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Orwell Rolls In His Grave (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:24
Fresh:19
Rotten:5
Average Rating:6.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
US Box Office: $0
Synopsis: Director Robert Kane Pappas’ ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an... Director Robert Kane Pappas’ ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself. Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media. Among the cast of characters in ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament. ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE provides a vital forum for ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. From Globalvision’s Danny Schecter: “We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a mediacracy – where a media that is supposed to check political abuse is part of the political abuse.” New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller says, “These commercial entities now vie with the government for control over our lives. They are not a healthy counterweight to government. Goebbels said that what you want in a media system – he meant the Nazi media system - is to present the ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.” From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t, ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media. Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where in an era of more news sources the majority of the population has actually become less informed? ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future. -- © Sag Harbor-Basement Pictures [More]
Starring: Michael Moore
Starring: Michael Moore
Director: Robert Kane Pappas
Director: Robert Kane Pappas
Screenwriter: Robert Kane Pappas
Producer: Robert Kane Pappas
Reviews for Orwell Rolls In His Grave
[N]one of this is news. But seeing it laid out so bare... is infuriating.
For some, Pappas' film will simply confirm everything they've suspected of the fourth estate. For others, it will be a reiteration of points they make themselves. Those who've never thought about these issues may be in for the shock of their lives.
Professors, pundits, journalists and one elected official, Representative Bernie Sanders (I-VT), rigorously examine the issue of maintaining a free press in an environment in which journalists are increasingly the employees of major corporations.
A vivid and distressing documentary examination of the state of the fourth estate... a deeply fascinating must-see for anyone interested in the news, politics and civic life.
Comes across as a political science course videotape rather than a movie to fully engage a general audience.
...it sometimes goes off into areas that, while interesting, are pretty tangential. Still, it makes a good (and scary) case.
Even though he refuses to excise about 15 to 20 minutes of unnecessary material, Pappas is nonetheless a steady editor who, less intrepid than dogged, pieces together a sustainably intriguing, suitably distressing exposé.
A bracing eye-opener to anyone who hasn't considered the full implications of recent Congressional debates advocating further media deregulation, debates that, unsurprisingly, have been strikingly underreported by mainstream news outlets.
The war against the neo-fascists still goes on, and the outcome at this point is far from certain. Mr. Pappas' film does its part.
Every incident mentioned in the film was reported in the media, sometimes ad nauseam, and the polls show that about half of Americans like where things are going.
A cheaply made, occasionally repetitive, but passionately argued documentary.
Attacking network news seems almost quaintly beside the point at a time when the networks are hemorrhaging viewers, losing more and more eyeballs to cable, the Internet and, apparently, our nation's new habit of staring blankly into space.
Get ready for a cultural wake-and-shake you won't forget for a long, long time.
The persuasion of Pappas’ argument lies in the accumulation of original documentation, allowing the political perps to condemn themselves with their own words.
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