Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Starsuckers 2009


Starsuckers is a feature documentary about the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it.

Made completely independently over 2 years in secret, the film journeys through the dark underbelly of the modern media. Using a combination of never before seen footage, undercover reporting, stunts and animation, the film reveals the toxic effect the media is having on us all and especially our children.

Chris Atkins presents Starsuckers as a series of five lessons on fame in the modern world: how children are persuaded that fame is something they want, how television and the media reinforces the importance of celebrity and the efforts to attain it, how the mind and body reinforces our need to follow the activities of well-known people and strive to join their number, how the press became addicted to celebrity coverage, and how the art of promoting fame has led to celebrities and their handlers controlling the press instead of the press having say.

Along the way, Atkins demonstrates how celebrity news with no basis in fact gets into print, why newspapers will run press releases almost verbatim, how parents will eagerly sign away the image rights to their kids, how certain mass scale charity events end up helping the performers far more than the causes they designed to support, and how publicists keep accurate but unflattering stories out of the news.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1510934/





Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press 1984



Yuri Bezmenov, the son of a high-ranking Soviet officer, was a member of the elite propaganda arm of the KGB, known as the Novasti Press Agency. One of his assignments was to accompany journalists visiting the Soviet Union to make sure they did not discover the truth about Soviet life. After becoming disillusioned with the oppressive system, he escaped to the West at great risk to his life.

In this interview, conducted by G. Edward Griffin in 1984, Mr. Bezmenov tells how the Soviets used propaganda against their own citizens; how he hoodwinked American journalists into publishing Soviet propaganda, how slave laborers are concealed from foreign visitors, and how he escaped to the West posing as an American hippie. Includes many photographs brought with him on microfilm at the time of his escape.

Hicks meets Huxley