Comments on: The power of Curtis http://sarahditum.com/2009/06/19/the-power-of-curtis/ Freelance writer and journalist Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:21:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: solidchris http://sarahditum.com/2009/06/19/the-power-of-curtis/#comment-1248 Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:36:39 +0000 http://sarahditum.com/?p=1553#comment-1248 The Corporation, book and film is the business. Cracking stuff. Best of a string of business docs that came out around the same time.

I’ve subscribed to Curtis though. TV like that is shamefully rare.

]]> By: Nelson http://sarahditum.com/2009/06/19/the-power-of-curtis/#comment-1246 Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:15:13 +0000 http://sarahditum.com/?p=1553#comment-1246 Yeah. And still they’re some of the best things on telly :)

Joel Bakan’s “The Corporation” shits on em though IMO. Heartily recommend the book if you’ve not read it.

]]> By: Sarah http://sarahditum.com/2009/06/19/the-power-of-curtis/#comment-1245 Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:26:13 +0000 http://sarahditum.com/?p=1553#comment-1245 Thanks for that – I’m still playing catch-up with Medialens, and when I first watched The Power Of Nightmares I was deep in lit crit and not very well-informed anything apart from semi-colons. My main grumble with Century Of The Self was the treatment of game theory, which I think can be a lot more subtle and humane than he allows (not that it always is, just that it seemed a little unfair to blame it for late-stage capitalism).

]]> By: Nelson http://sarahditum.com/2009/06/19/the-power-of-curtis/#comment-1244 Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:36:38 +0000 http://sarahditum.com/?p=1553#comment-1244 His documentaries are brilliantly made… but I nearly fell out my chair the first time I saw Power of Nightmares and heard the voiceover say:

“But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision.”

Which gives you a vague hint of the areas in which he studiously and repeatedly misses the point :)

There’s excellent criticism of Nightmares here:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041118_Power_Of_Nightmares_1.HTM
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041119_Power_Of_Nightmares_2.HTM

And analysis of Curtis’s response to the above here:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/041207_Curtis_Response.html

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it (“Century of the Self” even more so) but when I read “coherent, provocative, aesthetically persuasive” I only fully agreed on the fact that he’s persuasive. I’d also add “funny” as the bits I love most in his documentaries are the clever and sarcastic use of archive footage :)

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