Great reviews of The Corporation and Thirst in The Jewish Week.
5 thoughts on “21st Century Pharaoh”
This review calls The Corporation “a brilliantly argued and elegantly constructed case.”
Sorry, but what a load of crap. I hate multinationals as much as the next San Francisco leftie, but this film was a piece of agit-prop garbage. Poorly edited, horribly voiceovered, shoddily researched and absurdly one-sided, it preaches to the choir and offers no real ways to make change. I have never left a film, whose content I agreed with, so let down.
If you’re going to be a political filmmaker, use film intelligently. Build an argument, persuade, offer next steps. Use the medium for good, not propaganda. Rise above the urge to play for cheap laughs and hisses.
In fact, if anything irritated me more than this film, it was the audience, who fell for every cheap shot the film offered.
oh sarah, but from which reason of your heart did such sad darkness begin to emanate? siiigh.
like i said about f911: it may be propaganda, but at least it’s our propaganda. you’re educated about these issues–wonderful. most people aren’t even remotely familiar with these issues and, without a film that contextualizes them in such a way as to get people fired up about an issue, they otherwise may never care about it at all.
is f911 preaching to the choir? it’s the #1 movie in america and everyone is going to see it–across political lines. now, how many americans think the corporate retail state is a-okay? how many will continue to after seeing this film, which too may easily cross political lines?
sigh. don’t hate the player girl. hate the game.
like i said about f911: it may be propaganda, but at least it’s our propaganda. Oh, man… do you still not get it? The enemy is propaganda and short-sharp-shocked thinking. As Jews, we’ve been relearning that for centuries now. don’t hate the player girl. hate the game. Yeah, that’s my point. The propaganda game is a racist, caricatured, hackneyed one. Can’t lead to justice, because necessarily leads to dehumanization. Always has. Always will. It’s one game. There are others.
i fully get your argument, mob, but still stand by my position. i think that if you’re going to make the ENORMOUS effort to produce a film, to raise the money, to hire the people, to pour your bloodsweattears into it, then you owe it to your viewers, and to your cause, to make a good, effective film.
the film isn’t good for many reasons. a lot of the reasons have to do with a poorly planned structure and bad editing. some of the reasons have to do with the aforementioned agit-prop quality of the film: the ridiculous vintage footage, the spooky voiceover, the reliance on extremists as talking heads, and the failure to do basic exposition (worst example of this was the water debacle.)
but really, the worst failure of the film is its lack of next steps for viewers. if you accept the film’s hypothesis, that the corporate form, by design, encourages the sort of psychopathic behavior that must be reined in by a humane and just society, then you naturally should be moved to take action. what is that action, and how can we take it? where are the websites we should visit? what are the protests we should attend? where is the reading list? how can i sign up? what congressional legislation should be drafted? where are these solutions?
is the answer to strut and fret and smash up starbucks shops, or is the answer to redraft the legislation that helps us form corporations? this, really, is a separate topic that i don’t know we need to get into right now, but i felt that the film offered me no guidance, only more heartache.
This review calls The Corporation “a brilliantly argued and elegantly constructed case.”
Sorry, but what a load of crap. I hate multinationals as much as the next San Francisco leftie, but this film was a piece of agit-prop garbage. Poorly edited, horribly voiceovered, shoddily researched and absurdly one-sided, it preaches to the choir and offers no real ways to make change. I have never left a film, whose content I agreed with, so let down.
If you’re going to be a political filmmaker, use film intelligently. Build an argument, persuade, offer next steps. Use the medium for good, not propaganda. Rise above the urge to play for cheap laughs and hisses.
In fact, if anything irritated me more than this film, it was the audience, who fell for every cheap shot the film offered.
oh sarah, but from which reason of your heart did such sad darkness begin to emanate? siiigh.
like i said about f911: it may be propaganda, but at least it’s our propaganda. you’re educated about these issues–wonderful. most people aren’t even remotely familiar with these issues and, without a film that contextualizes them in such a way as to get people fired up about an issue, they otherwise may never care about it at all.
is f911 preaching to the choir? it’s the #1 movie in america and everyone is going to see it–across political lines. now, how many americans think the corporate retail state is a-okay? how many will continue to after seeing this film, which too may easily cross political lines?
sigh. don’t hate the player girl. hate the game.
er that should be from which realm but i just woke up and i’m dyslexic in the morning.
like i said about f911: it may be propaganda, but at least it’s our propaganda. Oh, man… do you still not get it? The enemy is propaganda and short-sharp-shocked thinking. As Jews, we’ve been relearning that for centuries now.
don’t hate the player girl. hate the game. Yeah, that’s my point. The propaganda game is a racist, caricatured, hackneyed one. Can’t lead to justice, because necessarily leads to dehumanization. Always has. Always will. It’s one game. There are others.
i fully get your argument, mob, but still stand by my position. i think that if you’re going to make the ENORMOUS effort to produce a film, to raise the money, to hire the people, to pour your bloodsweattears into it, then you owe it to your viewers, and to your cause, to make a good, effective film.
the film isn’t good for many reasons. a lot of the reasons have to do with a poorly planned structure and bad editing. some of the reasons have to do with the aforementioned agit-prop quality of the film: the ridiculous vintage footage, the spooky voiceover, the reliance on extremists as talking heads, and the failure to do basic exposition (worst example of this was the water debacle.)
but really, the worst failure of the film is its lack of next steps for viewers. if you accept the film’s hypothesis, that the corporate form, by design, encourages the sort of psychopathic behavior that must be reined in by a humane and just society, then you naturally should be moved to take action. what is that action, and how can we take it? where are the websites we should visit? what are the protests we should attend? where is the reading list? how can i sign up? what congressional legislation should be drafted? where are these solutions?
is the answer to strut and fret and smash up starbucks shops, or is the answer to redraft the legislation that helps us form corporations? this, really, is a separate topic that i don’t know we need to get into right now, but i felt that the film offered me no guidance, only more heartache.