By John Hilley | Zen Politics | July 9, 2015 A truly disgraceful piece of distortion from the BBC’s Lyse Doucet. The title of this film is a clear hint of the propaganda to come, based, as ever, on the fatuous ‘two sides’ narrative. There was no ‘war’, only another orchestrated massacre, a campaign of civil terror, in order to maintain […]
June 28 will mark 6 years since the U.S.-backed military coup in Honduras took the people’s government away from them. Thousands of people are still in the streets every week demanding that the wrongful president step down.”Whoever’s not jumping supports the coup!” is the shout as a sea of people leaps repeatedly into the air. The makers of an amazing new film called Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley, will be allowing anyone to view it online for free for two weeks. I recommend you do so.
Lia Tarachansky’s heart-wrenching documentary, On the Side of the Road, reveals the Big Lie at the heart of the myth of the creation of Israel.
I saw Clint Eastwood’s movie American Sniper the other night. It is the story of U.S. Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, based on his autobiography. Kyle fought in Iraq between 2004 and 2009 when the U.S. was occupying the country. (In February 2013, Kyle was killed at a gun range by another former soldier, reportedly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).)
American Sniper has been nominated for six Oscars, including best film and best leading actor; it has broken box-office records for war movies, and it’s generating heated debate.
Rosewater, a film marking the directorial debut of ‘The Daily Show’ host Jon Stewart, and the showman-turned-director’s first attempt to stoke up flames of Iranophobia in America and the world came to waste due to the inefficiency of the filmmaker on the one hand and the poorly-written scenario on the other.
I’m not accustomed to paying much attention to anyone’s national holidays, except perhaps France’s, but only because it at least commemorates what for a brief time was a real revolution. Since I pass a certain consulate almost every day, I do wonder every time I notice that the flag has not been hoisted.
I watched American Sniper the other night and it really is the most puerile propaganda imaginable. It is not even as though it is simply unfair to the “enemy” – that is, mostly ordinary Iraqis, who are shown to be ruthless and heartless killers filled with irrational hatred for the American soldiers sent to liberate them from … well, in this re-write of history it is seemingly from al-Qaeda. It is equally unfair to the US soldiers there, presenting them either as good guys being heroes or as good guys being traumatised by their exposure to the natives’ savagery.
By ABAYOMI AZIKIWE | Press TV | January 18, 2015 Selma was distributed to a mainstream audience on January 9. The film has already been viewed by millions across the United States and the world. During the Jan. 9-11 period of its opening, the Associated Press reported that “civil rights drama “Selma” moved from 22 […]
Last month Blade Runner played the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, and I went to see it on their old-school big screen, where it belongs. This was the Final Cut, one of multiple versions (not all of which have been released theatrically) made since the film’s first release in 1982. For some reason the Final Cut has been unavailable to theaters since it debuted seven years ago. Blade Runner’s production and re-production history is a saga in itself, as a little web research will show you. It’s clearly always been an object of obsession for its director, Ridley Scott.
More than 100 years after the birth of cinema, it sometimes feels like every story has been told. But the best films of 2014 dared to break out of their genres, explore new ways of filmmaking, and inspire viewers. Some of them even provided tools for popular understanding of our current political moment. This year, Selma, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, and Out In The Night all told stories of a criminal justice system harming Black communities, while Dear White People used satire to address racist power structures.
