Why so much hype?

Lack of good storyline.

A Major Disappointment

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

"This movie is a little unfocused in that it attacks the media (mainly Fox News and Rupert Murdoch), George W. Bush, and attempts to say the election was a fraud (ignoring the evidence that GWB did in fact win by all accepted criteria). As was widely reported, several unbiased news organizations did a recount of the ballots after the election and found that out of the 3 most accepted criteria for manually recounting ballots, GWB won on all counts. Even the lefty New York Times, who took part in the recount, agrees GWB won fair and square. It's amazing to see the director ignore heaps of evidence in his quest to prove an irrational point."This 'film' was completely slanted throughout. It showed 'viewpoints' by some of the most liberal left-wing people in the country -such as Mikey Moore and avowed communist Bernie Sanders. Put this crap forth as a 'documentary' should be a crime. Unfortunately there are many uneducated people who will see it and think 'how wonderful', silly them. This trash would get a minus, if possible.

Robert Kane Pappas' documentary "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" presents the case that the future which George Orwell wrote about in his 1948 novel 1984 might actually be our modern day. The film brings together a slew of interesting voices, from filmmakers, to politicians, to media experts, to discuss the current state of the mass media. Large corporations have been buying up more and more media outlets, whether film companies or newspapers, for a number of years, and the film warns of the conflict of interest between the media and these corporations and the politicians who share their pockets. Although the film offers occasional quotes from the landmark novel, there's a certain expectation that the viewer has already read and digested it. Certainly the concept of "Big Brother" has been in the mainstream for some time, but some of the correlations will likely be lost on some who might need this film the most. Regardless the film is a highly disturbing, if manipulative and homemade-looking, peek into the complete loss of power and overall hopeless outlook for the future of the United States.

There are some other great comments about this film, so I'll insteadtry to give out some detail. The film is done in a calm, non-ranting,informative manner primarily via interviews with journalists. Manypoints about the corporate domination of the corporate mass media arebrought out well; the citing of GE Inc.'s top management interferingwith NBC news is one case in point. The portrayal of the mediaindustry itself as a political "special interest" similar to thetobacco lobby or other traditional special interest is both insightfuland strong. The film also does an adequate job of painting the changein "ethics" of government officials over the years, and gives a fewcitations to support its point. If there is a knock, it's that the film covers a vast amount of pointsand therefore cannot go in depth unless you want to watch a ninety-hourdocumentary. This is not a big knock -- it seems that one goal of thefilm is to try to tie many disparate issues and trends together topaint the big picture, which is something our regular mass media simplydoes not do. To me, two points are worth special mention and applause. (1) the filmmentions the original 1980 "October Surprise" and while it does not goin depth, it does flush out the basics and gives a reference to thebook by Carter's Nat'l Security Adviser ("October Surprise"), which onecan use to read for more information. Still, it would have been niceto mention Jimmy Carter's quote about the October Surprise or the factthat the former Iranian president has publicly said the OctoberSurprise did indeed happen while he was president. (2) Despite it notbeing a focus of the film, the film brings out the class gap (aka thegrowing gap between the rich and poor) and issues of Americans workinglong hours. This is done in a way related to media self-censorship butI'm always surprised when this issue rears its head -- simply becausereporting about it is so very rare in the mainstream press. The filmgives a few stats but its message that the poor are poorer now than acouple of decades ago and the rich are much, much richer comes throughwell; it notes the current gov'ts solution to this problem is a tax cutfor the rich stands out starkly in its plain-face absurdity. Whilethere was a few of those conventional-wisdom-turned-upside-down momentsin the film, that one stood out. Overall, like the other reviewers, I highly recommend the film. Whileit's not done in a Michael Moore-like funny manner, the materialpresented is on the money, is not preachy and is easily followed, andthe film runs along coherently in an easy to watch pace. In some ways,it's scary, depressing stuff; in other ways, it's invigorating becauseit illustrates the depth of what's happening to our republic and paintsa picture of just how much work we've got to do to return our gov't tosome semblance of rule by/for the people.

I was blown away by this movie. In it's own way it is better than Farenhite 9/11. It is less polished, but very effective. One has to be very worried about "our democracy". You have the feeling you want to do something after seeing this film - but what?What else can I say - as they want 10 lines - I was deeply disturbed as was most of the group I saw the movie with. Everyone asked what they could do? Some had no idea what was going on re: the various news items discussed in the film. I am curious as to what other people will think when the movie officially opens in a few weeks. Hope others will comment on it when they see the movie.