect, as it could be about any number of things. Details of a larger picture manifest themselves throughout the whole, but they never come into focus. One can only guess from the outline at is being presented, and this must be seen through his or her own subjective perception. "Stuart Bliss" is not a filmmaker's film, despite the fact that the director and primary actor also performed most of the other key production tasks. Rather, it is more of a philosophical and/or psychological work, something even movie buffs might not be able appreciate. Incidentally, I found Michael Zelniker's acting to be more than competent, especially in the way his character slowly degenerates throughout the course of the film, which "ends" in a perfect circle. I only recommend this film to those who actually have the ability to notice and appreciate subtlety and mentality that lies outside the norm. "Stuart Bliss" has given me a new influence and means of perception, not just in film, but in all art, and even life itself. PLEASE SEED AND ENJOY!!!!
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