New Adam Curtis documentary

Yeah I've seen Curtis' filmography up to this point and he's one of my favorites. So far seems like he's going in on the Burial. Nice choice.

I think this guy completes my documentarian holy trinity consisting of him, werner herzog and errol morris.

bizarre coincidence that Curtis used 2 parts from songs I used in American Bisque, I heard it last night but I can only remember him using Locomotive by Plastikman, just the very opening part from it. 30:53 into my movie :

very unlikely adam curtis watched this, but id like to fantasize he did. It was kind of a love letter to him anyways

Edited January 27, 2015 by John Ehrlichman

Quality work, as expected. Curtis knocks it out of the park again.

yeah, that was pretty good. It did feel darker and weirder than some of his other stuff. Heavy-handed, but good.

Excellent film. Liked the pace, some narration, then long passages of almost abstract shots.

it had a kind of Chris Morris/Jam-era floatiness to it (see notes above on the music), interspersed with genuine violence (eg: the Karzai assassination attempt and the John Simpson bombing clip), so you get this fucked up sense of feeling like you've dropped some kind of benzo's (like virtual-apathy/confusion) while searing its main points into your mind better than most could hope to achieve

 

history as it should be taught in every school

is this shizz up on torrents yet? good lord.

Chen --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74-fP3RAep0

Ah ok, I'll just use video downloader...prefer to have an offline copy just in case right.

Thanks though!

as someone who lives in the Sates and thus cannot use the BBC's iPlayer, I am curious.

 

Does the BBC let users download content through the iPlayer in the same way that a user can download podcasts on iTunes,

or is the iPlayer streaming only?

 

thanks.

With Chrome and Hola (for instance) you can easily stream the BBC shows. Their DL app seems to run natively on your computer, which makes it a little bit more of a hassle to set up a VPN tunnel than just setting it up in the browser.

its gotta be a matter of days b4 this'll be up as a torrent (if not already)

ok, Thanks!

  On 1/28/2015 at 6:11 PM, Al N Aafiysh said:

as someone who lives in the Sates and thus cannot use the BBC's iPlayer, I am curious.

 

Does the BBC let users download content through the iPlayer in the same way that a user can download podcasts on iTunes,

or is the iPlayer streaming only?

 

thanks.

 

You can download programmes from the iPlayer yeah

 

Finally got round to watching this the other day, really great doc

Been watching this at nights whilst trying to get my daughter to sleep.

Not his best, but better than some of his recent output. Not finished yet however, so might change my mind.

I have met him.

The documentry was quite good but very much his opinion, his perspective on things. i though it was strange weapons of mass destruction where not mentioned in it

  On 2/4/2015 at 10:34 PM, AAAAh said:

I have met him.

how did this happen? He comes across as very obscure. What did you talk about? Where? When?

  On 2/4/2015 at 10:34 PM, AAAAh said:

The documentry was quite good but very much his opinion, his perspective on things.

 

I thought it might be that way from the way the film was presented in the trailer but I didn't get this impression from watching to be honest. It was just a very rational matter of fact description of the history of the region and the foreign policy of the US and UK. Do you have a different opinion and perspective? What points do you disagree with?

  On 2/5/2015 at 5:44 PM, Timothy Forward said:

 

  On 2/4/2015 at 10:34 PM, AAAAh said:

The documentry was quite good but very much his opinion, his perspective on things.

 

I thought it might be that way from the way the film was presented in the trailer but I didn't get this impression from watching to be honest. It was just a very rational matter of fact description of the history of the region and the foreign policy of the US and UK. Do you have a different opinion and perspective? What points do you disagree with?

 

 

Don't forget the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia. And the domestic policy of many Afghan politicians.

after a second viewing, my impression is that this is perhaps his most 'conservative' movie yet. ITs smaller in scope subject wise than his other films, and he doesn't really bring much to the table in terms of controversial viewpoints (Century of Self, Power of Nightmares). Visually and editing wise its one of his best i think, but content wise one of his weakest.

So it turns out that Adam Curtis short about Russia used 2 kind of interesting sources for his reporting.
A guy named Peter Pomerantsev and another American reporter Mark Ames. You can see the actual sourcing that he did for that special here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/20c22534-f722-3d7a-b7ba-0506fcc00063
Mark Ames was a US journalist who lived in Russia from 1997 to 2008 and who at first (after seeing his name associated with him on Adam Curtis' own writings) was intrigued by Peter Pomerantsev's book about the 'Russian propaganda machine'. It turns out though that Peter Pomeranstev might not be exactly who he seems and actually might be intentionally spreading disinformation himself *about* Russia but has at the same time become the most 'credible' writer to describe in detail how things like Russia Today TV and russian media works.

to sum it up: One of the sources (ames) Curtis used in his Russian special found extreme problems and even intentional lies of omission by the other primary source in the special (Pomeranstev). This doesn't mean his special is crap, it's still interesting and most of it's accurate but it gives great insight onto how complex these neocon information warriors actually have become.

All explained in this article: http://pando.com/2015/05/17/neocons-2-0-the-problem-with-peter-pomerantsev/

Edited May 18, 2015 by John Ehrlichman

I've always enjoyed his stuff but I've come to see him as either a hack and/or possibly a decent propagandist. A basic part of it is when he comes out with crude shit like "But that's what they want you to say." I just find it hard to take him seriously. Part of me thinks that's intentional though and he says such things because he knows it will appeal to the easily influenced.

It's even worse in Bitter Lake. Stuff like "..and then he MACHINE GUNNED THEM!"... heavy handed,yush.

When you first said that in the thread I thought you were crazier than I was tbh, but after seeing that Adam Curtis 'fell for' Pomerantsev writings I question his agenda. I think Adam Curtis is a pretty smart dude and I find it hard to believe that he didn't google the authors name to see that he literally sits on a vulture capitalist think tank that was involved in plundering Russian economy in the 90s. So either Adam Curtis has softened in his older age and now feels like neocon ideology deserves a fair shake or hes losing it or he's intentionally trying to shift the narrative to something actually not honest and true. Maybe you think this is what he's always been doing, but i only felt this way very recently