Reviews

From Variety:

“A marvel of passionate succinctness, Robert Kane Pappas’ docu critically examines the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Docu asks, “Could a media system, controlled by a few global corporations with the ability to overwhelm all competing voices, be able to turn lies into truth?”

“Orwell Rolls in His Grave” refrains from preaching to the choir but if its biting analysis proves true, film is unlikely to ever be presented to the general public. Indie arthouse and cable venues therefore beckon. Pic meticulously traces the process by which black may be turned into white, with frequent references totalitarian states both fictional and real — Orwell’s “1984″ competes with Goebbels’ theories on propaganda and blatant examples of Soviet revisionism for pride of place…

Helmer Pappas (director of the fiction features “Now I Know,” and “Some Fish Can Fly”) forsakes all pretense of presenting both sides, since presumably the other side is promoted daily by radio, television and the press. Pappas offers like-minded journalists, media watchdogs, scholars and legislators who voice their deep concerns about the health of democracy in America… Pic largely relies on talking heads, but the conviction and punch of the interviewees’ commentary, leavened with pertinent excerpts from a lively Michael Moore speaking engagement, never becomes tedious. Graphs showing the income of the middle-class lamely flatlining while that of the upper-class climbs off the page are accompanied with shocking government figures of a 9% increase in middle-class income verses a 140% increase at the top..

Ronnie Scheib, Variety, November 2003
http://print.google.com/print/doc?articleid=y4tfu9YqpnG

From BBC:

If Fahrenheit 9/11 lit a match under the Bush administration, this homemade documentary about the manipulation of the media by America’s ruling elites solemnly stokes the resulting flames of angry discontent. Filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas’s long-winded yet terrifyingly bleak Orwell Rolls In His Grave argues that the mainstream American media are no longer the voice of American freedom. Instead, they’re part of a repressive political power structure that has uncanny parallels with the dystopian world of George Orwell’s novel 1984…

Exploding the myth of the American media’s liberal bias, the film asks tough questions: why, in March 2003, did 51% of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11? Why did CBS hurriedly drop a BBC-led story about electoral irregularities in Florida after the subject of the allegations – Governor Jeb Bush – denied it was true?…

Jamie Russell   November 14 , 2004
For complete review: http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2004/11/10/

From England’s Channel 4:

The assembled wise men gradually explain how deregulation has actually helped ensure that the American media becomes increasingly restrictive as large right-leaning corporations (often headed by leading Republicans and even Bush family members) have swallowed up the competition and proceeded to distort their reporting with Orwellian double-speak and outright lies – right down to the myth that the American media is supposedly controlled by a “liberal” elite…

A serious and intelligent documentary. Low on fireworks and surprises, but the steady flow of cogent argument and unpleasant truths is enough to keep anyone riveted – and thoroughly depressed (unless of course they’re a Bush partisan).

Sam Jordison
For complete review: http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/

From The Los Angeles Times:

The latest in the current frenzy of political documentaries aiming to affect the presidential election, Robert Kane Pappas’ chilling “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” draws parallels between George Orwell’s classic novel of Big Brother totalitarianism, “1984,” and the current relationship between media and government in the United States.

.surprisingly adept at keeping the film moving, shrewdly including excerpts from a particularly animated speaking engagement by Michael Moore to break up the parade of straight interviews. “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” is enlightening, at times disturbing, and always provocative, but Pappas manages to end with a glimmer of hope.

Times guidelines: Could cause high-blood pressure in media CEOs, as well as devotees of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly.

Kevin Crust, Times Staff Writer   July 30, 2004
For complete review: http://www.calendarlive.com/templates/misc/

From Dissidentvoice.org   9/04

Bob Dylan’s right. The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handle. That was 40 years ago, but it’s still a contemporary analogy. The “pump” is democracy, the “vandals” are corporations, and “handle,” of course, is the free press.

Robert Kane Pappas, director of Orwell Rolls in His Grave, could have used that metaphor in his documentary, if he wished, but didn’t need to. Instead, by mapping how the mainstream news media distort reality by projecting what’s important to their corporate owners, Pappas reveals that American culture has become a world of Orwellian doublespeak in which Big Brother is the political-corporate elite.

Today, a full two decades beyond Orwell’s prophesied year, 1984, we have a war on two abstract nouns — terrorism and evil. We have a corporate government thhat was able to write and pass a law (the PATRIOT Act), several hundred pages long, allegedly in a matter of days, that the “legislators” never read. It essentially weakened the rights of human beings and increased government power, which is essentially privatized. No child is being left behind and Bill O’Reilly is the nation’s top TV news personality, running a “no spin zone” for cognitively dissonant Neanderthals.

In Orwell Rolls in His Grave, Pappas has provocative answers to questions most people will never hear directed to the corporate news media: Are Americans pathologically detached from reality thanks to corporate manipulation and censorship of news? Isn’t it ironic that in an era when there are more news sources than ever before, regular folks are less and even misinformed because the “news” is owned and operated by fewer and fewer corporate persons with ever more convergent viewpoints?

A personal anecdote: I used to be a reporter/columnist for a small town, corporate-owned newspaper. I was very outspoken and my skeptical eye toward those in power infected some of my co-workers. For a short while, we did a good job covering issues like racism, nepotism and other forms of public corruption. Circulation began rising, but alas, the business community rebelled. Increased circulation means nothing if your pool of targeted advertisers won’t do business with you. So, being a corporation, and bound by law to turn a profit for shareholders, the newspaper must change its editorial content to please the chamber of commerce. Employees who want to investigate injustice are told to shut up or go away. Some choice. Unfortunately, there are hundreds if not thousands of unpaid journalists out here who are just like me.

Chuck Richardson is a freelance writer whose work is archived at www.bastardpolitics.com.
His first book, Memos from Apartment 5, is now available in most online bookstores.
© 2004 Copyright Chuck Richardson.

For complete review:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept04/Richardson0909.htm

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_11635.shtml


From Ruthlessreviews.com:

Many of the anti-Bush documentaries, as pleasant as they are, rarely move beyond the usual collection of complaints and grievances — he’s a liar, a moron, a conniving asshole, a strutting prick, etc. No one who inhabits the real world disputes these assertions, but at some point the argument becomes little more than flattery for the like-minded. I’m even more impressed by a film that can rip Bush limb from limb while adhering to the principles of well-reasoned debate. In other words, amidst the frenzy of “hang-George W. Bush-from-a-sour-apple-tree” hysteria (it’s from Inherit the Wind, in case you were wondering where in the fuck I pulled that from), I’m always more inclined to embrace a film about actual ideas; not mere “theories” that might impact a handful of detached academics, but everyday issues that affect how we live, make choices, and look to the future. In the case of Orwell Rolls in His Grave, the issue is arguably the most important facing us today — media consolidation and the overall dissemination of information.

.Robert Kane Pappas, the director of Orwell Rolls in His Grave, should be commended for his insightful, tightly focused work, although it is unlikely that he’ll get any favorable mentions in the press. As much as I liked Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, it was far too sarcastic to really advance the debate beyond name-calling. So while Republicans can castigate the Left for its radicalism — and affinity for the likes of Moore — they can rest assured that Pappas’ work will remain obscure enough never to pose a threat. For if it did get more attention, it would be impossible to refute, as it is sober, measured, and far from an anti-Republican screed. Bush and his gang of crooks are implicated as they must be (especially for the appointment of FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a man who refuses to believe that there is such a thing as a “public interest”), but the issue goes beyond the current occupant of the White House.

Matt Cale, 8/15/04
For complete review:

http://www.ruthlessreviews.com/movies/


From Urbanspectrum.com:

.Orwell Rolls in His Grave desperately attempts to stir the masses out of its doldrums by signaling a belated alarm. Pappas enlists the assistance of an impressive panel of experts in illustrating exactly how we ended up in a predicament where a consolidated media has rendered humanity less informed.

Kam Williams, 9/13/04

Excellent……….*****

For complete review:
http://www.urbanspectrum.net/reel.html

From the San Fransisco Chronicle:

The U.S. media is negligent. The U.S. media is corrupt. The U.S. media is failing U.S. society. This is the premise of “Orwell Rolls In His Grave,” an important new documentary that cites countless examples of self-censorship, under-reporting of serious issues, and — worse than this — deliberate neglect and outright conflicts of interest.

.the pattern that’s documented in “Orwell Rolls In His Grave” should upset anyone who relies on TV, radio and newspapers for their news and information. 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.

Jonathan Curiel, 8/27/04
For complete review:
http://sfgate.com/

From TV Guide Online:

.Filmmaker Robert Kane Pappas contends that Orwell’s worst fears have been realized in an even deeper sense. His two-hour think piece argues that Orwell’s concern that “Big Brother” would one day be able to revise history on a daily basis, thanks to a monolithic, government-allied media and an apathetic and forgetful public, has come to pass. In Orwell’s nightmare, people “could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality” and would be too uninformed about and uninterested in actual events to notice. Pappas poses a number of provocative questions about the current state of the media: Is there an underlying pattern to the stories that make it into print or onto TV and those that get killed? Has the ever-increasing power of media lobbyists and campaign contributors made it easier for the media to create the truth? Have “official sources” become de facto assignment editors, determining what news is reported? Does the fact that an increasing number of media outlets are owned by fewer conglomerates mean that the public is privy to a limited number of viewpoints on a narrow spectrum of issues?

Pappas gives these important issues up-to-the-minute immediacy by focusing on the way the contentious 2000 presidential election was reported, and how the war in Iraq was pitched and sold.

.Packed with more information than can possibly be digested in a single viewing, the film will be 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.

Ken Fox, 8/04
For complete review:
http://www.tvguide.com/movies/

From Film Journal:

Robert Kane Pappas’ briskly paced documentary, Orwell Rolls in His Grave, is about the Orwellian collusion of government, corporations and mass media, and the threat that collusion poses to American democracy…

Pappas moves easily from the recent FCC ruling relaxing the rules of corporate ownership and dominance of media outlets-overturned by Congress and now in the courts-to the Bush administration’s double-speak and the print and TV media’s mindless repetition of it. The “stolen” election is also highlighted by the presence of Greg Palast, the BBC reporter who uncovered the Florida voting-machine scandal.

Pappas creates intimacy without invoking any Michael Moore-style inveigling, getting his subjects to say things they obviously didn’t intend to say on camera. One priceless moment comes during an interview with executive producer Joe Klines of Fox News. In the course of a discussion about how networks decide what is “news,” Klines quips, with rather too much sangfroid, that if something happens and you don’t see it on the news, you have to wonder whether it actually happened.

By Maria Garcia, 8/02/04
For complete review: http://www.filmjournal.com/Article.cfm/PageID/56268543

From The New Republic:

In his own field Robert Kane Pappas is also daring. He has made a documentary that is almost entirely what documentaries are supposed to avoid: a series of talking heads. His film has few attempts at cinematic cleverness. He has been more clever than that: his heads talk interestingly and pungently – about a pressing and scary subject.

Orwell Rolls in His Grave, using quotations from 1984, attacks the growing power of a few tycoons in the media field. It is based on the hypnotically frightening fact that every means of communication meant to serve us is becoming a means of maneuvering us. Press and radio and, most recently, television have always been principally in the hands of the powerful, but as time goes on, the number of the power decreases. William Randolph Hearst, once considered an emperor, was a vassal compared with Rupert Murdoch.

Former newscast producers, media analysts, investigative reporters, professors of media studies at several universities, a congressman and ((naturally)) Michael Moore speak forcefully on a situation that is simultaneously dangerous and ludicrous. The more effective that the media become, the fewer the people who control them. These facts will not surprise many, but Pappas’s film will heighten the viewer’s anxiety and frustration. (One has only only to switch on the BBC news after watching a network newscast to get some inkling of the contrast between spoon-fed news and candor – and few would contend that the BBC does everything that needs to be done.

The Catch-22 in the matter is that, unless one has private sources of information, we depend on the people who are spoon feeding us for some hints of the news that is being left out. Pappas’s talking heads can’t exactly solve the problem, but they help to keep us from forgetting it.

Stanley Kauffmann, August 9, 2004
For complete review:
http://www.tnr.com/

From Pop Matters:

Robert Kane Pappas is commendably courageous in confronting his topic: the pro-corporate and big-money bias of today’s news media, which have largely abdicated their responsibility to act as a check on federal power and are instead more like a fourth branch of government.

.Orwell Rolls opens with a personal narrative on the part of the director, set in 1980 over the backdrop of the Iran hostage crisis. Struck by the hyped-up media coverage of the hostage episode, Pappas interviewed Peter Mitchelmore of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. Mitchelmore is unusually candid about the nature of the business he’s in — we later learn because he’s about to leave the Post under less than cordial circumstances — and when he talks about cynicism in the news industry, it comes off as a confession, the tattletale press tattling on itself.

.Mitchelmore’s focus in Orwell is the media’s propensity for sensationalism and its interest in the “never-ending story,” a perpetual crisis (e.g., the Iran affair) designed to sell papers or keep people vegging out in front of the tube.

Mike Ward, August 27, 2004
For complete review:
popmatters.com/film/reviews/o/orwell-rolls-in-his-grave.shtml

From Entertainment Today:

Director Robert Kane Pappas’ vivid and distressing documentary examination of the state of the fourth estate is a deeply fascinating must-see for anyone interested in the slow morphing of news into mind-numbingly faux-informative entertainment (see: local news) and tidbits of distraction and carefully apportioned acquaintance. It looks, with an angry head but mostly clear heart, at the manner in which systemic conflicts of new-media interest are not addressed in reportage; at how the political system is off limits (personality trumps substantive debate and ideas given the amount of money that exchanges hands between corporate America and those who cover it); and, essentially, how as a result news is largely managed, not deeply investigated and presented.

By Brent Simon, 8/02/04
For complete review:
http://www.ent-today.com/movies/jul04/mo073004_orihg.htm

From CultureVulture.net:

History is always written by the winners. Documentaries examining unresolved political battles cannot partake of the comfortable illusion of being “correct.” In the escalating polarization of the current political climate, films such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 or Robert Kane Pappas’ Orwell Rolls in his Grave can instantly shatter that illusion.    A frequent lament heard on the left in the United States involves the proverbial historical amnesia of Americans as a whole. In Orwell Rolls in his Grave, Pappas raises the stakes several degrees and focuses on the very filters through which news, and the history constructed from accumulated reportage and research, are constructed. Asking whether George Orwell’s 1984 has come to pass in the United States (the answer is an emphatic yes), Pappas piles up the evidence, from media professionals, public intellectuals, published research, and the public record. .Unlike, Fahrenheit 9/11, it will not likely break out of the indie and art film circuit. As Pappas makes unequivocally clear, 1984, and the permanent war against the rude and impolite, is happening now and from now on.

Les Wright, 7/23/04
For complete review: http://www.culturevulture.net/Movies9/OrwellRolls.htm

From the New York Observer:

Orwellian Analysis

Robert Kane Pappas’ Orwell Rolls in His Grave fills in some of the dots missing from Fahrenheit 9/11′s indictment of the Bush administration. And Michael Moore himself is one of the more vociferous talking heads assembled to assail the media for their sins of omission and commission, dating back to Ronald Reagan’s October Surprise on President Jimmy Carter-involving Reagan’s alleged secret deal with Iran’s ayatollahs delaying the release of the American hostages until after the November election. The press fell asleep on that one even though the first George Bush was allegedly seen in Paris under suspicious circumstances. Amid the Gipper’s recent funeral hoopla, no one in the press seemed even mildly concerned about Reagan’s penchant for arms deals with foreign rogue states.

.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.

Andrew Sarris, 7/04
For complete review: http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=9332

From L.A. CityBeat:

REMEDIAL VIEWING

by Andy Klein

As Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 becomes the first documentary to gross more than $100 million in the U.S., additional political docs just keep rolling into the theaters – basically a good thing. The latest is Orwell Rolls in His Grave, an examination of what may well be the single direst aspect of the country’s roll toward the right – the consolidation and corruption of the media.

Robert Kane Pappas (Some Fish Can Fly) . interviews and excerpts from public appearances, intercut with headlines, stock photos, TV footage, and frequent quotes from George Orwell’s 1984. He goes as far back as a 1971 memorandum by soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell that led, at least in spirit, to the formation of the Federalist Society, as well as the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think tanks, and to the grooming of mediagenic spokespeople to counter the socialist menace.

With money from the likes of the notorious Richard Mellon Scaife, and with a long-term strategy, a relentless assault on liberalism began; even if it was not part of the original concept, it became a relentless assault on diversity of opinion. It is useful to think of the “sides” here, not as Democrats and Republicans, but more as liberals and conservatives, for the Democrats have been (at a minimum) passively complicit in this frightening erosion. The Fairness Doctrine may have been revoked in 1987, during Reagan’s watch, but the awful Telecommunications Bill of 1996 was passed during Clinton’s.

The result has been a destructive consolidation of media ownership, with the likes of Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. among the five or six entities controlling 90 percent of the media. Since the media have traditionally served as the greatest independent check against abuse of government power, this development is right up there with paperless electronic voting as a threat to democracy. (A positive sign was the recent public uproar that allowed the Senate to roll back FCC proposals that would have made the situation worse.)

For complete review: http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1097

From Moviepoopshoot.com:

“The boldest and most incendiary film to be shown during the Sundance Film Festival, not to mention the most important, wasn’t shown at the Sundance Film Festival — it was shown at the Slamdance Film Festival. It’s a documentary that skewers the news media and its owners in a way that seriously chills and disturbs, and is the best rabble-rousing piece of its kind I’ve ever seen. Any film critic, industry analyst, film distributor, news reporter or media professional reading right now who doesn’t make an effort to see this film is deserving of the term “derelict.” Sorry, but you can’t blow this one off. I’m speaking of a not-entirely-finished, low-budget, left-leaning documentary by Robert Kane Pappas called Orwell Rolls in His Grave. Boiled down, it’s about the effects of the news media companies all being owned by six or seven giant corporations, and the increasing uniformity and lack of diversity that’s resulted in their coverage of major stories and issues…”

Jeffrey Wells, Moviepoopshoot.com

http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/elsewhere/147.html


From Slant Magazine:

“The middle child to Joel Bakan and Harold Crooks’s The Corporation and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Robert Kane Pappas’s Orwell Rolls in His Grave is an expert piece of investigative journalism that likens our media system to a subsidiary of our country’s corporate process.

.Unlike Fahrenheit 9/11, Orwell Rolls in His Grave isn’t concerned with undermining Bush’s rationale for going to war against Iraq, instead choosing to focus on the current administration’s chokehold of the media in its attempts to undermine the political system in this country and silence its adversaries.”

Ed Gonzalez, © slant magazine, 2004
For complete review: http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=1167

From the Wolf Entertainment Guide:

ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE

.Orwell’s “1984″ warning about a dictatorial future yields quotes that director, co-writer (with Tom Blackburn) and producer Robert Kane Pappas has used as a takeoff point for his film “Orwell Rolls in His Grave,” an indictment of the current state of the news media, with proof offered that matters are getting worse under ever-narrowing monopolistic corporate control. The year 1984-Orwell’s futuristic year of doublespeak in which truth is turned on its head at the service of the state-has long since gone but the film finds signs everywhere that America is headed in a dire direction.

The film accuses the press of complicity in allowing the Bush Administration to get away with acts that the press should be challenging, and attributes the negligence to control by the right. The power of Rupert Murdoch is cited in particular as one of the tentacle moguls.

-William Wolf
For complete review:
http://www.wolfentertainmentguide.com/

From Philly.com (The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News):

If you are a Left-leaning conspiracy theorist, you will LOVE this documentary about Bush administration double-speak and corporate media control.

If you are a Right-leaning supporter of the president, right-or-wrong, you’ll hate this film. You’ll probably try to have it banned.

But if you’re somewhere in the middle, as probably most of you are, you may find “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” fascinating, kooky, inflammatory and disturbing.

Using George Orwell’s classic “1984″ as a jumping-off point, Robert Kane Pappas takes dead aim at big media’s “merger” with the Bush administration to create a new Ministry of Truth.

In “1984″, Big Brother wants its subjects to believe “War is peace,” “Ignorance is strength” and “Thought crime is death.” Kane Pappas wants you to believe the opposite- that a democracy is better served by open debate, a free exchange of ideas and news-gathering organizations out to serve the societal good instead of corporate greed.

Mission Accomplished.

-Howard Gensler, 5/2004

From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:

“Orwell Rolls in His Grave” — This most chilling of all new-wave political documentaries makes a devastating case that the increasing monopoly of the global media by a few multinational corporations will inevitably result in the end of democracy in the world.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/179354_documentary25.html


From Disinfotainmenttoday.com

Volume #107, June 1, 2004:

Orwell Rolls in his Grave is as objective as it gets. There are no hysterical rants, no oblique conspiracy theories, just cold hard facts presented as clearly and succinctly as possible. You can show it to your parents, your kids, your PTA, and they will be equally outraged. It’s not left, right, conservative or liberal, just a straightforward piece of filmmaking with no more agenda than the truth.

Complete review: http://www.disinfotainmenttoday.com/issue107.htm

From Film Threat:

Be prepared. Be prepared to be shocked, infuriated, depressed, and terrified. Viewers of Robert Kane Pappas’s documentary “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” will experience this range of emotions and it’s absolutely vital in order to process fully the issues and arguments presented. Indicated by its title, Pappas’s documentary is about a “1984” reality that is slowly turning from fiction into fact. Pappas goes directly to the meat of his documentary with footage of former CNN and ABC news producer Danny Schechter giving a speech where he asks if the American people live in a democracy or a mediacracy. Media is supposed to check political abuse, instead it’s part of the abuse…

Stina Chyn, June ’04
Film Threat: Truth in Entertainment
Complete review: http://filmthreat.com/Reviews.asp?Id=6109

From WINGTV, World Independent News Group:

“…This chilling passage lays the framework for Robert Kane Pappas’ remarkable documentary, Orwell Rolls in His Grave, an expose which hits as hard as anything that’s been released since Kristina Borjesson’s Into the Buzzsaw. The reason why its impact is so dramatic can be found in the fact that it covers what could quite possibly be the # 1 news story in our country right now – how everyday American citizens have been all but been forgotten by our supposed watchdog that “operates exclusively in the interest of a handful of corporations who decide what American people should know, and more importantly, what they should not know”

Victor Thorn, May 31, 2004
Complete review: http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/orwell.html

From Indiewire.com:

“A Thursday afternoon screening of Robert Pappas’ “Orwell Rolls in His Grave,” which screened in the festival’s View from Long Island sidebar, managed a mini-political firestorm of its own. Audience members could be heard whispering comments (mostly in agreement) about the assertions the documentary made regarding the current frenzy of media consolidation at the expense of diversity of opinion and critical investigative journalism. Several times, in fact, the audience erupted with applause, albeit tempered by the depressing state of news coverage in the U.S., which the film argues, resulted from deregulation that began in the 1980s. The result, according to Pappas, is the media oligopoly of today with only a few figures such as right-winger Rupert Murdoch controlling ever-greater areas of the media industry.”

Brian Brooks, Indiewire.com

http://www.indiewire.com/onthescene/onthescene_031029hiff.html


From turnoffyourtv.com:

Orwell Rolls In His Grave is a well done film that presents the Orwellian notions of “doublespeak,” “big brother” and “the endless war” in a contemporary context. Ironically, its message of corporate media control and the loss of free speech in America will never get any exposure. The film is critical of the very companies it needs for effective distribution. Politics and conspiracy theories aside, the film makes a strong case against the consolidation of media companies. In the end, the film polarizes the United States into “us” versus “them” — this being “the general public” versus “the corporate elite.” The public may eventually learn of this viewpoint, but one thing is certain. It will never be reported in the media.

Ron Kaufman, 4/04
Complete review: http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/

From Efilmcritic.com 3 stars

“So often a documentary tells a few stories that make the audience go ‘ooh’, but fails to package it all in a way that will make anyone actually take action. Orwell Rolls in his Grave is a different beast; it retells everything that I’ve heard over the last four years about how this government has pulled the rug out from under the civil freedoms that countless thousands have died for in one sweeping parade of malfeasance that is guaranteed to make your head hurt and teeth gnash. It isn’t a partisan spray for the converted, it’s an incredible collection of documentation and first hand testimony as to what is happening to us behind our backs – and under our noses…it is essential viewing for anyone who gives a damn about their country…”

Chris Parry (Worth A Look)
Complete review: http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8976

From The Half Moon Bay Review
and Pescadero Pebble (since 1896):

Orwell would recognize U.S.

Dear editor:

I know that over the summer some seniors at the high school have read Orwell’s famous book – “1984″. These seniors might be interested in viewing the documentary “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” now playing in San Francisco.

With forthright commentary from respected leaders in the industry, the documentary portrays how our present government has achieved power by controlling the media. (For instance, if a lie is presented enough times, people tend to believe it, even if it is false; such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq). A handful of corporations now control radio, TV and newspapers across our country. As a result, people are “fed” the official news and other voices are silenced. This is not what a democracy is about. In a democracy reporters investigate and report the unbiased facts, even if it is messy: like the election results from Florida in 2000.

.And when we can no longer find the facts, when voices are silenced, then we have the making of a country our seniors have just read about in “1984.” “Orwell Rolls in His Grave” is a shocking reminder of what we have to lose if this continues for four more years.

Evelyn Jess-Fulwiler September, 2004
For complete review: www.hmbreview.com/articles/