Savant's new reviews today are
Hello. The Mel Gibson movie about Jesus is sure monopolizing the airwaves today. I'll be very curious to see if all the notoriety translates into huge attendance figures. I've been watching more network programming than usual, and really noticing how movie promotion is weaved into news programs to an alarming degree. I think it's because the news organizations are owned by corporations that also own movie companies. How reliable can our news be when promoting a product is more important than journalistic truth? I think our channels of information - TV news, newspapers - should be independently owned and managed, but I don't hear that kind of thinking. We're kept too busy listening to non-debates about Janet Jackson.
Sam Fuller's old movie Park Row is a wonderfully patriotic movie that addresses this problem perfectly. It celebrates the rough & tumble days in 1880 New York when scores of cheap tabloids fought for circulation, and is an emotional argument for the free competition of ideas and information. Many of the papers were yellow rags but the choice they offered made a difference. The title sequence for the movie is backgrounded by hundreds of newspaper mast-heads from all over the country. Fuller says right up front that the free press is what makes us free, and as long as we have all these independent voices to cry out when injustices are done, then America will be all right. It almost makes you want to cry, knowing that almost all of the papers shown are gone or organized into lock-step with a few major syndicates, all drawing their news from the same handful of sources. Now the business is tidy and manageable, but I'm not sure it can be independent when a few big corporations have so much power. Sam Fuller made an obscure little movie, but it's like a beacon of truth. I wish people were talking about Park Row instead of the latest manufactured media sensation.
What happened? ... There was this soapbox there, and after that I don't remember. Pardon.
My first Ingmar Bergman review goes up today. Two of the five films have been recalled so the full boxed set won't be released until April 20. I'll review the other three titles earlier, as they're already out individually. Thanks! Glenn Erickson
Posted by DVD Savant at February 25, 2004 10:39 PM