Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Scary Good- Zeitgeist the Movie


Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you've had your fill of candy, costumes, and corny Halloween emails by now, I know I have, so instead of just putting up your everyday run-of-the-mill Halloween posting I've decided to scare you in a completely different way. I recently came across a scary movie on the internet. No, it's not Saw 4 or anything like that. You can take all the cliched scary movie images out of your head right now. This movie isn't scary like the way "The Shining" is scary (in the traditional sense of causing fear), it isn't scary the way the movie "Splinter" is scary either (possibly the worst acted, worst directed, ill conceived screenplays ever put together made it frighteningly bad), nope, this movie is scary because it makes you think. The film I'm talking about is called Zeitgeist.

Being in Korea I have no idea of this films popularity, but I hadn't heard of it, so I wanted to share it with you. It is a documentary about religion, 9/11, and the US economy. It is also a conspiracy theory movie. I have never been a big fan of conspiracy theories, or the people who preach the concreteness of them, but when done well, they can make great films. The website says it was made to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. I am not saying that I agree with everything in this film, but I am saying that I'm happy I heard it what it had to say. And the more I hear about it, the more I like it.

The website also says it was made as a non-profit film. I love the idea that someone wanted to get their point of view out there so much, that they would do it for no monetary gain. So you can download it, watch it on it's website, YouTube, Google video, or right here, and it's all legal.

This is a full length film though, and at 1 hour and 56 minutes long, I suggest you watch it on the largest format possible, without interruption. I can not imagine you will be disappointed. I stayed up till 4 in the morning watching it the first time. My coworker, Rachel, stayed two hours late after work to watch it, and I thought nothing short of magical chocolate geyser going off in the school gym could have done that. Another person I told to watch it said he emailed the link to all of his friends proclaiming "if you don't like this film, I'll send you $10", and I don't think there has ever been any precedence of a hippy saying he'll pay out money without gripe for anything before. So what I'm saying is I thought it was good, and the people I've shown it to have thought so to. SO CHECK IT OUT!

P.S. - Zeitgeist is defined in the dictionary as the spirit of the time; general trend of thought or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time. The first think I did after hearing the name was look it up, so I thought I'd save you the effort.

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