Thursday, 4 August 2022 — Jonathan Cook
New documentary discloses the ways western publics are softened up for aggressive, global US militarism through the Pentagon’s influence over thousands of films and TV shows
Middle East Eye – 27 July 2022
Category: Movies
David Chappelle’s ‘Space Jews’
9 October 2021 — Eric Walberg
Written by Eric Walberg Эрик Вальберг/ Уолберг إيريك والبرغ
Finally someone, male or female, white or whatever, str8 or lgbtq+, with the balls to give Israel the finger in the mainstream media. Chappelle is the American Hamas, lobbing his homemade rockets, flying his balloons out of besieged America at the dastardly foe, which relentless steals and then colonizes our minds, forcing us to our knees to atone for our inbred antisemitism.
Is lab-grown meat the future of food?
18 July, 2020 — Climate & Capitalism
Film review
Documentary on ‘clean meat’ fails to question the technology’s rationale and blindly accepts dubious claims made by its promoters
Australian ecosocialist Alan Broughton is is a member of the Organic Agriculture Association and co-author of Sustainable Agriculture vs Corporate Greed.
MEAT THE FUTURE
Directed by Liz Marshall
reviewed by Alan Broughton
Green Left, July 6, 2020
Green Capital and Environmental “Leaders” Won’t Save Us
20 May 2020 — Wrong Kind of Green
By Alexander Dunlap
Despite its serious flaws, Jeff Gibbs’s documentary Planet of the Humans powerfully exposes how optimism for “renewable energy” transitions is misplaced, and how mainstream environmentalism is becoming a force for green capitalism.
REVIEW: Planet of the Humans Michael Moore produced documentary on The Green New Deal lands the occasional hit, but pulls too many punches
3 May 2020 — Off Guardian
John Steppling
Michael Moore is estimated to be worth 50 million dollars. He is a wealthy man. His political support is for the Democratic Party. He has stumped for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in New York and for Rashida Tlaib in Michigan (does one need to say more?). Moore is essentially a brand.
Movie Review: The struggle to live in the present
25 October 2019 — MROnline
Originally published: Verso by McKenzie Wark (October 18, 2019)
Many of my friends disliked it, and not without reason. And yet Raoul Peck’s film The Young Karl Marx seemed to me to get the essential thing right.1 I saw it as a film about the struggle to live in the present. As such, it’s a film that can help us do exactly that. The Young Karl Marx is fiction, but like all good fiction is more real than the documentary evidence on which it is based. It tells us not what actually happened, but a version of what happened with which to think what is happening now. In that sense, it is a species of realism.2 And in another sense too. It is a work of cinema. It is in Pasolini’s terms (and Barad’s also) cut from the real itself.
XY Chelsea: A deeply flawed portrait of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning By Jean Shaoul
4 June 2019 — WSWS
Directed by Tim Travers Hawkins; written by Mark Monroe
XY Chelsea, directed by Tim Travers Hawkins, charts the life of former United States Army soldier Chelsea Manning, following President Barack Obama’s unexpected commutation in January 2017 of her vindictive 35-year jail sentence.
Manning had served seven years, much of it in solitary confinement, in a military prison for leaking classified war logs and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, which passed them on to the mainstream media outlets. The documents and video clips exposed the criminal operations carried out during the illegal US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying operations on foreign heads of state and ordinary people and sordid intrigues in every corner of the globe. Not one official responsible for the crimes she exposed—including mass murder, government spying and torture—has been prosecuted, let alone jailed.
Could this be the most Marxist film ever made?
14 May 2019 — MROnline – The Public Autonomy Project by Steve Darcy (May 8, 2019)
[Note: this contains some plot spoilers.]
Those who avoided reading Karl Marx’s three-volume, 2,500 page magnum opus, Capital, in the improbable expectation that someday a movie version would come out, have finally got their wish. Boots Riley’s film, Sorry to Bother You, may indeed be the most marxist film ever made.
US ‘Stumbled Into Torture,’ Says NYT Reporter By Adam Johnson
15 February 2018 — FAIR
Jennifer Lawrence does not actually come up in New York Times reporter Scott Shane’s reminiscence (2/14/18).
As part of a promotion for the upcoming “Look, Evil Russians!” film Red Sparrow (hyping Hollywood films is apparently a thing reporters do now), New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane (2/14/18) wrote a synergistic Cold War 2.0 essay about the CIA’s alleged attempt to recruit him. It included a rather jarring—if not risible—paragraph summarizing Shane’s years of reporting: Continue reading
John Pilger – The Power of Documentary – Selected life works at the British Library
9 November 2017 — John Pilger – The British Library
John Pilger’s films have been credited with drawing public attention to human rights crises, the impacts of wars and abuses of power by governments and corporations.
John will be speaking on both days. Due to demand, tickets are now bookable for single or half days or for the whole weekend:
THE COMING WAR ON CHINA A film by John Pilger
11 September 2017 — John Pilger
“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable” – John Pilger in The Coming War on China.
Ritzy staff strike for a living wage for the fifth time!
7 October 2016 — Momentum
[To tell the truth, I’m not a big fan of Momentum, or indeed any of the other ‘Corbynista’ support groups, websites, pr agencies, boosters and hangers-0n. Have I missed anything? But I like to keep my eye on things and as the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton is kinda my ‘local’, I actually know a few of the people in the photo below and remember the last time they struck the Picturehouse chain of cinemas. I mean, in London, you can’t even survive on a so-called London living wage. It should be called the ‘existing wage’, and that’s stretching it. I plan to tackle the Corbyn phenom sometime soon and try and explain why I mistrust these ‘fan clubs’. WB]
Cinema Strikes spreading across London.
No more war! The anti-war message of The Cranes Are Flying (1957) By Dorota Niemitz
19 June 2014 — WSWS
A great Soviet film about World War II
Almost 70 years after the end of the Second World War, the bloodiest war in human history, the world again faces the danger of military conflict on a mass scale.
Omar – Film Review by Gilad Atzmon
6 JUne 2014 — Gilad Atzmon
One of the most important Palestinian feature films ever, Omar is, to date, the deepest expose of the diabolical nature of the Israeli occupation and the inhuman situation imposed on Palestinians by the Jewish State. It also throws light on the tragic and depressing Palestinian struggle against a sophisticated, demonic enemy – an on-going battle that so far has led nowhere.
Movie Review: A confused and contradictory film on how foreigners “help” Palestine By Sarah Irving
As a child, Chloe Ruthven declares in the opening moments of this film, she hated the Palestinians. It’s a strong statement to make, especially against a backdrop of newsreel from the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing ahead of Israel’s establishment. Continue reading
A new John Pilger film, Utopia, is now showing in UK cinemas
15 November 2013 — John Pilger
One of the most extraordinary films about Australia is soon to be released in the UK. This is Utopia, an epic production by the Emmy and Bafta winning film-maker and journalist John Pilger. Continue reading
“The struggle to tell the truth through stories”: An interview with British film and television producer Tony Garnett—Part 2
24 October 2013 — WSWS
In a retrospective this summer, “Seeing Red,” the British Film Institute celebrated the work of veteran film and television producer Tony Garnett. The BFI described Garnett as one of television’s “most influential figures,” who “produced and fostered a succession of provocative, radical and sometimes incendiary dramas.”
“The struggle to tell the truth through stories”: An interview with British film and television producer Tony Garnett—Part 1
23 October 2013 — WSWS
In a retrospective this summer, “Seeing Red,” the British Film Institute (BFI) celebrated the work of veteran film and television producer Tony Garnett. The BFI described Garnett as one of television’s “most influential figures,” who “produced and fostered a succession of provocative, radical and sometimes incendiary dramas.” Continue reading
Why bad movies keep coming out and what to do about it By John Pilger
17 October 2013 — John Pilger
As an inveterate film fan, I turn to the listings every week and try not to lose hope. I search the guff that often passes for previews, and I queue for a ticket with that flicker of excitement reminiscent of matinees in art deco splendour. Once inside, lights down, beer in hand, hope recedes as the minutes pass. How many times have I done a runner? There is a cinema I go to that refunds your money if you’re out the door within 20 minutes of the opening titles. The people there have knowing looks. My personal best is less than five minutes of the awful Moulin Rouge.
The Art of Collaborating with the Nazi’s: Hollywood & America Reek of Nazi Influence
6 September 2013 — Boiling Frogs
Hitler’s Propaganda Principles Alive in 21st Century
The studio heads, who were mostly immigrant Jews, went to dramatic lengths to hold on to their investment in Germany. Although few remarked on it at the time these men followed the instructions of the German consulate in Los Angeles, abandoning or changing a whole series of pictures that would have exposed the brutality of the Nazi regime….At the center of the collaboration was Hitler himself. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 