The Movie:

In Search Of The Great Beast 666 is an interesting idea. Essentially, it purports to show the life and times of the infamous Aleister Crowley through a series of dramatic recreations and fairly stoic narration. Given Crowley's notoriety and status as the 'wickedest man in the world' this is a project that could have gone either way - Crowley's story is an interesting one but reenactments, more often than not, tend to come off as a little corny.

Directed by Robert Garofalo and featuring original music by Rick Wakeman and narration from Joss Ackland, the film sets out recreating the more noteworthy points in Crowley's life. While some of these recreations are surprisingly good, the actors are wildly uneven. Having different cast members play the same characters probably made sense given how the filmmakers likely wanted to portray the passage of time but sadly it winds ...Read the entire review

The Product:
Some call it stealing. Others call it sampling. Somewhere in the gray area between a literal interpretation of copyright law and the progressive need to serve available technology lies Girl Talk. Also known as Gregg Michael Gillis, biomedical engineer and full time rebel DJ, the infamous musician with a worldwide fanbase has made his name off of utilizing the media of the past to make what he hears as the sounds of the future - and he's not alone. Bands like Negativland and artists like Danger Mouse have long used this mash-up style of sound collage to add emphasis to their own aural ideas. But Gillis is different. He believes in utilizing only the work of others to create his own art. Now, he's not the first person to propose this idea. The Residents, San Francisco's amiable avant gardeners, took the entire Beatles catalog and created the seminal surrealism known as "Beyond the ...Read the entire review

The Product:
As the Talking Heads successfully argued, life during wartime "ain't no party...disco...or fooling around". Indeed, the toll a sovereignty skirmish takes on a nation cannot be calculated in full. Instead, it is measured in individual facets, a collection of coping mechanisms both stoic and sickening. Russia in the early '80s was gripped by the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan, and in the process, the nation became divided. Some were indifferent, taking up the mantle of the country's cause just as easily as they bought any other snippet of Communist Party misinformation. Others, however, used the chaos as a way of tapping into the ever-present military machine and milking it for all they could. One such situation occurred in the small provincial locale of Leninsk. There, a perverted police officer kidnapped a young girl and kept her for his own disturbing pleasures. It's within ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Alan Moore is widely known outside of comic book circles as 'the British guy who wrote V For Vendetta and Watchmen' simply because those two properties were made into successful films and were therefore able to reach a larger audience than the comics that they were based on. That said, there's way more to Moore than just the source material for a couple of movies. The man has been writing some of the most interesting comics ever published for a few decades now and Dez DeZ Vylenz's documentary, The Mindscape Of Alan Moore attempts to probe the brain behind those pages and pages of comics.

While Moore's best known work is that material he wrote for DC Comics - that being his incredibly influential run on Swamp Thing, and the aforementioned Watchmen and V For Vendetta (which was originally serialized in the U.K's Warrior mag...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Remember the last time we went through The End of the World™? That was back in the primitive year of 1999, with the clocks angling uncontrollably toward 2000, when, of course, all hell was going to break loose. Ooops. Well, then for certain it was going to be 2001. Oooops. Fear not (actually, more appropriately, fear on), for the next End of the World™ is a mere four years away, on December 21, 2012, when according to Mayan prophecy all hell is going to break loose. Or maybe not. It all depends on what happens then.

That, in a nutshell, is the gist of 2012: Science or Superstition, an actually pretty nifty little documentary that covers not only the Mayan calendrical system, which ominously ends on that date, but also various other ancient traditions, all of which some of the "experts" (all of whom seem to have written books, which are prominently featur...Read the entire review

The Movie

Most political junkies were probably too swept up in the glow of Barack Obama's successful bid to become the 44th president of the United States to notice one little thing: where was Michael Moore? The outspoken filmmaker, so ubiquitous during the 2004 elections, popped up on "Larry King Live" occasionally, but was far from the Democratic candidate and I'm fairly certain he never so much as even held a rally to support the Democratic ticket. What a difference a few years make -- could Moore's influence be waning?

A valid question and one that dominated by thoughts upon finishing Slacker Uprising, easily Moore's worst film and one which plays like a 90-minute highlight reel of his 2004 "Slacker Uprising" tour, in which he barnstormed the battleground states to compel the college kids to get off the couch and vote. (To entice them, he offered a package of Ramen n...Read the entire review

The Real McCain:
We had a small plate in our house when I was growing up. A coffee table thing with a cartoon printed on it. A dude with a crabbed face had stuffed himself in a tiny box. He held a sign that said 'people are no damn good.' Which brings me to the current election here in America. We've got what, three weeks to go? Thank frikkin god!

Is it too late? Only if you believe the guy on the plate. We're so close to fobbing off super-serious decisions based on what makes good TV. But let's not do that. Brave New Films, however, has made some darn good TV (internet-style) with its brief but potent DVD The Real McCain, a disc which features ten short internet videos - linked with people talking about things you can do to affect the outcome of this election - that hammer home points about how McCain's straight talk is sometimes deceitful, dangerous and often downright disturbing. Indepe...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Drugs are cool, the government is not

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Disinformation
Likes: Debunking propaganda
Dislikes: Drug comedy, Government lies
Hates: Drugs

The Movie
Right off the top, I may as well say, I have never done drugs, andunless they are forced upon me, in all likelihood, I never will. Anyonewho knows me well can vouch that my perceptions are altered enoughnaturally. At the same time, I know quite a few people who have partaken, andI don't villainize them for their choices as adults. It's just not forme. So as someone who is essentially anti-drug, but with a somewhat open mind, I should be the right audience for The War on the War onDrugs. After watching the film though, I'm p...Read the entire review

The Product:
His name is virtually unknown outside certain scholarly circles. Others may recognize him from a momentary cameo in Woody Allen's Annie Hall. He's the crotchety old man who tells the self-important academician that he knows "nothing" of his work, and how he ever got a job teaching is "totally amazing". But unless you were in college during the mid-'60s to early '70s, or somehow found yourself tuned into the seismic shifts going on in media studies during that same era, you probably have no idea who Marshall McLuhan is. Frankly, few outside his close family and friends understood him either. He was a brilliant man exploring a brain dead arena. He spoke of a fear of technology, but was not necessarily a Luddite. Even more confounding, his writings were a mish mash of borrowed theorems, original brilliance, and baffling intellectualism. Now, thanks to the Disinformation Compa...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I'm a little wary of political screeds that pretend to be documentaries, and I'm very wary of screeds that preach to the converted. American Blackout purports to examine the claims of disenfranchised African-American voters during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, but in the end it sacrifice the outrage of those stories for the shakier ground of canonizing ex-U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

The film touches on some of the election-day horror stories that befell many black voters in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio four years later. The Florida fiasco is particularly shocking. While most news media outlets at the time concentrated on dimpled and hanging chads in Broward, Dade and Palm Beach counties, untold numbers of other Floridians were deprived of the right to vote altogether. Thousands of voters wrongly identified as felons were erroneously kicked off th...Read the entire review

A quick primer on Robert Greenwald: He's the guy who went from filmmaker (with credits widely ranging from the disco musical fantasy "Xanadu" to the Abbie Hoffman biopic "Steal This Movie") to full-on hyphenate filmmaker-activist, spending the past few years quickly churning out hard-hitting left-wing documentaries with long-winded titles like "Uncovered: The War on Iraq," "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism," and "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price." (He's also produced a handful of other similarly themed efforts.)

Although sharply researched, his fast production turnaround time leaves his documentaries looking a little cheap and underdeveloped; Greenwald's intent is to get his message out to the people as soon as possible, and by any means necessary, which means direct-to-video with a push from direct internet sales and share-the-film campaigns. He's often fighting deadlines, want...Read the entire review

I pause on this September 11 to note that while feel-good emotional dramatizations of the 2001 attacks are starting to proliferate in the media, reliable basic information about our world is becoming ever more scarce, especially on television news. The difference between news, opinion and reassuring entertainment has disappeared, and viewers who want to find facts and full reportage are at a total loss. The airwaves are clogged with voices screaming that the media is overwhelmed by political bias. Any questioning of the version of events reported by the government is held up to instant ridicule.

9/11 Press for Truth is two documentaries in one. Its first part chronicles the experience of four women who lost husbands or sons at the World Tra...Read the entire review

The Movie

They punctuate the evening news like bloody commas - suicide bombings that ravage the Middle East and elsewhere are shocking reminders of just how far individuals will go in the name of belief. Dramatized in last year's searing drama Paradise Now, the methodology, but perhaps more importantly, the psychology of the suicide bomber is at once fascinating and terrifying - the prospect of someone being so utterly committed to a cause/belief system as to willingly martyr oneself is a foreign concept, one that strikes fear deep in the hearts of Westerners.

Despite the DVD case's incessant trumpeting of its tangential connection to the also recently released Syriana (The Cult of the Suicide Bomber is "hosted" by former CIA operative Robert Baer, whose book "See No Evil" and own experiences served as inspiration for Syriana), this 2005 Briti...Read the entire review

The Movie

Almost as divisive a social topic as abortion or gay marriage is that of behemoth big-box retailer Wal-Mart's effect on modern America – for those in many of the 50 states, shopping at Wal-Mart is an inescapable way of life, but despite its prevalence, Wal-Mart has become the equivalent of an economic epithet, a store synonymous with crushing mom-and-pop retailers, providing a bare minimum of benefits for employees and thoroughly dominating the American retail landscape. With his latest work, director Robert Greenwald (who previously threw the cinematic firebombs Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and Uncovered: The War on Iraq) peels back that big box facade and explores Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

With such a massive corporation as his focus, it's to Greenwald's credit that he's able to fashion a largely cohesive narrative (i...Read the entire review

The Product:
With Ron Howard presently shooting his big screen adaptation of Dan Brown's blockbuster bestseller The Da Vinci Code (with Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Ian McKellen), the whole Knights Templar merchandising apparatus has really geared up. Seems every cable channel has their own take on the supposed secret locked inside a small French village and wants to explore every possible angle for hints at the legitimacy of the legend. Origins of the Da Vinci Code is yet another attempt by The Disinformation Company at finalizing the proof in such scandalous subjects. The concentration this time is on geometry, and the existence of a secret society whose mysterious purpose is seen as holding the entire foundation of the Christian church in the balance.

The Plot:
As part of its ongoing exploration of all things Da Vinci Code-ish, The Disinformation Company offers u...Read the entire review

Both liberals and conservatives would probably agree that no principal is more fundamental to the American way of life than that guaranteed by the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." There are, of course, reasonable limits - maliciously creating panic by yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater where there is no fire, for example, doesn't fall under the protection of Free Speech - but historically everyone has been entitled, if not always welcomed with open arms, to express dissent, whether it's you expressing your opinion, or the KKK marching down Main Street expressing theirs.

In recent years, though, the nation has become so divided, with extreme co...Read the entire review

Whenever something becomes a major part of the pop culture landscape, there are always individuals looking to cash in on the newfound notoriety. Be they actually involved in the scandal or situation, or feel a need to be associated with it, no matter how tenuous the connection or the correctness of such an ideal, the leeches love a media circus. There are just so many of the hopelessly lost to huckster. In rare cases, however, the people reserving seats on the bandwagon are actually the one's responsible for the underlying structure of the now universally acclaimed idea. Such is the situation with writer/ historian Henry Lincoln. Long before author Dan Brown decided to turn some questionable theories about Jesus and Mary into a ballistic bestseller, Lincoln was working with fellow researchers to uncover the secrets held in the Rennes-le-Château region of France.

What he and his colleagues found was ...Read the entire review

Occasionally, you have to feel sorry for organized religion. Either people are piling onto it like rabid soccer hooligans after an unbroken 1-1 tie, or they are sycophantically kowtowing to it like is actually has all the answers. In between, formulated faith sticks its know-it-all fingers into everyone's existential pies, shrewdly perceiving that it stands a better chance of conversion than aversion in the process. With a set of edicts and dogmas that are older than time itself and a super-serious means of keeping it that way – mainly damnation for all eternity – spiritual conviction has it pretty sweet. But like George Washington chopping down a cherry tree or the coincidences between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy's assassinations, religious history is hampered by several long standing maxims that no longer bear up under scrutiny. For every person who believes that women should play a bigge...Read the entire review

The Movie:

A month and a half after the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, the still controversial Patriot Act was passed through Congress with little in the way of debate. Though the act was passed under the ideology that it would strengthen national security and go a long ways towards giving the appropriate government agencies the privileges and powers that they need to hunt down and stop terrorists before they strike, many argue that it infringes upon those civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States of America.

What this documentary (and many related essays, books, speeches, films and whatnot) sets out to prove is how the Patriot Act has been used by the American government to obtain private information, detain innocent civilians of Arab descent, and enforce extended periods of confinement without due representation. In other words,...Read the entire review

The Movie:

A reedited version of a documentary that originally aired on the BBC in England, Bush Family Fortunes – The Best Democracy Money Can Buy is writer/reporter Greg Palast's investigative look at how George W. Bush came to power and the unusual circumstances surrounding that climb.

The emphasis of the first part of the documentary is on Bush's admittance into the Texas Air Guard, which effectively ensured he would not see active duty in Vietnam, which is what happened to many other men his age during this time period. Palast questions many of the details surrounding Bush's military service record and even finds an administrative official who swears on camera that any incriminating evidence in his file was shredded to avoid making the President (then Governor of Texas) look bad. There are also people interviewed on camera who claim that Bush didn't even show up for dut...Read the entire review

Disclaimer: This show is a docu that advocates an anti-administration position regarding the Iraq war. Savant isn't going to pretend he isn't accord with that position. If you're furious that politics should be in a DVD review, stop reading, and don't blame me.

The best quote in Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War is roughly a hundred years old and from Mark Twain: "Patriotism means supporting one's country whatever. And the government when it deserves it." This informational documentary presents strict facts and a partisan argument that the Bush administration's war effort was based on calculated lies. In contrast to Michael Moore's emotional argument, this is a dry facts show with a straight story line: Here are the lies. Here's how we know. Here is some more interpretation of the Bush administration's perfidy. End of story....Read the entire review

The truth hurts. Only problem is, it's getting harder and harder to determine what makes up the proverbial pain bringer. Facts used to be the foundation of all truth, but over the course of time, the reliance on what really happened to jazz up the truth was shoved aside for more creative certification methods. Like a mass media game of Telephone, our current journalistic integrity is awash in plagiarism, falsehood, and purple monkey dishwasher spin. Now, this is not a new ideal. From Hearst's infamous yellow coverage to Murdoch's multinational 24-hour cable corporate con job, the news is not so much a reflection of truth (itself already removed from reality) but instead centers almost exclusively on what sells. This eon's old battle between accuracy and advertising caused Mark Twain to cajole such verity-warping practices. "Get your facts first", he wrote, "then you can distort them as you please". Tod...Read the entire review

Though politically one-sided and at times resembling a corporate training video, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism (2004) is a highly effective Op-Ed style activist documentary along the lines of Fahrenheit 9/11. It's certain to make the blood of both liberals and conservatives boil, if for different reasons.

Financed by MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress, and directed by Robert Greenwald, this direct-to-video feature traces the rise of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, which now includes nine television satellite networks, 100 cable channels, 175 newspapers, 40 book imprints, and 40 TV stations reaching three-fourths of the world's population, some 4.7 billion people. When Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996 as a rival to CNN, its CEO and Chairman, Roger Ailes said, "We'd like to be premier journalists and restore objectivity." Which is like a tobacco company spokes...Read the entire review