Street History

...This is a nice old documentary about the early days of Hip Hop. It describes the lifestyle of Africa Bambaataa and his Zulu Nation. Check the official site. It starts with Planet Rock: “Who control the present, control the past, who control the past, controls the future, FUNK!!!”. Classic indeed. After that we have a speech by Malcom Mclaren, best known as being the manager of the band Sex Pistol, who describes his first impressions when for the very first time he was in touch with Hip Hop. Very interesting! Than there is an amazing overview on Kool Herc. So funny, he drives around the Bronx squalor whit huge speakers on the back of his cars (mobile sound sistem). You can not miss that. He speaks about Hip Hop’s birth, he speaks about blocks party and about the Bronx itself...

Beyond Beats & Rhymes

...HIP-HOP: BEYOND BEATS AND RHYMES is a riveting documentary that examines representations of gender roles in hip-hop and rap music through the lens of filmmaker Byron Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist. Conceived as a “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” Hurt examines issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture...

McLuhan's Wake (2002)

...

The opening sequence of McLuhan’s Wake foreshadows the aesthetic quality of the rest of the film. It begins with a montage of video images – crashing seas, a dancing ballerina, the Challenger shuttle – edited together with audio from Marshall McLuhan and original New Age music. This rapid succession of heterogeneous images fades into a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Descent into the Maelstrom, complete with animation, special effects and narration by Eric McLuhan. As did so much of the literature that Marshall McLuhan read, The Descent into the Maelstrom impacted his thinking. However, the 1840 Poe short story is even more significant according to McLuhan’s Wake; the film suggests the mariner’s struggle in the story provides a metaphor for McLuhan’s own attempt to make sense of the swirling, whirling culture of media that could have swept him away so easily had he not identified the laws regarding them.

McLuhan’s Wake is organized around McLuhan’s last scholarly book, Laws of Media, which was published posthumously by his son. In this lesser-known publication of McLuhan’s, he and his son argued that there are four laws of media: any medium amplifies or intensifies some situation; any medium makes part of the environment obsolete; any medium recreates or revives any older structure or environment; and any medium, when pushed to its limit, can reverse to create the opposite of its intended function. McLuhan’s Wake explores this tetrad of enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal with examples from places so varied as an elementary school classroom, the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, and a Jaguar car dealership.

The film assumes that viewers have at least a rudimentary understanding of McLuhan’s theories. With its abundance of examples illustrating the laws of media, McLuhan’s Wake makes the meaning of the tetrad extremely clear. The film also highlights McLuhan’s better known theories on the effects of technology, including its numbing effect, its potential for creating a global village, its retribalization of man, and its incompatibility with a passive model of education. Excerpts of McLuhan’s lectures and interviews illustrate these theories, edited together with interviews from scholars like Neil Postman and Lewis Lapham and narration from performance artist Laurie Anderson. However, the viewer rarely sees the people speaking, causing them to become disembodied. While McLuhan would likely be quite comfortable with this haunting quality of the film, it has the potential to overwhelm an audience of students unfamiliar with McLuhan’s work.

McLuhan’s Wake does acknowledge criticisms of McLuhan’s theories, but it provides no specific explanation, and attributes them mostly to jealousy or lack of full comprehension. The film, which also loosely follows McLuhan’s life chronologically, portrays McLuhan as having died without ever fully being heard. In this way, McLuhan was the real-life mariner who made sense of and escaped the vortex, only to be dismissed by his peers. The film does highlight the resurgence of McLuhan since the computer revolution, but does not acknowledge that much of this resurgence, at least in popular culture, may be a result of people’s misunderstanding of McLuhan. However, the film does make clear that McLuhan himself believed that computers enabled authorities to exert more control over society. It also highlights McLuhan’s strong objection to technological change on the basis of the resultant unpleasant effects on the human body.

Ultimately, McLuhan’s Wake succeeds as a film. Although it is slow-moving at times, it captures the ideas and aesthetic style of McLuhan. However, because of the McLuhanesque qualities of the film, it falls short as an instructional video to introduce students to McLuhan. However, for students who already have some familiarity with McLuhan’s work, the film can provide insights into McLuhan’s thinking. Additionally, the web-based tools accompanying the video include “Understanding McLuhan,” a brief but useful biography of McLuhan, and an educator’s resource guide filled with discussion-provoking questions and possible assignments. McLuhan’s Wake fills a long-time void for a film about Marshall McLuhan, whose relevance to our contemporary culture cannot be denied. Viewers should just be prepared to experience the film as they might any of his writings, as a psychedelic intellectual journey...

Afro-Punk

...is a 66-minute documentary film directed by James Spooner, exploring race identity within the punk scene across America and abroad. The film focuses the lives of four people dedicated to the punk rock lifestyle, interspersed with interviews from scores of black punk rockers from all over the United States. The interviews cover issues of loneliness, exile, interracial dating, black power, and the dual lives led by people of color in communities that are primarily white. Afro-Punk features performances by Bad Brains, Tamar Kali, Cipher, and Ten Grand. It also contains exclusive interviews by members of Fishbone, 24-7 Spyz, Dead Kennedys, Candiria, Orange 9mm and TV on the Radio, among others. In 2003 the documentary was featured at the American Black Film Festival in South Beach and the Pan African Film & Arts Festival, and won an Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival, an Audience Award at the Black Harvest International Film and Video Festival in Chicago, an award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking at the Roxbury Film Festival in Boston, and an award for Best Documentary at the International Jamerican Film and Music Festiva] in Jamaica...

1984 (1984)

...is a British film, released in 1984, based upon George Orwell's novel of the same name, following the life of Winston Smith in Oceania, a country run by a totalitarian government. The film was directed by Michael Radford and stars John Hurt, Richard Burton (in his last film role) and Suzanna Hamilton.

Arrested Development

...just can't get enough of the Bluths, here we go again from the beginning...

...more free tv here...

THX 1138 (1971)

...is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas, from a screenplay by Lucas and Walter Murch. It depicts a dystopian future in which a high level of control is exerted upon the populace through omnipresent, faceless, android police officers and mandatory, regulated use of special drugs to suppress emotion, including sexual desire.

It was the first feature-length film directed by Lucas, developed from his student film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB, which he made in 1967 while attending the University of Southern California, which itself was based on a one and a quarter page treatment of an idea by Matthew Robbins.^{[citation needed]} The film was produced in a joint venture between Warner Brothers and Francis Ford Coppola's then-new production company, American Zoetrope. A novelization by Ben Bova was published in 1971.

the Eugenics Debate

...GREAT DEBATE of the WEEK with old sparring partners, Alex Jones and Doug Stanhope...

...Alex welcomes friend, Comedian, Doug Stanhope to the studio to discuss the topice of eugenics, which Doug says is not all that bad. Toward the end of the show alex makes an effort to turn Doug away from the Darkside of the force.
http://www.dougstanhope.com/
http://www.infowars.com/
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/
http://www.prisonplanet.com/